Kingdom Hearts; The Twilight Keeper

Chapter XVI; Pieced Together

The other side of the dark corridor welcomed the three into a dense forest, filled with dark trees that grew so close together any kind of light there might have been would never be able to pierce. Yuki frowned, her eyes scanning the trees, slowly adjusting to the new darkness. Slowly the world came into view. There weren't nearly as many trees as she had first thought. The ones that were there looked as if they were sick, the life no longer vibrant.

Y took a step forward, drawing Yuki's attention away from the trees. Cutting through the trees was a railway of some kind, broken and rusted. It hadn't seen use in many years. Y turned away, her eyes skipping over X completely and landing on Yuki.

"I thought we were supposed to end up in the realm of darkness?" Y asked, her confusion lacing her voice. Yuki nodded in agreement, glancing up to the sky. There was nothing, no stars, no sun or moon, just black emptiness. Slowly she glanced around the jungle again. Surely it wasn't meant to be this dark? It seemed, wrong.

"This, is the realm of darkness. I think," she said.

"It's not uncommon for fallen worlds to appear in the realm of darkness like this," X said, taking a step forward from where he had stood behind Yuki. She turned her attention to him. He looked just as calm as always, his hands in his pockets as he looked around the jungle.

"Ok, so we know we're in the realm of darkness," Yuki said. "But, where do we go now? It's not like we have any kind of goal."

"Well, we have to stop the organization, so we have to make it to Castle Impia," Y said, crossing her arms as she turned to face Yuki and X once again. She glanced around as she spoke, searching the area for threats.

"Castle Impia is in the deepest part of the realm of darkness," Yuki said. "And I'm going to guess, they have something set up so we can't just dark corridor in." She snapped, attempting to summon a dark corridor, but nothing appeared. It wasn't a surprise. With Syrine's spatial magic it was easy to prevent direct travel into the castle by a dark corridor. 

"So we have to go deeper," Y said, a heavy sigh following.

"I guess it'll be like anything else then," Yuki said, crossing her arms with a pout. "We just have to go from this world to the next. As many as they have in our way."

"That's what Aryum meant when she said it takes some time to set things up," Y said with a nod of agreement. Her eyes once again glanced around the jungle, stopping to stare into the trees for a moment. "So, do you know what world this is?"

"No, I've never seen it before," Yuki answered, suppressing a shudder. She glanced to X, who seemed to be staring in the opposite direction of Y along the rail that passed them. "X?"

"No." He didn't move his gaze, eyes narrowing in thought.

"Alright," Y said with a heavy sigh. "So, what do you think?" Her eyes had again returned to Yuki.

"I'm not sure," Yuki admitted. She shifted nervously under Y's gaze. It wasn't often she had to make decisions on her own. Usually, she could at least rely on X for some sort of cryptic advice. But Y didn't seem to be leaving any room for X to weigh in. "Without knowing the world, I'm not sure anything we do will make sense. There must be something they want from us."

"At risk of sounding super weird, I think we need to follow the railway," Y said, turning to follow X's gaze. Yuki frowned following her gaze. She couldn't see where it led. Only that it was getting lost in the darkness that surrounded them.

"Why would that be weird?"

Before Y was given a chance to respond, X spoke up.

"Because it's a stupid idea," he snapped. "We need to go through the jungle."