Divinity of Darkness

Disclaimer: all Final Fantasy characters seen here belong to Square Enix. I own nothing that you recognize.

Written for the Color Challenge on Caesar's Palace

Prompt - rainbow


Cursed Rainbow

It was a cold, hard fact that Kefka hated pretty much everyone and everything around him. He loathed the people around him, and considered it an inconvenience whenever he had to step outside and deal with the general public. He wanted to destroy all living things, to watch the streets run red with their blood, washing away the filth that stained the earth, the scum that was the human race. How he hated them.

He hated the noise they made when he was trying to sleep, those insipid little monkeys, jabbering away about their meaningless lives, their families back home, as of any of that mattered. One of the soldiers told Kefka that his wife had just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, and Kefka, frowning in disgust, was quick to offer the man his condolences, for there was nothing he hated more than children and the annoying sounds and smells they made.

He despised their ignorance, watching from a distance as they fought to keep their hopes and dreams alive, believing in such foolish things they couldn't see or grasp. The world around them was dying, like a wounded bird flapping its wings in a futile attempt to escape the clutches of death, fighting a battle it could not win. Death was something that was real. It was all around them. He'd held it in his hands, captured the essence of death as he snuffed out the lives of others, watching them take their last breath as they passed into the infinite darkness that awaits us all.

He took pleasure in watching them suffer, in seeing the look of horror on their faces as he twisted the knife in their bellies, each cut deeper than the last. He wanted to see them choke on their own blood, to see crismson fluid cascading freely over their severed limbs as they lay dead at his feet. It was better than the cold shades of metal and iron that surround him within the halls of the Imperial Palace. This place was so cold, nothing in it lived anymore, which is what made it such a fitting place to die, surrounded by hollow pipes and steel floors.

Kefka would get out of bed in the morning, staring out his window at the industrial factories that dotted the landscape, their dark smoke trailing across a sky of grey clouds. The world around him was so bleak and dull, without color and excitement. He pressed his palm against the glass, gazing at his own reflection in the window, then looked down at the hand held against the glass.

His hands were covered with burns caused by accidents he had while he was learning how to use his magic. If he was honest with himself, he hadn't gained complete control of his magic. He doubted if that was possible, for it was something that comsumed him, the ghost of long dead Espers racing through his veins, slowly poisoning his mind, screaming for release from within the body that imprisoned them. And those burns, the areas that laced his fingers in shades of red and brown, were a lasting reminder of the torture he'd undergone in the empire's quest to create the perfect Magitek Knight.

It was a cursed gift, the ability to use magic. It was something that came with a price, breaking down the very inner workings of his mind until all that remained was the shattered echoes of who he used to be. And in time those would fade as well. It was one of the reasons why he'd given up believing in this world, because everything he'd ever known had disintegrated into dust, taking with it the last conscious remnants of the life he had before the experiments began.

He slowly ran his fingertips over the burns, feeling the rough, dry texture of his skin. The skin had blistered and peeled along the inside of his middle finger, while unsightly red blemishes dotted the back of his left hand around his thumb and index finger. A white band shown on his ring finger like a tan line, marking the area where the garnet ring he wore prevented his entire finger from being burned.

The colors that filled his world were shades of ashen grey. The colors that covered his body were shades of red and brown, streaking and spotting a canvas of pale white. For that's what his body was, a canvas.

He grew tired of the only colors being those that represented the empire, colors that reminded him of the experiments that destroyed his sanity. That's all he had were burns and scars, fleeting nightmares and voices screaming, echoing in his mind, for most of his memories of those hideous experiments were lost to him. He wasn't even sure how he got these burns. All he knew was that he couldn't bear the sight of the burns that marred his flesh. He had to get rid of them. He had to restore the lost colors to his world, starting with the color red which was his favorite.

He began by painting his face and hands white. He wanted a clean canvas to work with, not one that had been stained with the colors of the empire. He painted his fingernails a brilliant shade of red, then began applying red eye shadow. When that wasn't enough he extended the crimson hues along the sides of his eyes, framing his blue irises with streaks of red, then added a red streak above each eyebrow.

Other colors came later, the multicolored silk scarves, the dangling strings of colorful beads that hung from his belt. He carefully sewed a strand of rainbow colored beads into the hem of his right sleeve, the strand tipped with red and yellow tassels. The beads dangling from his belt were orange, purple, red and green, his yellow and red ruff matched his cloak, and his mismatched boots were white and black.

A stitch here, a splash of color there, and pretty soon his new clothes were finished. He was covered from head to toe in every color of the rainbow, from colorful feathers tucked into his ponytail to the spots and stripes that adorned the fabric of his clothes. But they were just a mask to hide his scars. They didn't change what he'd become on the inside, a monster now swathed in rich colors and a dazzling display of patterns and textures, feathers and silk, hard beads and soft fabric.

Kefka Palazzo was a walking nightmare, a painted demon, whose colors did nothing to conceal the madness that lie within. They were the first thing people noticed when he walked into a room, and they were the last thing they saw when they died, his shrill laughter ringing in their ears as the world around them faded from a multitude of colors to an endless sea of black.