Final Fantasy 8: Shattered

Chapter 8

"I guess this is it..." Squall said to himself. He turned the crank on the hatch of the small sub and broke the suction that had kept the water out. He had entered into some kind of antechamber deep under the surface of the ocean. Some how the pressure was keeping the water out and the air was breathable. He had gone so deep that he emerged from the sub in total darkness. The only light was coming from inside the sub itself.

As he cleared the sub, he made his way down the side step ladder on the side of the small ship and jumped the last few feet to land bluntly on the stone dock. The sound of his boots hitting the stone echoed throughout the cavernous room. He had no way to see where he was going but he slowly stumbled forward in the dark. He had hoped that there was some kind of light somewhere in this place that his eyes would gradually adjust to, but he didn't seem to be in such luck.

Squall stood there silently for a moment thinking if he should go back to the sub and find a light, maybe some flares...and then he remembered that when he left the sub he had closed the hatch and couldn't see any light from it either. If he kept walking forward he would eventually hit a wall, and if he followed the wall, then he would eventually find a door, and that would lead him somewhere.

Before he started walking, he heard something over his shoulder...almost like a faint whispering, he turned his head, as if he could see anything if he found the source, but he didn't hear it anymore and assumed it was just the sound of the water hitting the dock.

"Hello?" he yelled loudly into the darkness. His echo replied to him over and over as it bounced around in the darkness. Wherever he was...this place was huge.

"Is anyone here!" he yelled again, but this time...there was no echo. He felt a small gust of cool air go by his left side and a chill ran up his spine. All his instincts were telling him to leave, but he knew that he needed to stay. He hoped that the answers he sought were here.

Squall continued walking forward in the dark for another few seconds before he heard his own echo from earlier speaking back at him "Hello? Hello? Hello?" it called back to him. He swallowed hard and stopped dead in his tracks. He started to think this through some more. He was in a huge chamber, all alone, in the dark, no weapon, no sense of direction, and something was here. Something that surely meant to frighten him. He would never have admitted it to anyone, but he was scared.

His mind focused suddenly and he remembered why he was here. It was his mission and his alone. The fear instantly fell around his feet and he felt brave enough to take on a guardian force bare handed. "Let's just hope it doesn't come down to that" he said quietly to himself, and then turned his head upwards and yelled out "SHOW YOURSELF!" in the distance he heard what sounded like footsteps running away, but far off in the distance. Light footsteps, like a woman wearing heels. Instantly he ran after it full speed. If he could keep that sound in front of him, and if there was nothing waist high in his way, he should be able to run in the dark and not break his neck tripping over anything. He ran what seemed like seconds turned into days, but the sound of his own boots drowned out the sound of the distant footsteps and he stopped running. "There's something familiar to all this..." he said to himself. He suddenly remembered when he had buried his gunblade into the godlike abomination of Ultimecia, and he was seperated from his friends. He was in total darkness just like this. Except that felt more like a dream world...this felt real. He started walking again but there was no echo to his footsteps. He sounded like he was walking in a small room, about to hit the wall at any given moment. He put his hands far out in front of him and walked slowly, but there was nothing. He wished now that he had gone back to the sub and found that light. At least then it was only a few yards away...now he could never find his way back in this darkness.

He looked down towards his feet for a moment, and then looked back in front of him to see a glimmer far off in the distance. It looked like nothing more than a spark but it was there. then it suddenly got larger, but just barely. Then he realized that it didn't get larger but instead another light appeared in front of that one. Followed by another, and then another. Something was approaching him, he turned around and saw another light heading for him as well. The two multiplying light sources moved faster and faster until they were on top of him and he suddenly realized that they were torches, and he was standing in a long hallway that stretched out forever in both directions. He reached up on the stone wall and took one of the torches and started to walk down the brightly lit hallway. If he was going to end up in the dark again, this time he would be prepared.

Squall started running down the hallway at full speed hoping to reach the end but it just seemed to keep going on and on. He was being toyed with and he was tired of it. "I don't know where you are, but SHOW YOURSELF! I'm tired of these games!"

Again, he heard echoes come down the hallway, "Hello? Hello? Hello?" in his own voice.

He wasn't shaken this time. His eyes narrowed and in a voice that had enough determination, he said "NOW!" At first there was no answer, but then he heard faint singing. He didn't recognize the language, but it was entrancing. It had purpose. It almost sounded like Cathedral music. The harmonics were incredible in the hallway. Squall started walking towards the music and the hallway took a bend. "Finally" he thought to himself. When he came around the corner he was standing in a royal chamber that looked as though it had been neglected for thousands of years. The carpet leading from the hallway was red, but stained and dirty with age. The columns holding the magnificent chamber up were a deep azure blue swirled with white, and still polished. Giant crystals generated or focused light down into the room from the center of the ceiling like a giant chandileer. Tapestries were hung on the walls, but they were so badly ravaged by time that no images could be made out. In the center of the room sat a throne covered in crimson velvet with inlaid gold along the edges of the wood and large lion heads adorned the ends of the arm rests. In the chair sat a small girl, terribly too tiny to fit in the chair properly. Squall walked across the giant room and stopped in front of the chair and waited to be noticed by the child. She was nonchelantly combing the hair of a doll that she lovingly held in her arms.

She didn't seem to notice him in front of her, but continued to sing her song to her doll. "Ieyui Nobomenu Renmiri Yojuyogo Hasatekanae Kutamae..." She finally stopped singing and looked up from her doll.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" Squall asked.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" The small child mimed his words less than a split second behind him so she sounded like a mocking echo. "Hello Squall."

Squall gasped slightly when the porcelain looking child called his name. Her accent was heavy and regal, and her dress looked like she was royalty, but what was she doing down here all alone?

"Who are you?" he said again, hoping to get an actual answer this time.

The small child giggled as if she didn't have a care in the world and went back to combing the hair of her doll. She began singing her song again, but Squall interrupted..."I don't have time for any more of these games. Is there anyone else here that I can talk to?"

"There's you, and there's me. There's no one else...You're not supposed to be down here. You know that, don't you?"

"I got the impression from your little funhouse."

"It was merely a test to see what kind of man you had become...this time around."

"What? Never mind. I need to know something."

"You never change...you always ask the same question..."

"Then what am I going to ask you?"

"You want to know why I am here, and what this place is. You want to know where the Guardian Forces come from. You want to know what lies before you. You want to know why all this is happening to you, and you want to know how to stop it."

Squall looked a little irritated. "...Well?"

The child looked disappointed, but answered, "Straight to the point. Very well...I am the Ancient. Hmm...that's funny...I always expect you to remember every time I tell you, but it always surprises me when you don't...Not that you would...perhaps it's one of my own shortcomings. I am the guardian of this palace; The Temple of the Ancients. We were once a prosperous race that visited different worlds, and different realities as explorers, but a civil war broke out among our people...so many years ago that I can't recall what it was about. Many factions decided to travel to these different earths and start over. They wished to put behind them the pettiness that had nearly consumed us before."

He stood there watching the small child recount the story of what must have been a devastating moment in her races history, and noticed that she seemed upset to speak of this, but hid nearly all emotion of it.

"Where do the Guardian Forces come from?" he asked, trying to stay on topic.

She looked up at him with her icy blue eyes and began again. "Over a thousand years ago, the Sorceress Adel threatened to destroy this universe. She became obsessed with power and became so threatened by the power she couldn't control that she sought to destroy it. This, in turn, made her blood rage more powerful and she began destroying everything she could. The Ancients saw her for what she was and knew that we had to do something or we would lose our adopted home as well as that of humanity. We had secluded ourselves from humanity from the time we first arrived here on Earth, and hoped to live out our lives in peace, but the time came for us to reveal ourselves in order to stop her.

"So the Ancients are the Guardian Forces?" Squall cocked an eyebrow as he took a guess.

"No. We made the Guardian Forces. When the time came to face the Sorceress, we offered salvation, but some would have to give up their humanity in order to take it. We, too, loved this world so much that we made a sacrifice of our own. It was a beautiful union of our two races. We would enter an eternal sleep with those few who gave their lives for this world, and we would dream. Our dreams would become reality, and those who gave their lives would be reborn as the Guardians of Earth. Some lived on as a dream, some lived as nightmares, but they all fought for the salvation of this planet. Their visage became a reflection of their hearts and they were forever trapped this way as long as we slept."

"Why couldn't you wake up?" Squall asked, genuinely interested in the story now.

"To wake up would mean we would die. We had used all of our energies to enter into the sleep and we simply couldn't wake up from it. We were in a beautiful coma, and our dreams were our life support."

"What about the humans that gave their lives? Couldn't they wake up?"

"When the Guardians began to sleep, they were preserved in precious stones that reflected their hearts, and preserved their souls. Their bodies became nothing more than ornaments of the gems, To wake from their dreams...they would have nothing to awaken to. Such was their destiny, and their curse.

"Is...'he' a Guardian Force?"

"He is a sick abomination. A horrible mistake, that was never corrected...he is not human."

"What is he?"

"His name was Alistaire. He decieved us all and claimed that he wanted to give his life to save the earth, but when we dreamed of him, he did not sleep. He could not be contained. He was a demon that walked the earth in the form of a man, and used his power to destroy rather than to protect." The child looked scared at the thought of the demon.

"What happened?" Squall asked.

"We knew that he must be stopped, so we attempted to imprison him. Our attempts failed, and he came after us. Our Guardians couldn't hold him back, and he entered into these chambers and slaughtered us one by one. When their spirits left their bodies, he consumed them, rather than allowing them to pass on to the next life. He no longer had need of the Ancients. He had become something far more powerful than a common Guardian... he had become a destroyer. The remaining Ancients used their powers to send him into deep space, but he found other worlds and destroyed them, growing in strength each time he did so. He finally came back to earth and killed the remaining ancients, save one.

"You." Squall answered.

"He couldn't be destroyed, he couldn't be cast away, but he was eventually imprisoned into a chunk of steel. The prison formed into the reflection of it's heart and took on the image of a great beast striving to break free."

"So...he can't be destroyed then..." Squall sat on the floor and looked down at his knees as he attempted to figure something out.

"We don't know h...I...don't know how. I'm sorry...it has been so long, and yet I always tend to forget that I am alone."

"I'm...sorry." Squall kept his head down as his eyes began to tear up.

"...what?" The child dropped her doll and looked at Squall with wide-eyes, almost as if she were in shock. There was a tremble in her voice which was the first real show of emotion the child had displayed since Squall had arrived here.

"I said...I'm sorry." he repeated to her.

She stared at him with tears streaming down her face, still doe-eyed and in shock. She tried to form words, but couldn't get the sounds out. Squall looked up at her to see the emotion-filled expression painted on her face and his heart nearly skipped a beat. He felt like he had done something wrong and didn't know what to do. He knew that this wasn't a child, and that she could probably destroy him with a thought, but something was...wrong. "...What? What's wrong?"

"Y..." she tried to form words again, and forced herself through it. "Y...you...you've...never..." He watched her try to articulate her words repeatedly and didn't understand what was stopping her. Just a moment ago she was speaking more eloquently than even Quistis, and now she was a quivering mess.

"Is something wrong?" he asked her; his heart still beating too fast.

"You've never...said that before. 'I'm sorry.' You've never said it before...never."

He knew that he had said those words before...what was she talking about?

"This is a...new page, Squall. This...has never happened before."

"What do you mean?" he asked her, completely clueless as to what she was referring to at this point.

"I have one more story for you.