Prelude: Memories
(I don't own Dissida Final Fantasy or Square Enix)
The gateways were a... mysterious occurrence, to say the least. A bend in space: a portal to the rift. Caves, forest, and even towering castles with dozens of floors were compressed into paper-thin slices of light that stood silently beneath towering stone arches. Supposedly, they react to the memories of those who have entered. Entire worlds can be found in those spaces; surely someone has thought to wonder? About possibilities, or about the connection that all these worlds just might share?
There wasn't much time to. Not with the endless war, and all. But that didn't stop a brave few from daydreaming: A pause in the fighting, or while keeping watch at night. The professor probably made the most progress in analyzing the anomalies, but she up and disappeared one day halfway through the cycles. Who knows what more she had discovered after her departure; for she had indeed escaped to the rift. The only ones who could have possibly known anything about her research lost their memories to the cycle a long time ago... Shinryu, it's calling itself now.
So many unanswered questions. Everywhere one turns to find answers, there seems to be an inexplicable dead-end. Vanishing people, missing information, and objects that don't appear unless certain (unattainable) conditions are met. Strangely and frustratingly Inconvenient, wouldn't you say?
It wouldn't really be surprising if "Shinryu" himself had created the anomalies that had hidden all the evidence. But, then again, perhaps he hadn't really needed to: The rift itself constantly fluctuated. It was a labyrinthine mess in the first place; having actual people there didn't help. It just caused the entire place to go crazy. Entire eons' worth of secrets were locked away in that place forever. No one will ever find out what had happened, what would happen, or why.
Or at least, no one who lives in the primary worlds ever will.
There's just one puzzle piece that was still here: a piece that every single one of the warriors had left behind in, or perhaps forged into the rift subconsciously. A piece that was so key to the puzzle, but could never be used by anyone. Or at least, no one knew how, and those who did could not tell of it. The warriors did not know that they had made something while they had traversed the malleable voids. They created something that could finally give me the key to unlocking the mysteries of the rift.
They had made memories.
The moments that they had shared whilst they journeyed through those mazes... they stuck there. Because it watched them. It watched them, and it learned from them. It saw them at their strongest, and it saw them at their weakest. It saw them when they laughed, and it saw them when they cried. It heard them speak of promises long past, and it heard them speak of their hopes for the future. It felt their fury. It felt their happiness.
In hindsight, perhaps it was the rift itself that was hiding all the clues: Hiding it's darkest secrets from prying eyes. But something in the pit of my stomach, tells me it wouldn't do that. Though I suppose I can't really know for sure, not yet; not without further investigation. Yet, still, the void has been tied to two major possible catastrophes, and I can't just rule possibility out. That's what I hope to use these memories for: to find out.
For these memories themselves hold secrets of the rift... or rather, events that transpired in the rift. But that alone could tell me so much. What did the warriors find in the gateways? Did they hide anything within them? I want answers about the rift... mainly because it's all that I know. I sigh to myself as I look down from my perch: one of the stone archways that towers above even the mountains.
From here, I can see the ruins of what once was, and in the primary world still is, the grand kingdom of Cornelia. In this world, there isn't much left of the once impressive castle; just broken walls and the remains of a few towers. Even now, it's hard to tell exactly what caused the kingdom to fall: there are no signs of burns or blast of any kind. It seems as though the kingdom had simply been left to rot. Like everyone had simply left one day... and nobody had ever come back. It had been abandoned... Forsaken.
I wondered briefly if Shinryu had anything to do with it, and I felt a spark of fury ignite within my chest. What gave it the right? The right to rob people of their memories? Of the experiences that had given them strength? It occurs to me that I myself have memories that aren't really mine either. Maybe I'm not so different from Shinryu in the end.
I shiver as I draw my cloak tighter around me: the thought is not a comforting one, and the air seems to have grown colder somehow. As I feel the texture of the gold embroidery lining the cloak, I come to a decision; it's time to get going. With a small step forward and off of the arch, I float soundlessly towards the ground. With a flutter of my cloak, I find myself standing in front of the gateway. The ruins of Cornelia are now a ways off, and I can no longer see above the mountains.
I pull up my hood as I turn to leave; letting only a single shock of green hair to be seen. This was it: the time had finally arrived. Cosmos was nowhere to be seen, for which I was grateful: I had nothing against her, but I probably wouldn't handle interference very well right now. Beneath the unwavering monolith that lie before me, the crest of red began to shine with its unearthly glow.
Suddenly,
The Winds Die.
It's such an abrupt change that the cloth surrounding me does not even register a difference; flying from my form and flapping about as if it were still being disturbed. In direct contrast to the absence of a force of nature, and perhaps in an act of complete rebellion,
The Seas Rage.
Such a thing should not be possible, but the ocean seemed to be screaming its defiance of the laws of nature and science to anyone or anything that would listen.
The Warmth Leaves
My Bones. A terrible coldness seized me as a result and I felt a sensation as though every breath was laced with poison. I choked on the air.
The Earth Decays
around me as the world goes black. Everything is silent. Not a sound can be heard in all of the vast emptiness that surrounds me.
Light Returns.
I find myself lying on my stomach in a large field of grass. All is calm, and I am able to breathe once more. When I look up, I see that I am on a tall hill overlooking a grand castle town that stands in the distance.
Cornelia.
I climb to my feet and brush off the dirt that has gotten on me. I reflect on the castle only briefly before I begin walking towards it. I have begun my journey along the grandest of roads. A road that all of the warriors of cosmos began walking a long time ago. I must be like those warriors, and take their mistakes and experiences to heart.
I now am a traveler that walks along the road to the
Final Fantasy.
Authors Note:
First off, a big thank you to Bloodwitch Raven for telling me that something was wrong with the story. I went straight to bed after uploading it last night, so I didn't realize. I fixed as soon as I realized.
This is my first published work of fanfiction, and it's mainly here because I wanted to have SOMETHING on my account. I may have signed up just a little to soon, having not completed the first story I intended to upload. Then life got busy, then my file got corrupted and I couldn't recover anything. So yeah.
This story was an entirely separate Idea of mine from the corrupted document, and I realized if I made this "Prelude," than I could write it up quick and easy and finally put something on here. But moving on from that. This story is intended to be a series of oneshots based around the warriors of dissidia as they travel through the gateways. The character shown in this chapter will not be in the limelight very often. I'm intending to use him between gateways, as I will be writing about them in chronological order according to Scenario 000.
As a personal concern about the story, I feel it jumps from point to point a bit too quickly throughout the first half of it. I don't really know how to fix it though, so criticism is certainly welcome.
I feel that that's everything so, I'm gonna sign off now. But thank you again to Bloodwitch Raven, and a big thank you to all of those who read this as well. Please leave a review, as I'm curious to know what you think.
Till we meet again!
UPDATE: I got rid of that one paragraph near the end. That one with all the bold words. I'm sorry if you liked it, but it was forced, an eyesore, and it just ruined the chapter for me. I might do something with the idea it conveys, like a full chapter maybe? It's gone from this chapter though.
