Here you all are, I hope you enjoy it!
Chapter 10: Monster in the closet
This was too much. Too much failure, too much shame. Vecks stumbled about on the world he was on in the dead of night in a depressed stupor. He just wandered around, muttering to himself incoherently. People would easily mistake it for the random babble of a drunk. Little did they know was that it was a spell of ressurection. Again and again he muttered it, and maybe he even truly believed it would work. Of course it wouldn't. Reanimation and reviving someone is one thing, but not even one of the magi can restore life where it has been lost for good.
Stumbling, he came to an abandoned alley way and fell into the gutter. He fell into a slumber that was beyond his mental state at the moment. He dreamed of darkness, and he dreamed of the light, and he dreamed of all they created long ago. He dreamed of the void, the roads of endless travel, and of course, he dreamed of kingdom hearts.
They had not only the power to restore life where it had been lost, they created it and took it away on a daily basis. Why should he be any different. The answer lay in his shell. He may be a wizard, a powerful weilder of the arcane arts, but he was still mortal. At least for now. Wizards have been known to become ageless with time, but for one so young it was beyond him.
"I see you are the one I have been looking for, young Vecks." Called a voice. Vecks was called to reality again. He listened again, until the voice said "Come closer child." and then he went down the alley towards the voice.
"W-who's there?" Vecks asked. As he walked down more, he could see a vague silloute, even darker then the blackness all around him. The figure was weightless and did not move. "An astral-projection?" Vecks inquired. The voice chuckled slightly.
"Very perceptive young master. Indeed, this is only a phantom of myself. I reside on a rather far off planet known as Ukozam, pardon the odd sound I named it myself." The voice said in a low voice that echoed.
"What do you want?" Vecks asked, getting right to the point. His mind was on other things at the moment.
"Very well, I shall tell you. I wish to invite you to my home on Ukozam. You see, I am a collector of the rare and exotic. And the powerful. You register under two of those. I am gathering the elite to aid me. In exchange for your help in some of my experiments, I would be gald to offer the vast stores of magical knowledge to I have at my disposal, to you."
Vecks was lost in his thoughts for a moment while he pondered what to do.
"Don't worry, everything will be fine. I eagerly anticipate your arrival." The shadow spoke. A moment later he was gone. Vecks was alone again. He didn't like to be alone. He thought of what this man could offer him, maybe even a way to get Aurie back. And if things went south, he could always fight his way out or at worst make a hasty retreat. He decided to go for it.
The next day he went out and bought some Gummy blocks with money from his accounts. It took him no time at all to fasion together a fairly decent ship, and set sail on the solar winds to reach the world Ukozam. It took him several days, no problem for a mage. Bread and water got rather old after a while, but he reached his destination just fine.
"Ah Vecks, so good to see you in person." A familar voice called out. Vecks looked and saw the physical body of the phantom he encountered days ago. He was an old man with wrinkled skin, white hair, and was bent over supported by a cane. However, he had an odd glow about him, and he was dressed much like a wizard would.
"It's an honor to meet you, Mr-" He trailed off, not knowing the old mans name.
"Xammu. Mr. Xammu will be fine young lad. Now, I'm sorry to rush, but let's please get started if you do not mind. Follow me." He said this in a nice yet commanding way. He gestured to the door and proceded to shuffle to it, Vecks following him close behind. Opening the large red double doors Vecks gasped at what he saw. It was completley empty, like walking into purgatory. Just endless white. An instant later, it vanished, replaced with a very large library.
"That, is what you two will be working on." Mr. Xammu said. Turning around, Vecks looked to him, and then to where he was pointing. At the desk in the center of the room was a girl, abotu Veck's age, with bright red hair and a green robe. Most interestingly, she also had a long, perfectly straight horn on her head.
"She is Sally, you're new partner. She is an expert summoner, and will be helping you to create that white empt room you saw. You see, in addition to the countless worlds and parallel universes that exsist, there are levels of exsistence in each universe. Such as Kingdom Hearts, the monster realm, and maybe even time its self. What I want is a doorway, one that will enable a person to enters these realms at will. I theorize that these realms, with the exception of our own, are universal. If so, we could enter one realm, then use the same process in reverse, to enter an entirley new dimension, or possibly even our own in a different time and place." The old man explained. Sally had heard this before, and was still deeply reading her book.
"So you want Sally and I to open a rift? Thats something any magician can do with the right practice." Vecks said. The old man chuckled slightly and shook his head no.
"You see, a rift is a flux in space time that works as a portal between to points in space in this universe. Like going from point A to point C and going right past point B. However, what I want is a hole from this dimension, into another one. If we hit the right one, we could acess a universe of pure magical energy! Imagine the spells humanity would suddenly have acess to! Not to mention all the things we could learn from parallel selves!" He explained.
"I think I get what your saying. You want us to punch a hole in the universe and get you to a universal realm, and use that as sort of a turn table to get to another dimension right?" Vecks asked. The old man smiled and nodded. "Well then, lets get started!"
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Sometime later
"Sally, how long have we known each other?" Vecks asked. The two were outside enjoying the day for a change. Vecks was laying on a thick tree branch with an apple and a book, just relaxing and reading, Sally down below in the shade doing the same.
"Well, you came here about, what, six months ago right? As I recall, it took me about four months or so to get you to go out with me, and we've been together ever since right?" Sally asked casually. Vecks finished off his apple, applied some rather unorthodox gravity spells, and then flipped over, clinging to the bottom of the branch while staring down at Sally.
"So why do you never talk about yourself? I told you about my freinds Mateo and Arcadios, and their friends and the adventures we had. All I know about you is your name, your magic, your birthday and favorite color really." Vecks asked. Sally chomped down the rest of her apple and then looked straight up at Vecks.
"I'm just waiting for you to tell me about her." She said plainly.
"Who?" Vecks asked.
"Aurie. You say her name in your sleep y'know, and you constantly aplogize while doing it." Sally said, dropping her book and locking eyes with Vecks as she spoke She had an honest look of concern and love on her face. Not a trace of anger or hostility. "So, what happened to her?" Sally asked. Vecks sighed, and dropped to the ground, landing on his feet.
"Sally, before I met you, there was someone else in my life." Vecks began. Sally sighed deeply.
"Let me guess, you fell in love and then she ran off with some man-whore?" Sally asked jokingly. However, it completley went past Vecks, as if he wasn't even listening. After a long pause and an akward silence, Vecks continued.
"S-she died." Sally flinched at this, not really expecting it. Vecks told her everything that had happened. He told her how they grew up together, why she was the reason he began to study magic, how they traveled together. He told her of the battles they fought, and how her brother had killed her, and then how Vecks had utterly annihalated him from exsistence. When he finished, his head was staring straight down, as if an invisible wieght was on his shoulders.
When it was over, and he didn't hear Sally say or do anything, he looked up. When he did, Sally kissed him right on the lips for a long while. At long last, she broke away from him and locked eyes with him once again.
"Whats happened is in the past, but we can learn from it. I'm happy you told me, although sad at what happened. No matter what though, I still love you, maybe even more now." They hugged, and seeing that the sun was setting, stopped to enjoy the beatiful sight before picking up their books, and heading back into the house.
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Four months later
'Dear journel. I have begun to record the events that have begun to transpire here at the house. When I came here some ten months ago, I was a lost and confused soul, still morning the loss of my beloved. Against all odds, I have found it again in the young summoner who sits just next to me even now.
I have begun to notice things, things that I should have noticed sooner, and may yet turn the tide of my fate again. We work everyday, researching and plotting and coming up with new ideas to forge a portal to a new realm of exsistence for our patron Mr. Xammu from dawn until dusk. He helps us as well of course, but not much, only a little bit from time to time, which is always fine of course. However, I can't help but feel he knows what he is doing more then I know magic. Whenever he does help us, we have a sudden revelation and are a lot closer. It isn't just a little help, it's a huge help. It's almost weird, or even bizzare almost.
Another thing I have noticed is that we always fail. Whenever we attempt a trial run of even a small opening into a realm, it never opens, not even a little. We should have torn the fabric of space into swiss cheese by now, and yet we haven't even scraped it yet. Sally has also noted, and I am sure it must be related, that whenever we fail a trial, not only do we not loose any magical energy, but she cannot perform any summoning for a short time. It's almost as if we're being stopped by something.
Sally and I have come up with a new plan. We intend to use her horn as a beacon, much as she does for performing summonings. However, instead of calling something to us, we'll be sending out a pulse. Magicaly amplified, it should work much like sonar, and cause an over-lap in subspace. Basically, we'll be able to see a shadow of a nearby dimension. If it fails, the worst that could happen would be momentary disablity for her to perform summonings. However, I am still unsure.
Vecks
Dear Journel. It has been some weeks since my last entry, and I apologize. The pulse was both a sucess and failure. We managed to get a brief glimpse of 'dimensional feedback' in other words, static. This means there is something there and a way to get to it, we just only got a partial signal through. However, this caused a rather nasty reprecussion. The pulse worked as beacon and summoned a good many heartless to our front door step. They were easy to dispatch, but it was unsettling non the less. All of them were shadows. Not one was an artificialy made heartless. This leads me to beleive that the a large portion of the signal remained in our realm of exsistence, and that it had an effect on semi-etherial creatures like heartless. Almost as if a large portion of it was redirected elsewhere.
Sally is not deterred by it, in fact, liek myself, she is inspired. She came up with the idea of using the pulse in reverse (Like a double reverse with different effects) to instad of echo a dimension, echo a heartless. We should be able to seperate it, at least for a moment, into it's key components, darkness and a heart. If set to a strong enough level, we should be able to not only seperate a heartless, but cause it's componnents to revert to a primal state, returning them to the realm of darkness and Kingdom Hearts! This could be the beginning of finding our way into a new dimension.
However, I have opposed her idea, and she agrees with me, I think. A pulse of that magnitude and type could instead destroy the heartless and the heart. We will have to find a new way into the new dimensions.
If there is one that is.
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Two months later
"We've done it! We can open the gate!" Vecks proclaimed. He and Sally both jumped up and hugged each other laughing and smiling at their success. Mr Xammu had come down to see them, and they were ready to perform a trial run of the gate.
"Allow me to explain Mr. Xammu! You see, a while back we came up with the idea of distilling a heartless and returning it to it's natural habitats, so to say." Vecks began. "Then, I tweaked the idea. You see before you on the ground, a small circle drawn in chalk, with a line connecting it to a large circle about five feet in radius, also drawn in chalk, connected to a second small circle in chalk. Both small circles are run of the mill magic circles to enhance magical power. However, the middle one, is Sally's own creation. I'll pass it to her to explain." Vecks told his patron.
"You see sir, the middle one has a small seal of order, two oposite triangles joines together. This has actually been greatly modified. It serves as a home beacon from our realm, like an anchor almost. Outside that is a much larger pentagram, usualy assosiated with evil and all that crap. This is actually a symbol for chaos, and again, greatly modifyed to serve as the oposite of the inner symbol." Sally explained, showing Mr. Xammu her work.
"Instead of distilling a heartless, we're going to distill void." Vecks began.
"Distill void?" Mr. Xammu asked.
"Thats what I said! Both Sally and myself will be in the two smaller circles. Using the amplifyed circles, I'll use my own ability to conjure nothingness, to do just that. Sally, oposite me, will then use her amplifyed inverted reversed summoning pulse to distill it and return it to it's natural place. However, because Void doesn't exsist and is the most pure abstract substance, it will instead creat a universal hole. The two symbold in the larger circle then send out a pulse each into the hole at the moment of its creation. Then, using the anchor and the beacon, they work to modify it's frequency, allowing it to open to any realm we want!" Vecks concluded. Mr. Xammu, despite the complexity of what was going on, understood it all perfectly clear.
"Let's do it then! Vecks, Sally, take your place and begin. I'll take care of altering the frequency." Vecks and Sally both smiled and nodded and went to their respective circles. Sally cast the spells to alter her pulse, while Vecks mentally prepared himself.
"Now!" Mr. Xammu yelled. Vecks and Sally began to chant two different chant in unison.
"Oblivion Flux!" Vecks proclaimed. A small ball of black energy, perfectly still, appeared in the center of the middle circle, right where he had aimed it. Sally began to glow brightly, and a sudden wave of energy struck the black void. The two mixed and then expanded. While this happened, the two symbold began to glow brightly and were suddenly connected to the void and Mr. Xammu. The void shaped into a perfect circle with a ten foot diameter, fitting in perfectly with the chalk circle on the ground.
"Hold on, almost got it." Mr. Xammu said, adjusting the freqency with surprising skill. Suddenly, it stopped, and the void was black instead of the multitude of colors it had been showing while changing realms. There was a small click, and a wide smile appeared on Mr. Xammu's face. Vecks and Sally went over to him.
"There! A stable hole!" Vecks said. "Say, where does this lead to now anyway?" Vecks asked Mr. Xammu. A glimmer appeared in his eyes, and Vecks noticed it.
"My home." The instant he said that, two things happened at once. He unleashed a powerful fireball on Vecks and Sally, and Vecks forced both of them to the ground, avoiding it, but then being sent flying a short distance, slightly bruised.
"Whats going on!?" Sally yelled and asked at the same time.
"Quite simple really, I used you two! I am, in all actuality, a monster. You know what a demon is Vecks, right? Well a monster is similar, but we have different aspects about us and the like. Monsters are almost like, demon ghosts, except we never died. Anyway, it doesn't much matter. You see, this portal will serve as a gateway, finally allowing us monsters and demons to enter this world without the need for summoners and deals!" Mr. Xammu proclaimed. His flesh and clothes melted away, then they mixed and blended, and became a new body. He had the appearance of a something resembling a man, except his face was compltley blank save two slits with red eyes, and had dark blue flesh. He had dragon like wings, and resembled a demonic geenie.
"Well, I should finish you off, but I have work to do!" He said, marching into the portal to alert his comrades. Vecks raised his hand, and the symbols on the circle began to spin wildly, the gateway going static with it.
"Over my dead body!" Vecks said with determination, both he and Sally rising to their feet. The monster chuckled a harsh sounding laugh that echoed far.
"That can be arranged." Before he could do anything though, Vecks and Sally both cast a flight spell, and charged the monster, sending all three of them through the window and into the empty planes outside.
"Hell Fire!" Sally spoke and then vanished. Vecks rose high into the air and began to chant. Xammu, after getting to his feet, looked up, and without casting a single spell, flew towards Vecks.
"Blast Ash!" Vecks yelled. From his palm, a concussive wave of fire erupted and struck Xammu, sending him earth bound. Without hitting the ground he stopped and charged back up. However, he was suddenly met with the figure of Ifrit, who struck him square in the gut, crashed into the ground, and cause a large explosion of fire and force.
"Haaahahahahahahaaaaaa! Pathetic mortals! I posses a spirit body you ingrates! The is just a shell of useless matter. Worthless, absolutley worthless. Any damage you do to it, is instantly repaired. No physical attack can harm me!" The monster said. Larger portions of the monsters being had to be applied to give it more power, and alter its form, but also made it more vulnerable. However, if only a little of a monsters power was used, it would be immune to even the most powerful physical attacks. They had to hit him from the astral side!
"Times up I'm afraid!" Without chanting and without reciting a single spell name, Xammu conjured black two dimensional blades that sped for each mage. Vecks, still levitating, flew straight at the high-speed blade, and when he got close, cast a powerful wind spell, sending the blade to the ground, where it sliced right through and vanished. However, Sally came out of her focus a little too late.
Blood stained the grass red.
"SALLY!" Vecks yelled, speeding to her. Catching her as she fell, he held her in his arms and looked to see the deep gash across her stomache with blood spilling out.
"Guess I should've been" She coughed and twitched in pain "-paying attention, huh, Vecks?" She tried to smile. That was her, always smiling. "Hey, give him heck for me, would you?" She asked. Vecks, still crying, nodded. "I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell you, I love you Vecks." She spoke softly and her words were broken apart in pain.
"I love you too Sally." While he said this, Xammu only watched silently.
"Then, I have one last gift for you, and a request as well." Sally said this very softly.
"Ha. Heh heh. Aaaahahahahahaaa! Oh yes! To one of the monster race, we feed on negative emotions, and this is a delicious banquet to someone of my lineage! Oh yes, I can feel myself growing stronger just watching her die!" Xammu gloated to the young magic users.
"At the cost of my life, I, Sally Beatrix Welker, do initiate the summoning of the great warrior Alexander!" Sally said these words in a voice that could not have been heard if you had your ear up to her mouth. However, they carried a contract, and so were heard by all who were there. A mourning Vecks, and a suddenly unlucky monster. "That is my gift!" She said again, this time as clear as day. Her body glowed brightly, and a great beam of white light shot up into the heavens. From the sky, decended a figure composed entirely of light in the shape of an angel with a sword and six wings.
The angel decended from the sky, and floated down, entered the body of Sally, who was now giving Vecks one last good-bye kiss. There was a flash of light, and when it cleared, only one figure stood oposite the monster.
"I am Alexander. As per the wish of the summoner, I have transfered my essence, into the boy." He spoke with two voices. Vecks was standing there, six glorious wings of light sprouting from his back and a sword in his hand. He had about him an aura that took the shape of armor, and he spoke with his own voice, and the voice of the angel.
"No, no....NO! It can' be possible!" Xammu stuttered in his voice. WIthout waiting for a response, he turned to flee, but was suddenly knocked down by a wave of light.
"I assure you, it is most possible. Die you monster!" Swinging only once, the white light penetrated Xammu. His body crubled into dist, and he was blown away in the wind. His job finished Alexander began to leave. However, the price had to be paid, and with the summoner gone, Vecks too died, and fell to ground. However, in a most unusual scenario, Alexander remained, and Vecks did not vanish.
"So, he is to accend then?" The angel inquired. From behind the apple tree, a voice came.
"Indeed he is. This boy is in my charge. I have been instructed to guide him for now." The wizard said. It was indeed the very same one who gave Vecks his staff he now had. Alexander nodded, and then vanished, as did the Wizard.
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Vecks was standing in a void. In front of him was Sally.
"I love you Vecks, but it is my time. I give to you both another gift, and a request, if you would." She asked of him. Vecks nodded solemly.
"Take me with you. I give you my eternal heart. Let it reside in your own, and give you my strength. Take me with you to new places and to new times. Let me live through you, and love through you again!"
"I-I will Sally." He said to her. Sally came cloaser to him, and spoke once more.
"Go back to her." With these words, she kissed him deeply, and there was a light that filled the void, and then he awoke.
Vecks now had on his head Sally's horn, and his head changed to red from blonde at a certain point at the ends. His face also resembled Sally a little. He looked over, and saw that Sally was gone, and so was Mr. Xammu. He knew what had happened. He went into the house, and retireved his personal belongings. He left the house, and then cast an eerie spell on it, causing it to vanish. Then he went to his vessle for the first time since he arrived almost a year ago, and left the world.
"I'm coming Aurie."
Okay one word : Awesomeness!
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There were two minor errors though
- you said that he told Sally about Mateo and Arcadios, and it really should've been Mateo and Eiyuu
- you said that Aurie was killed by her brother, but nobody was really aware that he was her brother at the time of her death
Really? I could have sworn they knew.
Oh well, minor errors at most, I'll go fix them later, when I'm not feeling quite so sick.