Final Fantasy I: The Light Warriors

By: Smurf

Author's Note: This is my first Final Fantasy book. This culminated into after beating the original Final Fantasy on Nintendo; it is more than just the story of the game, it tries to make a world out of the First Fantasy. It's deeper than the game itself, with the original storyline shaped into a world where characters and their surroundings immerse you in a universe. It is also the original Final Fantasy on the original Nintendo, so if anything changed on the Final Fantasy I and II game on Playstation 1 (Final Fantasy Origins), I am not aware of it because I've never played it. Following my inspiration of The Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time, this combines both of the two. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy I and the characters belong to Square-Enix, not to me. All characters I make up in this story are just free-floating pixels on your screen.

The world is veiled in darkness. The wind stops, the sea is wild, and the earth begins to rot. The people wait, their only hope, a prophecy...'When the world is in darkness, Four Warriors will come...' After a long journey, four young warriors arrive, each holding an orb.

Final Fantasy I Prologue

Prologue: In the Beginning

First, there was only the Creator, Maker of All Things, who gave the universe Light and Dark. In the Beginning, he began to make the first of the four Friends,or Tari in the Old Tongue. They were his offspring, able to bend the elementals of the universe at their will, but they never exceeded the status of the Creator. And with the Friends, he made a galaxy, and in this galaxy he made the world of Gaia for the Tari to live. And he told them: "Let this be your dominion, to live in harmony for the rest of eternity. But be forewarned that if the Tari are not always at peace, your enemies will take advantage and destroy your world."

And so the Friends went away to their new home.

Each of the Tari had a specific element he or she could manipulate the best, being Earth, Water, Fire, and Air Friends. Together, they formed their world into a habitable place. The Earth Friend gave Gaia its first lands, shaping them into interesting and unusual shapes, just as he liked. Tar-Earth made critters out of his molds of animals, as well as the first mountains. Tar-Water made the massive oceans that surrounded the land, teeming with silvery pearls of fish and animals. She made the streams, lakes, and rivers that encircled the great landmass of Danador. The Fire Friend made citadels out of rock and fire, mountains of inferno with seemingly topless peaks that awed any who came near. And the Air Friend made the wind, breezing through the world to cool the animals and make white waves in oceans.

The Friends began making animals, flyers that spread gracefully through the air, streaming fish that shone silver. Crawlers moved through the forests of Gaia, spreading their nutrients for the forests to thrive. And for two thousand years, things grew in peace and harmony, and the Friends made Gaia a utopia for all living things, as they played, happily together. So ended the Dream Age, where all harmony and peace was to be found, and the sins of the Tari were buried deep in their hearts.

After a while, the Earth Friend grew tired of the animals and of Gaia, wanting to make a race that would be similar to him: short of temper, patience, and height, stout, hardy, builders of great things, a race that would last for the millennias. And so he made the Dwarves, the first race, who called the Earth Friend Omru, "Builder God." For the Dwarves were gifted the power of making great cities out of stone and metal, and hardy sharp swords that cut through steel, armor as hard as rocks, and crafting of precious metals into precious stars of beauty.

Now, seeing what the Earth Friend had done, the Water Friend wanted to make a race similar to her, and so she gave birth to Elves, great mariners of the seas, immortal, fair, and wise. And they shared their love of the seas and oceans as the Water Friend, making sleek sailing ships with port cities that were wondrous to all who came to see. So they named her Alanni, "Everclear," for her help.

The Fire and Air Friends saw what their siblings had done, and watched as the Dwarves thrived into great civilizations, and traded in harmony with each other. The Fire and Air Friends, though, could not create races akin to their own, for no race that they could create could live in the bellows of fiery pits or the freezing drafts of air. So they asked their brother and sister for help, and with them, they made Man and Dragons, the last of the two greatest civilizations of Gaia.

To the race of Man, each Friend contributed a small portion of each of their Talents, giving them many strengths. Men were weak in flesh, but the Friends gifted them with a imaginative, creative mind, able to bend the things around them into use. And so, they rivaled the Dwarves in the art of craftsmanship, and the Elves in navigating Gaia's seas. They manipulated fire into their own use, and made flying machines. And they dispersed, spreading across Gaia in great civilizations: Coneria, Amlador, and Tekam.

To the race of Dragons, the Friends gave them an archipelago of islands to secretly flourish. But the Air and Fire Friends gave strengths to the Dragons too, the ability to fly and breathe fire. And the Dragons grew into great sizes, yet harmed no Men, Dwarves, of Elves, but lived in brotherhood.

The Men named Tar-Air Listoor, meaning "breeze" in the Old Tongue, and the Fire Friend Fira, which, simply put, meant "fire."

For another eight thousand years, all was peace, and Gaia thrived even more with the great civilizations on its land. For eight thousand years, Gaia lived well, her earthen floors home to many species. But cracks began to appear as the millennia came to an end, and the foundation that the Friends built trembled under the strain.

So ended the First Age.

The Creator watched, unknowingly to the Friends, as they bickered with each other, and as the race of Men bickered with other races, about land and water, and who was who's and what was what's. So he made a challenged for the Friends and races, to break them or to bind them together. And so he made the Four Fiends, anti-friends, demons of the souls of the Friends, the Alatari. Demons of the Heart.

As the Tari and their creations bickered, the Alatari raced into the world of Gaia, corrupting all forms of life. Phantoms inhabited the corpses of dead men, enslaving their souls in hideous creations called Imps. Trees of the forests were under the spell of the Fiends, who turned into mighty Ogres that wielded stout clubs. Dragons were mutilated into new creatures, like the deadly Chimaeras. Sea creatures Alanni had created became monsters, and pirates plundered the rich harbors of the Elves. The kingdoms of Men were set aflame, and Dwarves battled with creatures of the Underworld, as Elves watched their bountiful forests burn, and Dragons fought with their unnatural creations.

The Fiends were most interested in the Men. For Men were weak in heart, desiring power and wealth, and could be induced to work for the wills of Evil. And the Fiends gave each of the mighty kings a gift of immortality and power, to be able to wield the might gifts the Friends gave to their creations. The Kings of Tekam and Amlador accepted, becoming the most powerful servants and slaves to the will of the Alatari. But the young Conerian King refused, and from that time on, and raised a host to fight the Fiends. And so the Kings of the Dream Kingdom became known as the Kings of the Stars and Moon, for the night's sky had only the Light in the form of the heavenly stars and the moon to match the Darkness that spread.

The Friends, seeing all that they had labored to build being swept away in a torrent of fire and death, quickly acted to save their world and their creatures from certain annihilation. The earth groaned. The skies shook with thunder. The waters raged. The fires of the mountains glowered. The apocalyptic war was so devastating the great continent of Danador that the Dwarves, Elves, and Men lived on was broken apart. And all that was left was death.

But the Friends and their host of creatures cornered the Alatari in the Temple of Fiends, which the citizens of Tekam and Amlador had labored under the enslaved kings to build. The bastion of stone and ice was impenetrable, as the Friends lunged with desperate attacks with hosts of Elves in green with silvery swords and slim bows, as well as Dwarves in burnished armor and short axes and pikes, and a massive host of Conerian Knights, with a forest of lances. Dragons, too, helped their creators by sending fiery flames at the enemy, which swelled with numbers from the dead, and from the armies of Tekam and Amlador.

Time and time they clashed, until the land shook with the weight of the dead, and the blood that drained into the massive seas turned it crimson. And the seas were given a new name: the Aldi Sea. The Red Sea.

The Tari soon realized that they could not destroy their inner demons through force, as the Alatari and their twisted creations withstood attack after attack against their fortress. Therefore they decided to battle their inner demons themselves, to bind them together into four Orbs, earth, fire, water, and air. And so, the Tari entered the Temple, and the legions of the Alatari cowered under the Light of the Friends. When reaching the Fiends, they bound the four evils, Lich, fiend of Earth, Kary, fiend of Fire, Kraken, fiend of Water, and Tiamat, fiend of Air into each of the four Friends, binding and sealing themselves together into four orbs that glowed brightly as the moon. But the orbs vanished, and the hosts of the Friends thought they had won.

The legion of the Fiends trembled and wailed, throwing themselves with despair at the hosts of the Friends, who slaughtered the creations. But they had not defeated the Alatari. For the Fiends were only bound by the sacrifice of the Friends into four orbs, and they knew, in some other Age, the Fiends would break loose of their prisons, as their shadowy creations would once again, rally around the banner of the Fiends. But the Friends would not be there to help, only buried inside those four mysterious orbs, battling their arch-enemies for the Light of the orbs, lest they turned Dark. The only thing the Tari had left was a prophecy:

"When the world is in darkness, four Warriors will come,

though knowing not their destiny or route,

they know they must fulfill the journey or succumb,

to the evils of the orbs, that will spread and loot.

In this we leave you, beloved of Gaia,

four Light Warriors that will save your world...for our time is gone."

And with this, they left the world of Gaia forever, attached into the four orbs. And the hosts of the Tari knew, that once their world was in peril, the four Light Warriors, with the darkened orbs and spirits of the Friends, would rise to fulfill their destiny and defeat the Fiends.

So ended the Second Age.

The Third Age began like any other, as Coneria rose to her mighty feet and conquered lands, from the East Aldi Sea to the deserts of the North, and successive Kings of the Stars fought off the remnants of the Fiends. Tekam and Amlador became phantoms, great cities that once were, but never again.

But slowly, like a decaying oak tree, the Dream City and her kingdom shrunk, and the power of those who betrayed the Friends rose again, and the creatures of the Tari slowly sank into an abyss. In the Dream City, people looked towards each horizon, murmuring:

"Whence do the Light Warriors come?"

"When all have lost hope."