Chapter 4 - A World With No Heart

Sora woke up; his whole body was throbbing in pain, his eyes were blurry and for some reason he felt very thirsty. He sat himself up cautiously and began to rub the back of his neck.
"Arh... Where am I?" He groaned.
His eyes had taken their time to adjust to his surroundings; but as they did, he began to notice that he was sitting in a large, gloomy room. The room had barely any light to it whatsoever, only a few candles situated on the wall were lit up. The ceiling rose high above, so high that it wasn’t even see-able through the darkness. The walls were very plain with a dark violet tone. The floor was covered with a soft, red rug, although this was very hard to tell from the lack of light. From what Sora could tell, this had to be some sort of corridor. But the only way out he saw was a door on the west side of the corridor. The door was of a simple structure, but fairly large.
Suddenly, a voice echoed the corridor, "I don’t really know where we are, but I have a really eerie feeling about this place that it’s a world shrouded in darkness."
Sora twisted his head round, Riku was leaning against the right wall with his arms crossed and head tilted back against it. "We need to go and check this place out." He continued, his voice echoed the whole of the room.
"We can't do that, we need to get back to the islands, Kairi's waiting for us!" Sora argued. He mind flashed back seeing Kairi in tears while he was floating away into the vortex. He felt the dread rise in his heart. He leapt to his feet.
"I would love to get us back, but that isn’t possible anymore. I’ve lost most of my dark powers, remember, including my ability to open portals. I’m sorry Sora, but we’re going to have to search the place for a way out.” Riku apologised, feeling down about himself.
Sora did remember that; Riku had lost his ties with the darkness back at the World that Never Was, after Ansem’s machine exploded.
"Hmm… don’t worry about it, Riku. We’ll just have to do this the long way." Sora joked, but he felt a slight frustration well up inside him. He clenched his chest and whispered quietly, "Kairi, just hold on, we'll be back... I promise."
"(Sigh…) Well, we best get going.” Riku told him.
Sora nodded to him. They began to head to the door they could see on the west side. But, from out of nowhere, Sora felt suddenly dizzy, as if the whole world was spinning out of control. Riku turned back round and noticed Sora was standing oddly.
“Sora, are you coming or – What the-!?” Riku was suddenly caught off guard.
Enemy figures appeared around the two, jumping out of the floor and even the walls. They were Nobodies!

"Nobodies!? But we destroyed the Organization!" Sora shouted in surprise, finally recovering from the dizziness.
He quickly opened his hand and grabbed as his Keyblade appeared, Riku instantly did the same. With that, Sora and Riku stood back-to-back, clutching their Keyblades and ready for battle. The Nobodies circled around then and began to close in.
"Yeah, we destroyed Organization XIII but Nobodies are created by the bodies of people who became Heartless. Organization XIII just controlled them. Didn’t Yen Sid tell you that?" Riku reminded Sora, keeping an eye on the Nobodies movements.
"Ah! Yeah, I just … forgot," Sora admitted, feeling fairly idiotic about forgetting.
Swiftly, the Nobodies made the first move and attacked the two. In retaliation, the two dodged the attacks started the counter. Sora jumped into an uppercut, knocking a Dragoon Nobody back by surprise … well it would have been if it had a heart. Sora spun and struck the Dragoon in the side, knocking it into the wall. Riku charged towards a group of Dusks on his side, he held out his Keyblade and dark aura began flowing around the blade, he swept his Keyblade horizontally, releasing the charged aura and in turn collided into the Nobodies, instantly weakening them. Sora placed his free hand on the opposite shoulder, his Keyblade disappeared and his whole right arm started to glow in an orange aura, his fist clenched tighter as the glow strengthened. He quickly released his free hand from his shoulder and launched his arm as if throwing an object as hard as he could; an explosion raged out of his hand and obliterated a large number of Nobodies, including the Dragoon. He dropped his arm to his side, panting and sweating. Riku threw his Keyblade like a boomerang at the remaining Nobodies on his side, but the Nobodies was swift and jump away to dodge it. They all in retaliation countered the attack by sending waves of twilight magic towards Riku.
"Riku! Watch out!!" Sora shouted, trying his best to keep up his strength as the remaining Nobodies on his own side were strike at him in every direction.
Riku dodged the attack, but a second wave collided into him, throwing him off the floor. Winded, Riku tumbled across the rug of the corridor, he gasped for air to get back into his lungs. Sora had to finish this quickly, he to all his remaining strength and ran towards the nearest wall. Instantly, he began to charge up it like he was defying gravity. He jumped off the wall and his Keyblade appeared in his clutches while airborne, he dived towards the Nobodies that had been attacking Riku. The Keyblade collided with the Nobodies, throwing them off balance. Before colliding with the floor himself, Sora pushed against it with his hands and back flipped to his feet. He quickly grabbed his Keyblade from the floor and stabbed at the dazed Nobodies, finally killing them. Sora took a second to catch his breath back, and then rushed over to the wounded Riku. Riku got to his knees, just gaining his breath back. But he then clutched his chest in agony, putting pressure on the wound caused by the Nobodies. Sora skidded to his side.
"Here, drink up." Sora told him, he passed a potion to Riku.
Riku nodded and without second thought, drank the contents of the potion. Without a second wasted, the potion had instantly healed the wound on his chest. Riku carefully got himself to his feet.
"I was careless, I should have watched out for that counterattack!" He told Sora, wincing as he stood up.
"Dusks are strong when it comes to dodging and counterattacking, we just needed to read their movements carefully before they made their move." Sora assured him. "You're just too serious with these things."
"Too Serious!? At least I’m not a slacker like you!" Riku argued back, but then sighed, “Anyway, we need to get moving before more of them show up.”
Sora chuckled, but then nodded.
Sora and Riku headed towards the door at the end of the room. Riku turned the handle and pushed the door open. On the other side of the door was a hall even bigger than the corridor Sora and Riku was just in. The hall had large, with cathedral-like windows spanning across the walls from either end. Unlike the last room, the colour of the walls were completely different, it was silvery white, almost creamy coloured. But it still had that dark, eerie feeling to it. At the end of the room was a huge, castle-like, double-door reaching all the way to the ceiling. It had to be the entrance to the building.
"I'm guessing that's the way outside." Sora said, looking rather puzzled.
"I thought there would be more rooms than this … but now that I think about it, the other end of the last room was too dark to see anything." Riku thought out load so Sora could hear. He then asked, "What do we do now..?"
"I'm guess we should take a look outside." Sora answered casually.
Riku nodded in reply.
They began to journey down the hall, but Sora halted to a stop. He grabbed the top of his head with both hands, dropped to his knees, and began shaking like mad. Riku noticed him drop to the floor from the corner of his eye and rushed to his aid. Agonising pain suddenly rushed through Sora's head, and various thoughts began to appear. He could see something lurking in the very shadows of his mind, it was blurry but it was there. He could feel something closing in on him, intimidating him. A voice began to call out.
"The end of the Universe... lies in you."

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