12/9/06: Is this a rewrite? Yes, this is. If you haven't already, check my profile for more information. Thank you very much.
(…)
FINAL FANTASY VII
—CROSSING: OVER—
PROLOGUE:
/DEATH AND REBIRTH/
He floated in darkness, waiting.
How long, he could not say. There was no sense of time passing, or of any feeling either; only gentle, continuous movement, the cool and quiet pressing down on his eyes and enfolding him in warm oblivion. Sometimes, there were the whispers, low and insistent and brushing his mind light as a spider's kiss, enough to jar him from his sleep before he was pulled under again, and the wise old eyes, watching and judging from behind and everywhere and nowhere.
He might have felt alarm. But his slumber had robbed him of all emotion, leaving only an—expectant—silence. Yes, expectance, and long slow patience.
/He knows all these things but does not think them; it is as though the knowledge passed through his mind fleeting-quick like the shadow of a ghost, leaving behind their lingering remnants and he understands even as he hangs in dreamless nothing/
When he awoke, finally, the sensation was gentle, almost languorous, layers of years and sleep and dust sliding away like silk, a smooth caress of whispering cloth. Then the pain came like a panther from the darkness, waiting and ready, and pounced upon him to rend and rip and snarl, and he opened his eyes to green luminescence and screamed.
There was a suggestion of space, vast and infinite and it hurt the mind with its invitation of forever and immortality. Loops of green light curled loose tendrils around him, a lover's touch, fine as a noble lady's best ribbon. But as he reached for it, in wonder, it drew back like a rabid dog, and burnt him.
He heard the whispers now, more clearly than ever, and for the first time the anger in them. Anger that was directed at him, crafted sharp and cold as the edge of a blazing sword, aimed right and true. They twisted and darted around him, the unseen whisperers, their eyes bright and eternal as stars, their chant of bitter hate filling the empty world around him.
He screamed, writhed and fought the merciless grip of the emerald flames, as they crawled up his limbs and set him ablaze without hurting him, darting wraithlike beneath his skin and creating weird, shifting patterns of light and shadow. Even as the agony tore at him, he looked down at himself and marveled, in a sleepy, vague manner, at the existence of his body, forgotten and discarded for so long, the pale, perfect limbs and elegantly tapering fingers, the strands of sleek metallic-hued hair that fell into his eyes and over his bare shoulders in a great, shimmering wave. It slid out of his hands like water, like velvet, heavy and smooth and beautiful, and something rose to the surface, a shadow in the blank plane of his mind—
You shall not remember. Yet.
The mental hand slapped him roughly, cool invisible fingers stiff with fury and tangling viselike in his long hair. He howled anew, losing the thread of his awakening thought and sending it spinning into bloody chaos. Slowly he came to be conscious of the hatred, a great simmering brimming pool of hate hate hate that longed to reach in and rip him inside out, leaving him to spew his intestines and stomach and bones and tendons into emptiness and until he died in the pain. And there was wisdom too, wonderful and terrible, a sense of endless age and loneliness that, if fully comprehended, would drive him into shrieking madness with the concept, the vastness and alienation of it all.
Who are you? he demanded, even as the malevolent green light curled like snakes around the fragile bones of his wrists and sank their fangs in, pumping cold deadly venom into his veins. He jerked and shivered spasmodically like a mad thing, a wildly gyrating dancer trapped in an intricate, meaningless move, an animal caught in the jaws of a cruel steel trap and in the bonds of pain so intense it would tear off its own leg to flee from the nameless terror. But the only music here was his cries, faltering and primeval, the hushed, bitter whispers of the watchers, the trap the endless swirling glittering green threads spun by an unseen hand. Worse was the ignorance of how and why—the sheer illogic, the injustice of it all, suspended in frozen time wracked with suffering and not knowing. And so he asked, more in desperation that curiosity, who are you?
Laughter touched his mind. It could be kind laughter, or loving; but it was also wholly inhuman in its stark and unmitigated intensity, the way it crept into his skull sly and oily and stayed there like a stain upon his consciousness. The hatred grated like steel wire against his nerves, and suddenly his mouth was full of blood and he was spitting it out into the ether, feeling broken teeth cut across soft, bleeding gums, and there came an answer, black and thunderous and wrathful, like a storm into his mind.
I am your mother. I am your father. Your creator, and I loved you as I loved all of mine. I wept with you in the dark secret hours when you couldn't even remember your own name, and I heard, all the times you called, all the times you couldn't stand the sight of a mirror. Then you had the gall to try to destroy me—ME—who has lived eons untold beyond your petty imaginings, little mortal—
There were no words to describe the loathing, the complete and utter contempt in the voice.
I don't know what you're talking about. Defiance, even in the pain; it slashed into him harder and ate his insides with slavering gibbering fury as a reward.
I know. That is how I have willed it to be. You have always been a puppet in life, my child, dancing to the whims of the puppet-masters. This should come as no surprise to you. You have complied with orders you knew were wrong, taken life against all conscience. Thus you will be my soldier then, my perfect soldier, who will kill for me as you did for them, poor lost soul, benighted one…
The voice was all the more terrible for the great, pulsing love that filled the emptiness of tone for a moment, deep and intense, as mysterious and unfathomable as the ocean depths. The whisperers called, Traitor, traitor, from the unseen shadows, and he felt as though he might have wept, at the betrayal; the tears of the mother, the sins of the son.
There is still time for both of us yet, child, the voice said into his ear, cold and syrupy-sweet, bitter and vengeful, like curdled milk and festering wounds. The green light moved, a stinging, mocking caress, a flexible tentacle of shimmering lines that rammed itself down his open mouth, down his throat and into his body, spreading like slow poison. He could not breathe, he did not need to; it was a horrible feeling, to be dead and not have your body know it; it panicked and screamed for air, his heart hammering like a gong until he thought it might twist free of his flesh and impale itself on his ribs. And all the time there was no pain at all, just a blank, cold numbness that he would have gladly exchanged for some sort of feeling whatsoever. It made him feel inhuman, a distant spectator watching with agonized fascination.
Kill her for me.
Over and over again, a broken recorder hissing sibilant threats into his ear. Time was a distant memory in this plane, and yet he felt like forever had passed when everything was the same as it ever was. Then at last the questing tendrils of his tormentor withdrew, and his mind was a whimpering ruin of strewn memories. A hand touched him gently on the shoulder, and it seemed to ease his pain.
Farewell, the voice whispered, neither male nor female but just there, and he felt the hand give him a push. Then he was falling, into the eternal void, and before the blackness came, softly, like a falling feather, he thought he heard a chorus of angels calling his name.
end Prologue.
(…)
22/9/06: Yes, I know I said I wouldn't have time to post anything, but my prelims just ended yesterday and so I've got a bit of time before I get catapulted back to the exam hall. So I couldn't resist finishing this prologue. I hope you agree with me that this is a much better version of TIAL.
Thank you.
T. Axile.
NEXT CHAPTER: FROM THE NEW WORLD.
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