Setting: During Duodecim and heavily canon divergent. Certain worldbuilding elements, such as gateways, have been meta'd and greatly altered to death for the sake of plot, and some of the Dissidia lore, in general, has been changed. Certain Duodecim plot elements have also been changed.
Cast: It's an ensemble. A good deal of it consists of the characters that were introduced in Duodecim (Tifa, Laguna, Lightning, etc.).
Average chapter length: 8K to 20K words on average per chapter. The prologue is an exception to this, being shorter because it's a "take a sip and decide if it's your cup of tea before drinking more" kind of thing.
Updates: Since the chapters are super lengthy and require heavy proofreading, the waits in between will be quite long. Expect updates within three weeks or a month.
Beta: It'd be really helpful to have a constructive, educated beta look over these long chapters to check for minor and major screw-ups of all kinds. :)
Warnings: It's M-rated. That means mature themes galore. And lots of swearing. And some disturbing graphic elements. Also, lots of meta. Final Fantasy characters outside of the general Dissidia universe will be relevant. Spoilers run rampant here too. This story is heavy on the angst (of course with lighthearted moments to break up the depressing ones). Additionally, undisclosed pairings develop over time. When the story is complete, I will disclose them in the character tags. Besides all of this, there are other elements in this project that I've decided not to warn readers about in advance, so if you're not okay with that, this might not be for you.
Inspiration credit: To the author, Poisonberries, for being an amazing source of inspiration for this project and my other works. Without their contributions to fanfiction, I doubt I would have done all the fanfiction projects I've worked on.
Special thanks: To a personal friend of mine who offered to beta read this project and my other ones for me whenever she has the time to. Her technical suggestions really helped put this piece on a whole other level. :)
"But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins."
― Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium
Prologue - Only Enough Time to See, Not Dream
When Terra Branford awakens, she doesn't dare open her eyes.
Please, she thinks as if in prayer, delirious, I've already seen so much… too much… too much cruelty...
Around her, the air is suffocatingly arid. The ground beneath her face-up, flat body, unruly and paradoxically cold in contrast. An overhead light from a source she can't make out scrapes her closed eyes.
Grit assaults eyelids that are crusted over with mucus, and despite the resulting pain of irritation there and the ever-growing pain around a shin that feels soaked in something hot, messy, and oozy, she can't bring herself to open her eyes. No. She can't bring herself see the desolate truth that is reality. Not again.
She'd killed so many manikins. They probably had feelings of their own but couldn't express them for some reason, she thinks, and the thought sails the waves of her turbulent mind along with countless others. There were always so many possibilities and unknowns, so many that she could never bring herself to kill them on instinct. Yet, it somehow felt both wrong and right whenever one of her spells struck true against hard, crystalline skin. Wrong, in that she felled another life when she could have preserved it. Right, strangely, in that she felt accomplished something physical on her own will for once. And even then, that wasn't so right at all, when all she did was kill to preserve a lie she no longer believes in.
Until now, she always reminded herself that she was doing it all to protect Vaan and the others, that their lives mattered more than the things she was killing, that she couldn't afford to hesitate and be indecisive, but now it doesn't work, because now she knows that it was just some big lie she made to keep herself in action. Or it at least felt like a lie. Something to keep her doing something, because she always thinks so deeply about these things, never acting when she has to.
They're still living things, manikins… and I know nothing about them...
Even now, it's a maybe-lie she still wants so desperately to believe. Just like all the fairytales some dark-skinned man from a different realm, a different plane of existence, would always tell her when he would lull her to sleep.
New and old pain sears the shin she now realizes is not only broken but weighed down by something stony and heavy. An outsider would see her as a fallen angel; broken down bone by bone, senseless war after senseless war, but yet somehow still emanating with all concepts pure and morally right. The thought's funny to her, even gets her to snort a bit through dried out nostrils, even though she doesn't smile at it, because the irony of what she actually is so cruel, so true, so right. Like everything fairytales aren't, it's brutal and destructive, the truth of it all. But now, unlike moments before, the truth doesn't hurt to see; to believe.
She's no angel. She's a harbinger of chaos, a devil in the guise of a sheep. A weapon of war better off mindless or dead. Better off with clipped wings and no free will. And as she lies here, bruised and crippled and frail, flooded with thoughts that don't feel different from her deadly injuries, Terra Branford regrets her existence.
There was already so much death here, so much suffering, and she'd made too many depressing contributions to count in this world. Unwillingly or not, she'd always riled up the jaws of destruction in her wake.
They'd all be better off… if I was never here...
She opens her eyes.
Above her, ardent sunlight is hogged up by greedy, dull clouds. The tight pressure on her eyes dwindles, and cloudy, violet irises dilate in response. Between the faint ringing in her ears and the soft sound of passing gales, she thinks she hears a voice. A smooth, baritone one, swathed in all things pleasant and precious.
"Of course not, Terra," and then she remembers a man that ruffled her hair, pulling her into an embrace with strong, comforting arms. Even in remembrance, the warmth of his words and the hug is as striking as it was that day. Like sunlight, it persists all day, for all her life, no matter how much ashen clouds try to steal the golden rays from her.
His name, it's now so ready to come off the tip of her water-deprived tongue. So clear and easy to recall and speak so suddenly.
"L-Leo," she croaks through chapped lips. Her voice has the strength of a dandelion caught effortlessly in the grip of a breeze. She feels sturdy and nourished when she utters the name. Safe. Nurtured.
"Bad things happen. Arguments, fights. Sometimes, it's all because of our involvement. That's what happens when we try to promote a cause we believe in, too. There's always gonna be opposition and conflict, Terra. Whether it's from yourself, friends, family, strangers, the living things you fight. It's just in our human DNA."
It's all as transparent and pristine as a crystal to her when she remembers the way he would perch her on his lap and hug her closer to him, whether it was to tell her another story or to comfort her trembling self.
"But no matter what they tell you, what you tell yourself, you have to keep trying. Keep putting yourself out there. If there's still a chance to do what you believe in, you get up and keep trying. Even if you're not sure exactly what dream or cause it is you're standing up for. Do something. Ignite change."
Warm, wet tears, fresh and bitter, seize her unsteady eyes. Leo's voice doesn't feel nurturing or safe to hear anymore. And yet, it still sets something in her free. Something that's been bound in her wreck of a mind for so many years. Doubt constricts it, captures it as though it's a snake, wrapping tight, unforgiving coils around it.
But reality's too much, Leo. Tears roll over tombstone-cold cheeks. Excruciating thoughts tangle with warm memories, freezing them. I… I can't change it… I'm just some monster. I'm not human. I'm too different. No one will understand me. I can't help anyone. I don't deserve to help anyone. Maybe I should just die, so I won't destroy any more lives and hopeful futures that way…
She awaits a response. Something to soothe her, the way his embraces did. Something to give her more hope, the way all those nice little stories did…
But there's nothing. Because that's all she can remember. While the thought alone wracks her with immeasurable hurt, she focuses on what she did manage to recall — his beautiful, crinkled grin, his love, his words. It dulls the ache from before, reassures her that it's not the end of the world.
She shifts her tear-moistened eyesight to see what's crushing her shin, and the pain is riper now that her memories don't distract her as much as they did before. Splattered with radiant blood, a fallen pillar rests atop a mess of rotting sinew and gaping flesh that drools blood. It courses over pale skin in veiny patterns. A lone, long bone protrudes from the wreckage of human-esque biology. Waves of nausea thrash against her insides hard, and she's barely able to hold back the puke that wells up in a parched throat.
Leo's words and her thoughts are the loudest things she still hears, still stuck in her battered head, and they are like the sounds of numerous water drops that descend from gritty stalactites in a cave. Loose and disjointed, there's no rhyme or flow to them. It's all like a running faucet that's broken beyond repair, so all the water keeps flowing, spilling, drowning her. It's impossible to stop it. Along with all the physical pain that continuously blooms on her leg that keeps her on the verge of letting out a shrill scream…
Do something. Do something. Do something.
This is the mad mantra that comes from the overflow, one that pulses with the rhythm of a marching battalion of soldiers, and she's almost shocked by what it makes her do. How it all twists and contradicts what she'd thought about herself before.
It gets her to push herself up from craggy earth, gets her to bite down on a blistered tongue as fresh pain bursts from her rank leg and chokes every tendon and nerve with an unrelenting strangle. Gets her to face the wreckage that looks painfully impossible to remove. There's a nagging voice in her head that tells her she's better off dead, that there's no more value to her struggles or her life. That she needn't burden the lives of those who weren't devils in the guise of a lost, fragile girl. And maybe in the future, it'll be proved right. Maybe.
But, she thinks, bracing feeble nerves, there's also a chance I can prove it wrong. The thought doesn't feel as triumphant to her as it sounds. She almost feels stupid for daring to think it at all. Still, it's enough to feel true, real, and not at all a lie.
Sweat-slicked fingers push against the grooves of the inanimate pillar as she leans forward and blood spills from her split lips and withered tongue. She steels her gut, inhales dusty air. Black magic darkens blue veins to a ripe indigo. Internally, she commands the gales to rise from nothingness.
There's a chance that I… maybe a monster like me can make things better…
She's not sure how she's able to start casting the spell through the mental and physical pain of it all — from how the black magic drains the life from brittle bones to how it dulls vibrant veins. But strangely that thought doesn't matter anymore when she hears the spell let loose. The Aeroga is a deformed anomaly that tries to become a cyclone but contorts and twists instead. In tune with her throbbing, hurting body, it spins in alien shapes that sprout in all the wrong angles. There's no sense of control or domination to command the bellows of the spell, nothing to dull her emotions and aches, so as it all comes out, it forces out a banshee-like screech from swollen lips. Bones pop and crack, but not as badly as her broken shin.
"Stop… Stop." This time, she can't afford to let the faucet overflow her. So with ephemeral grace, she closes once-spread hands to fragile fists, and all that's left of the airstream are meek winds that have only the strength of a mere exhalation. When the pillar lands some feet away from her, the sound is quiet compared to the tempest that is her mind. Still, the fact that she knows that this dangerous power still resides in her breaks the little moment of triumph that slowed her racing heartbeats.
No. Stop worrying, Terra. Just keep acting. Do anything.
Terra tries to conjure up the biggest Cure she can with anorexic, sooty hands, but the spell fizzles into pathetic specks of light, falling from limp fingers. She sees her veins, how they return to a normal blue; feels the pace of her blood slow to a creep as the magic loses its binds on it. No. No. She can't be out of mana, not so soon. Without it, she can't fly or cast and she's got no chance to live… unless she…
No. Don't think like that. I won't use that part of myself ever again. Keep… moving…
Using her elbows, she tries to start moving, but the weight of herself, the agony of her shin, is all too much to take at once. Defeated, she can't sit up any longer, and she falls back into a lying position. When her head impacts the ground, everything goes blurry, unsteady, and now it feels like she's split her skull open, or cracked her head on something. Pain burns her all around, and she's sure that if she were entirely human, she'd be dead from the loss of blood and the trauma.
Still somehow conscious and on the verge of becoming incoherent, Terra decides that if she can't move, she can at least try to look beyond her immediate surroundings despite her draining vision. What she sees when she turns her head to look at one side is like a torn up piece of poetry, stained with black splotches of ink and wrinkled at every edge.
The world she once knew, a lush, vivid canvas of healthy greens, is now painted over with dingy blacks and desolate grays, and it's rumpled and shriveled. Like a fairytale turned reality…
She remembers what happened before she'd succumbed to her coma. She'd fallen in the shallow, pearl-white water at the top of a magnificent spire, a tower straight out of the books Leo would read to her in her younger days.
"Order's Sanctuary," Vaan's voice reminds her, trapped in her head, in the memories she won't get to relive again. "It's basically Cosmos's headquarters. It's where all the non-Chaos dudes hang out." It's nostalgic and saddening all the same when she hears him, and she remembers the softness of his young features. But oddly, wrongly, the feeling's nothing compared to the one that this sweet dream-turned-nightmare she's residing in gives her.
Where there should be paper-white waves of water beneath her, there's only stone-cold, rough, damp marble. Where there should be a throne carved with godly finesse that looks straight out of another world, there's not one. Where she had once seen marvelous, tranquil streaks of gleaming green taking refuge in a calm sky, the streaks are now dull and spread in frenzied, un-calm patterns above her. Once tall columns of marble are now either broken into smithereens of debris or are now lying on the ground, half-broken or cracked or all of the above. Where there should be a goddess ready to answer the prayers of man, there is none.
In a frail whisper, lost and forlorn, she dares to ask the question aloud.
"What… what happened here?"
Unheard and uncared for, the words are quickly replaced by the whistle of a stark wind. And now, with nothing left to do and on the verge of delirium, Terra Branford shuts her eyes.
Life in the Cycles of War
Authored by Cid of the Lufaine
Cycle 012, Day 120
The time to exterminate Onrac is nigh, my son.
Even as I remain concealed in this forsaken Chasm, I can see you in all your almighty, magnificent grace. Your talons have grown to rival those of that dismal Great Dragon's, Shinryu. Your mental fortitude is greater than even mine. Yes, the cycles have conditioned you exceptionally well.
Do you remember all the experiments, the feeling of so many needles plunging through scarred tissue? Your screeches as my wife — your mother — was shot down by those wretched Onrians?
They used you as a weapon of war, trained you to fight as you bled under their fruitless cause. I too am putting to use similar methods to strengthen you, but with superior intent: so that we can make them pay for what they ultimately started in the first place.
It is true that we could've left the cycles in arms at any time we desired to go back home. During the first cycle, the second one, or whenever else. Even now, you could still pry open a portal back home, and we could leave this farce of war, let these puppets live out their senseless lives on a stage devoid of meaning. But then you would be too weak to utterly decimate the Onrians, and then they would likely recapture you and subject you to even viler experiments…
Tear you limb for limb, gouge out your precious eyes, make yet another soulless copy of your mother only to break her and beat her as you are to do nothing but scream in uncontrollable rage…
But fear not, my son. We will return when the time is right. And when it is, you, Chaos, shall tear the nation of Onrac asunder with an iron fist.
They will bleed. They will burn. And we will live the rest of our lives fulfilled.
Cycle 003, Day 124
Though I must remain outside of the conflict, as outside interference from me is forbade by the Great Dragon, I wish I could once again express my gratitude to my son for leaving me a portal to the Rift in my Chasm. Without it, I would be left without the required materials to continue my study on manikins for however long we will be here.
I have produced mere failures so far, none fully human, though some have appeared to express more emotion than others. Some seem to not know how to properly express themselves, while others only mimic what the pawns speak.
The process of making one is quite strange. As I normally have no body with which to physically attain what I require, I possess a dead manikin's body and use it to toil in my labors. They deteriorate quite fast from them — I would reckon I have to use a new one every week or so.
It is quite strange that I cannot possess something that even remotely lives. Perhaps it is because their memories preserve their consciousness and free will, and that is why I cannot strip them of control…
Ah, I have digressed a tad much, have I not? As I explained, I use these deceased creatures to conduct my experiments. I have always had access to a dark cave with a portal, a rather enigmatic location in the entirety of the Rift. But this cave's existence is truly a miracle, filled with limitless resources to do my work.
I have already noted this in a previous cycle's documentation here, but I do find it fascinating that I do not use mere magical ore to make manikins, as those of the Lufaine think I do. I utilize sources far more intriguing. In my world, I combined these sources with an ingredient that was more limited than what I use now. Shinryu shares his mighty power with my son after consuming the memories of the pawns every cycle, and my son shares a fraction of that power with me in the form of a unique liquid substance. Every cycle so far, I get enough to last me a century. I then inject some of this liquid into those intriguing sources, and they would usually take the form of those pawns, the ones enduring constant conflict just beyond my secluded Chasm. As they all turned out eventual failures, I would kill one from every batch to possess for later and throw the rest of them back into the portal, down an inescapable ledge.
When it comes to making manikins, I have learned to accept that making a successful one is a matter of luck. No matter where exactly I inject the substance, they all react with varying results despite all being failures. Some look nothing close to any of the pawns from the conflict, while others are a mix of two or more; others take the shape of fiends beyond this realm...
I started making manikins once more as I did in my old world at the start of the second cycle, using the body of one of Cosmos's dead puppets until I could transition to using these crystalline bodies. Though my endeavors may seem pointless, I cannot help but feel enthused whenever I find myself at work. I might even be able to make a manikin stronger than my son, or one that could benefit my world widely in some way…
I simply cannot help but feel that there will be a point to these endeavors in the future. Like all great scientists, I will continuously fail experiment after experiment until I find the solution.
Cycle 012, Day 393
My son has made a woeful mistake.
He has chosen a warrior that has only now revealed that he can open a portal to the Rift.
Exdeath. You pitiful fool.
Stuck in this Chasm as I am, my only way to know what happens beyond this place is through my son. I can share his immediate vision and can hear what he hears, all whenever I desire to, all thanks to Shinryu's great power. It is almost like being my son, except not being able to control what he does. As I hear one of my son's warriors report to him this grave development, I can only hope that they do not discover the manikins.
It is fine for my son to have the ability to open portals to the Rift. Because he will not unless it is for his own benefit or mine — he could not care less about winning the wars when he has effortlessly triumphed every cycle. He has no desire to open another portal to the Rift at the moment. But Exdeath, oh Exdeath, he will search for some advantage to win without end. And if he finds my subjects…
My experiments have taught me it all. They cannot be controlled, not in such destructive numbers.
Such a development would possibly break the fragile pact we share with the Great Dragon.
Cycle 012, Day 399
No. Everything is going wrong.
My son's warriors thought they could control my flawed specimen. Thought they could cut down Cosmos's warriors without having to put in effort…
Blind fools.
For the first few days, it worked. The manikins submitted to their methods of mind control, my son's warriors started to send packs of them throughout the land to hinder Cosmos's forces, and soon they readied a horde to assault her sanctuary. That's when it all went wrong.
It all happened so fast, this manikin infestation. Soon, there they came, charging for my son, for anyone. A vast horde splitting up in all possible directions, attacking anything in sight. Their own kind, any pawn, anything living in sight. A manikin beheading another manikin here, a manikin joining in with countless others, overwhelming one of my son's warriors.
Right now, I hear my son's screams of rage. I had only recently begun to notice the subtle changes in his body over the course of this cycle. He has grown bigger, more unhinged, more twisted, and he does not remember me or his true mother…
He is feral. As I watch him cut down some manikins, I cannot stop trembling. The more he fights, the stronger he gets. And now he is too strong to guide or control.
Why, oh why had I made so many of those wretched abominations?
Cycle 012, Day 401
Everything lies in ruins.
My son has left the world of Dissidia through a portal he made himself. The portal in my Chasm just like that, now gone. Shinryu has severed our pact, deeming my son powerful enough and observing that like this, new wars cannot wage on. He has nothing left to feed upon…
Though Cosmos and my son pick their desired warriors, it is Shinryu who summons them, Shinryu who controls the state of their lives at every moment in this world. Seeing no further use of them, he has left them all to rot without forewarning. And me as well.
Shinryu's Protection has fallen. Outside interference to Dissidia can now come as it pleases from beyond this realm, now not only having to be born from those who inhabit Dissidia.
The puppets' souls will not naturally go where they must when they die, to be a part of the natural cycle of life and death once more. They will linger here, left unregarded for.
Desire for revenge against all of these things — Onrac, the Great Dragon, even Chaos — resides in me...
Many creatures haunt my Chasm now. They screech, they hunt, they wail. Some speak words such as "l'Cie" and "abomination". Others threaten me.
They are all getting closer.
No. No. No.
When Terra reawakens, there's still no sun in sight. Agony still ensnares her body all around and it's a miracle that she can breathe through her shaky lungs. She's dehydrated, and any minute now, she's sure she'll die. Her tongue is brittle, her midriff anorexic enough that ribs visibly make themselves known through plump flesh and her white leotard. Blood continues to pool around her, painting her clothes and cape with generous amounts of crimson. She simply smiles a heavy, small smile at the thought with swollen, red-cut lips.
Good. I'm nothing but a menace.
She closes her eyes, awaits death's sweet call. Her strength to smile withers and she thinks she can hear the calls of the afterlife. She does her best to ignore that other voice in her head that wants her to keep pushing forward, to remember Leo's words over the sounds of the angels and seraphs that are coming to guide her soul to the afterlife.
Something abruptly cuts through the symphony of bells and flapping wings that dominated her mind. At least, she thinks it's a symphony of those things at all. It's really all a blurry, unintelligible haze that chews on the remnants of her dying mind. The thought of angels being the last thing she would imagine just sat better with her. Another rejection of the real world to protect her yet again.
But the voice sweeps through it all again with simple grace and ease, and it's not nearly as unintelligible. Dull and barely perceivable, like there's too much ear wax stuffing up her ears, but she can still make out the message. A female voice surrounds the words, soft and careful.
"It's alright. You're gonna be alright. You hear me? You'll be alright…"
Even through a gaze that's slowly drowning into inky, blurry darkness, she can make out long threads of hair that frame an unclear, dirty face. The hair that doesn't surround the woman's face flows off to her side, surfing the waves of wind that splash over her and this person.
It's one of Vaan's friends…
The question's already gripping her gut by the time she decides to ask it. "Why… Why are you helping me? Aren't you… on Cosmos's side?"
A brisk silence.
"I guess it's mainly because the alternative just felt so wrong," she eventually replies, and Terra hears the uncorking of a bottle, catches the bitter waft from it as she watches the woman lower it to her chapped lips. "Just leaving you here to die. I just couldn't bring myself to do that."
Her hearing is still coated by endless weight and pressure, her physique is still wracked with inhumane pain, but somehow the warmth of the woman's soothing fingers, skating over knolls of flesh with easy grace, lightens all of the pain and pressure.
"But… I'm your enemy…" Terra croaks, feeling the cold tip of the bottle press against her lips.
"Yeah, according to some gods that brought us here without a care in the world. Besides that… I don't know. You just always seemed so different from the rest of those Chaos guys. Quiet, distant, lonely…"
At this, Terra watches her ruby eyes stare into her own. Effortlessly, they swim through the ocean of her soul, searching the still depths beneath the turbulent waves without any struggle. In trance, she doesn't blink for seconds Terra's lost count of.
"Oh right," she shakes her head, finally blinking, out of the trance. "Sorry about that. And I know this tastes awful, but you need it."
The tip of the bottle passes the border of her lips, and when the acidic liquid floods her tongue, Terra can't take it. She lets out a succession of coarse coughing, spitting out some of the earthy green liquid (mixed with the blood that resided in her mouth), but that's all she can do before she feels sharp fingertips pinch her nostrils closed and before a hand clamps her mouth shut.
"It's gonna be okay," Terra hears her say, and her voice gives her that soothing feeling again now that her hands are doing the opposite. "Swallow, okay?"
Dully, Terra nods. It's not really like she has a choice anyway. With her mouth and nostrils forcibly shut, the liquid has no way to go but down, and the laws of automatic movement of her internal muscles compel her to comply.
She swallows. Swallows hard. She feels the surface of her sweat-drenched throat ripple in tandem with the action and the astringent taste is fouler than the blood that's still nestled in her mouth. The last of it goes down, and finally, Terra's nostrils and mouth are released.
Suddenly it's easier for her to breathe in new air, and it's as if though her lungs aren't going to snap off so easily from doing so. The potion works its benediction, and she feels the warmth spread its wings within her, mending shredded sinew where it can, promoting the production of more blood cells to replace the lost ones. Collapsed sinuses refortify themselves. Split entera rebuilds new tissue out of nothingness. And while some blood still leaks through all kinds of openings, Terra's noticed that the flood of it has reduced itself to trivial trickles of blood.
"That was my last X-Potion," Terra hears her say as her face slowly becomes easier to make out, like a camera focusing on the subject so that it's as clear as it can be. Her vision isn't nearly as murky or dark as it was before anymore. "It should be enough to deal with a lot of internal damage, but this," — she points at the keen leg bone that sits atop a heap of rotting blood, layered in a thin crimson ooze — "is gonna take more than some X-Potion to fix."
Again, Terra can't keep the question to herself. "Why… would you go so far to help me? You… you don't know me…"
"Like I said," she starts, untroubled and calm, grabbing the area below Terra's injury, gaze still set firmly on hers. "I couldn't just leave you alone."
There's another question Terra can't hold back. "Who… are you?"
The reply comes swift and soft, and the woman shoots her a faint smile. "Tifa. Tifa Lockheart. And you're…?"
Terra blinks, looking off to the side, away from Tifa's pretty, dirt-stained face. "My name… My name is Terra."