Reawakening: A Prologue
The sky was on fire, a veil colored like a terrible wound stretched across the world. Beneath it, Terra found herself floating far above the ground. By the looks of her hands, she was her human self, no trace of the fur or the claws of her long-lost Esper form that used to take her into the air.
Flying still worked the way it always had for her though, and so she set out in no particular direction. The reason for the night sky's hue soon became apparent: The whole world had been set ablaze. There were forest fires, burning fields and villages, and even the mountains glimmered orange in the dark with lava oozing from their tips and their vegetation on fire. She also found the sea boiling as she flew closer to inspect it.
It didn't take her long to make out the particular shape of the Serpent Trench below her. She followed it to its eastern end, warm winds blowing into her face, until Mobliz became visible. The town, now populated once more by more than just her family, was on fire too. Fists clenched, she sped towards it.
Of course, she found him standing in front of the house. No wings this time, but one of the flamboyant outfits he had worn as a general gave him away easily. He spun around to her as she sat down.
"There you are!" Kefka laughed his terrible laugh. "We've been waiting for you."
"Go away, I'm not afraid of you anymore."
That wasn't the whole truth. Even now, years after his death, Kefka still haunted most of her nightmares, making her jerk awake with his laughter still ringing in her ears, or his smirking grimace fading away before her eyes. That made occasions like this, when she was aware she was dreaming, much more gratifying. The comfortable knowledge that they had defeated him— that he was gone, dead and destroyed—dispelled any power he still held over her. At least that's what she told herself.
"Not enough?" He tilted his head. "How's this?"
In the blink of an eye, he was suddenly covered in blood, surrounded by a pile of mutilated bodies. Katarin, Duane, the children...
Terra knew it was just a terrible dream, but the image seemed too real, too unsettling. It made her stomach turn. The urge to simply avert her eyes was strong, but she would not give him this victory. Defiantly, she returned his mad stare, though she wished she'd just wake up already.
"I hate you!"
"Yes!" His proud snicker made her feel like she had just complimented him.
"I said, go away!"
"Do something about it then."
He raised an arm, something was dangling in his hand: Little Rosie's head.
Despite herself, something in Terra snapped.
Her hand shot up, as reflexes long dormant took over. A flame, large and bright, flared out in front of her palm and engulfed Kefka. He screamed as it consumed him. And then he laughed.
"Yes!"
Terra threw more fire at him, but he just continued laughing.
"Yes, more. Burn me, Terra!"
Letting go of any remaining inhibitions, hoping to be finally rid of him, she descended into a mad frenzy, throwing more and more flames at him, each one more intense than the one before. Kefka, the bodies, the house behind him, everything was consumed by the growing inferno. He was barely more than a charred corpse still standing upright now, yet he wouldn't stop laughing. She was getting exhausted, the heat became almost unbearable as the world around her descended into nothing but flames. Soon she couldn't breathe anymore.
"Burn it all!"
"Mama!"
The terrified shriek finally woke her up. Surrounded by heat and angry light, Terra found herself desperately coughing for air.
"Mama, fire!"
Her bedroom was on fire, flames raging all around her, already up to the ceiling. Beyond the flames, she spotted Rosie standing in the doorway. She threw her blanket off, but the smoke filling the room made her eyes water. With her head spinning from the lack of air she stumbled and lost all sense of direction.
Suddenly Duane burst through the flames. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her from the room. Out in the hallway, he patted out the burning hem of her nightshift, while she was still trying to make sense of it all.
"Are you okay?" he asked over Rosie's crying.
"I-" she began, but barely got any words out through her coughing. "I must have forgotten a candle..."
"Get her out of here," he said, pushing Rosie into her arms. "I'll get the others."
In the end, they made it all out okay. Both she and Duane had gotten a few burns, but he was already back at the house, working with the older boys and helpful neighbors who had quickly arrived to put out the fire. The children sat with her and Katarin, as Terra coughed the last of the smoke from her lungs. They were all so very brave, watching on with only a few silent tears. Terra was proud of them but also hated that it was probably because they had already lived through worse in the Cataclysm.
It seemed that they were able to save the house. Thank fortune, for the mobile water pump—another design by Edgar—they'd gotten after the barn fire last year, and also for the tight-knit community Mobliz had been—and still was—growing into.
Hard as she tried, Terra could not remember lighting a candle. Not this evening or in any of the weeks before it. Her desk had a gaslight.
When she first noticed him lingering nearby, she thought him an obnoxious neighbor, gazing at the spectacle instead of helping put out the fire. Terra was about to mouth off to him when she noticed the disheveled imperial uniform. Without the makeup and the garish colors, she hardly recognized him, but the gleeful delight in his eyes gave him away.
"Did you really believe you could just unmake the power of the gods?"
Kefka grinned at her as Terra felt all color drain from her face. This was not a nightmare she could wake up from.
x - x - x
Strago was dead.
In the end, it hadn't come as a surprise. Her grandfather had lived a long life, most of it in good health, but after a nasty fall in early winter, his strength had faded fast over a couple of months, until one morning when his eyes hadn't opened anymore. The whole village mourned him with her, everyone voicing their support. She had cried less than expected but missed him dearly. Well, she honestly had and at least assumed she would do so again at some point.
Right now though, Relm was seething.
Far from unexpected, Strago had left her the house and everything in it, including a pile of gold pieces far bigger than she would have ever anticipated from all the times he annoyed her with admonitions about being frugal with their resources. That wasn't what had her clenching her teeth. She had also found a pair of letters written to her. The first one was a sentimental farewell, a declaration of love and pride he must have drafted for this occasion in the wake of Kefka's fall shortly after their victorious return to Thamasa. It had her bawling her eyes out for an hour, finally coaxing out all the tears that had failed to appear at his funeral.
It had done nothing to soften the blow of the second one: A more recent letter, less than a year old.
The man you know as Shadow is your father, it said.
Oh, it held more than that damned sentence. Some lame excuses about wanting to take that truth to the grave because he thought—as had she—Shadow had perished in the collapse of Kefka's tower when he hadn't returned to the Falcon with the rest of them. But then Clyde—which was apparently Shadow's stupid real name—had shown his face in Thamasa for some reason and what the fuck?
"You knew about this too, didn't you, traitor?" she snapped at Interceptor. The elderly dog just whined and wagged his tail at her. Quickly, she knelt to ruffle his coat. "Oh, I know you would've told me if you could, Puppy."
Though she couldn't be mad at Interceptor, even his companionship did little to quell her rage. After throwing Strago's books and other possessions all over the place and alternating between crumbling and rereading that bloody letter had lost its luster, she stormed out of the house, carrying her equipment with her.
She sat up on top of the cliffs to the north, looking out at the ocean and Ebot's Rock in the distance. A spot she often sought out, capturing the view on a painting. It always looked different with the passing clouds and the ever-changing sea, the light not only depending on the time of the day but also the weather. Today, the ocean was in a roil as deep, dark storm clouds drifted in her direction.
Standing in the rain, throwing angry and futile strokes at the canvas while her latest creation melted away right in front of her was exactly the kind of dramatic gesture her mood called for.
Except the storm brought no rain, only wind, and did nothing to calm her down. Nor did working on the painting. Were it not for her iron rule to never destroy one of her artworks, she would've torn it to pieces an hour ago.
Her skin was crawling with a tingling sensation that only riled her up further as she tried to ignore it. And the more furious she grew, the worse it got. Apparently, the whole world was against her at this point.
Stupid letter.
Letters.
Edgar had sent word, too. It had arrived the day before, conveying his condolences and telling Relm of his plans to have Setzer pick up as many of their friends as possible and come to Thamasa for a memorial service for Strago, because Grandpa had of course long been buried by the time her own letters had arrived anywhere. It also said he wanted to talk to her about her future, assuring her that she would be well taken care of and could come to live with any one of them.
At first, she had been glad to hear from him, but today Relm felt nothing but condescension when thinking about his offer. She could already picture them standing around her.
"Why don't you go live with Terra and the orphans? You know, because you're just a kid too?"
Like she couldn't take care of herself or hadn't already done most of the work around the house those past few years. Where were they when the old man had grown too weak to clean himself properly?
How dare they think that of her? How dare her father not only be alive but also be that weird masked man who had stood right beside her? How dare Grandpa just die like that?
Lighting flashed up as Relm screamed her frustrations into the wind until her throat hurt, soon followed by the rumbling roar of the skies.
They were probably already on their way. They would not find her here anymore.
They could all go fuck themselves.
More thunder, loud and angry as herself, directly above her agreed with her decision.
x - x - x
The whole campaign had been a disaster. Celes and the platoon of Figaro's Foreign Legion placed under her command had been tasked to rout the bandits who were outright besieging the trade route from Figaro to Narshe, hampering the restoration of the struggling mining community so much that its reconstruction was at risk of being abandoned.
For weeks, they had chased the bandits and their leader, a cunning woman only known as Coldeyes, through the mountains. Celes had been losing soldiers to traps, ambushes, audacious raids, and eventually desertion. Even nature itself seemed to be against them with the weather constantly getting worse over the past week. When an uncharacteristically late snowfall had set in, Celes had decided to divert their attention from chasing through enemy territory to guarding the roads. Except they never made it out of the mountains. An avalanche had scattered what had remained of her platoon, only for her and the handful of soldiers still at her side to get surrounded by the bandits.
That's how she found herself dueling Coldeyes in the middle of what might soon be a full-blown snowstorm.
Celes' opponent seemed twice her size, swinging a massive double-headed battle axe of all things. Celes was faster, but not so much that she could just dance around the other woman, who wielded her weapon like it weighed almost nothing, and the snow-covered ground made movement tricky. A few of those heavy swings had gotten far too close already. To make it all worse, Coldeyes was covered in layers of fur and wore a piece of armor a hundred years out of date that was frustratingly effective against the strikes of Celes' saber.
"You disappoint me, General," Coldeyes laughed, when they pulled apart for a moment, her many blonde braids dancing around her face in the wind. At least she was breathing heavily too. "They told me you are one of the heroes who toppled the mad god."
Celes had no idea who they were, nor did she care. At this point, she simply wanted to get out of these mountains and be done with the whole lousy affair. This woman stood between her and Locke's warm embrace. At least this duel was a chance to not return with entirely empty hands.
She unclasped her cape and shed it, together with a few other layers of her clothing. The cold got to her a lot more these days than when she'd still been a Magitek knight, but no matter how much she wore, a single hit of that axe would spell doom for her, so she decided to be as unencumbered as possible.
"Are you trying to seduce me, General?"
I'm trying to kill you. Never having cared for mocking words during a fight, Celes silently raised her saber, challenging Coldeyes to another round with an icy stare.
"You are such a bore," said Coldeyes, lifting her weapon again.
They stared at each other for a few heartbeats, then dashed at each other, beginning another dance of exchanged blows and feints and dodges. Then finally Coldeyes misjudged Celes' new speed and was left wide open after a swing of her axe that Celes only narrowly avoided. She struck at Coldeyes' face, but the woman twisted her head away at the last moment so that Celes only nicked her brow. Celes had to drop to the ground to evade the next axe strike, but from there she trapped one of Coldeyes' knees between her legs—a maneuver Sabin had shown her long ago—and brought her off balance. With a surprised cry, Coldeyes finally went down.
Celes immediately rolled away and got back on her feet in one move. Weapon raised, she moved in for the decisive blow. Coldeyes raised her hand, a desperate gesture Celes had seen many times in moments like this. But mercy had no place here. Celes was about to bring her saber down when the air in front of Coldeyes' hand filled with thick fog that solidified into a trio of floating shards of ice.
She had barely time to register how wrong that picture in front of her was when shards flew at her. One grazed her cheek, the others embedded themselves in her shoulder and her chest.
Celes staggered a step backward. The saber fell from her hand; she followed it into the snow right after. Dimly aware of the shouts from her soldiers and the hooting of the bandits, she stared up at the grey sky as she tried to make sense of what she had just witnessed. There was only one answer: Magic.
Impossible.
Coldeyes appeared above her, blood on her face, but gleeful triumph shining in the icy blue of her eyes.
"You lose, General," she said and brought the pommel of her axe directly down at Celes' face.
Author's Notes:
Many thanks to icicleradish for beta reading.
I know, it says "Prologue", but I'm sorry to say, this is pretty much all I have for this idea right now. It's of course just the beginning of something grander, but when or if I'll get to the rest of it, I don't know.
When I replayed FF6 this summer and got bitten by its writing bug, I told myself I would only do short oneshots for it, not another post-canon epic (because I'm working on a FF7 longfic right now that I want to get finished in a reasonable timeframe). But then one day I found myself standing in the kitchen and asked myself the hypothetical but foolish question "But what if I did write an FF6 longfic, what kind of story would it be?"
An hour of daydreaming later, I had this vague idea with Terra, Celes and Relm in the middle of it. It grew and festered for a few weeks until I had these three scenes stuck in my head and they needed to come out. And here we are. I'm sorry for the mean cliffhangers.
Feel free to use this as a jump-off point for something of your own, if it inspires you. Or if you want to pick my brain, where I think this might go, please do!
A few notes on the contents:
One of the earliest FF6 fics I read had Relm as a surly, cursing teenager. She has lived in my head rent-free until this day. So of course, I had to use this characterization in some way
For no reason whatsoever, Coldeyes speaks with a French accent in my head. I don't even know if that would fit a place in the FF6 world. Jidoor perhaps?
Thank you for reading!