An Overdue Crossing [Private]

The passage through space-time's nether realms spanned endlessly onward before an unwary wayfarer. As the traveler, a broken, bloodied, black-clad clump of a man zoomed through the cosmic highway between dimensions, he wondered, as he often did, how he could always be traveling this way and never happen across others on similar journeys. Or at least, that was what he would have been thinking if he wasn't half dead...


The battle on Ashen Crater had been a dreadful ordeal. The man, one Glyde Savian, had been caught up in the Hellish mess, and it had taken its toll on him under all accounts of mind, body and spirit. From the moment he had cast his Shift Dimension spell to enter the inter-dimensional causeway, he was sapped of any sense of strength. As soon as he had begun zooming through the corridor, he had been nodding in and out of consciousness, nearly blacking out on more than one occasion. His path now was a sheer descent into his next destination.

However, when he thought about it, he wasn't even certain that he had set his portal to take him where he had intended to go. Knowing his luck, he mused to himself of how his portal out of the wormhole would land him back at Ashen Crater, or even worse, back at the doorstep of his once-home at the Keyblade Academy. Glyde chuckled weakly at his own dark humor; the vision of how pleased the Grandmaster would be to have his most-wanted dead on his porch was actually an amusing one.

After what seemed like ages spent in the wormhole, Glyde caught the familiar feeling of being spat out from the other end. The sense of a vertical fall suddenly changed to that of being flung across a room. And again... he thought. The blackout that he had been staving off the whole trip began to settle in. The last thing he felt was his body knocking into what felt like another body before everything went dark...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYhogl411ec​

The Light was falling around him, slowly fading in until it surrounded him over the span an endless plane. It was far from pleasant though; his eyes, accustomed to the dark, shadowy corners of the worlds' refuse, felt like they were being set aflame by the white glow of the ethereal dreamcape. Then came the voices, from all directions, speaking in a gargle of incoherent mumbles, as all of them seemed to speaking their own piece at once. The few words Glyde could pick from the wash of noise were unfriendly. Death threats abounded among them their speakers promising that the next time they saw him, they'd be his last sight. Steadily, these voices grew closer, and the shadowy phantoms of memory stood over him as his will to move diminished.

But then, there came a voice that didn't threaten. "Glyde?"

The bright wash of piercing light faded to black. Glyde, growing aware of his conscious self began stirring about on the cold, rock-hard ground. He came back into himself, eyes opening up to the dank caves within which he had crash landed some time earlier. "Who wants to know?" he asked sluggishly, looking around the tunnel. His eye, or eye, though blurred as his vision still worked to catch up with him, fell upon the recognizably friendly face... which was constituted by the face not being one of someone that wanted him dead. "Oh." He smiled weakly but with an unusual sincerity, seeing none other than Malisa Jals standing over him. "Hey. Long time no see... Mind helping me up?"

He held up an open hand. "I'm not sure I've got enough left in me to stand on my own right now," he said, looking into her eyes, jostling his overgrown hair out to reveal his own ocular injury and the accompanying patch over his right eye.

 

Glyde's smile broadened and receded in a quick, continuous motion of the mouth. He grabbed hold of Malisa's outstretched hand; the adornment of a familiar gauntlet caught his eye without fail, causing the smile to return in subtly. With her help, he manged the feat of pulling himself back onto his feet. After a few moments of shaking legs and a nervous wrenching in his stomach, he found some sense of balance, carrying himself as best he could as to keep Malisa from bearing the entirety of his weight. "Well, I would call it more like 'one time in Hell,' but the point would be the same."

He took a slow step forward, in a way urging Malisa to begin walking as well. "By the looks of it, the same could be said for you," he continue, trying to not sound too insensitive to her state of being. "Birds of a feather I guess," he finished softly. He gazed around the cavernous tunnels in which he now stood, thinking it typical of his fate to land him in another such world. So this is home for you, eh? Well, hopefully your home world will treat us better than mine did."

 

"A plague? Ha. Just my luck I guess," Glyde chortled weakly. He looked around the caverns as he limped along supported by Malisa. He hadn't registered the details of his surroundings before. But with a more observant look around he noticed the crystalline formations dotted about the tunnel. They emitted a luminous glow, making the curiosity and urge to reach out and touch one particularly difficult to dismiss; Glyde imagined that they'd be very useful if they weren't in a state of corrupting anyone that touched them... but then, maybe they could still be useful.

When Malisa had finished her story, Glyde bit his lips. The mention of her father's deeds intensified the churn within his stomach. "Your father sounds like a great man, to save his entire world," he said. An undertone of remorse was evident in his voice, though he hoped Malisa didn't catch it. He turned his head away with a quick jerk and, under his breath, finished his though: "mine wasn't so fortunate." He brought his head back up, rubbed his eyes and wiped his face with his sleeve; he hoped Malisa wouldn't catch the dried water mark upon his cheeks.

"So," he said, regaining a hint of his 'normal,' strictly-business disposition, "if there's a plague coming from these crystals and it effects magic, where do we go to get healed?"

 

"Well then... that is unfortunate." Finding himself at an abrupt loss for words, Glyde lowered his head back towards the ground. He remained silent for the remainder of the journey through town, paying only quick, suspicious glare as they passed by the few souls that strode the streets. In this silence he was deep in thought of his new surroundings and his reunion with the kindly woman beside him. Something wasn't completely adding up in his mind. He thought of questions he had for her and answers he had in mind to give her even though she never asked a thing; she hadn't heard his previous comments, or had at least not pursued them further.

When Malisa came to a sudden halt, he limped to one of his own, stumbling as his knees began buckling. He relied on her more than he cared to admit in getting down the stairs, hoping that she wasn't getting too much pressure in the task. He gave little attention to the room they entered at the bottom. Laying upon the plush surface of the bed. It was a long awaited pleasure, yet somehow soiled with guilt after the months of roughing it upon cold hard ground. He took in his surroundings in earnest interest, wondering exactly where it was they were.

His observation eventually fell on Malisa, while she rifled through the cabinet, noting its various contents with equal interest at the artifacts and objects that sprung from it. One in particular aroused his interest: an old book that slid across the floor to the foot of the bed. With some great effort, Glyde sat himself upright, seeing the book's title clearly enough to read: 'Family Genealogy.' Curiosity got the better of him, and he found himself leaning further forward, hoping that he might take the book and look into it. But he soundly and swiftly retracted from this course of action as a green glass bottle sailed across the room and onto his lap.

He didn't need any instruction for what he did next. Panting like a dog, he took up the bottle, popping the cork out and raising it up as high as his arm would go. "To good health," he said, catching a rare air of humor. He chugged down the Elixer. In an instant, he felt his body rejuvenating from its long fatigue and some of his minor scratches and bruises seemed to vanish. Seconds later, his magical integrity came back to him. Still, he opted to stay in the bed, laying back down and stretching his body out over it before propping himself up with the pillow.

"So..." he began, struggling to think of his words carefully as he eyed about the room and down to the book on the floor. "Is this your--" he cut himself off, once again turning his head off to the side. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't pry."

 

Beaming amusedly at Malisa's rambling, Glyde nodded his head to each point. In the midst of it, he gently lowered himself back into a laying position, hands pillowed under his head. He took a few deep breaths. To his better fortunes the churning he had been feeling in his chest seemed to quell to a gentle whirl. As soon as silence fell between them, he released a loud, lazy yawn and cocked his head up towards his companion.

For a moment he wasn't certain what she was asking when she spoke again and spent some time thinking it over. "Well I don't know much about the time flows between all of the places I've been to," he half-yawned. "And I doubt it matters much when it comes to people like us who are always jumping between different wheres and whens. It wouldn't effect our bodies as far as aging, at least I suppose. I want to say that I spent about a month or two in that mining town after you left before plane-jumping. Then I spent some time as a sort of free agent... Bounty hunting and what not; didn't hop planes when I did that. Plus maybe a month on Ashen Crater with those Syneptowhatevers. So yeah. I guess it's been about that long."

 

"Yeah. The Synoetophy; that sounds about right." Glyde rose from the bed this time, sitting upright again. "I'm surprised you had a run-in with them yourself. But I guess an effort with as much ambition as they had was bound to have more hands working across more than one reality. The ones I encountered were lead by some Keyblade Master called Exilus; kinda got leverage over me and forced me to work for them." He threw his legs over, onto the floor. He opened his mouth only for silence to come out as he realized that Malisa was speaking to herself.

"Who are you talking about?" He asked, hinting at concern. "Who came back?" The Keybearer groaned aloud, pressing his fingers to his eyes. Looking to Malisa, hoping she had an answer, he asked a question that had just passed through his mind: "What does all of this mean? The Syneptophy. That Deep Granum thing. This all just got more confusing."

 

After listening to Malisa, Glyde flopped back down over the width of the bed, such that his head hung upside down over the edge. He looked up towards Malisa, taking the time to fully grasp everything she had told him. Then, he groaned, plastering his face with his hand. "Oh damn. Damn, damn, DAMN. I did NOT sign-up for THIS when I broke that house-arrest." He kicked up and off the bed entirely and commenced to pace a short track across the room and back. Every few steps he shook his head, releasing a cloud of accumulated dust from his hair.

After a moment's silence, he spoke again with a half-laugh-half-tremble in his voice. "You know," he said, "I figured that the Syneptophy had messed things up between realities. But I just wasn't sure how much. Passage between realities and universes completely different from mine and yours is still open to me. The Syneptophy must have done lasting damage to space-time for that to have happened." He rubbed his temple, heaving out growling sigh. "Evidently, there's more than one way to access 'Dominion.' Otherwise Exilus and his Syneptophy wouldn't have been trying to access it in the first place... I mean, it's kind of ridiculous to think that the nexus of all reality could only be opened by one person. And it's safe to say that it was the same Dominion because, well, the same point as before... Man, this all makes my head spin."

Again, he fell silent, still pacing, until he came to a slow, intending halt. He looked back to Malisa, trying to dare something resembling a smile. "I guess you and I are more alike than I thought. You've got people after you, one that appears to have a personal vendetta as well; I've got... well I don't even know who's after my head these days. Probably Syneptophy from Exilus' order; the man himself would probably want me for himself considering how badly I spoiled his grunts in the end. Not to mention my Academy caught wind of me on Ashen Crater, and Vance Scypa has been on my tail ever since. I think we're pretty safe from THEM here, but that future you... don't you think she'll think of this place sooner or later?"

 

Glyde's concerns were quelled with Malisa's lighter-hearted response.

"Well if that's the case, then the two of us might be enough to overpower her as long as we battle her here. I've gotten quite a bit more powerful... at least I think, and hope I have. Being so well off the map has given me a lot of time to hone my crafts." He capped off with a forced smile, trying to return Malisa's enthusiasm. But, failing a bit miserably at it, he resumed his straight-faced facade. "Vance didn't learn to breach, per-say. The Grandmaster from our Keyblade Academy gave him some device that opened up portals through space-time. I remember I... I kind of destroyed it when I battled him once while I worked with my Syneptophy. But he was traveling with a tech-savvy crew; they probably managed to repair it for him, or give him something similar, unless he managed to learn it himself from watching me do it."

Glyde drifted while he spoke and leaned up against the wall by the counter. "You know, we nearly got to Dominion ourselves. We found a lead about it. We just had to retrieve something that would let us access it. Only the people battling against the Syneptohpy found the home world and mounted an attack on it. That's when I broke rank from them, and also why they're probably searching for me right now; at least, the ones that I couldn't finish off before the battle was over.

"It would be convenient if they all came here at the same time. Not sure how we'd make our escape; I imagine Vance wouldn't want the Syneptophy getting to me before he did though, and he's already beaten down once before as it is. Like I said though: I don't expect any of them to show up here any time soon; I wound up here unplanned as it is. So that just leaves that future you, who, by the sound of it, shouldn't be too hard to shake as long as we fight her where she's weakened."

He pushed off from the wall and walked towards the corridor through which they had entered the workshop. His stomach lurched and roared from within; for all of its wonders, there was one thing that even an Elixer couldn't have fixed. He turned around to Malisa, famish shown in his expression as he asked, "so... uh, where does a guy find a good meal down here?"

 

"Right." Glyde stepped aside allowing Malisa to reopen the secret tunnel. He remained to the side for the remainder of the conversation, albeit remaining silent through it as well. He mused in silence to himself about how magic was currency in Baroque Caverns, the fact of which brought him from being dirt poor to middle-class in an instant. He gawked at Malisa's sudden disguise only to straighten his face before she could notice. He relented from speaking the thought of the jet black hair looking food on her, fighting the thought off almost as soon as it settled in. "Lead the way," he said, gesturing out the door. "I mean, you do know the way around here; I barely even know where here is."