Welcome to Adventu, your final fantasy rp haven. adventu focuses on both canon and original characters from different worlds and timelines that have all been pulled to the world of zephon: a familiar final fantasy-styled land where all adventurers will fight, explore, and make new personal connections.
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year 5, quarter 3
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”My, my, folktales not your forte, sir?” The girl gave a haughty and infuriating laugh. ”The black cat, the shapeshifting, the stunningly youthful looks and lofty air?" She raised her head then like a debutant at the peak of her own ball. "I'm a bona-fide witch if you ever saw one. I've even been known to boil a few children on occasion."
”A...witch?” Kuja eyed her uncertainly, eyebrow raised in confusion. ”You mean a mage?” The description sounded ridiculous. Complete and utter trash that could only thrive on the whispers of the paranoid and uneducated. Magic was not some incomprehensible force beyond the control of mortals -- at least not mortals of any decent mind. It was as structured as science and just as simple to control once its limits were learned. ”I’m afraid there’s no such thing as ‘witches.’ Whatever you do to children on your own time is completely irrelevant.” Not the most concerned of answers, perhaps, but he was quickly losing his patience.
She went on to tell him about the plague she’d mentioned before. It was like nothing she’d ever seen. It was an assault on every sense, changing its victims into something monstrous, it seemed. Kuja didn’t particularly care, really, except that he’d have to avoid Provo for some time if this continued. Still, she wanted his opinion on the matter, and he supposed it wasn’t unwarranted.
”It could be anything,” he said with a wave of his hand. ”Magic, certainly, but your symptoms were hardly specific. If anything, a spiritual change might suggest a dysfunction of the soul. But there’s no use guessing without real evidence.”
He didn’t know if she cared for his answer. He certainly didn’t, but it he might as well try to maintain pretenses. It wasn’t until she took her stone back that anything particularly caught his interest. Not until she made well on her promise to make the trek into the temple’s labyrinth somehow easier.
She brought her hand to her chest, clasped it there as though grabbing onto something ethereal, and then pulled and with it came something that shimmered in the dull light like shards of glass. She made another motion with her hand, and the shards melded together into one, complete whole. Kuja stared at the thing floating before him, taken aback by its radiance, by its power, by the very way the air changed around them. ”Among other things, I can clear the air. As accustomed to it as you seem, I imagine some fresh air would do you better than inhaling this mist, no?"
Kuja’s eyes flicked to the girl before returning to the impossible artifact she held before her. It could control the Mist. Whatever it was -- be it some feat of technology, sorcery, or condensed magic itself -- that was something nearly unheard of. Something that could clear the Mist could certainly bring it forth or at the very least make living in it far more sustainable. What other powers did it possess, he wondered? And how was it so connected to her?
So many questions raced through his mind, that he nearly forgot to maintain his composure. Even still, his expression defaulted to one of thoughtful interest. Curiosity rather than hunger. He’d trained himself well to never reveal his desires in public.
”How useful.” Kuja’s words came stiffer than he would have liked. Distracted. ”It’s hard to say the exact properties of the mist, but it can’t be beneficial.” Of course not. Kuja could practically taste the anguish of lost souls on his tongue. Or he had before she’d activated her crystal. Kuja glanced at it again. How much more use would it give him than her? How had she extracted it from herself and could it be removed without damaging the relic? There were too many variables and too many of them ended in losing the very prize he sought, but one things was for certain.
Fortune had smiled upon him this day, and he’d hardly fail to take advantage of it.
”Well then. Shall we?” He shot her wry smile before sauntering forward, out of the nook he’d been clearing and further into the darkness. He kept his hand before him, and within it a weak flame that illuminated their path. He made certain to stay close to the girl -- both for the benefits of clean air and to be certain she wouldn’t slip away into the shadows. How many ruins had he explored just like this? There was that labrinth beneath the Metaia Temple, the catacombs of the Dragon’s Gate, and long before any of that there were the countless hours he’d spent renovating his Desert Palace or venturing into Terra’s elemental shrines. The experience was almost mundane for him. Here was crumbling rock, there a mysterious altar to gods lost to time, and far in the distance the sounds of scuttling which could have come from monster or pest. This time, it wasn’t his surroundings that set him on edge, but rather his company and the plans he had for her.
How was he to be rid of her? For once, he’d been caught off guard without the time to plot. He didn’t know what exactly he’d find at the bottom of their path, and he hadn’t been granted the time to plan for every contingency. As such, there was little more he could do but speculate and take advantage of whatever situation might come. And if there was none, he supposed it had been quite some time since he’d dirtied his hands himself. It was a dangerous gamble, but one he thought worth the risk.
Had he gone too quiet? That wouldn’t do. ”You haven’t told me your name.” He glanced to her as though he had any interest for her personal life. ”Or how you manage to wield such a…useful artifact. Is such a thing common where you’re from? I’ve certainly never seen anything like it.” His eyes darted to the crystal again before he directed his attention forward again. ”Or anything like you, as a matter of fact.”
"My village would beg to differ." She huffed, his reaction to her claim of witchcraft being the first disappointing one he had yet provided. Oh well. Couldn't win them all, Sherlotta supposed. "But, you're right. It's irrelevant. I can safely settle on the fact that I'm weird." They set off, down one of the corridors that wound and twisted its way through the earth. Surely the architect of whatever this place was was completely insane...
He provided the opinion she had requested, about the plague, and his response actually proved useful. She tapped a finger to her chin in consideration. "You're quite right, actually. I guess I was pretty vague on the details." She had been describing it from her point of view, which, at the very least, was enlightened compared to a mortal's. She pondered back to the city, picturing its victims and the marks they bore. She felt like puking just remembering them. "Deathly pallor, extreme lethargy, discontent around bright lights... Now that I think about it, they're all fairly standard symptoms of a lot of diseases..." It didn't put her off the idea that it was unnatural though. The way it felt... She couldn't explain that to someone who couldn't sense it. It was definitely alive, and in more senses than a normal virus. "I suppose the most outlandish property would be the black ooze that seems to come from late-stage victims... And the inevitable result, of course."
Sherlotta sighed, dropping the topic for now and focusing on their surroundings. When the crystal shone on the walls, it revealed carvings and reliefs of some ancient battle. The fact that every single inch was covered with a unique design was mind-boggling. If this was all a single tale - Which it appeared to be, the same four figures appearing in each image - it must have been a struggle of monolithic proportions. Perhaps they were multiple incarnations of the same figure over countless centuries, or maybe a metaphor of some kind...
It sent a shiver down her spine. It reminded her a lot of the Shadowlands. That land on the edge of death, all of history's tragedies and atrocities etched in fine detail onto its timeless walls, haunted by the tortured souls of those who would never pass on or find peace. A prison for those who walked the very precarious line it straddled. As brief as her stay in that realm had been, she never had any intention of returning there. This place was all too similar.
"Hm?" She turned around, suddenly caught out of her thought by the questions of her fellow. "Oh, but I did. Weren't you listening? Sherlotta." She said, though not as mocking as it would have been prior. "I can't blame you for that. Tensions were very high in that moment." They very much still were, but it seemed they were both operating under the pretense that they weren't. Then came the inevitable questions about her power. This required a light foot.
"Apparently," The girl began; "Long before I was born, people did use them as easily as this. Albeit a bit differently. They fueled an entire society, propelled them into an age of prosperity and longevity. All the product of one man's brilliant mind."
She paused to examine the skeleton of some unfortunate delver of centuries past. He had died crawling, desperately reaching for something that was no longer there. "But... All the power it brought him twisted his soul. The crystals began disappearing. People panicked. Those who had once believed themselves immortal started to face the natural end of their lives. In the end, he hoarded them all to himself, and his magnificent civilization fell and was forgotten. All he had now was a long, long life of desperately clutching at what he had once. Watching lesser civilizations spring up and thrive without him. By the time I was born, the crystals were little more than a myth to everyone outside my village. As fortune would have it, we hosted the last remaining one in a secluded old grove in the forest, and the world was none the wiser." She explained, avoiding the bit about the raid on her home and the time-bending consequences. "It simply... Fell from the sky one day, supposedly, when I was a child. For the most part, we left it be. Backwater folk like us had no interest in such power. It shone with such brilliance that we simply saw it as a good omen. Lo and behold, the hunting was good, the harvests were bountiful and sickness waned as long as it was there." She kept walking examining the carvings once more. It seemed that they were definitely heading towards some conclusion. Perhaps that was the key to navigating this place - Follow the story. "I'd ask if you knew anything about these designs, but from your assumption of my story, I assume we're in the same boat? Which would make these tales as foreign to you as they are to me."
The girl, Sherlotta apparently (How had he forgotten? It must have been stated during that odd time when his mind was still reeling), told him all about the crystal in her hand though she conveniently told him nothing of any real use. It was a relic from her world and something that had once acted as a fuel as common as Mist. The thought gave him ideas (Could it be used that way again? And for what?) but that was nothing compared to the parable that came next.
It was a cautionary tale about greed and the lust for power. Apparently a single man had stolen all of the crystals for himself so as to assure his own immortality -- but once obtained he was but the only immortal left. It was a tragic tale certainly and one that wouldn’t have made for a terrible play, but Kuja could only smirk at the stupidity of it all. Was such a brilliant mind expected to let the products of his own work go to waste? And wasn’t it only natural to seek immortality above all else? Oh, she told him he’d been twisted by it. And he could read the thematic significance of the dangers of loneliness should one overextend oneself to the detriment of all others, but the whole ordeal sounded perfectly natural to him. If he was truly such a brilliant mind, he should have made other immortals in his image if the loneliness was too much for him.
Sherlotta, it seemed, was from the middle of nowhere and the inheritor of nothing. She told him how her idiotic people had found a crystal and simply left it there unsalvaged and unutilized in the middle of the forest. Oh, it gave them passive good fortune, she stated, but somehow he doubted that any of that came from the crystal itself rather than the mere perception of it. Humans had a way of believing anything if you told them so, and a relic as powerful as that must have had a way of sparking the imagination. Still, that was all the girl would tell him before she changed the subject.
"I'd ask if you knew anything about these designs, but from your assumption of my story, I assume we're in the same boat? Which would make these tales as foreign to you as they are to me."
”Hm?” Ah yes, the ruins. Honestly, Kuja hadn’t been paying much attention to them since he was all but assured a more productive excursion at a later time, but he eyed them curiously just for show. The walls here were littered with murals and mosaics -- chipped and worn by time. It was a standard affair really about some heroic venture or another, and he honestly couldn’t have cared less. Ancient civilizations were all so similar after all -- Gaian, Terran, or otherwise -- but he glanced over them regardless in the hopes of finding something worthwhile. It wasn’t as though ancient legends had never led him to power before.
”I’m unfamiliar with the myths of this land, yes,” he started slowly. ”But from experience, I’d say that the people here are just as unfamiliar. There are certain designs that are common across human history, however. This symbol here, for instance, is often associated with the sun. Its prevalence across the mosaics would seem to suggest some kind of light motif -- perhaps meant to portray purity or worth. In most of these murals, there appear to be at least four figures present, but the most focused upon is the one holding the flame. Again, that could symbolize either light or literal magic though I quite doubt the second.”
He talked without any real mind for his words. His thoughts came as quickly as his tongue could move, and he had no reason to filter between them. Already, his eyes were sharpening on the next scene -- a puzzle like any other. ”These figures are represented as almost demigods though whether that resulted in actual worship is hard to say. They appear to have battled draconian beasts of air and water, which I will accept in the literal current circumstances considered. And they themselves appear to have practiced a form of ritual worship towards a gemstone of some kind. You can see the motif present behind them in several of these murals as though the voice of a god spurring them forward. In fact, it doesn’t look entirely dissimilar to…” He glanced back at her, eyes flicking from the relic in her hand to the carving on the wall. ”Well, to your crystal,” he said before continuing on.
”What coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
Except that he didn’t believe in coincidence. Not when this world had already proven to be nothing but a thematic mix of every other dimension smashed together. The similarities didn’t necessarily mean anything, but it wasn’t necessarily unrelated either. Only time would tell, he supposed, if a rock motif was merely a rock or something far more significant.
The Mist had grown thicker here, almost solid in the darkness. Without the girl’s crystal, it would have been suffocating, but as it was it was merely an anomaly. How deep had they ventured by now? Were they farther underground now or was it merely an illusion? Kuja had explored the depths of these ruins once before, but he couldn’t remember their end -- just that he’d stumbled upon a tunnel far too precarious to venture any further. Still, he couldn’t help but peer into the darkness as they moved. The Mist brought with it a sense of unease, and with it, the feeling of being watched.
”Did you hear that?” Kuja paused and raised his flame above him, but the light couldn’t penetrate the fog. ”It sounded like...footsteps.”
Footsteps, yes, but not the human kind. This came more as the lumbering kind backed by weight and the purchase of scrabbling claws. Kuja glanced at the girl and then to their surroundings. With the walls as ruined as they were, he couldn’t risk a higher degree of magic without the possibility of collapsing it all upon them. ”Can you clear the fog?” He kept his voice to a terse whisper. ”We’re nearly blind.”
She listened to Kuja explain his observations, at length, of the reliefs on the walls. He made some interesting points, though it was hard to believe that a place like this was ever a site of religious significance. Simply accessing it was a trial. She would have maintained her astuteness, had something in the darkness beyond not caught her eye.
A flash of silver-white, a smile that radiated innocence and a grass-stained white dress. In the shadows cast, it still radiated light enough to see clearly. Hands behind its back, it grinned at her, seemingly ignorant - or uncaring - for the place it was in. Then, with a girlish giggle, it took off around the corner, bare feet padding softly on the dust-caked floor.
Sherlotta was about to take off after it, but caught herself. It was impossible. It had no will. No persona. Were it not for the heart beating in it and the shallow breaths it took, it would be dead.
She clutched her forehead, regaining herself. Why would it be here, of all places? How? Had someone already taken it? Why couldn't she sense it? None of the things she could think of made any sense--
Kuja's voice brought her back to reality.
"... It doesn't look entirely dissimilar to... Well, your crystal."
For the first time, Sherlotta's facade caved and she slowly turned her head to him with a death glare that spoke volumes of her opinion of such an assumption. Not that he was wrong, in fact, his innocent claim of 'coincidence'was probably further from the truth than his original statement. But for her, hearing something like that was akin to hearing a knife sharpening behind your back. Just that one sentence, and she could already feel the claws of greed scrabbling for grip on her. However, her stare finally died when more pressing noises began to echo from the mist around them.
In her stupor, the dark had closed in around them. She had let the crystal's influence dwindle and now they were enclosed by fog, with some creature - That most certainly wasn't the thing she'd just seen - scuttling around them. "Right. My apologies." She focused her power on the stone, and it shone brighter and brighter. It's sphere of influence began to expand out to what it had been before, but just as it was about to reveal the monster lurking in the black, she felt resistance.
"That's not right..." She muttered, as their safe area began to shrink once more. "That's not right at all." Sherlotta bared her teeth and focused harder, struggling against the unseen force. "The fog here is... Different. Before it was just normal fog but here... It's like something's controlling it. It's pushing back against me."
She strained to maintain the bubble around them, all the while aware of the encroaching threat. Desperate to see what was beyond, she reached into her pouch and pulled out an orange magicite, rolling it between her fingers before clenching her fist around it, which proceeded to light up with a blazing flame.
"Not much, but it'll have to serve!" She grimaced, extending her palm forward. In an instant, the flaming marble shot forth, streaking down the corridor and exploding as it impacted whatever stalked them. For a moment, the flames made it possible to make out something snarling and feral, but faded too quickly to tell what. She could hear it now, running for them. Her hand left the crystal, which now floated in front of her chest, as both her arms were thrown out to the sides. The aura of light rippled and pulsed, and its edges seemed to define themselves, suddenly containing the pair within a glassy dome.
Just in time, as the creature lunged and finally made its first attack, which bounced straight off the dome, sending it lurching back into the dark. Sherlotta visibly winced at the impact, but held the shield for long enough to see it wasn't about to immediately attack again. Her arms dropped, and the barrier dissipated to nothing more than light once more.
"Ideas would be welcome..." She said through gritted teeth, watching the depths for any signs of another attack. It was still very much there, she could hear it, waiting for an opportunity.
you won't believe your eyes
words: 712 - tags: Kuja - notes: Tried not to assume too much about the monster
”That's not right..." The girl frowned, tensing on the stone in her hand. ”The fog here is... Different. Before it was just normal fog but here... It's like something's controlling it. It's pushing back against me."
”Controlling it?” Kuja turned on her sharply. ”That’s impossible, unless…”Unless it was managed by a Soul Divider. The thought came and went as unpleasant as the Mist itself, but it meant nothing. This was a world without the ravages of another planet, and the Mist here had not yet infected the world at large. Still, he couldn’t help but consider the possibility, as unpleasant as it was. If this world had no soul divider, then where had the Mist come from?
The girl’s fingers snapped to her pouch and she pulled another of her magic stones from within. She rolled it once within her fingers until its power activated and with a short battlecry, she tossed the stone into the shadows. There was a burst of flame and the brief silhouette of something before the fog swallowed it again, but there was no mistaking it. They had seen a monster and the monster had seen them.
”Idiot!” His tongue snapped faster than the magic he brought to his hand. ”Was it your intention to give us away or were you too stupid to think of anything else?”
The room echoed with snarls as the monster sought its vengeance on the poor, stupid creatures that had attacked it in the fog. Kuja readied his spells, tense as his eyes raked the Mist for something he couldn’t identify and would never see coming. The girl had busied herself on the crystal, and within seconds he shivered as a ripple of strong magic pulsed from the thing. Kuja risked a glance to see what the stone was floating in front of her on its own volition and carried with it a kind of eerie and ethereal glow. He blinked.
Was this its power? It seemed so close he could almost touch it…
There was a crash beside him full of scrabbling claws and a monstrous roar. Kuja’s eyes snapped to the fog, but he couldn’t see anything beyond their bubble. What had it hit, and why hadn’t it been able to reach them?
"Ideas would be welcome..." The girl’s voice was strained. She’d done something. Something with the crystal...A barrier perhaps? Kuja glanced from the crystal to the Mist beyond and let his thoughts stream forth unfettered.
”Your crystal repelled it. Whatever it is, it aligns itself with the Mist. It carries the same properties and the same weaknesses.” His mind landed upon the Mistodons and the myriad abominations which lurked within the Iifa Tree. They were all fearsome and bloodthirsty, but even the Divider itself had carried the same exploitable weakness. They were creatures born of the Mist and could be banished just as easily.
”Lower the wall.” His fingers sparked with magic as he readied his spell. He’d need only one. ”I’ll make this quick.”
With the crystal’s power weakened, he might as well have closed his eyes for all the good they did him, but he heard the beast lumbering and snarling beyond his vision, and that was good enough. He heard it collect itself, prowl some fifteen degrees to their left, and then charge again. By the time he caught its silhouette, it came with a flash of yellowed teeth and sharpened claws swinging towards...the girl. Kuja hesitated for a moment, allowing it at least one swipe before raising his hand to stop it.
If they finished each other off, wouldn’t that be most preferable, really?
With a muttered word, magic circled his target and erupted from its feet in rays of ethereal light. Their chamber echoed the creature’s death cry as the light settled deep inside it and brought it quickly to its knees. In seconds, the screams were cut short and the shadowed creature fell heavily at their feet.
It was truly humorous how simple it was to dispatch the undead.
Kuja lowered his hand. ”As I thought. It’s useless against white magic.” He stepped forward and peered at the unsightly beast before them. It was vaguely draconic in nature with taught skin and protruding bone plates. A whitened eye stared back at him in the fog -- glazed with a death far less recent than this one. He sighed and crossed his arms haughtily. ”Well then. Shall we?”
But the fog didn’t clear. It came just as thick as before, if not thicker. His eyebrows furrowed as he glanced at the girl sharply. ”Well?” he prompted, but the answer came before he could finish the thought.
The ground trembled beneath them. The walls groaned with an unearthly wail. At first, it sounded like the very roar of the earth, but then the sound took shape. A voice. A word. ”Who…?”
The Mist shifted with an invisible wind. It curled in spirals, in longing tendrils that whipped across his cheek and hands. Kuja batted it away with the tips of his nails, nose wrinkled in disgust. The earth moaned in the tenors of scraping stone. ”Who dares bring that magic here…?”
There was a crack and then a gust of stale, unnatural wind that thrust the fog against them and out the opposite hall. Kuja raised an arm against it and peered into the darkness. Without the Mist, he could almost make out a face -- twisted, skeletal, and demonic. But where was the rest of it? He caught nothing else but a blank slate of flesh, dirt, and stone.
He brought fire to his free hand and flared it against the wind. In that moment, he glimpsed the thing before him for what it was. Flat. Expansive. Stretching from one side to the other.
Before him was nothing more than a face in a wall.
It let out another tortured groan, its mouth twisting with agony. There was another crack and then a terrible screech of stone on stone. It was pushing towards them. ”You who wield the purifying light…” Mist spewed from its lips as it spoke, releasing like steam from a dragon’s tongue. ”Let this be your tomb!”
