Consciousness came back to her in a flash.
One moment she was stuck in murky darkness, the next she was standing outside a set of doors, holding her breath as her head spun. "What the hell?" Sora rubbed at her pounding head. "I swear I've said that way too much..." she mumbled, eyeing the ostentatious door. "What the hell is my life becoming?" The last thing she remembered before falling unconscious had been those golden eyes. The ones that belonged to somebody who should have been long dead. She glanced down at the small piece of string wrapped around her finger, shuddering as she suddenly became aware of a slight hum of power surrounding the innocuous thread. Whatever was going on, it was linked to it. There were no doubts about that fact.
Then there was also that strange white space, and the voice there.
Sora bit her lip, staring at the string. "Tell me what's going on, dammit," she whispered, glaring at the only clue she had to her so-called test. "Just what kind of crazy test is this?"
The string buzzed around her finger, tugging pointedly and rather painfully at the digit. Sora winced, taking it as a sign she ought to hurry along. Stepping up to the door, she reached for the handles, scoffing at the ostentatious dragon head design. The rings were heavy in her hands, and nothing seemed to happen for all the strength she had. Grunting, Sora pulled that much harder, biting back a curse when the dragon head seemed to slither around the ring to bite at her fingers. Pain throbbed up her arm, and she leapt back, bringing her bloodied finger to her lips.
A loud clank pulled her attention away from her bloodied finger, the clicking and whirring of heavy gears and locks behind the tall wooden doors causing her to blink. Power hummed in the air, magic buzzing against her skin as if resonating with something deep inside her, and then markings emerged like creeping vines from either side of the door handles, spreading up and out as they glowed a luminous white.
The doors opened with a rattle, nearly drowning out the sounds of feet pounding towards her location. "You have got to be kidding!"
"How did she gain access?"
Sora snorted softly, hurrying inside. "Believe me, I'd love to know the answer too," she muttered, looking around the large hall she found herself in. "I hate mysteries..." There were too many of them in her life. Was it too much to ask for a straight answer for once in her life?
Apparently, yes.
The golden thread buzzed, and Sora stared down at it, tracing it to the source. It shimmered, the entire length of its sparkling cord becoming visible as she followed its trail to the glass cabinet, and the cloak it held within its confines.
There it was. The Monster Cloak. Woven from an inky black fabric, the kind that might look tinted blue in the correct lighting, tassels of gold at the neck, ready to be fastened in a moment's notice. Sora swallowed harshly, watching as the ends – which might have come to a mid-thigh length had she been as tall as her father – rippled in a non-existent breeze. It was moving on its own.
Suddenly its name made more sense than ever.
There was something unearthly about it, though it didn't stop her from walking right up to the glass it was housed in. She pressed her hand up against the glass, mulling on how exactly she was supposed to get away from her pursuers, when she caught the reflection of light and ducked entirely on instinct.
Magic sizzled past her head, slamming into the casing behind her with a loud crash as she spun to face that same golden-eyed man. Who couldn't be the Dragon King of legend... It was impossible. Dragon King Rhydian could never have looked as unnerved as that man did. "Who"—his teeth were bared—"no, what are you?"
Sora felt her brow wrinkle. "What?" she echoed dumbly.
He stepped towards her. She stepped back, foot crunching something underfoot, freezing only when she felt the brush of silky fabric over her skin. Sora blinked at the unfamiliar sensation, eyes widening when she realised the cabinet behind her was broken and the Monster Cloak was already fastening itself at her neck.
There was a tugging sensation at her navel, head pounding slightly as the world seemed to shrink away from her, darkness seeping in for just a moment before she was back in that cloudy space. Only this time there was no oddly fond voice or any sign of the spectre which had patted her shoulder. Instead, the clouds darkened, like storm clouds right before the lightning and thunder came, and a pair of bright red eyes gleamed in that darkness. They shone like chips of rubies, and Sora felt her heart pound, fear making her teeth clench as her eyes darted around – looking for any hint of a way to escape that focused red gaze.
"No wonder he is panicking..." the disembodied voice rang out, clouds twisting like phantoms in the night as they shifted about.
Chills crept down her spine, a breath of wind there making her shuddering much more prominent.
"You're wrong... you're all so very wrong..."
Sora twisted, hating the unknown factor about the apparent ghost sharing whatever space she was in. Everything was a mystery to her there, and she didn't like it one bit. "Who are you?" she hissed, wishing for some sort of weapon to defend herself with.
The fact something resembling a sword materialised from the white flooring did nothing to reassure her, but she grabbed a hold of it despite that.
"Silly girl," the voice murmured, shadows lashing out like vines to wrench the blade out of her flimsy grip. "A weapon you are unfamiliar with will only slow you down at best and endanger your very life at worst."
Silently, she noted the voice made an alarming amount of sense. Not that she would ever mention that aloud. Nothing good would come, she decided, from talking to weird voices in a strange fog. Even hearing strange voices from creepy fog wasn't a good sign, though given she had just had a strange cloak wrap itself around her...
"My, aren't you a clever one?"
Sora bit her lip. "Can you... hear my thoughts?" she asked, because she hadn't verbalised that one out loud in that place. "Please tell me you can't..."
The disembodied voice only chuckled. "Don't you recognise the place you're in?" they inquired, a curious lilt to their tone. "That should be enough of an answer."
Frowning, Sora stared at the cloudy space. How was she supposed to work out where she was?
"Think," the ghostly voice demanded. "You haven't moved, nor been the victim of any form of translocation-based magic, and I just wrapped myself around you..."
"Wrapped?" Sora echoed, feeling a terrifying resonance with parrots all of a sudden as the answers trickled through her big brain far too slowly for her liking. "You're the Monster Cloak," she said, blinking slowly, her mind slowly stitching together the pieces of the puzzle. "The monster in the Monster Cloak."
A low chuckle rent the air. "Well, I suppose that's one way to put it."
Sora shivered. Not good, not good, her mind kept whispering like a mantra. "Is there a reason I'm here?" she asked because she had to have been pulled inside her mind by outside forces – seeing as how she hadn't even been taught how to access her so-called mindscape. There was only so much she could read on the topic.
"I don't know, little Gold..." the cloak purred, seemingly taking delight in how very unnerved she was. "You tell me. Did I pull you in to consume you, or did I pull you in to greet my beloved new master?"
"Gold?" Sora echoed, ignoring the question in favour of her apparent nickname. Pondering that question would do her no good. It was something to scare her, no doubt. "Why would you call me that?"
"Hmm," the voice hummed. "I wonder."
Eyebrow twitching, Sora held back the urge to scream in frustration. Why did everyone seemingly enjoy being as cryptic as possible?
"You smell like one... you even taste like one," they spoke, the feminine voice sounding oddly puzzled and bemused by her. And wasn't that just brilliant? "But you aren't one."
Frowning, Sora tried to wrap her head around what had just been said, but she couldn't understand it for the life of her. How could she smell like gold? Or was she maybe talking about Gold Magic? Her brow wrinkled the longer she thought on those words, her mind trying to find the answer hidden inside those words.
But she came up blank and grappling with the overwhelming need to tear her hair out and scream. She wanted answers for once in her life. "How is that supposed to work?" she asked, not expecting an answer in the slightest.
So she didn't feel disappointed when the voice only laughed. "No idea, cub," the voice said, and Sora simply felt resigned to her fate – a life of not understanding anything about herself or the complexities surrounding her team.
"Cub?" she echoed, not liking the sound of that.
The voice only chuckled again. "You haven't earnt the right to the title of master, and I don't think you ever will."
Sora barely withheld the snarl which wanted to slip from her lips. She was tired, scared, confused, and her thoughts weren't only her own. "I don't understand you at all."
"I could say the same, cub," the voice shot back. "I don't understand how it can be in two places at once... how there can be two in the first place."
"Welcome to my life," Sora grumbled, so far beyond frustrated she actually felt strangely calm and composed.
"You'll find out in time," the voice said, and Sora felt like she had no energy left to scream or twitch as she was left with no answers. The strange space – her mindscape – faded back into the real world, and she had only a second to stare into those golden eyes before she was being yanked away by her new sentient cloak. Her heels dragged against the flagstone, not hindering the cloak's task in the slightest. Sora could only clutch at the fabric wrapped around her neck, ensuring she didn't wind up dying of asphyxiation before she reached her cloak's destination.
The golden lighting of the so-called palace became non-existent, along with the sounds of pursuit, vines encroaching on the hallways she was dragged through backwards before she found herself dumped halfway through an archway leading to a cave holding a few very familiar figures which milled about a pond of blackish water.
"Sora!" Raelynn called, waving at her. "You passed too!"
Blinking, Sora could only fall to her backside as her frazzled brain tried to piece together and understand what exactly had just happened.
Yeah. She had no clue.