For as long as ▯▯▯▯ remembered, there was solitude.
The mansion was vast, a labyrinth of hallways, ballrooms, dining chambers, libraries, and bedrooms, each one beautiful and luxurious. But nobody danced in the ballrooms, only she read in the library, and she took her meals alone in whatever dining room she felt like that day. The doors to the outside remained locked, save for the one out into the caged garden.
She sometimes climbed to the highest point in the mansion, staring out the window at the fields and hills beyond. She’d read about villages, towns, grand cities, but there was nothing as far as the eye can see.
The only people she saw were the servants. They kept their faces concealed, and they rarely spoke to her. They would serve her meals, and shepherd through her morning and nightly routines, but when they weren’t needed they rarely strayed beyond the servant’s quarters.
It took weeks of pestering one of them before they finally spoke to her, and even then it was only to inform her that it would be improper for them to make conversation with a princess. Even her tutors conducted their lessons with as little talking as possible, and never any conversation that wasn’t related to her studies.
She read voraciously, and when she’d finished every book in the libraries, she read them all again. She painted, sewed, played music, made up games to help her through the day. Each day seemed to blur together.
Then, one day, just before sunset, the front doors slammed open.
▯▯▯▯ knew it might be dangerous, but she sprinted towards it anyway, to the promise of people and the outside world. What she found was four people standing in the entrance hall: Two boys her age, wearing a unicorn and a bear mask, one boy some years younger with no mask, and someone she assumed was their -- father, maybe? No, brother. He wasn’t old enough to be their father, but he was definitely the oldest of the group, towering over the others and taking in the entire hall with expressionless, blue eyes.
“Wo-o-o-ah,” the tall man said, suddenly cheerful. “This place is huge! Hey, hey, can we live here?”
“No, Master,” the boy in the unicorn mask said, flatly.
“You’re killing me,” the tall man -- the Master -- said, suddenly tearful. “You’re a terrible child and you’re killing your master, Ira.”
“Um,” ▯▯▯▯ said, raising a hand as she jogged down the stairs.
The Master’s gaze flicked over to her, and suddenly all trace of tearfulness or jocularity was gone.
“You must be the princess. Bow, guys,” he said, voice turning almost thunderingly sonorous. The three boys bowed -- low, in the case of two of them, but the one with the bear mask barely tipped his head. “I’m here to bring a message from the king. Call it a last favour. He says …”
A pause. The Master folded his arms, tilting his head and shutting his eyes, expression grave.
“Ira,” he murmured, eventually. “I’ve forgotten what the king said.”
Ira sighed. “The king says that the palace has fallen to the rebels,” he said. “I’m sorry, princess, but he, your mother, and your elder sisters were all killed in the fighting. His last wish was that you flee to your aunt’s residence on the border.”
▯▯▯▯ blinked at them. From what little her servants had said, and from the books she’d read, she’d known already that her father was a king. But that she had sisters, or that there were rebels, was all brand new information to her.
“What’ll happen when I get there?”
“The same thing that’s happened here,” the boy in the bear mask said. “You’ll be kept safe until you’re old enough to be named queen. And then you’ll be kept safe somewhere else.”
Kept safe. ▯▯▯▯ could read between the lines: She was to be kept prisoner again, never leaving a single residence, waiting for the day when she’d be allowed even the tiniest bit of freedom -- and that day would never, ever come.
But right in front of her was a door, and rolling plains, and an entire world beyond them.
“I see,” she said, tilting her head. “And will you be escorting me there?”
“No,” the boy in the bear mask said, “babysitting royals is beneath us.”
“I’m sorry,” Ira said. “But as keybearers, our duty demands we go elsewhere.”
“Something like that, anyway,” the Master chirped. “We’re only here because your old man was a friend back before all of the …” he waved a hand, vaguely, “bleeding. And hacking. General unpleasantness. And now we’ve delivered his final wishes, so you can have fun with those!”
He turned on his heel, heading for the door. ▯▯▯▯ found herself calling out before she could stop herself.
“Wait!”
“Nah, no, no can do,” the Master replied.
“Master,” Ira said, sharply. “Before we go … What’s going to happen to the princess?”
The Master stopped, angling his head to give Ira a sidelong look. “Eh what-a-what now?”
“Your eye can see into the future, Master,” Ira said. “So, what’s going to happen to the princess if she stays?”
“‘If’? Ira, you know it doesn’t work like that,” the Master said, voice suddenly dropping into grave, serious tones again. “The future’s already been written. From now until the dying of the light. Y’know? Y’know.”
The boy in the bear mask huffed. “I don’t need a magic eye to -- …”
“I mean, it’s not really magic -- …” the Master started whining.
“We saw what had happened on our way here,” the boy in the bear mask continued, with a slightly snide curl to his voice. “Your kingdom’s completely fallen, princess. The rebels are relentless. Every royal, every noble, all the wealthiest merchants. And they know you exist, so they’re gonna find you, no matter where you hide.”
“That’s not true,” Ira said. “Master -- …”
“The new regime’s gonna collapse in about … ah, hang on, carry the three, divide by two … twenty-five years,” the Master said. “And the one that replaces it -- well, it’s going to be a lot worse, but it’ll be friendlier to princesses, at least. So all you need to do is hide for twenty-five years. Should be easy, right? You’ve done ten already.”
Twenty-five years. More than two times the eternity she’d spent in this mansion. All to wait for people who will be friendlier.
“Then I renounce it,” ▯▯▯▯ said. “All of it.”
“Oh?” The Master asked. “D’you have anything to renounce it for?”
“These are your apprentices, correct?” ▯▯▯▯ asked, tipping her chin up. “Then take me on as an apprentice.”
The Master’s mouth twisted into a sly smile.
“Just like that, huh?” He murmured. “You don’t even know what that’d involve.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just so long as I’m not kept alone and caged again,” ▯▯▯▯ said. “You can see the future, right? You know what’ll happen if I become your apprentice.”
“Sure,” the Master said. “You’ll die young. Younger than you would as a princess. But you’ll be surrounded by friends and students of your own when you do. It’s a trade-off, I guess.”
“Then I want to do it. If that’s my fate, then I can bear it,” ▯▯▯▯ said.
“All right, all right, all right,” the Master said, wryly. “I knew you’d say that, by the way. After all, the future’s already been written. Even I can’t change it now.”
He turned, walking towards her. Up close, ▯▯▯▯ realised suddenly how tall he was: He would tower over any of the servants at the mansion. He dropped to one knee in front of her, lifting a hand.
“This’ll hurt. You ready?”
▯▯▯▯ nodded.
The Master took a deep breath, waving his fingers as if shaking motion into them. With a crackle of light and thunder, a magic circle formed beneath him, spreading outwards, carving shapes into the floor: Runes, keys, a sun and a moon, a heart that tapered into a winged cross, and about the edge, seven animals. ▯▯▯▯ recognised them from her books: A unicorn, a bear, a leopard, a snake, a fox, a goat, and at the head of them, at the twelve-o-clock point, a lion.
The Master stretched out his hand towards her, his fingers burning with blue light. Then, in a low, sonorous tone: “From the shadows of your heart, in the shape of the X-blade, and in the name of ▯▯▯▯, the Master of Masters: I summon to bear this keyblade, Ophiuchus, and give to you a new name.”
Pain shot through ▯▯▯▯’s chest, then outwards through her entire body, so all-consuming that she thought it would burn her up. Something was being wrenched free from her heart, she realised, a shapeless concept being heated and battered into a concrete form as it was dragged free. Through the tears forming in her eyes, she saw the red-hot shape of a key, its guard decorated with a snake symbol, its shaft and teeth formed of metal vines.
“From this day until the end of all things, you are Invi, Apprentice of the Snake,” the Master said, closing his hand around the handle of the keyblade and pulling it free, sweeping a cloud of frost, the metal hissing as it cooled.
Invi swayed on her feet, struggling to stay upright. With a quick movement, the Master settled a hand on her shoulder, steadying her, and flicked the keyblade about, offering it to her handle first.
“Here. It’s yours,” he said, gently.
Invi paused, hesitating. Then, slowly, she took the keyblade.
---
They never returned to that world.
Instead, they flitted from world to world, fighting Heartless and training in the use of the keyblade -- or, at least, she, Ira, and Aced did. When Invi asked Luxu why he rarely trained with them, he sheepishly admitted that the Master hadn’t yet given him a keyblade of his own.
The Master himself rarely, if ever, summoned his own keyblade, wryly remarking when asked that it was a poor fit for training others. It hardly mattered: His native dark-element magic was enough to tear through any Heartless his apprentices couldn’t deal with.
He took a different approach with each of his students: Ira learned mostly by repeating the same forms and exercises again and again until he’d mastered them, and then applying them in practical battles; Aced learned best when simply thrown into situations where he’d have no choice but to push his skills to the limit; and for Invi, who was most skilled in magic, the Master spared no opportunity to have her study under every magician and sorcerer they could find, so that she could grow her skill with the mystic arts under a variety of tutors.
It reminded her uncomfortably of life in the mansion. A succession of private tutors, each one less interested in teaching her than in impressing the Master. She wondered if that might be the point, if it was a test to see how she’d react, or just a sly joke on the part of the Master. His sense of humour, Invi noted, was a lot sharper and more vicious than he usually let on.
“What kind of magic do you use when you forge keyblades?” Invi asked one day, as she returned from training.
“Hm?” The Master asked, looking up from his book. He smiled slightly, shaking his head. “It’s not really magic. Or I guess it is, but not the way you’re thinking of.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Magic is magic. And keyblades are keyblades,” the Master said. “Magic manipulates energy into powerful but fleeting forms. You take magical energy and you impose a form and a function onto it for as long as you can, like trapping fireflies between your hands to light your way and waiting for them to fly out between the gaps in your fingers. But the keyblade is the permanent physical manifestation of a concept. An idea forged and tempered into the shape of the X-blade.”
“But they’re all failures, right?” Invi asked. “You said that once.”
“I said they were imperfect,” the Master replied, wryly. “Imperfect doesn’t mean something’s a failure. They’re -- the products of inferior materials. The X-blade is the keyblade of Kingdom Hearts itself, the heart of all worlds, after all. It only stands to reason that its mimicries, born from the hearts of men, wouldn’t compare. But with each one I make, I learn more about the X-blade.”
“What about the first one you made?” Invi asked. “Was it Ira’s? Or -- no, it’d be Aced’s, right?”
“Aced’s was the second, and Ira’s the third,” the Master said, shaking his head. “The first attempt really was a failure. Or -- not, depending on how you look at it. Some people would call it a success that just wasn’t suited to my needs.”
“Why did you start making them in the first place, though?”
“Call them -- ah, just call them experiments,” the Master said. “Anything more than that would just be misleading, y’know? Y’know.”
---
In time, they recruited two more apprentices, both of them from the same world: Gula, Apprentice of the Leopard, and Ava, Apprentice of the Fox. The two of them were fearsome alone and unstoppable together: Gula’s speed was unmatched by anybody, even the Master himself, and Ava had a talent for illusion magic that let her deceive and muddle the senses of anyone nearby.
Invi spent more time watching the group than she did taking part in it. She saw how Aced started to resent Ira, his bitterness fueled by how the Master seemed to favour Ira despite Aced having more experience. She saw how Ira’s thoughtfulness started to become indecision. She saw how Gula needed to always prove himself the smartest person in the room, the most cunning and learned, how it ate at him whenever he fell behind another apprentice.
She noticed how months pass, but the Master never granted Luxu his own keyblade. Luxu never said anything, he was too meek and nervous for that, but more than once she saw him watching their training from afar, yellow eyes peering out from under his hood.
Most of all, she noticed how the Master seemed to withdraw more. He was still as jovial as ever, but he spent hours at a time scribbling into a book, ignoring the world around him, and he wore his hood up more. It’s strange how, the more he hid his face, the more it started to fade from Invi’s memory.
---
“Limit break?”
“Sure!” The Master chirped. “You’ve seen Ira’s ‘Unicorn Horn’ and Aced’s ‘Bear Claw,’ right? Like that. It’s like a special move or a spell or -- something. Burning all of your magic in a single attack. I didn’t want to bring it up before since you’re all about wearing people down slowly from afar, but you might need something like that some day.”
“And like your, er …” Invi realised she couldn’t actually remember the name of the Master’s Limit Break, no matter how hard she thought about it.
“Right,” the Master chuckled. “Mine’s a bit more of a brute force attack than, say, Ira’s, but what can I say? It gets the job done. But yours doesn’t have to be anything like that, or Ira’s, or Aced’s. It needs to be something that capitalises on your own strengths, exploits them to the fullest.”
“What do you mean by that, Master?”
“Listen,” the Master said. “You’ll never beat Aced on sheer power. And you’ll never beat Gula on speed, or Ava on control of the battlefield, or Ira on -- Ira-ness. So, find that thing that you can beat them on, and push it as far as you can.”
For some weeks after that, he left her to study and train on her own, only occasionally checking in to give some advice before flitting off to put Gula and Ava through their paces. It was comforting, somewhat. For this part of her training, maybe the last part, there were no tutors, no oversight, just her learning how best to apply her powers.
She didn’t tell anybody when she’d perfected her Limit Break. Instead, she waited. It was only during her sparring match with Ira and Aced a few weeks later that she revealed it, releasing a torrent of magic, shaped into giant, hissing serpents of fire, and ice, and lightning, battering them both back with an ever-changing stream of magic.
---
They settled, a little after that, in Daybreak Town.
According to the Master, it was built, courtesy of Mog, just for them, and when Invi noted that an entire town was a little excessive for seven people, he chuckled and wryly remarked that maybe it wasn’t just for them.
As they settled into town, he would disappear for longer and longer periods, making excursions out to other worlds. When asked why, he said that he was making new keybearers. Invi tried not to think about how much that must have hurt Luxu.
Some time later, he sent Invi, Ira, and Aced out to do their Mark of Mastery exam: Travel to seven worlds and open up Corridors back to Daybreak Town. When they returned, Invi and Ira were both declared Masters -- and Aced was told that he could try again with Gula and Ava.
Gula, Ava, and Aced took their Mark of Mastery exams a year later, linking six more worlds to Daybreak Town, but Invi was sure Aced never forgot the humiliation of being passed over the first time.
---
They were in the Master’s study when he finished the first Chirithy, setting the glass vial containing its tiny, sleeping form down on his desk.
“Master! Did you make this?” Ava nearly squealed, running over and dropping to her knees at the desk to get a better look into the glass vial. Gula wandered up behind her, leaning around to examine the little thing.
“Well, things are going to get pretty hectic around here soon,” the Master said. “But this Spirit Chirithy is gonna make your lives much easier! Hopefully.”
“Spirit?” Gula asked.
“You could say they’re like cats or dogs,” the Master said. “And they’ll be your loyal pets. Every keyblade wielder will have one of these adorable little guys at their side. They’re here to help, so play nice.”
“Okay!” Ava immediately said, clearly beyond overjoyed.
“Oh, right, before I forget,” the Master said, just a little slyly. “If a wielder is overcome by malice, or -- rather if their heart is tainted by darkness, their adorable little Spirit Chirithy will turn dark and become a nightmare.”
“So, you’re saying that if we see one of these Nightmare Chirithys …” Ira started.
“Then someone’s heart has been overcome by darkness,” Invi finished.
“Exactly,” the Master said. “And if you don’t stop this -- black Chirithy, it’ll plant darkness in the hearts of others, and you’ll have an army of nightmares on your hands.”
---
The Master never lowered his hood anymore, and all Invi could remember of him was his bright blue eyes. Even his voice seemed fuzzy in her memory.
What was worse than all that, though, was that after years teaching them all, he had abruptly handed the reins to Ira, announcing that he would soon be leaving. Or -- vanishing, rather, leaving them only with their own Books of Prophecy and an individual role for each of them.
“So, I’ll need you to observe the others. Easy-peasy,” the Master chirped, clapping a hand on Invi’s shoulder.
So, that was her role. Ira would be leading, as they established their five Unions of keybearers; Aced would be his second in command; Luxu would be leaving town on some unknown mission; Gula and Ava’s roles were still secret; and Invi would be observing.
“Don’t be afraid to talk up!” The Master continued. “Even though I say ‘observe,’ you’ll need to be the mediator. Make sure people get along.”
“I understand,” Invi said. “But without you or Luxu, to form and maintain our own Unions is -- it’s a little unnerving.”
“C’mon, lighten up a little!” The Master chirped. “Maybe I’ll never disappear. Or …” He claps one hand to his chest, in an overwrought performance of grief. “Do you … want me to go?”
“No! Of course not!”
“I was just kidding.”
“O-Oh. I see.”
“Look,” the Master said. “I get that change can be hard for everyone. Bu-u-ut, things need to keep moving forward, and you need to keep up, or else you’ll just be left behind. All alone. Again.”
Invi had no idea what to say to that, but the Master’s voice was light and cheerful.
“So, now that you know what the future holds, Invi, what does your heart say?” The Master asked, voice suddenly somber. “‘May your heart be your guiding key.’ I say it all the time! You ultimately need to do what your heart feels is right.”
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