Hello again, good readers. I apologize for the lack of updates and review replies this past week; it was Spring Break and I was in no condition to write anything. With that out of the way, though, we return to our regularly scheduled fic. Enjoy!
Chapter XI
Sephiroth lashes out at the creature charging him, the speed of his strike turning the Masamune to a silvery blur. With astonishing speed, his foe – a purple, crystalline facsimile of the young man that summoned it – crosses its arms in front of its face. The five orbs of light that surround it become streaks that flash forward to intercept Sephiroth's attack. They bat his sword out of the way and then radically shift direction, coming at him in a twisting spiral. Uninterested in finding out exactly what effect they will have on him, Sephiroth rolls out of the way, using the movement to bring his sword back around for another strike.
Even as the creature's lights rush through the space where Sephiroth's head had been, it points a finger at him. The air around him grows hot; Sephiroth gathers his strength and leaps into the air in time to avoid a large explosion. The energy forms a perfect sphere, glowing gold at its center and fading to a deep black at its edges. Sephiroth twists as he falls, slashing out in a flurry of blows both to ward off the orbs of light and to slice off his enemy's arms.
It leaps out of the way, displaying surprising agility, and takes to the air, its orbs trailing after it. Sephiroth watches it fly up in a series of increasingly-broad circles, gaining altitude for an aerial assault. He rushes toward the nearest pillar, pushes off the floor, begins to run up the side. He'd noticed before when he and Auron fell, but now it is even more apparent that this world has little gravity to speak of – less than half of what he's used to. When he reaches the top of the pillar, he pushes off in a flying leap toward his opponent, who attacks with its orbs again, this time in a zig-zag pattern that crosses over and through itself at high speed, creating a kind of grinder in mid-air.
Rather than try to force his way through, Sephiroth sights an opening and fires a lightning bolt straight through the crisscrossing orbs. The bolt hits his enemy square in the chest, sending it flying, and its orbs go into disarray and flee back toward it. As gravity begins to reassert itself, Sephiroth searches the ground below him to see Auron furiously batting aside similar attacks from his own foe, unable to get an opening.
He glances up just in time to see Sephiroth descend on the creature like a judgmental angel. The Masamune stabs down through its head, into its torso, and out its stomach as Sephiroth lands. For a moment, the creature staggers, cracks spreading through its crystalline form. Then it explodes into fine purple fragments which glitter as they slowly fall to the ground.
"Thanks," Auron says. "Where'd yours go?"
"It went flying after I hit it with a lightning bolt," Sephiroth replies. "But I think it should be back by –"
The conclusion comes to him in the same moment as Auron. Without another glance, the two of them leap and run up adjacent pillars, then pull themselves onto the upper level of the shrine. Sephiroth's enemy floats high in the air. It is tracking Terra, who is retreating as fast as she can run, with a chain of gold-and-black explosions while its orbs harry her, swooping and diving in an attempt to get around her beleaguered magical guard.
Sephiroth tries another lightning bolt, but the creature sees him casting it and pulls its orbs in. The bolt dissipates harmlessly against the shield they form a moment before an explosion blossoms between Sephiroth and Auron. It sends Sephiroth staggering back, his vision blurring, into another one, which sends him into another –
Auron sees Sephiroth being thrown around like a rag doll, but when he tries to reach his companion the orbs rush him, each spinning so fast that it blurs into a pulsing white ring. He sweeps two of them away, ducks the third, takes the fourth and fifth in his chest. They burn with intense power; he feels like he's been punched by hands of flame. As he watches, the three orbs that missed him swoop back toward the enemy, while new fourth and fifth orbs blossom into existence to either side of it.
Without thinking, Auron seizes the brief opening. He spits on his blade, focuses on feelings of weakness and impotence. Reddish-gold streaks of power ripple along the length of his sword, some of them breaking free and whirling around the weapon in decaying orbits before returning to the steel. The glow intensifies until it is painful to look at. As the creature hurls its orbs at him again, Auron slams his blade into the ground, where the power he's built up bleeds into the stone before erupting into the air as four black spheres, each of them emblazoned with a glowing red Spiran glyph.
This time he takes all five orbs in the chest. The pain is so intense that he actually blacks out for a moment, but his senses return in time to see the creature, which has been left completely open by its offensive, clutch at itself in obvious pain as his attack sinks into its chest in a fountain of midnight-black energy.
For his part, Sephiroth staggers forward from yet another explosion. He braces himself for another but nothing comes; surprised but unwilling to question the reversal of his fortunes, he fights through the haze of pain and forces himself to focus on the creature.
His surprise only increases when he sees it begin to claw at its own chest. A moment later its scream pierces the air – a horrible, anguished noise that sounds oddly flat and distorted, as though he is hearing it through a bad phone line.
"What did you do?" he tries to ask, but the words come out unintelligible, probably because of all the blood in his mouth. He spits, wipes at his face, tries to ignore just how much blood comes away on his arm. "What did you do?"
"It's an attack I call Banishing Blade," Auron replies. The guardian is hunched, his free arm cradling his chest; he must have taken a beating as well. "It saps the power of its target."
Sephiroth eyes the creature, which is currently ripping chunks out of its own chest, screaming all the while. "Is that all."
"I think its dramatic effect here is because this creature is nothing but power. You would feel your strength being sapped, but you would fight it off eventually. This thing has no will, so it can't stop the drain. A good thing to know."
As though to punctuate Auron's statement, the creature loses all cohesion, shattering into a rain of purple crystal.
Sephiroth spits out more blood, which he determines is coming from a large gash in his tongue. He must have bitten down on it while he was being tossed around like a doll by the explosions. His nose is also bleeding; one of the blasts had gone off right in front of his face. "Why haven't you used this before? It seems like it could have been useful."
"You're right, and I apologize. I should have used my magical attack against the dark masters of the arcane we've been fighting."
"Point taken. Still…"
Auron shrugs. "I wouldn't have used it here, except for the fact that it's the only way I can hit a flying enemy without being able to jump after them. Fortuitous that our enemy chose to force my hand, I suppose." He looks at Sephiroth's nose and the bloody sputum the younger man has left on the rocks. "We need to leave before our real enemy returns. If these facsimiles of him gave us this much trouble…"
Sephiroth casts his gaze around for Terra. He spots the girl easily enough – she is crouched behind one of the statues adjacent to the ramp at the far end of the shrine, covering her head with her hands. "Terra!" he calls. "It's all right! You can come out now!"
He watches her stand up, but as she begins moving back toward the two of them, the ground beneath her feet lights up and electricity crawls across her skin. All the muscles in her body tense for a moment, then she slumps to the ground as the light fades.
Both of them immediately dash toward her, but they are brought up short when the ground in front of them begins to glow. They skid to a halt, turn and see that they are now surrounded by the glow, which hems them into a small circle.
"What is this?" Auron growls.
"Think we can jump it?" Sephiroth asks.
"I would not advise it," a familiar voice says.
Sephiroth turns back around to see Mateus floating in front of them, just outside the circle of light. "You people seem to be obsessed with appearing behind us and saying pithy things."
Mateus gives him a small smile. "It is an effective mode of getting one's point across. You cannot deny that."
"You led us here," Auron says. "You knew without the dash we'd fall into the Forest, and from there we'd have nowhere new to go except for this one place you 'happened' to mention in our conversation."
Mateus examines the fingernails of his left hand. "Perhaps. I also may have let knowledge of your eventual presence here slip to Kuja, who is far too eager to prove his worth. I knew he would at least distract the both of you, giving me plenty of time to set up this snare."
"Everyone we've encountered on the side of Chaos has shown that they can move between the worlds without any effort," Sephiroth says. "Why didn't you attack us in the Forest, if you knew we'd end up there?"
"Because that is Kefka's territory, or at least it was until you dropped a tree on him. He was a lunatic and a loose cannon; he might have objected to another one of us being present there as much or more than to the presence of a pawn of Cosmos. You actually did us a favor by killing him. Chaos certainly has an eye for effective servants, but in Kefka's case I think he chose rather too well."
"Enough," Auron says. "What do you want? It's clear you went to no small amount of effort to ensure we'd end up here. I'm sure you could have killed us by now, but you've instead trapped us. We have something you want, and it's not something that you can merely take."
Mateus cocks his head. "You are a perceptive one. Yes, as a matter of fact there is something I want from you. I chose this particular location for our conversation because it is far from the eyes and ears of my fellows – far too close to Order's Sanctum for most of them. Ultimecia was the only one of us who was confident that proximity to Cosmos would not spell her undoing, and we all know how that went for her."
"Get to the point," Sephiroth says.
"Fair enough." Mateus begins to float back and forth, pacing without actually moving his legs. "It is Chaos's intent to destroy Cosmos and plunge the universe into a primordial state of existence incompatible with life, or at least intelligent life. This same battle has been fought many times before, but it has always ended in a stalemate because when it comes down to it Cosmos and Chaos are equally matched. So they chose proxies to fight in their stead – pawns, warriors, heroes, whatever you want to call us. Our struggles, and how we fare, directly feed the power of our respective leaders. Past conflicts have not swayed the balance of power far enough to either side to make a substantial difference, but each time, both Cosmos and Chaos summon more powerful warriors and amass greater armies. They are getting better at this new version of the game, and eventually it will spell the doom of reality."
"More sacrifices," Auron says, his lip twisting. "Us on the altar of Chaos if we fail, and our enemies on the altar of Cosmos when we defeat them."
"Precisely. Now, Cosmos does not want to extinguish all life as Chaos does, but it is her very nature to wish to control it. Indeed, that is what she is. So we are faced with creation being spent in the service of these gods, utter annihilation, or complete subjugation. None of these outcomes are appealing to me."
"I can understand why."
"So what do you plan to do?" Sephiroth asks.
"Simple," Mateus replies. "Make Cosmos and Chaos invest themselves personally in the fight. If they invest enough of their power in their warriors, those same warriors can then turn on them and bring an end to this destructive conflict. Cosmos and Chaos are the incarnations of their respective concepts; by destroying them, we are merely removing causality from the hands of the forces it should manipulate, thereby restoring the natural balance of existence."
"Sounds like a noble goal. It doesn't strike me as something you'd do," Sephiroth says.
Mateus shrugs. "You know very little about me, boy. But to make things perfectly clear, I want to do this because I do not wish to die or be ruled over. You understand?"
"I understand perfectly," someone new says to Mateus.
The golden-armored mage whirls to find himself face-to-face with Gabranth.
"See?" Sephiroth asks. "It's irritating the way you just pop out of nowhere."
Gabranth ignores him. "I knew it was an ill choice to place any trust in you, Mateus," he says. "You have made an enemy of me, and by extension, of Chaos."
Before Mateus can say anything, Kuja appears in a flash of light. He hovers above all of them, orbs of light whirling around him in a frenzy. "I knew it! None of you respect me enough to let me deal with these interlopers in my own fashion!"
"Chaos's forces turn on one another," Auron murmurs. "I must confess I'm not terribly surprised."
"Stay out of this, Kuja," Mateus says. "You've served your purpose."
"You used me!"
"Can you blame me when you're so very easy to manipulate?"
"Ignore me at your own peril," Gabranth warns Mateus, his hands resting on his swords. "Acknowledge the futility of your situation, and I may yet accept your surrender."
"On three," Sephiroth murmurs to Auron, "we make a break for it."
Before he can start counting, however, a shrill cry pierces the air, and both of them look past Mateus and Gabranth just in time to see Terra scrambling backward along the stone ground, trying to get away from a squad of more of the crystalline creatures. These are a dark gold and have Gabranth's features.
The shriek is all the distraction anyone needs. Sephiroth and Auron leap out of the circle of light, Mateus hurls a bolt of energy at Gabranth, Kuja charges toward Mateus, his orbs whirling around him, Gabranth rips his swords from their sheaths with a roar, and the battle is joined.