Work Text:
What did it take, to start a war? Two wars, at that?
His quill tapped against the ink bottle, restlessly beating out an odd rhythm as he thought. It would have to be big, certainly. Enormous, really, to bring about the shattering of the worlds and the deaths of–
He stopped abruptly, leaning back into his chair. He knew what was coming. He knew. He’d known, since the moment he’d taken out his eye (Really, an eye? To see into the future? How that had been the actual process still astounded him), but he’d kept himself from looking at the specifics until now.
It would happen, though, no matter if he looked or not. There wasn’t even a question of whether or not he would – in that moment that had granted him an initial impression of what was to come, he had known that he would record it, and to record it, he would have had to – will have to see it first.
It still wasn’t a pleasant thought.
He really should get it over with, already.
Things had been pretty quiet recently, maybe he could –
“Master!” Aced barged into the room, fumbling at the last moment to keep the door from smashing into the wall.
“Aced!” the Master called back, matching his tone. Taken off guard, Aced recoiled a bit with a small noise. There was a short silence while Aced tried to collect himself.
“Yeeees?” the Master finally prompted.
“Ah,” Aced said. “I. There’s. Ava convinced Gula and Luxu to go sightseeing with her, but then –”
---
He’d put it off as long as he could. His apprentices were all grown now (more or less), and he couldn’t shake a lingering feeling of unease. It seemed to poke at him from the back of his mind, nagging at him until he finally sent the apprentices off to look at potential housing places (there were going to be more people than just them in the war, and they all needed somewhere to stay until then), which left him a while to… scout things out.
The Master set a blank book in front of him and readied his quill. He took a moment to steady himself. Then, he reached back and dragged the unease into the forefront of his mind, widening it until it became something akin to a door. It yawned open further on its own, until he could perceive nothing else.
---
The most coherent thought he can make out, at first, was that everything looks strange. There’s a surreal quality, not limited to a blue tint, that seems to linger over everything, and a nausea-accompanied feeling of movement.
He’s looking at – himself? No, he’s over there. This person in his coat, holding the keyblade with his eye in it, is shorter. Together they drag out an elaborate box.
What’s in it? The Master wants to know. Their hoods weave and bob in the motions of a conversation he can’t hear.
Then he’s up on the hill overlooking the town. He peers through the ever-present mist and watches. Five of his apprentices scatter and pull together and then shatter further.
Where’s Luxu?
The shorter hooded person from earlier – it must be Luxu – sits stiffly behind him, keyblade stuck into the ground, teeth down, an arm’s length away. The box from earlier is tucked behind him. Luxu’s hood moves occasionally, as if speaking to the keyblade itself.
Despite the tension visible in every line of his body, he never seems to look away from the town entirely.
The group breaks apart. Aced acts impulsively, foiling himself in the process. Ava remembers. She turns away. Ira plans. He accuses. Invi does her duty, solemnly. Gula overthinks, overanalyzes, driving them forward. Luxu watches. They all despair.
Ava confronts Luxu on the hill. She screams at him. He backs away, seeming to choke out reasons that she refuses to accept. Her keyblade smashes against his, and the bell tells all that the war has now truly begun.
The Master only catches glimpses, thankfully. It still pains him to watch. Keyblades litter the earth. Aced slams Ira through a mountain, and Invi pushes them apart with a wave formed from the rain of a storm that has started to rage above.
Or. No.
Not a storm.
Rather, not just a storm.
Gula’s eyes, reflecting the lights floating upwards to join the glow above, peek through a crack in his mask. They whip around, a glow from Ava’s keyblade overtaking them instead.
One by one, the five foretellers fall. The Master is detachedly thankful for the masks. Luxu holds vigil until daylight. It takes far longer than it has any right to. When the sky is clear of any of the familiar early-morning streaks of color (How can anything be that cheerful at after such a sight? How?), Luxu bows his head, turns, and runs, dragging the box behind him.
Ava’s Dandelions take up their roles, and Luxu mourns yet another passing. The Realm of Dreams’ odd relationship with time sends a few members further forwards, and in some corner of his mind, muddled and swamped with sight, he knows he’ll see them again.
The Master loses coherency.
His keyblade is mounted on a wall, and he watches, hazily, as wielders pass through the halls. A boy, eager to abandon the backwater world he came from, looks up with curiosity as another guides him around. He takes the keyblade with him, eventually, as he traverses the world, searching for more questions to find answers to.
He finds his question.
The Master can’t think. Can barely see through the blurs of loss and colors and light and darkness.
The man searches for his answer and splits a Dandelion into two, saved by the grace of a child. The dark seethes and howls, clutching at what it can. The light forgets. The dark sends pain and wrath and fear skittering across the worlds. The light finds a family.
A man in white gapes in pain as his old companion strikes his unprotected back. A young man screams his rage to the sky. He is twisted inside and out, his colors leeched and warped. The Dandelion drifts. Their friend dives after them both.
The white-haired boy leads a group of apprentices in a reimagining of the fall of Daybreak town. The cells underground seem to spiral endlessly, like a reflection of the town’s own towers. Blood stains the ground, and yellow blooms in another pair of eyes.
The child calls for his friends, unknowingly harboring one (pure light, how could that even be possible) as well as the dandelion. The man, split further, prods the other forward.
A challenge. Self-sacrifice, splintering further and further and further until echoes and reflections and shadows abound.
A Dandelion stands in a corridor, brandishing a scythe. He ushers in a long slumber (how fitting).
A year, bright with joy and salt and tears, passes all too soon.
A heart-shape glows in the sky, then gapes open like a wound and finally disperses.
The child drowns in dreams of hope and deceit in quickly doubling vision. He is pulled out a moment before he would have joined the rising tide of Dark.
There’s a resounding clash felt more than seen, past the light and the dark there is hope
and sadness and loss
and determination
and
and
---
“Hey, Gula?” Luxu called hesitantly. Gula’s head didn’t lift from where it was bent over a book.
“Gula,” Luxu repeated, louder this time. “Gula!”
Gula snapped his head up and around to glare at him sharply. Luxu paid no attention, moving to tug at the other boy’s arm. He’d long ago gotten used to how Gula (most of the apprentices, really) reacted to disturbances when immersed in something.
“I need your help with something,” Luxu told him.
“What?” Gula said, shaking him off. “Go ask Ava or something, I’m busy. As you can see.” He noticed Luxu’s hand edging towards his book and quickly pulled it out of the other boy’s reach. Luxu pulled back with a small laugh, but sobered again quickly.
“Alright, but seriously. I need your help.”
“Fine. What is it?”
“Well,” Luxu started. “The Master. I haven’t seen him in days. Not since he sent us to scout for living places. A-and now I can’t seem to find him. I checked everywhere except for the study, and the door was locked there. So I was hoping…?”
“Really? You got the hillside, too?” Gula checked.
“Yeah. Even the rooftops, actually, before you ask. Even if that was only the one time.”
“Pfft. Yeah, sure, I’ll come.”
---
Gula was pretty sure the Master hadn’t entirely thought things through when he’d given them their keyblades. They’d figured out pretty quickly that they could unlock almost anything with them. Including the locks to their rooms, which had lead to a good amount of mayhem.
He lowered the blade away from the lock and dispersed it, following Luxu as he pushed his way into the Master’s study.
Gula stopped abruptly. There was something… subtly off about the room. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. His gaze roved the room, taking in the desk lamp left on, the chair pushed away, the ink drying in its open bottle and on the quill left uncleaned.
“Hey, Gula,” Luxu called. “Look at this.”
A book sat on the desk, open and lying at an angle as if someone had been writing in it. The handwriting on the last page was a jagged, nearly unreadable scribble, in contrast with the Master’s usual careful hand.
“…prevail and light-,” Luxu read aloud quietly.
The book was slammed shut by a gloved hand. Luxu broke off in a squeak.
“Sorry, you guys can’t look at this just yet,” the Master said. Gula blinked.
“W-where did you come from?” Luxu asked.
The Master shrugged and lifted the book from the desk. Something about his manner seemed uncharacteristically ominous to Gula.
“Is everything alright?” he asked hesitantly.
The Master turned towards him, humming inquisitively.
“Something doesn’t quite feel right,” he said. Luxu froze, seemed to take in the atmosphere, and nodded slowly.
“He’s right,” Luxu agreed. “Is there something wrong?”
The Master considered them for a moment.
“Nah.” The Master waved his hand in dismissal, dispersing the chill that had been building in the air. “I was just trying something out, and it wound up going in a direction that I hadn’t really been expecting. Took a bit out of me, I’d say.” He snickered quietly to himself, as if at a private joke.
“Nothing to worry about, then,” Gula said lowly. Luxu looked unconvinced, but he subtly waved him off.
“Yup. Sorry for the scare.”
“It’s fine.”
“Tell us before you do something like that, please,” Luxu interjected, thankfully pulling them away from the awkward tension that had been waiting to happen.
“Sure, sure. Well then, you two scurry off now.”
“Right,” Gula dipped his head. Before Luxu could protest, he grabbed his arm and pulled him through the doorway behind him.
His thoughts drowned out Luxu’s yelp, but he couldn’t focus, trying to pin down a root for the feeling he couldn’t shake.
There was something wrong with the Master.