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The Price of Freedom	By : Raiethstar Category: Kingdom Hearts > Crossovers Views: 1180 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom hearts, or final fantasy 7. This story is for fun and I make no profit on

Chapter List
- 1-Memories of a Broken World
- 2-Ghosts from the Past
- 1
- 2
This is a Kingdom Hearts AU/fusion fic that assumes a more final fantasy 7 approach to history and explanations (seriously replay the game and switch all references of “darkness/light” to “mako/lifestream” and all “kingdom hearts” to “the promised land” and things start to sound very familiar….). Rather than focus on the destiny trio, who are still hugely important, this story focuses more on the final fantasy characters. It contains spoilers for the series as a whole and assumes at least some familiarity with the general sequence of events. I expect the story to grow more AU as it progresses, especially once the organization shows up (I’ll probably have a whole side story dedicated to them…), as they will be the most changed.
The story proper (not counting flashbacks of course) starts roughly two years before the start of Kingdom Hearts, and mostly disregards Birth by Sleep’s timeline. As such the nature of the Organization members changes a little. As many are native to the Final Fantasy world they will be Nobodies of existing FF characters (mostly 7) rather than originals. For conveniences’ sake they will still have the same Kingdom Hearts names (even if the reason for their names is stupid).
The title of this fic is taken from the song of the same name on the Crisis Core Soundtrack. I consider it the image song for the fic as a whole. I highly recommend giving it a listen as the crisis core soundtrack is really good.
Note: I will endeavour to make all references to the powers known as Darkness and Light be capitalized and to leave the mundane descriptions of ambient light levels as lower case. Also the characters are not aware of what the “official” names of the various Heartless are till later, so sorry for the roundabout descriptions.

Warnings: Angst (seriously, Cloud and Leon as main characters, were gonna have enough angst to pave a city here….), violence, and sexual situations (including the strange 2.5 thing going on here.) This is a Yaoi (boy on boy) fic, if you don’t like that then stop now.
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Chapter One - Memories of a broken world.

The planet screamed, rage and fear and desperation all rolled into one. It blurred his senses, the world around him fuzzy and distant. The endless waves of clawed black oil and glittering yellow eyes swarmed like a living ooze, boiling from the floor and in his mind like tar, hot and suffocating. Raw, bleeding fingers dug into his skull in a futile attempt to block out the sound, endless babbling screams his ears didn’t hear. Why he thought it would work this time he couldn’t say. Instinct and something else made him swing the stolen/borrowed/given blade in his hands, the black shapes squealed, but he couldn’t hear over the raw sound of the planet drowning out everything else. The ground was hard under his knees and he was distantly aware of the blood running coldly down his skin, black smoke boiling out of him like dry ice. Yellow eyes crowded closer and closer, an escape from the torment in sharp claws and stuttering motion. A release from the soundless screaming, to stain the white tiles black and red. A promise to end the pain whispered by something with no voice. So much pain…

//Come on Spike! Get up!//

The almost voice was strange in it’s panic. Shouldn’t be panicked, was never panicked. He snapped his attention forward and called on his tainted gift for destruction. The rolling flames swept through the black swarm, driving them back for the moment; the dark power casting age dulled stone walls in shades of purple and blue. The ground was cold under his hands, it was so hard to breathe with blood filling his mouth, chasing the stench of death down his throat. Oily black smoke clogged his lungs and stung his eyes, he was drowning in the cloying sent of Darkness. Sweet and thick, and such a waste, would be better to drown then to give in to the sweet taste. But it tasted of things he had lost and why shouldn’t he succumb? So sweet; strychnine laced honey and overripe fruit, a promise to make the voices stop screaming in his head.

A strong hand lifted him up by the elbow. A swirl of red fabric and the smell of gunpowder was all he could sense through the cracks in his mind. The planet was screaming so loud. Begging and pleading and cursing and tearing; tearing apart, shattering into a million fragments, becoming lost in the black sea that watched with yellow eyes. Soon to become nothing.

“Move Strife.” The voice was deep and rich, like liquid black velvet across his ears. His legs refused to move.

A bitter bark of a laugh sounded with his voice, thick blood splattering the tiles. “Run. Leave me and run.” Can’t leave, must watch, bear witness to the end of it all, almost nothing left now.

The brass claws at his elbow dug in deeper and his weight was taken up by a demon stitched into human flesh.

Why didn’t he just run? It was so hard to think with all the screaming. The once full and comforting voice twisted and hollow now. So little left, struggling so hard to maintain one last stronghold. Glittering bladed promises slipping in, like toxic waste seeping into a garden. His fingers drew blood from his scalp, staining thin spun gold red, if the planet didn’t stop screaming his head was going to explode.

The dark sea of yellow eyes surged behind them. Lit by the stray sparks from the sword forgotten fingers refused to release. A not so hollow puppet without strings, an endless corridor, a demon bound in leather and brass, an ocean of death lapping at their heels. Home…just want to go home…

//Just a little farther Spike, you’re almost there.//

“Almost where?” Fresh blood made the words thick as heavy eyelids blinked open. The torch light was long faded and his eyes, strange, slitted, glowing, cursed eyes, like the skies of lost childhood innocence, cast everything in shades of azure; cold light for a cold world.

There, in the distance, a pulsing light. Warm and bright and painful, a shuddering stuttering heartbeat of light, calling, begging, urging, dying.

“A door?” The voice at his ear, as dark the blood staining the tiles underfoot, nearly drowned out by the screaming of the stars, was almost surprised, almost confused, but never anything at all.

A moth to the flame, knowing the fiery burning end yet unable to draw away. The door was radiant and beautiful, embedded with intricate glowing swirls of white. But it was fading, the pulsing light growing dimmer. His hand felt heavy as he reached for it; mad, raving, broken screaming echoing in his skull. To far gone to even remember why it hurts, why everything is going dark.

Fear, terror, panic and still pale fingers reach for the portal. It burns, and sears, and claws pain deep into sensitive flesh, a blinding flash revealing a deep sucking void. Twisting and turning and squeezing, ripped apart into a million pieces and finally the voices in his head were drowned out. Now there were only his own screams to fill the void.

OOOOOOOOOO

He awoke, a jerk and sharp inhale of breath the only outward sign of his nightmare. There was a moment of blurred confusion before he remembered where he was. A broken building on a broken world lost in a twilit realm far from the source of his nightmares. He lay back down on the simple bed and stared at the peeling paint on the ceiling, listening as his breathing slowed and deepened.

//You okay?// Calloused fingers brushed his hair, not a strand moving.

He closed his eyes and leaned into the phantom contact, more than he deserved. “Yeah. Just a dream.”

A slow smile, //Wanna talk about it?// They both already knew what the answer was.

“No.” He swung up and out of the low bed. The persistent memory of emotions told him he was supposed to feel gratitude for such concern, but there was nothing. Ever since-

He shook his head to clear such thoughts. They would do him no good, and he knew that if he started thinking about it now, he would not be able to stop. The pull of memories so terrifying that nothing his imagination could conjure could compare to the stark truth of what his past held, bright lights and cold tables...

He caught a glimpse of himself in the large mirror on the far wall of his small room as he rose from the broken and dusty bed. The sight froze him, as it always did, his body so changed it was hard to reconcile with himself. Thick corded muscle wrapped around his small frame, dark veins and pale scars forming a network across skin faded with the lack of sunlight. Golden blonde hair in uncontrollable spikes hiding the only part of him he recognized as his own. The luminescent blue orbs glowering from beneath the gravity defying spikes, pupils almost round in the gloom, not quite normal, not quite not. They traced the path of darkened veins across his body and wondered if he would ever grow used to seeing the evidence of his past that flowed so thickly through his veins it coloured his blood.

He watched as his left hand, twisted and warped from the energy the glowing door held, rested on his breastbone. The leathered, tar black flesh, more clawed weapon than not, in stark contrast to the massive white scar over his sternum. He could feel the heart that pulsed within, strong and sure, filled with a Light that was softer than moonlight reflected off black smoke, and as alien as the wing that curled behind his left shoulder.

Black, tinted purplish-blue with his blood, looking more like a weapon than something made of flesh and bone. Thin skin stretched over delicate, yet unbreakable spines in a parody of a bat’s elegant hand. Two inner ‘fingers’ that ended in double points, and the third, the leading edge, broken into six deadly spines that smoothed to a single point like some deadly plant as his shook off the dream. Instead of a thumb there was an arrow of bone framed by two fingers that ended in claws, they flexed as his hands fisted.

He could still remember when the wing had ripped through his body, Darkness so concentrated it warped his very flesh, tearing and reshaping muscle, bone and sinew. A shudder ran through his small but powerful frame, the wing rustling softly. He could taste the sterile lab the memory was so strong. Needles and scalpels and white lab coats.

//Hey, come on, let’s go get something to eat.//

The forced cheerfulness washed over him, and his lips quirked in the ghost of a remembered movement. The taste of feeling soothed the soul deep hollow ache that saturated his entire being. He knew he was broken, possibly beyond repair, a defective puppet tossed aside and forgotten. The alien, yet familiar and welcome, Light warmed in his chest. A faint candle leading lost souls home.

//Enough moping already, get dressed and get going, I’m starving.//

He flicked his wing dismissively. It was amazing how emotive the appendage could be with the smallest of movements. It had been a while since they hunted, he could feel the creeping hunger seep into him from the imprisoned heart. Quiet need that filled him with longing. The longing to be whole again.

He laced his fingers together and lifted them above his head, stretching his body to the fullest. He watched in the mirror as muscles corded and shifted under his skin, his wing mimicking the movement. The long finger-like bones reaching for the stone roof, the dusky membrane pulled taut and the flexible spines on the leading edge flaring out in a mockery of feathers. He forced his back to continue to arch with methodical slowness, feeling for any stiffness and finding none. His hands touched the ground behind his feet and he bent his elbows until his hair brushed the ground before firming all his core muscles and lifting his feet with the same care he bent back with. He felt his arms tremble with effort as he straightened his elbows into a full handstand. Rotating his shoulders and settling his weight, his wing brushed the cold ground as it swung through the manoeuvre. Waiting until the trembling subsided and the blood had rushed to his head, he bent his knees towards his belly as slowly as he could, bringing his feet back to the ground. He tucked his elbows around his legs once he was folded in half, and felt the muscles in his lower back pull tight. He flapped his wing once to try and loosen them; even after all this time his body was still not adjusted to having such a heavy, unbalanced weight on his shoulders. Finally he straightened upright and twisted his spine left and right, the motion causing several vertebrae to pop back into place.

Satisfied he was stretched fully he let his muscles relax, wing drooping low under its own weight. As he walked across the small neglected room that served as his current home to get dressed, a flicker of something resembling loneliness brushed against him. It had been months since he had seen a living person. His fingers lingered on the brass and leather gauntlet as he pulled and strapped it onto his warped and twisted left hand, not since he had failed to protect-

“NO VINCENT!!”

“D-don’t let them have my heart, Strife.” A twisted smile, and a gentle touch. “No regrets.”

He shook himself free of the past, the memory of blood warming his hands.

//It wasn’t your fault.// Warm arms wrapped around his neck.

The clawed gauntlet creaked as it flexed. “If I had been faster-“

The phantom arms tightened their hold. //It wasn’t your fault. You did everything you could.//

“And it wasn’t enough.” He pulled on his dark clothes roughly, months of stains making the original colour hard to determine, and secured his stolen //borrowed// thigh and shoulder armour straps with practiced movements that were not entirely his own. The long and tattered red cowl still smelled faintly of Vincent, windswept smoke and gunpowder. He pulled the worn fabric close around his neck and shoulders, the high collar concealing his lower face from view. Bending he fastened his boots and secured the leather straps that held baggy pant legs tight to his shins. His fingers lingered on the small tears around threadbare knees, it was probably time for new clothes. He drew the leather straps of Vincent’s’ cowl tighter around him, he didn’t want to go near people again. Bad things happened when he went near people.

The leather grip of the massive Buster Sword was a strangely familiar weight in his hand. He hesitated as he lifted it. Memory told him he should feel guilt or shame or something for what he was about to do, yet he could feel nothing. He also supposed he should feel grateful for that small blessing, but all he felt was hollow; a small drop of water falling endlessly down a well, never to reach the bottom. The heart trapped in his ribcage thumped firmly, leaking emotion, trying in vain to fill the void in his being. He swung the Buster Sword over his shoulder onto his back, careful not to harm his wing where it rested against his back, claws hooked onto his pauldron.

“You should stop wasting my energy. I know that feeding upsets you.”

//Spike…//

This was an old argument. They had to feed, or they would fade away. His life may not have been worth much, but survival was a strong instinct. Stronger than the void that pulled at him and called so seductively. The more energy the heart he carried used, the more often they had to feed. However, the more emotion he was filled with, the more whole he felt.

Breathing in the faded scent of his lost saviour, he steeled himself and opened the door, ignoring the icy tingle of fear creeping up his spine at the thought of entering the hallway his faintly glowing blue eyes scanned quickly. Nothing but peeling paint, broken glass and long shadows.

Releasing the breath he held, he closed the door behind him and locked it with tainted magic pulled from the shadows around him. Stalking down the old musty hallway, booted feet making no sound on the dusty carpet; he stayed low to the ground, body tense and ready for an attack, knowing from painful experience that the Buster Sword would be useless in such tight confines. The empty window frame at the end of the hall was his goal, the only exit this floor offered, as the stairs downstairs were purposefully collapsed some time ago. Hopping onto the sill his wing spread fully, it knew how to fly, yet still he couldn’t, wouldn’t, unable to give up that last little voice that screamed, still human.

He flexed his body and leaned out the window, feeling like a bow pulled taut waiting to release. He savoured the feeling of wind tugging his spikes of hair and gravity pulling him to the ground far below. The sheer physical sensation caught his breath, and the tiny twinkling lights from the worlds above cast everything below him in a soft glow, softening the edges of the broken city. Body vibrating with the need to move, he forced his awareness outward.

Darkness saturated this world, seeped from every stone, a sweet murmuring fog that masked other smells, other presences. His eyes scanned the twisted wreckage of the city, the blue glow of his eyes tinting everything even as it revealed the nights darkest secrets.

Movement.

His whole focus snapped to that point, a feral grin hidden behind blood red fabric. Wing trembling and his fingers digging into the cracked wood of the windowsill, muscles singing with tension and the wind ripping quickened breath from his lungs. This was when he felt alive. This infinitely short moment frozen between strained stillness and explosive movement.

His muscles snapped and he launched forward, a dark arrow against the starlit sky. His wing flapped with a crack of whip-corded muscle and straining tendons. The Darkness in his veins sang as he called on its power, the shadows around him shifting as if alive.

His prey never saw it coming.

The Heartless screeched in pain as the purple-black flames washed over its humanoid form, it managed to turn yellow eyes upwards just in time to see him fold his wing and dive down, claws first.

The Heartless screamed and hissed in his mind and leapt to meet him, calling for its kin. An answering cry burst out of his chest as he tore into it from above, brass and wing claws digging deep, the shadowy flesh parting like so much smoke.

Sensing its chances, the large Heartless desperately tried to escape, scoring deep marks on his shoulder armour, claws catching on the metal bolts. He reached with his human hand and wrapped the floor length antennae around his fist. The creatures’ silent grating screeches grew more desperate as he pulled its head back. He flexed his brass claws before plunging them deep into the doomed creatures’ chest.

Its death rattle raked talons across his mind but the solid treasure within shadowy ribs more than made up for that. His fist closed on the gem like object before ripping it out. The once human shade gave one last pained sound before melting away into oblivion, nothing more than sweet smoke on the wind.

He opened his eyes and stared at the treasure in his leather and brass clad fist. A heart shaped gem so dark it bent the light around it. Like a living thing it beat with a soft pulse in his palm, warm and steady.

There was a needy wordless whine in his mind.

He closed his eyes and ran a thumb across the inky black surface, coaxing the echo of emotion from the dark heart. He savoured the taste, fear, anger, loneliness, hope, despair.

//Please…//

He flicked his wing, annoyed. “Shut up Zack.” They both knew he couldn’t eat here, it wasn’t safe. He tucked the black heart into the tiny pouch on the back of his belt and flexed his wing. It was surprising that the noise of the fight had not called more to them. The larger humanoid Heartless always hunted in packs. He crouched, coiling like a spring before launching into the air, weightless for a breath before perching on the crumbled remains of a building. There were so few Heartless remaining on what was left of this nameless world. They would have to move on.

//Please Cloud, I need…please…I…//

He snorted, Zack only called him by his proper name when he wanted something. Launching himself back into the air, his wing making the long jumps almost flight, he retreated back to his temporary home.

OOOOOOOOOO

He was soon secure in his room once more, his gauntlet and armour pulled off, sword resting against the wall. He paused in front of the bed, reaching out with his senses to be sure that everything was safe.

//…Please…// The voice was little more than a husky whisper.

He retrieved the heart and held it in his blackened, clawed hand. His fingers, so like the Heartless he hunted, tightened around the pulsing stone and placed it over the cloth hidden scar on his breastbone, sinking to the bed as he did so.

//Ooooh, gods yes.// Warmth spread from the contact like fire across an oil spill. Snippets of emotion and memory flashed behind his eyelids.

Tall spires glinting in sunlight, proud and fierce.

Laughter like fireflies dancing in the summer breeze.

Sinking darkness and racing fear.

Black shadows and yellow eyes.

He convulsed, muscles and tendons responding to stimuli that were long gone.

//Cloud…AHH…// His nerves screamed as they were played, drowning in pure sensation. Phantom memories clawed at his skin, running through muscle and bone and nerve, cutting and tearing and caressing and good, so very painfully good.

He couldn’t stop, couldn’t even hear, the sounds that started deep in his throat, mind lost to the liquid fire spreading through his body. He clung desperately to the other within him, the anchor that held him here, and now, as the stars sung and the void screamed.

“Ahhh…ngh” They were so tangled now, almost one being, the edges fuzzy and forgotten. A writhing mass of nerves and emotion and memory. Overwhelming heat pooled in his body, coiling and shifting, suffocating and liberating all at once.

Phantom lips found his and he arched to meet them, twisting and moaning under probing hands that brushed nerves and enflamed skin. White fire ran down his spine as it arched off the bed. “Zack!” The worlds exploded behind his eyes and he screamed.

Warm arms encircled him and black spikes of hair brushed his chin. //…Cloud…I’m so sorry.// Guilt and love and need.

He panted on the bed, his body limp and unresponsive. He managed to shake his head. “No.” He swallowed, the words sticking in his throat. “No regrets.”

Calloused hands carded through his sweaty bangs, //Oh Spike.// The rapid heartbeat in his chest out of sync with his ragged breath. //If only things were different.//

He laughed weakly, the afterglow of emotion allowing him that much. “Zack…If it wasn’t for you I would be in a populated place.” He shifted, freeing his trapped wing from under his shoulder. “We both know Heartless are nothing compared to a real person.”

A deep sigh, //And once again you are right.//

He weakly waved a hand, “The guilt will fade once it’s fully absorbed.” To be replaced with hunger for another, he didn’t add.

//I’m not sure I want the guilt to fade.// A contemplative pause. //We have to move on don’t we?//

“Yeah.” He propped himself up on his elbows and surveyed his stained and torn clothing, the original mismatched colour hard to remember. “We need new clothes.”

//Are you sure?// He wasn’t referring to the clothing.

The air left his lungs with an ‘oof’ as he flopped back down. “I think we’re ready.” He curled up on his side, wing wrapping around his shoulder, claws briefly scratching at his scalp. “Sleep first.” It seemed he did nothing but sleep these days, despite the lack of pleasant dreams.

A soft chuckle, //It’s too bad this is the closest to sex we get.//

He rolled his eyes under his lids.

//Yeah, yeah, I know.// His hair ruffled. //Night Spike.//

A whisper from under a demon’s wing. “Zack?”

//Yeah?//

“I wish I could love you like they did…” The dusty mattress swallowed his mumble as he slipped from consciousness.

//I know Spike. I know.//

OOOOOOOOOO

Lungs expand, pull tainted, thickened air in with a hiss.

Screaming, screeching, pleading, begging, clawing whispers no ears could hear.

Lungs contract, push air out into bubbles of shimmering oil.

Dying, fading, running, tearing at thoughts and sanity and sense of self.

Air in, hiss.

A million voices cry out for blood.

Air out, bubble.

A million more cry for salvation.

“Cloud!” Thump. “Cloud, let me know you’re alright!” Thump, thump.

Muscles contract. Blood pumps. Thoughts stir. Who? Was that his name?

“CLOUD!”

The fluid stings sensitive eyes as it always does, the curved glass reflecting the soft blue glow. Past the scratches marring the inside lay another tank of liquid, another pale figure suspended within, large fists pressed against the similarly marred glass. Dark hair so like his own triggered a name, Zack.

Thump the fist lands one last time, fingers spreading wide, “Oh thank the worlds.” A great rush of silvery bubbles float up like fractured dreams from a dark mask hiding all but bright violet orbs. “You had me worried for a while Spike.” The voice echoes in the thick liquid, somehow solid in a way that dulls the voiceless screams. “Sorry about the silence, they turned off the speaker this time.” A weak chuckle. “It took me a whole story to realize I was talking to myself.”

Twitch, that was a blatant lie, Zack always knew. Bright blue orbs stared into pleading violet, the numbness fading with the constant chatter.

A more honest laugh, warm despite the poor quality of the microphone in the other’s mask, “Ah, you’re right, that was a lie. Can’t ever pull the wool over on you eh Spike?” Black spikes of hair waved in the viscous fluid. “Have I ever told you about the two loves of my life?”

Silence, blissful silence in the back of a weary mind. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t remember if he had heard this story before.

“They’re as different as can be from each other. My little icy kitten, and my fiery songbird, I’m so lucky to have two special people. Although one of them is certainly a lot closer than the other.” A lusty chuckle. “But I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that. I bet you got a girl waiting back home for you.”

A rare coherent thought, he wondered if the flowers marking her place were in bloom.

“You’ll have to introduce me when we get out of here. Then we can all go for a picnic or something. I mean my girl makes the best apple pie in the whole city I bet. I think they’d really like you, and you can never have too many friends right? I mean you’d have to get through kittens’ icy shell but once you do…”

The words stopped making sense long ago, but the warm friendly sound lulled heavy lids closed.

Air in, air out.

Air in, air out.

OOOOOOOOOO

Cloud woke slowly, the echo of a thousand lost planet’s cries ringing his ears. Stretching he rose from the bed, they would leave this dead, nameless world as soon as he was awake enough to open a portal.

He felt for the faint voices of the heavens that still echoed in his skull, calling on the gift he had possessed since he was born. After his…change…it was harder, but if he focused he could still hear the voice of the planet, of all the planets in this realm between realms.

Despair echoed in his mind. Empty shells and broken hearts.

All but one.

He hesitated, that voice had not been there before. Had a new world been created in this strange twilit realm between Light and Dark? The voice was disjointed, and echoed strangely in his mind, sounding both broken and somehow more whole. But it was filled with something all the other worlds had lost.

Hope.

The calling of his family line drew him to that voice. Something of great importance was going to happen there. But not yet, not for several years. His mother had called them Locks, tangled knots of probability that needed only a key event to unravel. That he could feel the event coming so far out… the future of many worlds would depend on one small, seemingly insignificant event.

A child of shadow and light would appear holding a great power once intended for another. Power to save the worlds, power to destroy them, irrevocably bound to the balance of all, the darkest shadow cast by the brightest light, and it must be the hound of fate that finds the child first.

He fell to his knees as the images pierced his mind, three paths, three realms, three locks, three keys. The day swallowed by the night in order to shape the dawn. One must lead to the next, or the balance would fall, the universe swallowed by Darkness on one path and Light on the other.

He shuddered and pried bloodied fingers from his skull, the vision broken. Even if he wanted to travel to a different world he knew he would be forced to visit that one first. The Curse of Strife; like his mother before him, he was drawn to major events, forced to bear witness. That curse was why he had been in the great city of his homeworld. The call so loud it had rendered him unconscious when he couldn’t follow.

The breaking of his body and the end of the world.

His eyes found the large blade of the Buster Sword on their own, the metal gleamed in the dim light. Green cat-slit eyes mocked him from his memories. Black feathers and silver hair, dull leather and gleaming metal, all tied together with mocking laughter. The one heart that he could not find, the one heart he wasn’t sure he should find.

The heart in the cage of his ribs pulsed in a stretch. //Morning Spike. Sleep well?//

Shaking his head he rose to his feet, and moved to prepare himself to leave this place forever. He strapped on Zack’s armour, slung the Buster sword over his shoulder and pulled on Vincent’s gauntlet before ducking down and grabbing the small duffle bag of things he had acquired since his escape. A couple of potions, a handful of munny and a few other odds and ends from the worlds he had visited after his desperate flight from a dying world.

//We’re leaving right away?//

He paused, “Yeah. Why?”

//Do you know where we’re going?//

He slung the bag over his shoulder, wrapping his wing around it before tugging the cowl over them both. Flaunting his corruption in a populated area was a good way to get himself killed. “A Lock.”

Curiosity, it would be the first time they had visited one. //How big?//

“Big.” He shook his head, possibly the biggest the worlds had seen since the days of legend his mother told him of. “Ready?”

A nod, and a flash of white teeth. //Let’s mosey.//

The Darkness was always whispering to him, tempting syrupy sounds to drown in. Usually he didn’t listen to the whispers, just let them wash over him like waves on a beach. But now he dove into the Dark headfirst, it was shockingly cold as he gathered it around himself. Sweet and cloying, rotting meat and sour wine, soft fingers and stale air. He dug into the barrier that held the Darkness at bay and felt it tear like flesh, thick as intestines it pooled out of the tear at his feet, cold and sweet and calling.

He paused for a moment, steeling himself, before stepping into the swirling purple, red and black. His skin crawled and his wing flexed, with reluctant effort he pushed the sticky sweetness away from himself and carved a space with his will. It pulled at him, and called to him, the vapour pooling in his lungs and seeping into his bones, making him stronger, yet more hollow. That empty feeling the reason he shied away from this place.

He turned and pulled the tear closed behind him. The drifting tendrils of Darkness the last signs of life the dead world would ever see.
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The Price of Freedom