Spurious Serpent, Chapter 5

[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: Just picked up the new Dissidia NT, I'm hyped to see how all the new lore breaks this ancient sequel. On that note I've taken a few small liberties with the Confessions of a Creator storyline because Dissidia's lore already made my head hurt.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

 

 

Squal dragged himself from the gateway, and fell to his knees with a gasp. The red sigil pulsed ominously behind him, but nothing emerged.

His fingers scraped for purchase on the ground, but his strength had left him, the last of it used to fuel his desperate escape from the gateway. The air stifling hot against already burned skin.

Then suddenly he was blinking his eyes, to the sound of a familiar voice repeating his name with increasing urgency.  “Squall? Squall!”

He’d passed out, but he had no idea for how long. “Cecil?” he croaked, wincing at how his voice cracked on the word.

“Thank the eidolons, I thought you were dead. What did this to you?” The paladin gently raised him into a sitting position.

“I think it was Chaos,” he gasped out, even as Cecil hurriedly uncorked an elixir, shoving the vial in his face, tipping it down his throat. A rivulet of sparkling blue liquid slipped from the edge of his lips, running a thin line down his throat before soaking into his skin, disappearing with a faint glow. The vicious slashes on his back and legs, the burns that seemed to pepper every bit of exposed skin – slowly, they all began to cool and fade as the powerful curative worked its magic.

“Chaos?” Cecil gaped. “But isn’t he-”

“Reborn, maybe,” Squall cleared his throat, relieved that his voice came out smooth and painless. Tentatively, he pushed himself free from the paladin, and while exhaustion still dragged on his limbs, the only thing left of his wounds were bloodstains and torn clothing.  “It was like he’d gone feral. There was no intelligence there, no reasoning.”

Cecil frowned at the gateway with a new wariness. “And you went in there alone?”

He hadn’t known, but truthfully, that wouldn’t have stopped him. He’d gone searching for clues Chaos might have left behind, after all – what better clue than Chaos himself? “Cloud defeated him alone.” Did missing memories make that much difference? 

“I don’t think… I don’t think Cloud expected to win,” Cecil offered tentatively.

Squall stared at the paladin, waiting for him to explain.

“I don’t know for sure, but after going through these isles-” He shivered. “I think I understand now, what they were thinking. That it was better to lose an inevitable fight on their terms than it was to persist in a world they couldn’t accept.”

It wasn’t just Cloud he was talking about, clearly. “Golbez?” Squall asked carefully.

The paladin hugged his knees – it made for a disconcerting image. “I couldn’t accept it. Even after understanding why he refused to join Cosmos, why he forced me to fight him. But I think they were the same, in the end.” He stared into the distance. “Giving it your best and failing was still better than just standing back and losing anyhow.”

Except Cloud had beaten the odds, somehow. Twice.

Squall remembered enough snatches of Garden to know when to cut his losses. To know what fights he could win alone, and what fights required backup and strategy, and when there was and wasn’t a choice. He’d seen his death in those glowing yellow eyes, and didn’t see the point in waiting for that prophecy to come true. “We still have options. They didn’t.”

“But Golbez did,” Cecil insisted. “That we’re here now, that we defeated Cosmos – doesn’t that prove it?”

Squall shrugged. “You fought on her side, remember.”

Cecil nodded solemnly. “I felt like I failed him. I took his life for a cause I still lost.” He sighed. “I ran off to look for him like a fool – he’s not been revived, or he would have come after us. That’s who he was. If I really wanted to honour his sacrifice, I would keep fighting regardless. Even after losing. Even after failing.”

A prickle of discomfort ran along Squall’s skin. This was getting far too emotional for him. But more than that…

There was danger here, somewhere.

Carefully, he shoved himself to his feet, and sought for a change of topic. “How did you find me here, anyway?” He wasn’t complaining – he might have died alone in the dirt if not for Cecil’s timely arrival, but this world was far too large for such a lucky coincidence. He hadn’t thought there was anyone beyond stray manikins on the northern islands, much less an ally.

“I was searching for any sign of Golbez, but I can see now the tracks I followed were yours.” He shook his head ruefully, beads in his white hair faintly jangling with the movement. “I’ve never been particularly adept at the art, else I might have guessed.”

Considering Squall was half the size and didn’t fly – regardless, those errors had likely saved his life, so he kept his mouth shut. “We should regroup with the others,” he said instead.

Cecil blinked. “That’s… unexpected, coming from you.”

Squall bristled. “I know what I said, and did, but… together we were stronger. I get that. Strategically, it makes sense now we have more information.” He stared into the distance. “We’re all looking for the same thing, you realise. And when it’s all done…”

Cecil followed his thoughts. “You thought it was better not to get attached, when we’ll have to part ways?”

Squall shrugged.

“You changed your mind, then?” Cecil ventured.

“No,” Squall said curtly.

It had simply happened anyway. Half a damn world away, when he realised he was a fighting a foe he couldn’t defeat alone, when he realised he might die alone, undiscovered, in a desolate gateway in a desolate universe, and all of a sudden all he could think about was Tidus’s irritating grin and Terra cuddling moogles and Cloud looking back at them to make sure they were all keeping pace. Remembering Onion Knight’s constant theorising and Cecil’s quiet brooding. And before that, Bartz, Zidane, Firion-

“Just being practical,” he said. “They need to know that Chaos is back, and we need to figure out what we’re going to do about it.”

His words haunted him, a mockery.

“There’s nothing dangerous left aside from us.”

 

…………...

  

“This looks a bit like Sanctuary,” Tidus commented. “I didn’t realise gateways took in fragments of this world, too.”

Cloud nodded, eyeing the faintly glowing rivers of magic floating through the air. “It’s unusual, but I’ve seen it before.  On the Northern Isles, especially in the deeper gateways. It’s like they loop back into reality after a while, to avoid spiralling forever.”

“Very astute of you!” A third voice piped up behind them.

They whirled, swords drawn. The moogle let out an ‘eep!’ and fluttered frantically out of reach.  “Uh, that is,” it continued timidly, “in some cases it’s merely reflections of fragments of this world from a different point in the time stream. But in the case of this gateway, it functions as a prison by creating a loop-”

“You must be the Mured Moogle!” Tidus exclaimed. Then, “Wait, a prison?”

“Oh! Not for you. But I’m afraid I’m quite unable to perceive the pathway from this place myself, and even if I could, in this form there is little I could do about the manikins beyond-”

“We cleared out the manikins!” Tidus reported cheerfully. “But do you mean you’re not really a moogle?”

Cloud eyed him more carefully. Physically, there was nothing different between him and any other moogles in this world.  But he didn't talk anything like the usual moogles, who attached 'kupo' to almost every sentence like some kind of exclamation mark.

“This is not my original form, no,” he confessed. “I was trapped in this body, then sealed here.”

“By who?” Tidus asked.

“By ShinRyuu.”

Even Tidus didn’t have a response for that.

They’d all seen the dragon sweep the skies, impossibly huge, impossibly powerful, a being of fire and light that seemed less a dragon and more a force of nature.

“Why did ShinRyuu do that?” Cloud asked, shifting his weight slightly, just in case he needed to fight. Even killing Chaos and Cosmos hadn’t turned the dragon’s eye directly on him. What could anyone have done to earn its ire?

The moogle’s bobble twitched as he looked at him. "Oh, you.  You've been here a long time, haven't you?"

“Something tells me you’ve been here longer.”

The moogle drooped midair. “You aren’t mistaken, although it was only very recently I was forced into this form. Before, I was merely a spectator. But well… it was you, actually, who inspired me to finally act.” He fidgeted. “I had a pact with ShinRyuu, the same as Chaos and Cosmos. By choosing to act, I broke that pact, and this is my punishment.”

A pact. With ShinRyuu. “What did you do?”

The moogle fluttered over to a small, smooth rock, settling on it. “I suppose… yes, I suppose you of all people, deserve the truth.” He sighed. “It’s difficult to know where to start.”

“How about your name?” Tidus prompted.

“My name is Cid. I was a scientist of Lufenia.”

Blood roared in Cloud’s ears.

A scientist.

“It was you,” he said, fingers tightening on the Buster’s Sword’s hilt. “You were the one who made them.”

“Cloud, wait.” Tidus grabbed his shoulder. “Let’s just- let’s hear him out, okay? Remember what we came here for.”

Cloud remained stone-faced.  "I don't like scientists.”

“It’s fine,” Cid assured Tidus. “His reaction is… deserved.” He turned to Cloud. “Although I was not the one who created Cosmos. Chaos, yes – he was the result of mine and my wife’s experiments with materials extracted from the Interdimensional Rift, married with Lufenian engineering. He was, in many ways, our son. But Lufenia…” He hunched in on himself, bobble dropping. “Ours was a world at war. And his potential, you see. It was enormous. Even though we protested, they took him from us.”

“Okay, so you’re sort of Chaos’s dad, kind of spooky, but then who created Cosmos?” Tidus asked, keeping a wary eye on Cloud.

“They did. She is… she’s modelled after my wife.”

“She looks like his mother,” Cloud murmured. “They used her to control Chaos.”

Cid nodded. “Precisely.”

“Okay, but how does ShinRyuu come into this then?” Tidus prodded.

“My wife and I went to break him out when we discovered what the experiments and war were doing to him. However, in our attempt, my wife was killed. And in his rage, Chaos accidentally ripped open a portal to this world – this, empty mirror image plane of Lufenian, an anomaly in space and time. Cosmos and I fell into it with him. And that… that was when we met ShinRyuu. When we made the pact that started this whole cycle off.”

“In exchange for power, Chaos and Cosmos would wage war with summoned champions from other realms. Chaos wanted the power to seek revenge on my homeworld. Cosmos was impelled to seek power to contain Chaos. I was a scientist, however, and ShinRyuu had no use for me, and I myself, in my grief, could not decide which side to throw my lot in with. Chaos was my son, but Lufenia, for all its faults, was still my home and I didn't wish to see it destroyed in his wrath. So in exchange for my physical body, I would watch the war from afar, and preform experiments and research as I pleased, in hopes that time and a proxy war would solve the conundrum for me. ShinRyuu would absorb the memories and power of the fallen soldiers, and begin the cycle again.” Cid’s black bat wings fluttered, but he remained seated. “I believe you have experienced the rest.”

Cloud and Tidus stayed silent, absorbing that, until Cloud cleared his throat and asked, “How many?”

Cid seemed to guess what he meant. “My memories are imperfect – being forced to this form lost me much. But this would have made the fourteenth cycle.”

Tidus swore under his breath.

"I owe all of you an apology,” Cid confessed. “But also my thanks. It wasn't until you acted that I truly realised what a horrible cycle we had created.” He shuddered, bobble quivering. "You were pawns, summoned across dimensions, to a conflict that had nothing to do with you.  For the sake of what?  Science? To fuel Chaos’s vendetta, or to help bring him back under control? Or simply as more fodder for a dragon hungry for conflict?"  The moogle folded his paws in his lap, despondent.  "We were engulfed in madness, and none of us could see it.  If it had continued further... who knows what might have happened.  Chaos's psyche had already begun to degrade by the twelfth cycle."

"So I acted.  When you defeated Chaos, I took the opportunity to seal him away during the Purification, to disrupt the revival process and ensure he couldn't summon new warriors to begin the cycle anew.  I did the same to Cosmos when she fell.  If we must suffer for our sins for an eternity, best that we suffer alone."

"But ShinRyuu was furious once he realised what I’d done.  He sealed me away in turn.  It's only a matter of time before he breaks Chaos and Cosmos free again."

No one spoke for several long moments.

“Then we should uh, get out of here while we can then, right?” Tidus asked. “If you’re implying that Chaos and Cosmos could come back at any minute, we need to meet up with our friends, pronto. If we bring you with us, you can leave, right?”

“I suppose it is possible, yes, especially if you already destroyed all the manikins,” Cid agreed, but darted a nervous glance at Cloud.

Cloud didn't want to commiserate with the moogle.  He didn't want to find sympathy with a scientist who had created atrocities just as bad - maybe even worse - than Hojo.

"I can't forgive you," he said flatly.  "It's not just about us.  It's about what you did to Cosmos and Chaos as well. But Tidus is right, if what you’ve said is true we can’t waste any time here. Can you help us get home?”

Cid seemed startled by the request. “Well, it’s – I know the theory of it, of course. There are some complications I would have to consider, especially given my current form, but I am certainly willing to try.”

Good enough for Cloud. Distrust and dislike, he could deal with – he’d been on Chaos’s side, after all, and that had been their primary currency. Even if this scientist stood a whole tier below in his esteem, he’d put up with it, if it meant they could finally leave this place.

“Then let’s go,” he said. “And find the others before Chaos or Cosmos can find them.”

Cloud was tired of this world.



Next chapter

 

Comments

[evetenshi]

is it regrouping time?? :D Thanks for the update as usual!

[sinnatious]

It is indeed, we are racing towards the conclusion. Thank you for always commenting!