Who are we, if not vessels of destruction, created to decimate and kill? Who are we, if not creatures of chaos that long to see the world in ashes? What are we, then, if we pass from times of peace to times of war without trying to reconcile ourselves and right our wrongs?
Perhaps we are all these things, in which case we are abominations. We have no place in a world which should be governed by banners of harmony, not ruled underfoot of discord.
And yet I was taught opposite this conclusion that I have come to... I was once told that chaos and discord were the only means of control, that power and hatred would grant me all that I wished to have. I knew in my heart and the back of my mind that it was true, but I could not disobey at the time or listen to myself, for those who gave me this information had power and hatred and chaos and discord, and I was forced into believing this. Of course, you shall hear of this story soon enough, but I must first tell you where it all began.
I am Chaos, god of Discord. I was born into World A long ago. I had no mother nor father, for I was not born organically. It was by the government of the nation Onrac that I was created out of a living crystal that could bear life. They had a name for creatures of crystal that had no soul of their own: manikins. I was born a manikin, but that was soon supplemented. The scientist, they called him Cid of the Lufaine, was given the task by Onrac to use an ancient Lufenian memory ritual and imbue this crystal being with the memories of ten different people. So it was done, and so was I born. Cid of the Lufaine offered to care for me while I grew in power, to relieve the government of Onrac of my burden. They hastily accepted, and so it was that I came to live with Cid and his wife.
I called them mother and father, for in many ways they were to me. They housed me, fed me, and kept me safe while I grew. They loved me, and I loved them. I remember feeling that we were inseparable, but I was more wrong than I was right.
When I was grown, and my power had risen immensely, the government of Onrac took what was theirs. They took me from my family and told me that I was to be their weapon to combat other nations who threatened them. When I looked to the other nations, I saw that they used creatures of power like me to combat their own enemies. I became disgusted and for a time refused to lend my hand.
But they had my parents, and they used them to force me into fighting. I destroyed the other nations' summons and creatures and I could taste regret as it stung in the back of my throat. Cid of the Lufaine and his wife soon refused to help Onrac any longer as they saw how military life was twisting me, and they were thrown in prison for this treason against the government.
In their place, Onrac created another perfect manikin, one with self-consciousness. It was modeled after my mother. They named her Cosmos because she was created to keep me in order. It was after years serving under Onrac and its military that I finally saw my parents again.
They used wild creatures in battalions to draw attention away from themselves, and they escaped. Once they had escaped, they went searching for me. I had gotten word that two prisoners had escaped by the time they found me. All the years in military servitude had made me bitter and had force out the hatred within me, but when I saw my mother beckoning for me (and Cosmos, for she took pity on her) to follow her to freedom, back to Lufenia where we could all live in peace, I was ready to hastily leave my troubles behind me.
But they found us, and they attempted to stop us from escaping. I tried to fight them off, but they knew my power and brought enough firepower to make battle with me. As it was, my parents stood little chance against this onslaught, and in the process of protecting them and battling the soldiers of Onrac, my mother was struck by a projectile. She fell to the ground, and I presumed her to be dead, for she did not move after she slammed against the ground. As tears welled in my eyes, I allowed my power to break any seals of restraint which I held against it.
And burst forth did my powers of discord. It was so powerful that all the soldiers were blown back, some atomized where they stood, others dead. Only those furthest back were able to stand again after the blast, but when they did, they did not find Cid of the Lufaine, the perfect manikin Cosmos, or me standing where we were. No, they certainly did not.
My power was enough to open a portal in the Rift that transported we three to another dimension, a different world altogether. This world was identical to its predecessor, but as if it were many years into the future and after a great apocalypse. All villages, towns, and cities were destroyed. All nations were gone. There were no creatures roaming the plains. It was a wasteland.
We were not the only ones summoned here, however. There was another. I can now remember it plainly. He was a tallish man, clad fully in a dark armor. His face was covered by a helmet which only showed his yellow eyes peering out at us. His helmet had large metal horns protruding from near his temples, and he had a reddish cape fluttering behind him. He wielded a large sword, larger than I had ever seen before. He looked astonishingly like me.
He had no memory of anything before that day, and aside from his name, Garland, he knew nothing. From the day we met him, he felt a connection with me, and I felt a connection with him. We grew as close allies in the coming conflict and the cycles thereafter.
As for that war that seemed everlasting, along with Garland came another. He was more powerful than anything I had ever encountered before. He was the mystical Dragon, Shinryu. The five of us soon came to a pact. Cosmos and I were to do battle against each other using pawns summoned from other worlds in the Rift. Cid wanted no part in the battle, and he gave up his mortal life and physical body to observe the war in neutrality. Garland was to keep me fighting, to keep me reminded of the war's reason. Shinryu in return for this fighting told us that he would purify the battlefield, absorbing the memories and experiences of the losing side's warriors. He would then grant me enough power to return us to our own worlds. I agreed.
With that, Cosmos and I were given a great amount of power to summon our warriors. I cannot recall who I summoned for the first many cycles of this conflict, but Garland was always there, ready to keep me in the battle. And so the cycles began, and the war grew larger and larger.
And as the cycles progressed, I slowly forgot my past. By the twelfth cycle of conflict, I had forgotten Cid of the Lufaine, and I had forgotten my relationship with Cosmos and what she meant to me. You see, I could never bring myself to finish her. She reminded me of my mother, and I could not kill even something resembling my mother. My past had troubled me up until cycle twelve, and I never forced my warriors to fight as I was forced to fight so long ago.
When I forgot everything during the twelfth cycle, I was guided by Garland to fight Cosmos and her warriors and kill her, ending the cycles of conflict. However, I could not kill Cosmos. She was my enemy, but I had some instinctual feeling that she and I were more related than we appeared. I could not kill her. I would not kill her. However, I never expected her to sacrifice herself for her pawns like she did.
You see, I gave Exdeath, my pawn from the Fifth World, the permission to open a small door to the Rift that he found. Inside were stored all the failed manikins that Cid had cycled through in trying to create a third perfect manikin. That is another story for another time, however he was able to create one, and he injected it with his memories. It was taken by one of Cosmos' warriors and thereafter became one of her pawns.
Either way, they were all bound to fall. The onslaught of manikins in this hole in the Rift seemed never-ending. They poured out, weak in ability, yet strong in number. They had no wills of their own. They would overwhelm the enemy, and they would not stop their onslaught even if the enemy was dead. They would continue to fight, even if it meant throwing their lives away. When Cosmos' warriors realized this threat, it was almost too late.
While Exdeath was opening the hole in the Rift, Cosmos had imbued her pawns with her powers. These powers would manifest themselves into crystals if the pawns were proven worthy enough. The warriors were to collect their crystals and gather them together, and somehow they would help them in defeating me. That, however, comes later in this story. The warriors still had the manikins to deal with.
And the manikins were ever fighting, some in groups, others alone. Some were more powerful than others. They were the eldest created by Cid, and had been in the Rift for far longer. Cosmos' warriors should have died against them... but they persisted. A small team of her warriors gathered and parted from their quest to defeat me in favor of defeating the manikin horde. From my pawns, her warriors learned where the manikins were originating. They fought their way there, and finally found the door to the Rift. It was like a crack in the ground, and it was widely open. By this time, many of Cosmos' warriors had either perished by the manikins, my pawns, or by one of their own who saw no hope in defeating me this cycle. He was the brightest of them all. He stowed the limp bodies away as safely as he could, and then proceeded to defeat the manikins.
It seemed hopeless. The warriors fought wave after wave of manikins, destroying them and shattering them, breaking their crystalline bodies, but they were not without wounds themselves. The manikins inflicted so much pain and suffering unto them, that five of them stopped fighting and dropped. There was one remaining, one of the strongest will. She gave a mighty throw of her sword and struck the door to the Rift, sealing it forever. I imagine that Cid was angered by this and lost all hope of finding his way back to World A and his precious Lufenia. With the destruction of the door, this last warrior fell, her energy spent, and the remaining manikins who had escaped the Rift before its closing overwhelmed them and spread across World B.
Meanwhile, at Cosmos' throne, a lone warrior stood to guard her from annihilation. It was Cid's manikin, her most loyal warrior. When he witnessed the manikins on the horizon he spoke to Cosmos, and drew his sword and armed his shield. And when the manikins made it to him, he put up a massive fight. He defended Cosmos from all that crossed his path. But there were thousands of them, all come to taste destruction. When he was ready to give up, Cosmos called out his name that he had long forgotten. He stood up, and the manikins around him flew away from an otherworldly force. However, he was not powerful enough to continue on, and he dropped his shield and sword. He looked on at the wall of crystalline figures in despair when Cosmos made her final choice of the Twelfth Cycle.
Cosmos moved forward and gathered her power. Despite the Warrior's cry, she still unleashed her powers on the manikins. He fell over and blacked out. She, hovering, weakened, nearly powerless, was purified by Shinryu instantly. She had died, but it was not by my hands, so the cycles would continue on. The Warrior witnessed the purification as well as the dissolution of the six who died fighting to stop the manikins. Having strayed from their paths, the six would never be summoned as warriors again.
And I sat on my throne, holding my throbbing head. Something was missing, I would tell myself. Something that I could not replace was gone, but I could not figure out what it was that I was attempting to remember. This went on for some time until Garland kneeled in front of me. He told me my purpose again, though even he had forgotten some over time. He never told me that Cosmos and I were related. He told me that she needed to be killed in order for me end the conflict.
And with that, the thirteenth cycle began, and like any other, I summoned my pawns. Gathered, I gave them the orders to fight Cosmos' warriors. I did not believe they would defeat them. I did not want them to defeat them. Cosmos had given her warriors her powers to manifest into crystals, and her warriors still held her powers. The crystals would come when her warriors realized their potential, and they would not meet that without fighting their chosen foes.
And when the crystals were acquired and gathered, Cosmos' power was fully transferred to them. I saw the confrontation in its entirety.
First, her Warrior approached her. "Let us end this fight, here and now," said he.
She hesitated to reply, but she did, her eyes staring at the white water below. "No..." said she. "It has already been settled." Her face was an amalgamation of sorrow and apology. Then she grew weak, and as white wisps of the last of her power floated away from her holy body, she fell to the ground. Weakly, she told them, "Your fate is to fall... into true darkness!" Order's Sanctuary flashed from white to red, and altogether ceased to exist. It was the Edge of Madness that emerged, and from it I came to her. When I appeared, her warriors attempted to stop me. She stood to face me. I rolled out a triumphant laughter and crossed my arms satisfied.
"Chaos..." she said expectantly.
"For all your wandering... still you end up in purgatory," I told her for she was not safe. "What a shame, Cosmos."
"This is not for you to decide," she said sternly. She never spoke without a certain softness in her voice. "What they must know is true darkness." She had hesitated on the last two words.
I unfurled my arms, and, ravenously, I said, "Your wish shall be granted... I will extinguish all light!" I moved my arm in an arc, pulling it toward me, and Cosmos was engulfed in a pillar of fire and darkness. When it had consumed her, and the pillar had gone, all that remained of the goddess of harmony was a wisp of light that danced high into the darkness. "The world is unchanging," I chanted to her warriors. They were angered with me, and they had good reason to be angered.
"Powerless beings..." I said as I turned from them, my voice echoing in the distance. "Fall into the shadows of despair... and begone." It was almost a whisper, but my message arrived to them. I vanished from that place and returned to my throne. Her warriors were supposed to have disappeared, but the light in their crystals kept them in World B long enough to accomplish their objective.
Before I was defeated, however, the memories of the past flooded into my mind. It was like an endless descent into despair as they pooled there. Discord... pain... suffering... I felt them all as they came to me. And then I remembered why this conflict was begun. Cid... he was the one who had initiated it. And for what? Research? All this torment for research? I grew so angry at him, that I would make a rather rash decision later, but for now let me tell you the next battle.
The warriors of Cosmos approached me, and I readied for them to die. "At the end of the dream..." I said. "Even chaos... tears itself apart!" A shockwave of power surged out of me, and I was ready to fight these paws. They were powerless. I would defeat them, and it would be simple. "Let us mark the end of this... eternal conflict," I growled out. And it was the end indeed. It was my end, for her warriors had bested me.
I floated in the air in front of them, flailing for my powers had left me. I could feel my limbs getting weaker and power waning. "Cosmos…" I moaned deeply. "Now I know what you left behind." As I said this, the warriors in front of me vanished with white flashes of light, leaving only dust where they had once stood. Fire continued to plume out of the floor of my throne around me, and all across the land fire rained from the heavens. "Here ends the war of the gods. Destiny's hand cannot be stayed," I whispered aloud.
"Begone, mortals..." were my last words as I was consumed by a plume of fire. But it was in that plume that I was approached by Shinryu. He told me that it was Cid that had transported the warriors to safety, back to their respective worlds from which they had been summoned, breaking their pact by siding with harmony. He offered me a deal. He would trap a fragment of my mind in a world where the cycles would continue, and he would trap Cid there as well.
It was done. Cid was trapped in this nightmarish alternate world along with that fragment of my mind. The cycles continued on, and Cosmos and I battled each other. It was I, however, that defeated her in every cycle. I accumulated the power granted me by Shinryu, and by the eighteenth cycle of conflict, I had grown mad by it. I was transformed into a monster, a feral beast of chaotic nature that saw all as enemy. When the eighteenth cycle of conflict was unveiled, I began slaughtering all pawns regardless of who they were sided with. I would defeat each one of them by the twentieth cycle, in which Cosmos' last Warrior stood, the only one born in World B.
When that was done, Cid took Cosmos and locked him and her in the Chasm of the Rotting Land, far on the Southern Continent. He cleaved them in two with a gateway, and I was to be forevermore locked away there where the discord mutated manikins and where only the moogles dared to venture. When he did this to me, I turned my fury on Shinryu, and even I do not know what happened. Perhaps he wiped my memory of that event, but in the end he was unleashed as Shinryu Veras and he and I fought together. Whether he fought for me or we fought in unison, I do not know, but whenever I called for him, he would show and use his powers.
And so it happened that when five warriors appeared on World B, they made for Cid of the Lufaine. Even he didn't know how they were summoned there, but when they found him, Cosmos was not there. She had perished in his long hibernation with a fragment of the power that she was granted by Shinryu with the opening of the first cycle. The five warriors fought there way through manikin infested gateways, fighting creatures more powerful than ever, until they finally approached the gateway that separated the North and South. Cid had sealed it at the time with a manikin of myself at the time. The warriors defeated it, and they fought their way to my abode.
When they finally found me and fought me in battle, they were much more powerful than when they had begun the quest. Together, the five were able to defeat me, and I fell. The Feral Chaos died, and the memories of everything past returned to me. I leave this memoir to those who would give them attention, to the bravest warriors who chose to venture past the discord and unleash the Feral Chaos; to those who felled him and freed me, the creature of a place called Onrac, created by a man from Lufenia and forged for war, but striving for peace. These are the last words of Chaos. I give them to you.
Can you hear my voice?
Cid has awakened—in the world in which I was felled in the thirteenth conflict.
And another thing happened—Another miracle.
The "crystals" of the warriors who were defeated despite the strongest resolve brought "her" back to that world.
And Shinryu departed for the Rift. I guess the conflict will never repeat again.
Thank you so much for saving my father...