A/N: Inspired by the games storyline. This takes place from the perspective of the player character. While my wizard's name is being used, feel free to insert your own character. This story is talking about you after all.
You despicable cheater.
Evan didn't get it. He was the hero. The Savior of the Spiral. The Child of Light of Darkness. There was a parade in his honor and everything. He could remember their faces bright as day: happy. Alive. He saved them. So why didn't he feel like a hero?
He looked around his castle room. He'd moved out of the student homes about a year ago.
Damn, he thought. Has it really been a year?
He currently lived in the Massive Fantasy Palace. He remembered it was a gift from the professors as a "thank you for defeating Malistaire and saving the Spiral" present. They gave it to him when they learned he had no place to go and was planning on moving out. There wasn't much in the living room where he was standing. He spent so much time fighting whoever felt like being evil that week that he never had time to decorate. He was starting to wonder why he even had a castle. The dorm was small, sure, but it's not like he was ever there for that long. Still, he wasn't going to sell it. The professors bought it for him to show appreciation. It wouldn't be right to sell it.
The professors were there at the parade. Thought Evan. Their faces were as happy as the first time if not more so. More people whose lives I've saved; made better.
He believed the feeling of confusion started the day after he beat Morganthe.
I did beat her right?
He recalled the glass breaking after Morganthe was a mere moments from obliterating him. It didn't make sense how someone had managed to be that powerful. He thought for sure he was done. Of course, he left that detail out during the briefing to Ambrose. All Evan told him was that he defeated Morganthe and she was falling into infinity. He did mention Old Cob, but he didn't tell Ambrose much about him. That man creeped him out.
The morning of the parade was when he woke up from his nightmare. It was the day after the end of Morganthe was announced. In the nightmare, he saw Old Cob standing at the cliff where Evan last saw him. The purple things were flying around him before scattering into the sky. The fear he felt the first time he saw it was even worse. He felt like everything around him was falling apart; like all order in the world,everything that made sense, everything that gave you sanity was slipping away.
The scene changed in a blur of purple smoke. Suddenly, he was face to face with a very angry Morganthe. She looked just like he did when they last met: all-powerful. There was nothing around the two but darkness. If they were falling he couldn't tell and he doubted there was a bottom.
"You horrible little wizard! You're lucky I can't destroy you through this dream!" She screamed.
Evan didn't really have a response to that. For one, he wasn't sure if he was dreaming that Morganthe was threatening him or if Morganthe was actually talking to him through magic. Second, he was so used to not getting a word in around people that he just stopped talking after a while. He'd talk about what just happened and then that'd be it.
"Don't think I can't see you. I saw what you told Ambrose. I even saw Old Cob haunting your subconscious. You release him and call me a villain? You watch me fall and call yourself a champion? You bathe in shadow and call yourself a child of light? You are no hero. You are the greatest threat to the Spiral. You are a cheater! You do not deserve your accolades and praise. You deserve a death as painful and slow as the ones you have unleashed on the Spiral."
Morganthe was seething with rage. She wanted Evan to know what a horrible person she thought he was. He didn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing it was working and stayed silent.
Morganthe just chuckled. "Speechless are you? You never were much of a conversationalist. Still, you can't hide your emotions in here. I can feel your doubt and fear. It's slowly dawning on you that no matter what you've told the others and no matter what they believe, you're worse than any villain I could've been."
The dream began getting hazy, like he was slowly waking up.
From the blurry vision, Morganthe said, "it pleases me to tell you that you're in for a much worse talk than the one we've been having. It's been nice catching up with you, cheater."
Evan woke up in sweat. Or, at least, he thought he woke up. It definitely felt more real than a few minutes ago. A nearby voice answered his question. It sounded familiar, motherly. But angry. Like she was scolding a child.
"You are not awake. This is still a dream, just one that I am in control of."
Evan looked around his bed to see it was suddenly in a giant bird's nest. Above him were millions of stars shining in the night sky. In front of him sat an enormous raven. He knew with a start he was talking to one of the oldest and most powerful beings in the Spiral: Grandmother Raven.
"Do you have any idea of the power you unleashed on the Spiral?" Asked the raven, "how much damage Old Cob will do?"
Evan figured now wouldn't be the best time for silence. "I needed to defeat Morganthe. He was the only person that would be able to help and-"
"Fool!" Cried the raven. "You did not release Old Cob because you thought it was the only way. You released him because you allowed him to manipulate you. He used a rat to whisper in your ear, prey on your doubts and free him from the pit."
Above him, Evan could see the stars shaking with Grandmother Raven's anger. He tried to appeal to her motherly nature. "If I didn't, the good people of the Spiral, your children and everything they built, would be destroyed by Morganthe. Darkness would win."
Instead of calming down and agreeing with him, Grandmother Raven flapped her wings with rage. The winds were so powerful Evan almost flew out of his bed.
"Are you forgetting that Morganthe is also my child? As are the dark forces she fought for! You have gotten arrogant my child. You and your brethren of light. You have spent so long on top you believe that everything you do in your name is just. You forget that both light and darkness are equal parts of Order and Order is more important than either on their own."
She calmed down and lowered her wings before continuing, "did it ever occur to you that you were not meant to defeat Morganthe? That it was darkness' turn to win?"
At some point, he did. When he first met Morganthe in Celestia he didn't think much of her. The only thing that scared him was the prophecy she gave, but even then he was afraid of her words, not her. His first bit of fear set in around Zafaria, where she retrieved her deck of shadows. For a moment, he could feel how powerful Morganthe was and how severely she outclassed him. It was when she destroyed Azteca that he truly realized he couldn't win. After that, his only reason for fighting was to give a false light of hope to people.
Grandmother Raven leaned in closer to him, her voice more sympathetic now. "You knew in your heart that you were fighting a war you couldn't win. So many people put their faith in you. You were the hero of light and you couldn't bear to tell them all the light in the world wouldn't defeat Morganthe. You carried with you the guilt of promises you couldn't keep."
Grandmother Raven looked towards the skies before saying, "I can still hear the anguished voices of Azteca. The hardest part of being a mother is doing what's best for all of your children. It's even worse when you are a primordial force of Order. I have to keep the balance, no matter how much it pains me or others. Bartleby understood this, but he wanted no part of it. Leaving the burden upon me and me alone."
She faced him and her voice became stern again. "You are a hero, but it is too easy for you and the others you fought for to forget that so was Morganthe. She was the hero of darkness, she fought for her armies of shadow as their champion. She was evil and selfish, yes, but without qualities like those there would be no good or generosity. You were both given an even playing field and a chance to succeed. You were both extremely skilled and destined for greatness. When the two of you would face each other for the final time Morganthe was to be the winner. Morganthe would rewrite the Spiral and darkness would reign for thousands of years."
Even though it probably wasn't wise to get angry at someone as powerful as Grandmother Raven, Evan couldn't hold it back. "How is letting Morganthe rewrite the Spiral any better than freeing Old Cob? You saw what she did to the people of Khrysalis, Zafaria, Avalon, Azteca!"
Grandmother Raven lowered her beak to peck him on the head, not enough force to impale him but more than enough to hurt and knock him off his bed and into the nest. He blinked from the pain and when he opened his eyes, he was in the Commons of Wizard City, but it was notably different. A statue of Morganthe stood where the statue of the two wizards stood. Shadow-Weavers floated around like they owned the place and after he saw one of them flying into a house, he realized they did.
The scene changed to where Ravenwood once was. Once, being the keyword. The school's had been torn down and replaced with one large building the stretched like a U across the former school grounds. The building was a dark shade of purple and loomed like a military fortress. Inside the building were classrooms filled Shadow-initiats. Outside of the building where the stumps of the school trees. The only tree left standing was Bartleby, but standing didn't seem like the right word. He was withered and sickly looking. His branches were covered in webs and spider eggs. His leaves were as pale as the silky thread that surrounded him.
This is how it's supposed to be, thought Evan. This nightmare is how Wizard City is supposed to look right now. Not filled with smiling faces or clear skies, just spiders and darkness everywhere.
Nesting on top of Bartleby was Grandmother Raven. Her voice was still as clear as ever.
"I know this isn't easy for you to take in, but this is what was meant to happen. This is how it was meant to be. It was darkness's turn to rules the spiral and light's turn to surrender. This may seem like a nightmare to you but to these creatures this is a paradise. And most importantly, there is order. The forces of evil are balancing out the forces of light."
Evan barely heard her. He couldn't accept that this was meant to happen. He didn't even want to know what the rest of the Spiral looked like. This was a twisted world he wanted no part of.
"If you are not properly convinced, then I suppose I should show you the alternative."
Grandmother Raven swooped down and picked Evan up with her beak. She flapped her powerful wings and flew off into the sky. Once they reached a point high enough that the ground could no longer be seen, she dropped him.
"Here is what the Spiral will look like if Old Cob is not stopped," she told Evan as he fell into the void.
For a while, there was nothing. Evan just fell for a while through a black sky. After a few seconds of this, Evan could make out a shape in the distance. It wasn't any sort of recognizable shape and he could hardly see it. Then the image of it came into closer view.
Evan would've screamed in horror the whole way down if only down was a thing anymore.
Evan curled up into a ball in the corner of the room. Remembering that dream had brought the image of Old Cob's world (he wasn't sure if "world" was a good thing to call it but he'd go mad trying to call it anything else). It didn't matter how bad Morganthe's world was, it was something he could understand. There was still something he could hold on to. Something familiar, no matter how vague and wrapped up in spider webs. What Old Cob did to the Spiral was indescribable. There was literally nothing that he could hold on to. The only words he could possibly use was pure chaos. Not a shred of order anywhere. Nothing that anyone's mind could cope with.
He understood now. He cheated. He wasn't supposed to defeat Morganthe. He definitely wasn't supposed to free Old Cob from that pit. Thanks to his actions there would be no winners for either side. There would be no order. Old Cob would turn the Spiral into something beyond words.
And it was all your fault.
A/N: I would image this story only really makes sense if you've played through the ending of Khrysalis but I tried to give y'all a good understanding of what happened regardless. Your wizard freed the primordial force of chaos itself. A lot of this story is based off theory, but heavily supported theory. Also, if anyone here was reading No Heroes to Save You Now, that story is pretty much cancelled. I was gonna announce this in a third chapter but my inspiration for that died too. Maybe I'll revive it but for now don't expect an update anytime soon. Leave some constructive criticism on the way out and see ya next time.