Kingdom Hearts: Recollect

As the sun began to shine through the clouds, brightening the graveyard and surrounding area, Relli doubled over in pain. Much like their companions, memories began to rush into their head, but they meant little to them. A castle, carved into the side of a mountain, surrounded by flowers and other flora in all directions. Relli could've sworn they'd never seen it in their life, but they could remember the smell of the breeze as it rustled the grass, the feeling of it blowing through their hair. Could remember the vivid colors and the blue skies. It sent a shudder through them, and Relli remained hunched over long after the memory had faded and the graveyard reappeared in their vision. Vaguely, they could still hear the whispering, but it paled in comparison now.

Out of the corner of their eye, Relli watched as Cerdic demanded the journal. Daeni handed it over, if reluctantly, but the young prince still cursed themself for being unable to stop her. Whether he was going to destroy the journal or not, Relli wouldn't trust Cerdic with a blade of grass any more than they'd trust him with anything else. Silently, Relli got to their feet, dusting themself off and glaring at where Cerdic was holed up in a corner.

"If you want to know look yourself," Cerdic snarled angrily, shoving a page at Marley and stalking away. It was probably the most serious any of them had seen the man. "Lets just catch up to the others, and maybe murder someone in the process."

Relli growled under their breath and raced after him. They'd had it up to here with Cerdic's bullshit. "No way! Not until you hand over that book," Relli shouted, slamming into Cerdic, and trying to grab the journal from inside his coat.

 

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"I'm not keeping any secrets. I've already told you everything I know, what would be the point to keeping things from you guys? I'm keeping you updated as I remember things, sorry that I can't do that faster" Kara apologised. Hearing that Aevum might not be able to be trusted was something that made her uneasy. She'd seemed so certain in her memory that Aevum was right, had she been deceived or had she....no, she wouldn't help someone create heartless. Darkness was evil, no good came from it. She refused to believe she'd ever be able to help someone do that intentionally; memory blanks or not, she knew that she wouldn't help do that.

 

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Snatching things from her was what made Daeni want to almost snap Cerdic's neck. But she kept that to herself and crossed her arms. She glared at Cerdic as he flipped through the pages, but soon enough, Cerdic was on the ground, acting like a brat and keeping the journal to himself. Relli and Marley were nearby and that gave Daeni some hope that they could get the Journal back before Cerdic could do any harm. "Wanna be a tough guy?" Daeni said, walking over. She looked to Marley. "Could you kindly find a way to lock that door? Or at least make some kind of a magical barrier that nobody can get past until you remove it?" she looked to Marley, but didn't wait for an answer.

Daeni stepped over to Cerdic and looked down at him. "Give it back." she snarled. She didn't wait for an answer before she put her foot on Cerdic's back, between his shoulder blades, and pushed a little. "Do we have to force you to give it back? I don't wanna do that." she sighed. Nevertheless, she did summon her keyblade and point it at Cerdic. "Please just give it back. That journal is way too important, I can feel it."

 

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Chrono had figured that his claim to not remember anything would be met with some skepticism, which was why he was glad that he'd remembered his name before he was called out on that as well. "Believe me, if I did remember anything that could've been of help, I would've mentioned it already." Unfortunately this was much easier said than done seeing as there was no way for him to prove that he truly didn't remember anything else without a shadow of a doubt.

"You're just going to have to deal with that until I happen to remember something else." Irritation had started to become clear in his voice as well. He should remember more than did and it didn't have to be much. He would be happy remembering literally anything else right now. Chrono paid no mind to what Kara said while they followed behind her, not that she had much else to add to what they currently knew.

 

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Chrys brought a hand to his face and sighed as the entire group fell apart at breakneck speeds. No one had even answered his question.

It was because of Cer- X of course. He ripped the journal everyone had worked so hard for straight from their hands and refused to share its contents. The ensuing scene had given him a headache within seconds. Admittedly, he was curious as to what the man was on about, but X seemed not to sure about it himself. He wasn’t sure how to appeal to the idiotic pride in this situation, meaning he had no way of getting the Narcissistic brat to hand the journal back. He wasn’t really sure he had the patience or desire for it now anyway. Perhaps simply asking him would be the best thing; perhaps the man would surprise them. Though, it might be a bit late for that.

Since the squabbling mass was essentially useless to him, he instead opted to walk around it, throwing back an informative shout.

“Well, you can all argue here until you’re blue in the face then. I’m going to go try and meet up with the others and compare notes. When you’re ready to share your own personal revelation and the contents of that journal, you can come find us to.” He halted some ways from the group, His foot mid step as a thought suddenly occurred to him.

“Or you know… If you’re not all too busy shouting to notice something terrible sneak up on you and… well… I suppose you’re all capable though, so...See ya.” With that, Chrys continued walking back the path they had come.

 

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Marley still felt a bit frustrated as Cerdic shoved the torn paper into their hand, wondering just what their problem was. Annoyance still clear on their face, the opened up the crumpled piece of paper, looking at what the page had said. Their eyes showed a strange mix of surprise, intrigue and of course, rising anger. When they had finished what little was there, they momentarily looked up, wondering just what it was this paper was even talking about. They didn't know what it was they had agreed to, what it was they were tricked into doing, and what it was that had happened as a result. They did, however, understand what they were a feeling. With a burning desire to find this Aevum and get whatever answers they needed to get from them. With that in mind, they crumpled the paper up and simply put it back in their pocket. As they turned around, getting ready to leave, their already irritated mood was only soured further.

Marely could understand why they were so damn presistant about getting the book, after all it was quite the curious notebook. However, looking at it now would probably only frustrate them all further and Marley had enough questions without answers for the moment. As they were about to walk over to the scene, Marley heard Cerdic's comment on them, their eyebrow twitched a bit in annoyance. Nevertheless, they made their way over to the pinned body of Cerdic, and looked down at him, a face not filled with any real emotion or pity behind it. "You're going to share the rest of that once we meet up with the others."

After stating this, Marley summoned their keyblade, moving with an upward slash to knock Daeni's keyblade away from him. Dismissing their blade, they then bent down to pick up the small prince with both of their hands, in an attempt to both hoist and throw Relli off of the man. Once that was done, they simply said, "it'll only annoy you looking at it by yourself. So just stop making walking more complicated then it needs to be and let's go." Looking at the sorry state of Cerdic they then scoffed with, "you too you flamboyant he-she." With that, Marely got ready to leave.

 

The girl looked at Alder when he addressed her and she took a moment to think before responding, "Well, my name is Mora... and... well, there's a chance you're talking about the old sanctuary? I was pretty sure it was unsafe for stay after... something happened. But that's the only thing that would be down that road..." Mora pondered for a bit and said, "Aevum... Aevum... it doesn't... sound familiar to me. I'm sorry. But maybe the answers you guys are looking for might be in the sanctuary? Maybe even my parents are there." Mora suddenly realized that would help out her dilemma. She looked at the group of three and said, "I can lead the way, if you'd like. I just don't know how much more dangerous the heartless may get."

 

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"The sanctuary..." Kara repeated. The name sounded familiar to her, somewhat, but she still couldn't quite picture what it looked like or how long it would take them to get there. Heck, she couldn't even remember what Aevum had looked like, god having amnesia sucked. "Alright, lead the way, Mora" the girl said and waited for Mora. She was a bit annoyed with how Alder had reacted, but was more sad than annoyed really. Did he really think that she would hide things in a time like this? She'd already told him that she'd taken the townspeople to where Aevum had said, and if Aevum really was a bad person then didn't that paint her in a bad light already? Still, she didn't want to show it. If she showed how unsure about everything she was, how was Mora to believe that things would be alright?

 

Daeni listened to Cerdic and felt her keyblade get jerked away from her. She didn't care now, she just frowned and looked to see Marley grab Relli. She didn't care that her keyblade was knocked away. No, she was more interested in the fact that Cerdic was making such a big deal of the page and the journal itself. Saying it had all the answers they needed, but she certainly didn't believe it. She needed to see it herself.

So, she stepped off of Cerdic and dusted off his back and front when he stood up. She looked at him and sighed, her expression softening. "Sorry..." she said timidly, turning towards Marley. "I need to see that page and the journal. I need to see it for myself." she said, stopping Marley before they left. "Please let me see it."​

 

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"If there's a chance we can get some more answers, then I say let's go." Chrono declared. naturally finding Mora's parents or the other villagers would be a good thing, but Chrono was more concerned about the prospect of getting answers. Nothing sounded familiar or rang any bells in his head out of anything that was said, but hopefully something at the sanctuary would remedy all that. Least that was what he was hoping for.

 

The groups continued on their way to... well... essentially the same place. But because of the distance between the two groups, one was going to be there before the other no matter what happened. As a result, it may seem rather arbitrary that when the gold team (graveyard group) ended up getting to the town, a line of heartless (mostly shadows) appeared, blocking the way halfway down the path inside the town. The darkness was still looming over the town like nothing was necessarily fixed here like the graveyard seemed to have been.

After a moment of pause as the heartless swayed, a portal appeared from the middle of the group before it disappeared, showing a robed Ria appear, who gave a small salute as they said, "There's the rest of ya. I was wondering when you'd show up." Ria walked only a bit forward before putting their hands on their hips as they said, "Honestly I felt like the rest of your group seemed to be a little lacking but you guys sure made some progress... unfortunately the other.... three, are falling behind."

Ria was silent for a moment before saying, "Aw man, did I spoil the surprise. You guys are probably wondering "three? five people went this way"... well." Ria held their hands out for a moment before two keyblades appeared. One was Xen's, and one was Chloe's. He held them out for a moment, waiting for a reaction from the group. Then she realized they probably didn't recognize it so they sighed and explained further lifting their right hand, "Xen." then they lifted their right hand, "Chloe." and then they let the keyblades disappear before making a motion with their hands and made a noise, similar to that of slicing off a head. Trying to say they were dead without saying it exactly.

Ria sighed and said, "I could spare you guys and you could all be off on your merry way. I'll give all of you back your memories, and you can leave this world... but you guys have something of mine. I want it. If you give me that, I'll let you go..." there was a pause as Ria waited for the answer, but soon Ria was shaking a little and suddenly blurted out, in a very familiar voice, it was Chloe's, screaming, "Don't listen to him!" before Ria blocked their mouth in panic.

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The silver team (town group) followed Mora. Mora looked very worried as they approached, and as they reached the path, there was a trap door at the side of one of the mountains. It wasn't exactly hidden, it was purposefully made so people could spot it. When Mora lifted it, there was a ladder that went down into the dark. First, Mora had motioned in a sort of "after you" motion, but after there was no response. Mora took a breath and went down first. It was relatively hard to see at first, but the deeper down the shaft they went, soon light began to appear. And once they touched the ground, Mora motioned for them to look.

The sanctuary was like an underground village on its own. Houses were made of stone, there were gardens that grew in the dark corners of the sanctuary, but... it was very quiet. Mora took a step forward towards the village and nervously said, "Hello? Anyone?!" her voice echoed throughout and she immediately looked worried she was too loud.

 

Ria listened to Cerdic's question and chuckled at his question, "That's a question... what am I? What are you? Does anyone really know the answer to that? Mmm... I guess I know." Ria walked a bit closer to the group and replied, "I am a result. A dark result to a tantalizing hypothesis." The cloaked figure crossed their arms and said, "I'm pretty sure Aevum doesn't even remember what he took from you if we are being completely fair. But I know, and Aevum can't give that back to you. Because Aevum is lost, and soon all fragments of what remains will be gone. That's why. I need his journal, and I know you all have it."

Ria laughed a little and said, "A Giga heartless told me you guys found it."

---

Mora was silent for a moment when he asked that question before saying, "I uh... I got separated early on. I didn't actually trust what was going on was a big deal..."

As Alder opened the house, there were three people inside, but all of them were asleep and had this aura of darkness around them. They were moving as if constantly in a nightmare. If they looked through all the houses, everyone was like this. Some people were in chairs sitting up with this happening. One person was actively standing up with this same problem.

Mora looked at all of them, scared and asked, "W-why are they... what is going on?!"