Valhalla (2/3)
Title: Valhalla: Duty and Death (2/3)
Pairings and Characters: No pairings, in this chapter there is Cosmos, and covers Benjamin, Verdot, Zack, Cloud, Vincent, Ramza, Marche, Luso and Squall.
Rating: T (violence, death)
Word Count: 4,748
Spoiler Warning: Contains spoilers for Dissida, and spoilers for Final Fantasies VII (+Compilation titles), Mystic Quest, Tactics, Tactics Advance, Tactics A2, and VIII. Next chapter covers Final Fantasies IX, X(-2), XI, Unlimited, XII, Crystal Chronicles, and XIII.
Fanfiction.net| Servitude|Duty and Death (current)| Fabula Nova Crystallis
Cosmos moved on from the stone likeness of the Godslayer, touching the tarnishing bronze plaque on the next statue. She smiled then as she read the name and title.
The False Champion had always been a bit of a black sheep of her warriors. A little awkward with those around him, the False Champion was often called ‘the Warrior of Light version two’ by some of the more light-hearted members of her army. His stone visage bore the fabled Aegis shield, a claw fastened to his gauntleted hand, and was brandishing his world’s version of the holy blade Excalibur. Though a vastly different man to the Warrior of Light, she could see why warriors such as the Skylord or the Fleeting Dream wouldn’t hesitate to point out the similarities.
The Crystal of Light rested against his feet, glimmering in the flickering torchlight. Perhaps it still guided him through his death, just as it had through his life? Sometimes she wondered how sentient her crystals had become, though they had originated as expressions of her magic and strength.
Though he had become a mighty fighter over the course of his journey, the False Champion had always been… easily fooled and lead into traps. It was something his eternal opponent, the Dark King, took into account each time they squared off against one another during the many cycles. Even back home in their lost world, the Dark King had created a false prophesy that the youth had fallen for and fulfilled, which had enabled the Dark King’s plans to succeed. The plans were in vain; the False Champion, in spite of the terrible setback to his quest, slew the Dark King where he stood and restored light and hope to the world.
The False Champion was leaning against a partially crumbled pillar, hidden in an alcove off to one side, as the Traveller, the Witch and the Skylord argued over which corridor they’d be going down next. His expression was a little pained as he heard the arguments getting more and more violent, the Witch loudly threatening - never dropping her usual rhymes - to curse both of them where they stood. Of course, that went over well with the two more head-strong members of their party.
Cosmos could have sworn she heard the Skylord threatening to give the Witch to the Fleeting Dream to use as a blitzball - as if to confirm her suspicions, the False Champion buried his face in his hands. She stifled a short laugh, resting her hand on the knight’s armoured shoulder. He was just so earnest and easily-read! It reminded her very much of the Warrior of Light, emotional and bold, back in his first war. The reminder of that carnage quickly quelled her laughter, though.
He smiled at her laughter, though it looked a little strained. “The Dark King is still out there, Cosmos.”
She waited for him to continue, attempting to ignore the brawl between allies that was about to break out behind her.
“There’s no way Shantotto finished him. He hasn’t even brought out that creepy spider form yet.” He shivered, dark eyes troubled. “I cannot rest easy until he is slain, and dead at my feet. He knows this. He’s waiting.”
The Goddess of Harmony gave it a few second’s thought. A rare flash of insight from the False Champion. Perhaps he was not as unaffected by the cycles of war as she’d hoped.
“Has he ever faced you on your own terms?” she asked him then.
The False Champion shook his head, folding his arms across his chest and looking towards the Dark Tower in the distance. “Never. He sits, waiting in the shadows, and orchestrates things from afar. A spider, in more ways than one.”
Cosmos nodded. “Be wary, Benjamin.”
It wasn’t long afterwards that the Dark King ambushed them - after getting off a lucky hit on the Traveller, the False Champion slew the arachnid without mercy.
The next warrior in the long procession of the dead was a man dressed in a crisp, dark suit. Older than many of his comrades, his face bore scars and a goatee that Cosmos remembered as being as streaked with silver as his dark hair had been. His mechanical arm - grafted on after he’d been involved in a terrible accident - bore various materia set in the knuckles and held a swirling Zirconaide materia crystal in the palm.
Often, the Turk had wondered why Cosmos had accepted him into the ranks of her warriors. Why choose a man that had been responsible for so much of his Planet’s agony? Why, after all he’d sinned? Why?
“Because you regret,” Cosmos answered simply. “Because you want to right things.”
Because you are the only one would has a chance at saving Elfé’s soul, she wanted to say, but the words stuck in her throat. Her ruthlessness in these wars - in blatant psychological warfare against Chaos’ chosen - sometimes disgusted even her.
The Turk was quiet, perhaps lost in thought. Cosmos watched the man’s weathered face closely, waiting for even a hint of weakness. If Gilgamesh had been wrong about this man, Chaos and his pawn would destroy him and render him useless in the coming wars. One failure would beget many, and it would snowball much like the Godslayer’s weakness had. Slowly, the grizzled man exhaled, striding to the edge of the building and staring out at the gutted remains of Oerba.
“It’s because of my daughter… isn’t it?” the Turk said slowly, and he clasped his hands behind his back. Cosmos noted how the knuckles on his flesh hand went white.
The Hero had always told her that Turks were smart. Cosmos had never expected how true the Hero’s words had been - for the Turk to have guessed so accurately of what Elfé’s choice had been, so early in the game was nothing sort of astounding.
The bond between father and daughter was stronger than she thought. She stowed that information away for later, before nodding. Cosmos stood beside him, a hand laid gently on his shoulder. Below, she could see the encampment of the rag-tag group of heroes she’d summoned.
“Does this trouble you?” she asked softly.
The Turk laughed. It was an empty sound, full of bitterness and regret. It spoke of the same, cynical outlook that had driven him to ask, ‘why’.
“Felicia is the last person I have left, and I’m to fight her. Why wouldn’t that bother me?” His empty chuckles died abruptly, his eyes staring off north-east, beyond the Chaos Shrine and to where the Portal to Madness lay open. To where Elfé must be.
There was a long moment of silence, but it seemed to galvanise the Turk.
“Well, serving my employer is what a Turk does best. Maybe I can do it right this time.”
And serve was what he’d done. His experience, in spite of his aging body, had proven invaluable to her troops. Largely consisting of a gaggle of headstrong youths, the steady influence of a seasoned commander in their ranks had been a stabilizing influence, and had led to Cosmos’ victory in the Ninth War. Among those the Turk had counted on and respected deeply, had been the Hero - an ex-SOLDIER who had crossed swords with both Sephiroth and Genesis and had lived to tell the tale.
The Hero had not always been a part of Cosmos’ soldiers, though his dramatic entrance during the Third War had certainly cemented his place among their number. Always positive, and even in the face of confusion and despair, he was smiling. In one gloved hand, he held an apple shaped from blue crystal.
“Genesis used to call a lot of things ‘the Gift of the Goddess’,” the black-haired SOLDIER said companionably as he looked over the Shuyin Sphere and the Virgo Stone his comrades had attained. “S-cells, the Goddess Materia, the apples… then I figured, hey, maybe it isn’t just one thing. So… I don’t know. It could be anything.”
“Many things could be considered important, if only you look at them in the right way,” the Zodiac Brave murmured as he leaned against the crystal tree, his brown eyes thoughtful. He reflexively caught the Virgo Stone as his friend tossed it over carelessly, a frown creasing between his eyebrows.
The Gunslinger laughed as she grabbed her own crystal from the Hero before he had a chance to throw it to her.
“You should be more careful, Zack,” she teased, wiping off the surface of the sphere with the corner of her skirt. “Cosmos wouldn’t be terribly pleased with you if you broke her crystals, you know.”
“What?! I’m the very definition of careful!” the Hero crossed his arms over his chest indignantly, before he scratched the back of his neck. “But… you guys get what I’m saying, right? What the hell is my crystal? How can I find it, when I don’t even know what it looks like? What do you think Cosmos would say?”
“ ‘Find it in your heart, Zack. Find your path.’ ” the Gunslinger’s voice took on a more mysterious tone as she attempted to mimic the Goddess.
Cosmos had to smile at the group’s antics from where she materialized between the trees of Macalania Forest, her spirits higher than they’d been since the beginning of the Ninth War.
Ultimately, the Hero’s conflict with the warrior poet was not one to be solved with violence, but one best confronted with understanding. Cosmos supposed that Genesis had always been one of the more reluctant of Chaos’ pawns, and was far more benign than the likes of Exdeath, Kefka, Cloud of Darkness or the Emperor.
She moved on. The case of the Cloudy Wolf was an interesting one, Cosmos had always thought as she looked up at his stone face. A friend of the Hero’s from outside the cycles, the Valkyrie had initially overlooked the Cloudy Wolf’s potential. A mere grunt from the army, who would have guessed that in watching his childhood hero burn his hometown to the ground, experiencing five years of experimentation and seeing his best friend die, that that mere grunt would become powerful enough to defeat Sephiroth every time they met in battle? In his arrogance, Sephiroth continually underestimated the warrior, opting to play with his prey rather than completing a quick execution. It was one of Sephiroth’s fatal flaws.
Once freed from the chains of false memory had had ingrained themselves into his mind, the Cloudy Wolf had been a dominant force in Cosmos’ army and his support was the reason the Godslayer held onto sanity during the Thirteenth War. Shorter and less powerfully built than the Hero, the Cloudy Wolf was garbed in black and bore the First Tsurugi, but occasionally bore the Buster Sword and SOLDIER uniform to honour the memory of the Hero.
The Cloudy Wolf offered his hand to the Onion Knight, helping him to his feet as the Godslayer returned, victorious from her battle with Kefka. The three smiled at one another, a silent understanding and appreciation of thwarted demons passing between them. Courage and hope gave them strength.
“You came back!” the Onion Knight said, pumping his fist. His enthusiasm caused the Godslayer to laugh and the Cloudy Wolf to ruffle his hair. In such a short time, the three had become such fast friends, Cosmos had to wonder why she’d never tried this combination before.
“You doubted her?” the Cloudy Wolf teased the Onion Knight, straightening and looking directly at the Godslayer. His glowing, mako eyes seemed to pierce the gloominess of Kefka’s tower. “Good always prevail over evil in the end.”
His voice was falsely light; Cosmos recalled what she knew of Gaia’s history and knew why. Aerith Gainsborough, though she had sacrificed her life to summon Holy, had stood against Sephiroth’s will and the Lifestream had lashed out against Meteor. Even though the Cloudy Wolf had clearly put his past behind him, there was still a small seed of regret that would probably always remain. He would push forwards, for a dream he now shared with the Wild Rose Warrior and the Godslayer.
A future in which fighting would no longer be necessary.
It was extremely odd for her Valkyrie to find more than one worthy soul in the history of a single planet. Stranger still was to find four heroes in such close proximity to one another - the Turk, the Hero, the Cloudy Wolf and the Chaotic Harbinger had all fought the darkness in the space of a few short years. Cosmos suspected Chaos’ meddling, and continued reports of the presence of his fiend Jenova worried her.
The Chaotic Harbinger was a gaunt man, and the stone in which he slumbered did not reflect the vibrant red of his tattered cloak, nor the haunted look in his eyes. He had been instrumental in crisis after crisis, from the tragic events surrounding Sephiroth’s birth, Meteorfall, to finally thwarting Omega WEAPON when all seemed lost. In this man, the touch of Chaos on Gaia was as clear as his monstrous transformations.
The Protomateria gleamed in his gauntleted hand, the final gift of a woman to her lost lover. While Cosmos considered Lucrecia to be a monster in her own right, as bad as Hojo and Hollander and intimately involved in the creation of Sephiroth, it was her gift and her legacy that kept the Chaotic Harbinger firmly grounded on the side of order. But that same strength - the iron-clad desire to atone for all the pain he’d caused - remained the Harbinger’s greatest weakness.
The Chaotic Harbinger’s steps were quiet in the Airship Graveyard as he approached his enemy’s location. His three-chambered Cerberus was loaded and ready, and to Cosmos’ eyes he seemed hazy, flickering between himself and his twisted Chaos avatar. She would not lie - the form terrified her. She couldn’t look away, though. The Chaotic Harbinger had been engaged in a running dogfight with the sorceress Ultimecia for some days now. He was exhausted from the extended use of Chaos and he was low on bullets. One way or another, Cosmos knew this conflict was going to end that day.
Their battle had finally brought them to this tomb of airships. Prepared for even this outcome, the Harbinger had asked the Zodiac Brave sketch a rough map of the area. As the battle wore on, and went deeper into the crypts, even that scrap of paper had become useless.
The Chaotic Harbinger cautiously rounded the final corner, and trained his gun on the feathered back of Ultimecia, switching the safety off. Cosmos knew he would do whatever was required to atone for his sins. From her omniscient vantage point, Cosmos saw Ultimecia smile slightly as she turned-
-and was abruptly someone else.
A white laboratory coat, long brown hair caught in a high ponytail and wrapped in yellow ribbon, the woman was beautiful, but to Cosmos she was awful and twisted. Cosmos’ breath caught in her throat, feeling his shock quake through him.
That shock caused the Chaotic Harbinger to freeze for just a moment, but one moment was all it took for Lucrecia to flash forwards and embed her clawed hands into the Harbinger’s heart. He went down without a word, as if he believed his death at ‘Lucrecia’s’ hands was his due, his right. His atonement. Ultimecia extracted the Protomateria with a jerk, and the world dissolved in fire.
The next was man in spiked, black armour, holding the Virgo Stone in one hand and the Chaos sword in the other. The Zodiac Brave had never wished to be a hero, Cosmos recalled, and only desired to do the right thing by the world - even if history would slander him and twist him into naught but a villain in a world of corruption. As the War of the Lions raged, the Zodiac Brave had stumbled across secrets regarding the Church of Glabados and fought head to head with the Lucavi. His desire to do right ultimately led to him halting the rebirth of the High Seraph Ultima.
But for all the Zodiac Brave’s courage and determination, it was his tactical brilliance that saw him shining among Cosmos’ chosen. A wily strategist with an eye for the strengths and weaknesses of those around him, it was he and the Turk that secured victory for Cosmos at the end of the Ninth war.
His friend, Delita Heiral, continued to be a problem for the Zodiac Brave.
The Zodiac Brave knelt in prayer at the ruins of the church, his lips moving soundlessly. After all he’d seen, in the endless wars and in life, Cosmos was surprised that the man would continue to go through the motions of faith. He raised his head at the sound of armour scraping on weathered stone, his hand reaching for his sword - he didn’t relax when he saw who had visited him.
“Delita.” One word managed to convey so much emotion, so much anguish at his old friend’s choice.
The man wore gold armour, his dark hair slicked back from his face. A holy knight, allied with the most unholy of Gods. A man of contradictions and single-minded purpose. Cosmos watched him, wondering what lies Chaos had fed to him. A chance to turn back time? To save his sister from death? Or had it been something else that drove Delita Heiral to action?
Delita approached Ramza slowly, his eyes wary. “No further rebuke for my ‘dishonourable’ actions? Perhaps things do change, after all.” A cold smile.
The Zodiac Brave slowly climbed to his feet. “Chaos, Delita. You have sided with a madman, to elevate the desires of the select few and create needless suffering to all else! Do the ends justify the means? Are people naught but pawns to you?”
Delita was silent.
“Answer me! Delita! I stood by and let you use me and my allies to purge the Lucavi, but no more can I ignore this.”
Delita drew his sword, facing down his old friend. His face was unreadable, even to Cosmos. She remembered Delita’s history - the broken heart of a princess who was not, and a bitter and lonely end while all others hailed him the hero of the War of the Lions.
“I follow the path I must,” he said coldly, levelling the blade.
The agony in the Zodiac Brave’s face was unbearable - and then there was only iron-hard determination. “Then you leave me no choice, my friend…”
The next Cosmos-sworn warrior was a boy, not much older than the Onion Knight, with short, blond hair that tapered into a longer rat’s tail. He travelled to a dream world using the mysterious grimoire, but ultimately became the destroyer of that world. The Slayer of Illusion would have much in common with the fallen Final Aeon and the Fleeting Dream, Cosmos mused as she laid a hand on his forearm.
He’d been a lonely boy, though, and his resolve to reject fantasy for the less favourable reality hadn’t made him well-liked among friends.
“I chose to end the fantasy,” the Slayer of Illusion said softly. “I don’t think it’s that different to what you and your son did in Spira. Make final their fantasy, and slice through the world threads…”
The Final Aeon - not yet fallen - grunted at that. “We did what we thought was right. And sentencing everyone to suffer at the hands of another Sin wasn’t something I could just grit my teeth and deal with. Never say the great Jecht doesn’t care, ‘cause I do.” The Final Aeon paused them, clenching his hand into a fist uselessly. “More’n I should.”
The Slayer of Illusion lowered his eyes for a moment. Cosmos recalled that the Slayer had a brother that had loved that ‘fantasy’. Doned had spent his life confined to a wheelchair, he would hardly have seen the Slayer of Illusion’s choice as an act of mercy. There had been similar reactions from his friends Mewt and Ritz - they had been unwilling to let go of the dream of Ivalice until the Slayer of Illusion had convinced them otherwise.
A hard choice, but a choice that the Slayer of Illusion had nonetheless made. She turned her attention from them then, flashing back to her throne in Order’s Sanctuary. A pronounced desire to end the cycles… Cosmos had filed that information away for later. Perhaps the Slayer of Illusion could be more useful than she’d thought.
True to form, in every cycle the Slayer of Illusion had sought to end Cid and Shinryu’s everlasting fantasy of battle. In every cycle, he’d failed, giving the Cosmos-sworn only a short respite in the stone before being called forth to fight once again. A chill ran down Cosmos’ spine, and she suddenly drew her hand back to her side. The only other member of this eternal conflict so committed to ending the wars, was one Emperor Mateus of Palamecia. The Slayer of Illusions was yet to take such drastic measures - the Final Aeon’s corruption was more than proof that the Emperor had.
The Traveller was another boy who had experienced different worlds, thanks to the fathomless power of the grimoires. Those tomes lay outside Cosmos’ power and understanding, a magic older than Shinryuu and potentially more dangerous than those wielded by Cid. But the Traveller had begun to use this magic, first to travel to an early age of Ivalice, where he was assisted by the Skylord in taking down Illua in holding back the Rift from the worlds. Some records of Ivalice’s later years suggest that the Traveller had also ventured forwards and met the infamous heretic, the Zodiac Brave.
Even here, the grimoire was in the Traveller’s gloved hands, as Cosmos’ own crystal mock-up of the book that had shaped his fate.
The Fifth War was in the final throes, and only the most steadfast of the Cosmos-sworn and the most heinous of Chaos’ chosen remained. The sound of battle rang throughout Order’s Sanctuary as the Lunar Knight, the Wild Rose Warrior and the Warrior of Light formed a defensive shield around Cosmos’ throne, but the Warrior was nearly staggering under the onslaught of Garland’s gigant axe and Makenshi’s wisp-quick katana was driving the Wild Rose Warrior to his knees.
An alarmed shout from the Lunar Knight drew Cosmos’ attention outwards - in the distance, she could see Barthandelus smiling malevolently as he charged his magical onslaught. Her warriors would be ripped apart from the strength of his thanatosian laughter and spells, and after they fell, so would she. Cosmos braced herself, her eyes scanning the icy fields for the lone warrior who had not chosen to come to her defence. She spotted him, a dark form sprinting head on towards where Barthandelus stood, homing for the fal’Cie’s blind spot. Pale sunlight seemed to glitter along the edge of the Traveller’s sword.
“Prepare to meet the Maker, false Goddess of Harmony,” Barthandelus announced darkly, but Cosmos’s eyes were fixed to the Traveller as he jumped, somersaulting through the air - and slamming his sword deep into the gears at the nape of Barthandelus’ mechanical neck.
“There’s only one way to end this story!” the Traveller yelled, heaving back on his sword. Barthandelus roared in anger as the beam of destructive magic passed over Cosmos and her ragtag shield of warriors. The air seemed to crackle from the near escape with oblivion, but the Traveller looked pleased with himself as he jerked the blade free from Barthandelus.
Now morphed to a disturbing fusion of his human and machine forms, Barthandelus turned on the Traveller, bringing his staff down in a forceful strike. The Traveller blocked easily, sparks showering to the icy mud around them. Cosmos could see the frustration building in the fal’Cie’s mechanical features.
“You are naught but a pawn for a false goddess of death and war, and you will pay for your insolence! You will feel the wrath of the fal’Cie,” Barthandelus growled, and his voice was so certain of his power and his knowledge.
The Traveller just grinned at the god-machine’s words and activated the bombs he’d scattered under Barthandelus’ feet.
It had been an inspiring fight, a fight that should have given hope and the omen of victory. For all the efforts of the Traveller, the Warrior of Light, the Wild Rose Warrior and the Lunar Knight, the Fifth War devolved into a bloody free-for-all that had seen Garland take on four-to-one odds and come out victorious. A truly frightening individual - he was a remnant from an old civilisation and had been engineered to be a tool of war.
Now, he was fighting for Chaos, the endless battle validating his existence, feeding it, until he was an expression of the Cycles himself. His actions created himself, a never-ending loop of destiny.
The Sleeping Lion’s stone visage was as proud as his namesake, even if his face was blank of all emotion, only marred by a scar running between his eyes. The Revolver gunblade rested against his shoulder is a show of justified arrogance. Were the Sleeping Lion fully aware of the implications of his actions in his own world, wrought by Time Compression, ignorance and the wish for something better, Garland’s tale as a victim of endless cycle would be one he could emphasize with.
The music from the dusty piano was soft, the strains of an old and worryingly familiar song filling the air.
“Let me tell you a story, legendary SeeD. There was once a girl… her name is unimportant. But she lived in a world in which was ruled by fear of sorceresses, and governed by the SeeD who would search for them relentlessly and without care for those they ruled. It was a grim future for the girl, but not more so than other humans in such times.” Ultimecia’s clawed fingers moved gracefully across the keys of the piano as she painted a picture of what would be.
“I didn’t come here to listen to your sob story,” the Sleeping Lion growled. But in spite of such harsh words, he rested his gunblade against his shoulder. Perhaps he was lulled by the familiar music, but perhaps not. Cosmos had no doubt that he would flash forwards at the slightest hint of trouble, to cleave Ultimecia’s head from her shoulders before she’d even finish her incantation.
“Do not mistake me, SeeD. It is not my intention to excuse my actions, but to provide a… perspective on things you have not the intelligence to observe. One day this girl received the powers of a sorceress, and everything changed for her. She lost everything, her husband, her family. Driven insane by the fear and loathing of those around her, she decided to become just what they feared. She became the Sorceress Ultimecia, destined to fight SeeD. She defeated them, and ruled her world with an iron fist.” The words were bitter, angry. She did not regret her actions as Ultimecia - but she wished the transformation had never happened in the first place.
“But still she wished for something else, to prevent her death at the hands of the legendary SeeD. So using Junction Machine Ellone, she travelled to the past and attempted time compression. She was defeated at the last moment by that legendary SeeD, who would then go on to prepare SeeD to stop her in the future. This created a girl who lived in a world which was ruled by fear of sorceresses, and governed by SeeD. Do you see the pattern, legendary SeeD, Squall Leonheart…?” Ultimecia continued to play, launching into the last refrain of the song. The ability of music had not originally been Ultimecia’s, but had belonged to a young woman known as Rinoa. Such was the nature of possession.
“You expect me to believe this? That my actions doom you, and your actions doom me?” The Sleeping Lion’s voice was cold - it hid his alarm easily. Cosmos could see the thoughts working in his head, trying to reason his way out of this scenario and failing. She saw his grip tighten on his gunblade.
She nodded. “You will always rise to the challenge of Sorceress Ultimecia, as the legendary SeeD that must do so. Just as I will always lash out at an unforgiving world and wish for something different, and so conceive of time compression. We two are the makers of our own suffering,” she told him quietly, Julia’s long-loved melody fading with those words. “And there is little to be done for it.”
Fanfiction.net| Servitude|Duty and Death (current)| Fabula Nova Crystallis
Pairings and Characters: No pairings, in this chapter there is Cosmos, and covers Benjamin, Verdot, Zack, Cloud, Vincent, Ramza, Marche, Luso and Squall.
Rating: T (violence, death)
Word Count: 4,748
Spoiler Warning: Contains spoilers for Dissida, and spoilers for Final Fantasies VII (+Compilation titles), Mystic Quest, Tactics, Tactics Advance, Tactics A2, and VIII. Next chapter covers Final Fantasies IX, X(-2), XI, Unlimited, XII, Crystal Chronicles, and XIII.
Fanfiction.net| Servitude|Duty and Death (current)| Fabula Nova Crystallis
Cosmos moved on from the stone likeness of the Godslayer, touching the tarnishing bronze plaque on the next statue. She smiled then as she read the name and title.
The False Champion had always been a bit of a black sheep of her warriors. A little awkward with those around him, the False Champion was often called ‘the Warrior of Light version two’ by some of the more light-hearted members of her army. His stone visage bore the fabled Aegis shield, a claw fastened to his gauntleted hand, and was brandishing his world’s version of the holy blade Excalibur. Though a vastly different man to the Warrior of Light, she could see why warriors such as the Skylord or the Fleeting Dream wouldn’t hesitate to point out the similarities.
The Crystal of Light rested against his feet, glimmering in the flickering torchlight. Perhaps it still guided him through his death, just as it had through his life? Sometimes she wondered how sentient her crystals had become, though they had originated as expressions of her magic and strength.
Though he had become a mighty fighter over the course of his journey, the False Champion had always been… easily fooled and lead into traps. It was something his eternal opponent, the Dark King, took into account each time they squared off against one another during the many cycles. Even back home in their lost world, the Dark King had created a false prophesy that the youth had fallen for and fulfilled, which had enabled the Dark King’s plans to succeed. The plans were in vain; the False Champion, in spite of the terrible setback to his quest, slew the Dark King where he stood and restored light and hope to the world.
The False Champion was leaning against a partially crumbled pillar, hidden in an alcove off to one side, as the Traveller, the Witch and the Skylord argued over which corridor they’d be going down next. His expression was a little pained as he heard the arguments getting more and more violent, the Witch loudly threatening - never dropping her usual rhymes - to curse both of them where they stood. Of course, that went over well with the two more head-strong members of their party.
Cosmos could have sworn she heard the Skylord threatening to give the Witch to the Fleeting Dream to use as a blitzball - as if to confirm her suspicions, the False Champion buried his face in his hands. She stifled a short laugh, resting her hand on the knight’s armoured shoulder. He was just so earnest and easily-read! It reminded her very much of the Warrior of Light, emotional and bold, back in his first war. The reminder of that carnage quickly quelled her laughter, though.
He smiled at her laughter, though it looked a little strained. “The Dark King is still out there, Cosmos.”
She waited for him to continue, attempting to ignore the brawl between allies that was about to break out behind her.
“There’s no way Shantotto finished him. He hasn’t even brought out that creepy spider form yet.” He shivered, dark eyes troubled. “I cannot rest easy until he is slain, and dead at my feet. He knows this. He’s waiting.”
The Goddess of Harmony gave it a few second’s thought. A rare flash of insight from the False Champion. Perhaps he was not as unaffected by the cycles of war as she’d hoped.
“Has he ever faced you on your own terms?” she asked him then.
The False Champion shook his head, folding his arms across his chest and looking towards the Dark Tower in the distance. “Never. He sits, waiting in the shadows, and orchestrates things from afar. A spider, in more ways than one.”
Cosmos nodded. “Be wary, Benjamin.”
It wasn’t long afterwards that the Dark King ambushed them - after getting off a lucky hit on the Traveller, the False Champion slew the arachnid without mercy.
The next warrior in the long procession of the dead was a man dressed in a crisp, dark suit. Older than many of his comrades, his face bore scars and a goatee that Cosmos remembered as being as streaked with silver as his dark hair had been. His mechanical arm - grafted on after he’d been involved in a terrible accident - bore various materia set in the knuckles and held a swirling Zirconaide materia crystal in the palm.
Often, the Turk had wondered why Cosmos had accepted him into the ranks of her warriors. Why choose a man that had been responsible for so much of his Planet’s agony? Why, after all he’d sinned? Why?
“Because you regret,” Cosmos answered simply. “Because you want to right things.”
Because you are the only one would has a chance at saving Elfé’s soul, she wanted to say, but the words stuck in her throat. Her ruthlessness in these wars - in blatant psychological warfare against Chaos’ chosen - sometimes disgusted even her.
The Turk was quiet, perhaps lost in thought. Cosmos watched the man’s weathered face closely, waiting for even a hint of weakness. If Gilgamesh had been wrong about this man, Chaos and his pawn would destroy him and render him useless in the coming wars. One failure would beget many, and it would snowball much like the Godslayer’s weakness had. Slowly, the grizzled man exhaled, striding to the edge of the building and staring out at the gutted remains of Oerba.
“It’s because of my daughter… isn’t it?” the Turk said slowly, and he clasped his hands behind his back. Cosmos noted how the knuckles on his flesh hand went white.
The Hero had always told her that Turks were smart. Cosmos had never expected how true the Hero’s words had been - for the Turk to have guessed so accurately of what Elfé’s choice had been, so early in the game was nothing sort of astounding.
The bond between father and daughter was stronger than she thought. She stowed that information away for later, before nodding. Cosmos stood beside him, a hand laid gently on his shoulder. Below, she could see the encampment of the rag-tag group of heroes she’d summoned.
“Does this trouble you?” she asked softly.
The Turk laughed. It was an empty sound, full of bitterness and regret. It spoke of the same, cynical outlook that had driven him to ask, ‘why’.
“Felicia is the last person I have left, and I’m to fight her. Why wouldn’t that bother me?” His empty chuckles died abruptly, his eyes staring off north-east, beyond the Chaos Shrine and to where the Portal to Madness lay open. To where Elfé must be.
There was a long moment of silence, but it seemed to galvanise the Turk.
“Well, serving my employer is what a Turk does best. Maybe I can do it right this time.”
And serve was what he’d done. His experience, in spite of his aging body, had proven invaluable to her troops. Largely consisting of a gaggle of headstrong youths, the steady influence of a seasoned commander in their ranks had been a stabilizing influence, and had led to Cosmos’ victory in the Ninth War. Among those the Turk had counted on and respected deeply, had been the Hero - an ex-SOLDIER who had crossed swords with both Sephiroth and Genesis and had lived to tell the tale.
The Hero had not always been a part of Cosmos’ soldiers, though his dramatic entrance during the Third War had certainly cemented his place among their number. Always positive, and even in the face of confusion and despair, he was smiling. In one gloved hand, he held an apple shaped from blue crystal.
“Genesis used to call a lot of things ‘the Gift of the Goddess’,” the black-haired SOLDIER said companionably as he looked over the Shuyin Sphere and the Virgo Stone his comrades had attained. “S-cells, the Goddess Materia, the apples… then I figured, hey, maybe it isn’t just one thing. So… I don’t know. It could be anything.”
“Many things could be considered important, if only you look at them in the right way,” the Zodiac Brave murmured as he leaned against the crystal tree, his brown eyes thoughtful. He reflexively caught the Virgo Stone as his friend tossed it over carelessly, a frown creasing between his eyebrows.
The Gunslinger laughed as she grabbed her own crystal from the Hero before he had a chance to throw it to her.
“You should be more careful, Zack,” she teased, wiping off the surface of the sphere with the corner of her skirt. “Cosmos wouldn’t be terribly pleased with you if you broke her crystals, you know.”
“What?! I’m the very definition of careful!” the Hero crossed his arms over his chest indignantly, before he scratched the back of his neck. “But… you guys get what I’m saying, right? What the hell is my crystal? How can I find it, when I don’t even know what it looks like? What do you think Cosmos would say?”
“ ‘Find it in your heart, Zack. Find your path.’ ” the Gunslinger’s voice took on a more mysterious tone as she attempted to mimic the Goddess.
Cosmos had to smile at the group’s antics from where she materialized between the trees of Macalania Forest, her spirits higher than they’d been since the beginning of the Ninth War.
Ultimately, the Hero’s conflict with the warrior poet was not one to be solved with violence, but one best confronted with understanding. Cosmos supposed that Genesis had always been one of the more reluctant of Chaos’ pawns, and was far more benign than the likes of Exdeath, Kefka, Cloud of Darkness or the Emperor.
She moved on. The case of the Cloudy Wolf was an interesting one, Cosmos had always thought as she looked up at his stone face. A friend of the Hero’s from outside the cycles, the Valkyrie had initially overlooked the Cloudy Wolf’s potential. A mere grunt from the army, who would have guessed that in watching his childhood hero burn his hometown to the ground, experiencing five years of experimentation and seeing his best friend die, that that mere grunt would become powerful enough to defeat Sephiroth every time they met in battle? In his arrogance, Sephiroth continually underestimated the warrior, opting to play with his prey rather than completing a quick execution. It was one of Sephiroth’s fatal flaws.
Once freed from the chains of false memory had had ingrained themselves into his mind, the Cloudy Wolf had been a dominant force in Cosmos’ army and his support was the reason the Godslayer held onto sanity during the Thirteenth War. Shorter and less powerfully built than the Hero, the Cloudy Wolf was garbed in black and bore the First Tsurugi, but occasionally bore the Buster Sword and SOLDIER uniform to honour the memory of the Hero.
The Cloudy Wolf offered his hand to the Onion Knight, helping him to his feet as the Godslayer returned, victorious from her battle with Kefka. The three smiled at one another, a silent understanding and appreciation of thwarted demons passing between them. Courage and hope gave them strength.
“You came back!” the Onion Knight said, pumping his fist. His enthusiasm caused the Godslayer to laugh and the Cloudy Wolf to ruffle his hair. In such a short time, the three had become such fast friends, Cosmos had to wonder why she’d never tried this combination before.
“You doubted her?” the Cloudy Wolf teased the Onion Knight, straightening and looking directly at the Godslayer. His glowing, mako eyes seemed to pierce the gloominess of Kefka’s tower. “Good always prevail over evil in the end.”
His voice was falsely light; Cosmos recalled what she knew of Gaia’s history and knew why. Aerith Gainsborough, though she had sacrificed her life to summon Holy, had stood against Sephiroth’s will and the Lifestream had lashed out against Meteor. Even though the Cloudy Wolf had clearly put his past behind him, there was still a small seed of regret that would probably always remain. He would push forwards, for a dream he now shared with the Wild Rose Warrior and the Godslayer.
A future in which fighting would no longer be necessary.
It was extremely odd for her Valkyrie to find more than one worthy soul in the history of a single planet. Stranger still was to find four heroes in such close proximity to one another - the Turk, the Hero, the Cloudy Wolf and the Chaotic Harbinger had all fought the darkness in the space of a few short years. Cosmos suspected Chaos’ meddling, and continued reports of the presence of his fiend Jenova worried her.
The Chaotic Harbinger was a gaunt man, and the stone in which he slumbered did not reflect the vibrant red of his tattered cloak, nor the haunted look in his eyes. He had been instrumental in crisis after crisis, from the tragic events surrounding Sephiroth’s birth, Meteorfall, to finally thwarting Omega WEAPON when all seemed lost. In this man, the touch of Chaos on Gaia was as clear as his monstrous transformations.
The Protomateria gleamed in his gauntleted hand, the final gift of a woman to her lost lover. While Cosmos considered Lucrecia to be a monster in her own right, as bad as Hojo and Hollander and intimately involved in the creation of Sephiroth, it was her gift and her legacy that kept the Chaotic Harbinger firmly grounded on the side of order. But that same strength - the iron-clad desire to atone for all the pain he’d caused - remained the Harbinger’s greatest weakness.
The Chaotic Harbinger’s steps were quiet in the Airship Graveyard as he approached his enemy’s location. His three-chambered Cerberus was loaded and ready, and to Cosmos’ eyes he seemed hazy, flickering between himself and his twisted Chaos avatar. She would not lie - the form terrified her. She couldn’t look away, though. The Chaotic Harbinger had been engaged in a running dogfight with the sorceress Ultimecia for some days now. He was exhausted from the extended use of Chaos and he was low on bullets. One way or another, Cosmos knew this conflict was going to end that day.
Their battle had finally brought them to this tomb of airships. Prepared for even this outcome, the Harbinger had asked the Zodiac Brave sketch a rough map of the area. As the battle wore on, and went deeper into the crypts, even that scrap of paper had become useless.
The Chaotic Harbinger cautiously rounded the final corner, and trained his gun on the feathered back of Ultimecia, switching the safety off. Cosmos knew he would do whatever was required to atone for his sins. From her omniscient vantage point, Cosmos saw Ultimecia smile slightly as she turned-
-and was abruptly someone else.
A white laboratory coat, long brown hair caught in a high ponytail and wrapped in yellow ribbon, the woman was beautiful, but to Cosmos she was awful and twisted. Cosmos’ breath caught in her throat, feeling his shock quake through him.
That shock caused the Chaotic Harbinger to freeze for just a moment, but one moment was all it took for Lucrecia to flash forwards and embed her clawed hands into the Harbinger’s heart. He went down without a word, as if he believed his death at ‘Lucrecia’s’ hands was his due, his right. His atonement. Ultimecia extracted the Protomateria with a jerk, and the world dissolved in fire.
The next was man in spiked, black armour, holding the Virgo Stone in one hand and the Chaos sword in the other. The Zodiac Brave had never wished to be a hero, Cosmos recalled, and only desired to do the right thing by the world - even if history would slander him and twist him into naught but a villain in a world of corruption. As the War of the Lions raged, the Zodiac Brave had stumbled across secrets regarding the Church of Glabados and fought head to head with the Lucavi. His desire to do right ultimately led to him halting the rebirth of the High Seraph Ultima.
But for all the Zodiac Brave’s courage and determination, it was his tactical brilliance that saw him shining among Cosmos’ chosen. A wily strategist with an eye for the strengths and weaknesses of those around him, it was he and the Turk that secured victory for Cosmos at the end of the Ninth war.
His friend, Delita Heiral, continued to be a problem for the Zodiac Brave.
The Zodiac Brave knelt in prayer at the ruins of the church, his lips moving soundlessly. After all he’d seen, in the endless wars and in life, Cosmos was surprised that the man would continue to go through the motions of faith. He raised his head at the sound of armour scraping on weathered stone, his hand reaching for his sword - he didn’t relax when he saw who had visited him.
“Delita.” One word managed to convey so much emotion, so much anguish at his old friend’s choice.
The man wore gold armour, his dark hair slicked back from his face. A holy knight, allied with the most unholy of Gods. A man of contradictions and single-minded purpose. Cosmos watched him, wondering what lies Chaos had fed to him. A chance to turn back time? To save his sister from death? Or had it been something else that drove Delita Heiral to action?
Delita approached Ramza slowly, his eyes wary. “No further rebuke for my ‘dishonourable’ actions? Perhaps things do change, after all.” A cold smile.
The Zodiac Brave slowly climbed to his feet. “Chaos, Delita. You have sided with a madman, to elevate the desires of the select few and create needless suffering to all else! Do the ends justify the means? Are people naught but pawns to you?”
Delita was silent.
“Answer me! Delita! I stood by and let you use me and my allies to purge the Lucavi, but no more can I ignore this.”
Delita drew his sword, facing down his old friend. His face was unreadable, even to Cosmos. She remembered Delita’s history - the broken heart of a princess who was not, and a bitter and lonely end while all others hailed him the hero of the War of the Lions.
“I follow the path I must,” he said coldly, levelling the blade.
The agony in the Zodiac Brave’s face was unbearable - and then there was only iron-hard determination. “Then you leave me no choice, my friend…”
The next Cosmos-sworn warrior was a boy, not much older than the Onion Knight, with short, blond hair that tapered into a longer rat’s tail. He travelled to a dream world using the mysterious grimoire, but ultimately became the destroyer of that world. The Slayer of Illusion would have much in common with the fallen Final Aeon and the Fleeting Dream, Cosmos mused as she laid a hand on his forearm.
He’d been a lonely boy, though, and his resolve to reject fantasy for the less favourable reality hadn’t made him well-liked among friends.
“I chose to end the fantasy,” the Slayer of Illusion said softly. “I don’t think it’s that different to what you and your son did in Spira. Make final their fantasy, and slice through the world threads…”
The Final Aeon - not yet fallen - grunted at that. “We did what we thought was right. And sentencing everyone to suffer at the hands of another Sin wasn’t something I could just grit my teeth and deal with. Never say the great Jecht doesn’t care, ‘cause I do.” The Final Aeon paused them, clenching his hand into a fist uselessly. “More’n I should.”
The Slayer of Illusion lowered his eyes for a moment. Cosmos recalled that the Slayer had a brother that had loved that ‘fantasy’. Doned had spent his life confined to a wheelchair, he would hardly have seen the Slayer of Illusion’s choice as an act of mercy. There had been similar reactions from his friends Mewt and Ritz - they had been unwilling to let go of the dream of Ivalice until the Slayer of Illusion had convinced them otherwise.
A hard choice, but a choice that the Slayer of Illusion had nonetheless made. She turned her attention from them then, flashing back to her throne in Order’s Sanctuary. A pronounced desire to end the cycles… Cosmos had filed that information away for later. Perhaps the Slayer of Illusion could be more useful than she’d thought.
True to form, in every cycle the Slayer of Illusion had sought to end Cid and Shinryu’s everlasting fantasy of battle. In every cycle, he’d failed, giving the Cosmos-sworn only a short respite in the stone before being called forth to fight once again. A chill ran down Cosmos’ spine, and she suddenly drew her hand back to her side. The only other member of this eternal conflict so committed to ending the wars, was one Emperor Mateus of Palamecia. The Slayer of Illusions was yet to take such drastic measures - the Final Aeon’s corruption was more than proof that the Emperor had.
The Traveller was another boy who had experienced different worlds, thanks to the fathomless power of the grimoires. Those tomes lay outside Cosmos’ power and understanding, a magic older than Shinryuu and potentially more dangerous than those wielded by Cid. But the Traveller had begun to use this magic, first to travel to an early age of Ivalice, where he was assisted by the Skylord in taking down Illua in holding back the Rift from the worlds. Some records of Ivalice’s later years suggest that the Traveller had also ventured forwards and met the infamous heretic, the Zodiac Brave.
Even here, the grimoire was in the Traveller’s gloved hands, as Cosmos’ own crystal mock-up of the book that had shaped his fate.
The Fifth War was in the final throes, and only the most steadfast of the Cosmos-sworn and the most heinous of Chaos’ chosen remained. The sound of battle rang throughout Order’s Sanctuary as the Lunar Knight, the Wild Rose Warrior and the Warrior of Light formed a defensive shield around Cosmos’ throne, but the Warrior was nearly staggering under the onslaught of Garland’s gigant axe and Makenshi’s wisp-quick katana was driving the Wild Rose Warrior to his knees.
An alarmed shout from the Lunar Knight drew Cosmos’ attention outwards - in the distance, she could see Barthandelus smiling malevolently as he charged his magical onslaught. Her warriors would be ripped apart from the strength of his thanatosian laughter and spells, and after they fell, so would she. Cosmos braced herself, her eyes scanning the icy fields for the lone warrior who had not chosen to come to her defence. She spotted him, a dark form sprinting head on towards where Barthandelus stood, homing for the fal’Cie’s blind spot. Pale sunlight seemed to glitter along the edge of the Traveller’s sword.
“Prepare to meet the Maker, false Goddess of Harmony,” Barthandelus announced darkly, but Cosmos’s eyes were fixed to the Traveller as he jumped, somersaulting through the air - and slamming his sword deep into the gears at the nape of Barthandelus’ mechanical neck.
“There’s only one way to end this story!” the Traveller yelled, heaving back on his sword. Barthandelus roared in anger as the beam of destructive magic passed over Cosmos and her ragtag shield of warriors. The air seemed to crackle from the near escape with oblivion, but the Traveller looked pleased with himself as he jerked the blade free from Barthandelus.
Now morphed to a disturbing fusion of his human and machine forms, Barthandelus turned on the Traveller, bringing his staff down in a forceful strike. The Traveller blocked easily, sparks showering to the icy mud around them. Cosmos could see the frustration building in the fal’Cie’s mechanical features.
“You are naught but a pawn for a false goddess of death and war, and you will pay for your insolence! You will feel the wrath of the fal’Cie,” Barthandelus growled, and his voice was so certain of his power and his knowledge.
The Traveller just grinned at the god-machine’s words and activated the bombs he’d scattered under Barthandelus’ feet.
It had been an inspiring fight, a fight that should have given hope and the omen of victory. For all the efforts of the Traveller, the Warrior of Light, the Wild Rose Warrior and the Lunar Knight, the Fifth War devolved into a bloody free-for-all that had seen Garland take on four-to-one odds and come out victorious. A truly frightening individual - he was a remnant from an old civilisation and had been engineered to be a tool of war.
Now, he was fighting for Chaos, the endless battle validating his existence, feeding it, until he was an expression of the Cycles himself. His actions created himself, a never-ending loop of destiny.
The Sleeping Lion’s stone visage was as proud as his namesake, even if his face was blank of all emotion, only marred by a scar running between his eyes. The Revolver gunblade rested against his shoulder is a show of justified arrogance. Were the Sleeping Lion fully aware of the implications of his actions in his own world, wrought by Time Compression, ignorance and the wish for something better, Garland’s tale as a victim of endless cycle would be one he could emphasize with.
The music from the dusty piano was soft, the strains of an old and worryingly familiar song filling the air.
“Let me tell you a story, legendary SeeD. There was once a girl… her name is unimportant. But she lived in a world in which was ruled by fear of sorceresses, and governed by the SeeD who would search for them relentlessly and without care for those they ruled. It was a grim future for the girl, but not more so than other humans in such times.” Ultimecia’s clawed fingers moved gracefully across the keys of the piano as she painted a picture of what would be.
“I didn’t come here to listen to your sob story,” the Sleeping Lion growled. But in spite of such harsh words, he rested his gunblade against his shoulder. Perhaps he was lulled by the familiar music, but perhaps not. Cosmos had no doubt that he would flash forwards at the slightest hint of trouble, to cleave Ultimecia’s head from her shoulders before she’d even finish her incantation.
“Do not mistake me, SeeD. It is not my intention to excuse my actions, but to provide a… perspective on things you have not the intelligence to observe. One day this girl received the powers of a sorceress, and everything changed for her. She lost everything, her husband, her family. Driven insane by the fear and loathing of those around her, she decided to become just what they feared. She became the Sorceress Ultimecia, destined to fight SeeD. She defeated them, and ruled her world with an iron fist.” The words were bitter, angry. She did not regret her actions as Ultimecia - but she wished the transformation had never happened in the first place.
“But still she wished for something else, to prevent her death at the hands of the legendary SeeD. So using Junction Machine Ellone, she travelled to the past and attempted time compression. She was defeated at the last moment by that legendary SeeD, who would then go on to prepare SeeD to stop her in the future. This created a girl who lived in a world which was ruled by fear of sorceresses, and governed by SeeD. Do you see the pattern, legendary SeeD, Squall Leonheart…?” Ultimecia continued to play, launching into the last refrain of the song. The ability of music had not originally been Ultimecia’s, but had belonged to a young woman known as Rinoa. Such was the nature of possession.
“You expect me to believe this? That my actions doom you, and your actions doom me?” The Sleeping Lion’s voice was cold - it hid his alarm easily. Cosmos could see the thoughts working in his head, trying to reason his way out of this scenario and failing. She saw his grip tighten on his gunblade.
She nodded. “You will always rise to the challenge of Sorceress Ultimecia, as the legendary SeeD that must do so. Just as I will always lash out at an unforgiving world and wish for something different, and so conceive of time compression. We two are the makers of our own suffering,” she told him quietly, Julia’s long-loved melody fading with those words. “And there is little to be done for it.”
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