sinnatious

Title: Spurious Serpent

Summary: Sequel to Fallacious Deity. With both Chaos and Cosmos dead, the surviving warriors try to find a way home.

Author's Note: This chapter is a bit short, the breaks just didn't want to fall in the right places.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

Carefully, Onion Knight scanned the beach, searching for the next miniscule clue that might point him to Terra.

Guilt lurked in the back of his thoughts – he’d left Tidus and Cloud sleeping, without a watch, but there hadn’t been any manikins near and they were both tough, he was sure they would be fine. He just hoped they didn’t take it personally, or abandon their mission. They just – they wouldn’t understand. He had a responsibility to Terra, and she was so gentle-hearted, he needed to show her that he was fine, and that he didn’t blame her, that he wasn’t scared. Not of her. Not ever.

A dull headache still lurked in the back of his skull, which he resolutely ignored – it was more exhaustion than any lingering damage from his injuries. His cure magic tended to trade hurts for fatigue, but he couldn’t risk resting long, in case Terra widened the gap between them while he dallied.

A slight disturbance in the sand to the east. He turned that way, purposefully striding forward.

It had been… well, he had no sure way to tell time in this world, but it had been close to two days, at a guess. But this world was so empty of life, so unchanging in its patterns, that it made tracking easy. Even if the person you were tracking could fly. So long as Terra had touched down anywhere, or even skimmed above the ground for a period, it was enough to get a heading. The odd half-formed footprint, or wash of disturbed sand.

There were other clues, too. Scorch marks on boulders. Slowly melting frost on the edges of a pond. The aftermath of a violent tornado in a world where the weather was mostly static. They were getting fresher, too. He picked up his pace. She couldn’t be far away.

There ahead, on the beach, stood a dazzling blue gateway. Most of the gateways were blue now, of course, but he felt especially drawn to this one. The sigils were more complex, perhaps? The colour looked deeper, somehow, or maybe it was just the reflection of the sea playing tricks on his eyes.

He looked to the sand before it. Unmistakeable footsteps. Terra.

With scarcely a thought for the exhaustion dragging at his limbs, he followed them inside.

…………..

The gateway was silent but for the dull distant rumble of lava flows and the tread of Squall’s boots on earth.

To begin with the fractured fragments of worlds had been passingly familiar – ones he’d seen in other gateways, or from his own world, or maybe even forgotten memories of past cycles. This area, though, this fragment – this was new. A landscape dotted with volcanoes, with swords the size of buildings buried like the gravestones of titans.

The manikins were thin on this ground in this gateway – thin on the ground everywhere, but gateways usually had more, not less. Unless something had cleared them out beforehand.

He didn’t relish meeting who – or what – might be responsible. But the emptiness, the oppressive silence – it had started to get to him, calling in flashbacks of a cracked, endless desert, of a floating island in a void, of nothingness. Memories that made no sense without context, but chilled him to the bone anyway.

He drew his gunblade, and felt silly for it, but kept it out regardless. Battle readiness, he told himself, and tried to shake the sensation that he was a child creeping about in fear of ghosts.

Then he saw the throne.

It was enormous, regal and ancient, seeming to come from the ground itself. Aside from the shallow dais it rested upon, there was nothing else, no reason for it to exist in the landscape. No structure, no path beyond the faint wear in the dirt leading up to it.

It was a throne that presided over nothing.

The hair prickled along the back of his neck. A guttural growl. The hiss of a lava flow.

Squall spun, and barely raised his gunblade in time to stop the claws slashing at his throat.

It was gone again, impossibly fast for its size, his eyes barely able to catch the black and red demon, its body shining like it was made of magma. He leapt back, twisting midair, gasping for breath as razor sharp claws ripped across his leg.

It was all teeth and claws and wings and magic, hot breath and glowing eyes and power and speed that felt tangible in the air, a wild electric current of rage and hunger and defiance.

“Chaos,” Squall cursed.

…………..

“Terra? Terra!” Onion Knight called. His voice fell strangely flat in the gateway. Even though they were in the Melmond region, the fragments of this gateway reminded him of the Sanctuary. White sand and still waters and enormous sweeping remains of marble architecture.

There had been no manikins to speak of – it made his progress quick, but it was more than a little eerie. Gateways were about the only place manikins were left.

Finally, up ahead he caught a flash of red. “Terra!” he called, running towards her, giddy with relief.

Terra whirled, and it seemed like the feeling wasn’t mutual. “Don’t!” she yelped, wringing her hands and backing away. “Stay away! It’s not- I’m not safe!”

“Terra, I’m fine! See?” Onion Knight crept closer, like he was approaching a skittish hound. He spread his hands. “You just… you needed to let off some steam, right? Like a pot boiling over. But look at yourself, you’re back to normal now. Nothing to worry about, right?” Based on what Cloud had mentioned of her esper form, this was… a little concerning, actually. Was it really as simple as just letting off some spells?

She stared at her hands, clenching them into fists. “I am now, but if I were to lose control again… I’m a monster. Destruction incarnate…”

“I can take it,” he promised, then amended. “We can take it. You don’t have to deal with it alone.” He crossed his arms. “I mean, look at us. You think you’re the only monster? Cloud took on Chaos single-handedly – do you think he’s a monster?”

“No!” she protested, then shrank back. “Aren’t you mad? I- I hurt you-”

“I was fine,” he lied. His head still felt clouded and buzzy, but he was putting that more down to exhaustion than anything else at this point. “Which you would have known if you didn’t take off straight away.” But that sounded like blame, so he backtracked. “I came after you as fast as I could, to show you. I didn’t want you to worry.” He’d been right to come. Sure, Terra would have been fine for a few more days, but she would have spent that time suffering. “Come on, Terra. We have to stick together, right? We can’t all just keep running off on our own, or nothing will get done!” Hypocrite, a vaguely familiar voice taunted him in the back of his head. I’m fixing that, he shot right back.

“Do you think they’ll even want me back?” Terra wondered, sinking to her knees in the soft white sand.

“Of course! Think about it, we all have the same goal right? To go home, back to our own worlds? This is just a bit of a detour.”

“I’ve never really given much thought to what the future holds,” she confessed. “It’s… I don’t understand myself. I want to go home but, without my memories – home is a bit scary right now. I guess I’m worried… since I was originally summoned by Chaos – what if I’m a monster there? Destruction incarnate, just like he said?”

It was a heavy thought. He couldn’t say he hadn’t worried about similar things himself. He caught glimpses of places and people, but were they friends or enemies? Were they even still alive? He didn’t know, he knew nothing for certain. All he had were gut feelings.

“Then you’ll just have to change it, and make a better world,” he said. “Or come to one of our worlds! I haven’t remembered much, but I bet you’d like Sasune. And it sounds like Tidus’s world has some great beaches. I bet out of all six of them, you’d find one you like!”

She smiled at that, finally – a small, tentative little quirk to her lips, but the sight of it was such a relief. “You’re right. And… even if I’m uncertain about what the future holds, or my own powers, I want to help everyone else reach their dreams too.” She nodded, that quiet determination he’d come to admire in her blossoming as though it had never left.

The buzzing his head only seemed to grow stronger though. Onion Knight shook his head a little, trying to clear it. The symptoms reminded him of something, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. He tried to focus on the horizon, maybe it was like motion sickness, the distance would-

He caught just a glimpse. Of golden hair, impossibly long, wild ethereal vines that drifted and pooled in snarls mid-air. Of white satin, billowing, edges torn and fluttering like dying butterflies. Eyes glowing golden with power, porcelain white skin littered with hairline cracks, that same golden light peeking through the fractures.

He knew this feeling. He recognised it.

“Terra!” He snatched her wrist and dragged her away, too rough but too frantic to apologise as she stumbled after him. “We have to get out of here!”

It made sense now, how Terra had been reborn in Cosmos’s side. Why her esper form had fled, however unconsciously, to this radiant blue gateway. How she’d gone from bursting with power back to normal so quickly and easily, how easy it had been to talk her down from her previous panic.

He didn’t stop running, not until they were spilling out of the gateway, gasping for breath, and somehow the air suddenly felt so much clearer.

“That was…” Terra panted, voice thin and thready with shock. “That was Cosmos, wasn’t it? But she looked-”

Onion Knight staggered back to his feet. Now was not the time for rest. “We need to find the others.”

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