Destiny Waits For No Cetra

Destiny Waits For No Cetra
Date of Scene:	26 November 2012
Location:	Targ Woods
Synopsis:	Aerith, running out of supplies, decides to make her own batch of what she's missing. Naturally, as with everything else in this world, things are not so easy, and she falls into a trap she didn't know was waiting for her. In the midst of the conflict, she discovers her purpose, and something that comes with it...
Thanks to:	Thanks for running this, Jasmine!
Cast of Characters:	Aerith Gainsborough, Jasmine (GM)

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Aerith has posed:
Aerith makes her way through the forest, sunlight peeking through the trees as she gathers some herbs for a few potions. Lately she's been low on stock, and since the store prices have been going up in recent weeks, she figured she'd use her talents to make some of her own. Who knows? They might even be better than the stores!

But that's not really her concern, she just wants to be prepared. So for the sake of prevention, she trims, cuts and gathers what she needs in a pouch, just so she can take it back home and get everything set up.

Jasmine has posed:
At first it takes a long time to notice that something's wrong. The birds sing, the bugs hum, the Midgar Zolom sleeps off the pounding it recently received from a joint taskforce of caravan guardians. Life, glorious Life, surges strong and pure and clear. The sheer ferocity of the wilderness is unsettling to many urban folks, but it welcomes its daughter, its sister, its mother, with open arms. Marshes subtly firm up under Aerith's path; vines blow gently out of her way, the ones that can resist the urge to briefly twine around her shoulder as she passes them, reaching out to touch the Last Cetra, to convince themselves that she's truly real, that they aren't alone.

But persistently, the hairs on the back of Aerith's neck start to rise, an evil feeling coiled at the base of her spine. Hours pass before she realizes what it is:

Someone -- or something -- is watching her.

Aerith has posed:
And she can feel it.

She feels the entire forest, all of it. Wild, yes. Gentle too. Many who were scared didn't understand, but she could. In fact, she couldn't help it. She asked, did nothing more, and it gave. She only took what was needed, what the Voice told her to take, and all was well. Aerith liked to think of it as a collaborative effort. She didn't just take, she gave back, helped to create something as much as she could. And so she moved from one spot to the next, aiming to get as many of her little pouches as full as she could and back before evening.

But she could feel something else, too. Something all too familiar... And the feeling made her stop as her heart contracted, shrank, tried to squeeze itself into hiding. Her breathing quickened, shallowed. When they said these things were everywhere, they were not joking.

Aerith stood perfectly still, right hand grasping the center of her staff, left hand clenched in a fist. The materia in her weapon and her bracelets began to glow with anticipation.

They couldn't hide from her. Then again, she couldn't hide from them because of what she was. So she waited.

Jasmine has posed:
Aerith makes a critical error, when she blithely assumes that all things in the universe that might come after her are Heartless; that every piece of Darkness is of the same flavor, that all hunters are one.

Perhaps she could have run and hid, after all.

Because once she stops moving and indicates her awareness, everything happens at once. The ground underneath her opens up -- betraying her against its will, but suddenly its will is not its own, clasped in a vicelike grip by another presence. A presence of raw, pure malice.

And so she falls and falls and falls, air and darkness rushing up to meet her, into a cavern below, landing in a black pool of shockingly frigid water. There are ledges to swim to, if she has the strength and the speed.

But beneath her, the water stirs, first slowly and them more rapidly, as something starts thrashing, not taking kindly to its slumber being disturbed...

And just barely visible in the depths, a lidless yellow eye opens.

Aerith has posed:
A scream tore from her throat as she fell without any warning or pretense, but that wasn't the reason she was deathly afraid. No, this presence was everywhere, even in the land itself. And it was deeper than anything she'd ever encountered, a vast, empty void.

This wasn't hunger, it wasn't blind animal instinct. This... whatever it was... knew. It understood. Her wail of terror was cut short by a splash in the waters below, and for a few moments, she found herself unable to move.

Then those moments passed, fear replaced by the need for air. She swam to the surface, took a gasp of air, and headed for the nearest ledge. Hauling herself onto somewhat dry land, she fought for every breath she could get... and once she'd regained herself, she stood on shaky legs.

Then the air thickened again, heavy with dread and malice. Aerith froze, her back still turned to the water even as it churned. Something forced her to turn, made her look at what emerged... and as she stared into the lidless yellow eye, Aerith screamed again.

No one to help her, no one to call on for backup. Her mind was convinced she was going to die, and she couldn't do anything but scream...

Jasmine has posed:
The eye stares directly at Aerith, as though studying not her flesh but the deeper, most private and sacred parts of herself, and there's a terrible sense of recognition: it knows exactly what she is. Seconds pass as their gazes lock.

And then a second yellow orb appears, down below, this dark eye opening to glare straight at her. And a third. And another, and another...

The cavern explodes with freezing water as the dark being, patiently waiting in the depths of the world for its prey, erupts to the surface. It has had many names, given to it in many worlds, but its most famous, possibly, is kraken.

It -- he, there's definitely a strong masculine presence about him, coldly aggressive and endlessly, infinitely hungry -- is all tentacles, studded with popping suckers and furry, slimy hairs. What isn't, is all envenomed teeth, said to tear holes in the very fabric of reality, and... those eyes.

One gets the immediate sense that this is one tiny fraction of his overall mass, that he must continue further into the world, perhaps all the way out to a lake or the sea. All the seas, even.

But even as he closes in on Aerith from all directions at once, to crush and stab and warp her simultaneously, to devour her whole and draw her into himself forever, her soul to be worse than extinguished, turned into something terrible, a cog in a far greater spiritual machine...

...She realizes something worse, still, setting a new record for awful cosmic realizations at a moment when things seemed like they'd already hit rock bottom.

This being was once alive. It isn't a spawn of Darkness, but twisted by it beyond recognition. In a very specific way: the Lifestream that flows through all beings, flows corrupted and brakish through the kraken. It is toxic. It is fundamentally wrong.

Somehow, something... or someone... is turning the river of all souls to very Dark purposes indeed. Aerith's ears fill with the cries of tormented spirits, every person, place, or thing consumed by this purveyor of destruction.

And dimly, almost totally drowned out by the chains it's bound to itself, the kraken's own spirit screams for release.

The pure Lifestream rushes around the Last Cetra, buoying her, enfolding her. Its voice is her mother's, and her grandmother's, and the whole of her race, supporting her even as they intone their demand.

You must fix this.

She's the only one who can.

Aerith has posed:
The screams. For the love of all that's good, the screams! Aerith falls to her knees at the utter hopelessness of it, the sheer insanity. Her mind is frozen with all the overload, her senses assaulted by the cries for help, for salvation, to just let them die even though they can't... She couldn't help, how could she? She had no idea what to do, how to pull them out and cleanse them! No one told her how to be a Cetra, just that she was one!

Her responses were lost amidst the weeping and pleading, and in the back of her mind, she could feel the possessed thing close in on her.

The screams died down and time slowed for what seemed like minutes, hours, a life time. Aerith opened her eyes... and saw the one woman she never thought she'd see again, a spitting image of her own likeness. She knew the dress, the figure, the eyes, the hair...

"Mom?"

Ifalna smiled. "We can't allow you to die just yet. But from here, we can do very little to help you."

Aerith looked around, saw others. Many she didn't know, but on some level she understood who they were. They had the same presence, the same force that she could sometimes feel inside of her. And now she felt it again, only magnified exponentially. Aerith remained on her knees, only in shock instead of horror. It felt like she was five again.

She didn't have to ask who they were. Part of her knew, though it didn't clue her in. "They're... they're all asking me to save them. I don't know if I..."

Her mother placed a hand on her forehead. "You already have everything you need."

Aerith shook her head. "This... Materia won't work against this. I can feel it, it's got so many ways to beat what I have..." She sighed, shoulders slumped. "I've dealt with a darkness that most would absolutely dread. Seen things that have made others run in fear. I've been in the midst of a battle that's part of a war none of us could have comprehended. I'm just so tired..."

Ifalna nodded. "I know. I can see everything you've been through. But you have to stand up now and face this, because it's your responsibility. And besides..." She winked. "It can't counter everything."

One of Aerith's brows rose. "What do you mean? Do you know something?" The ghosts, those of her ancestry, faded away. "Wait! What do you mean!?"

Ifalna shook her head. "There's no time! You have to free them!"

Aerith glanced behind her. The arms were speeding up now as time resumed its normal pace. She leapt over one of them before it could pull her down, the other two slamming into the stone floor, piercing it as if they were spears. Aerith took a fighting stance, her materia glowing fiercely. "If there's not much choice... I'll try everything I have!" With that, she aimed a glowing sphere of flames at one of the tentacles and let fly, making her best attempt at causing some damage.

Jasmine has posed:
There are just so many arms. More than should be able to fit into the cavern. At first it seems like a trick of the light -- of which there isn't much, only the reflection of dozens of ochre eyes and Aerith's own materia -- but eventually she spots it happening head on, one tentacle phasing through another one to get a better angle.

That is grossly unfair, to say nothing of creepy. Whatever time and torment has caused kraken has become, he is far from a merely corporeal being, in the modern age.

As the flames come pouring in, he defends himself in the efficient and entirely conventional manner of slapping his pool, sending up a wall of chill water that quenches the fire spell easily. Then it keeps moving, towards her, trying to fill her mouth and nose and ears and lungs, even as one gaping maw comes lunging in with rending, ripping teeth...

Aerith has posed:
Not much time to think, move faster!

Aerith's right hand shoves forward, and a pale green sphere of light surrounds her, forcing the wave to break on her defense. Her senses pick up the incoming mouth, full of jagged teeth, and she leaps upward, forcing it straight under her. She lands right on top, and breaks into a run, blasting a ball of lightning at one of the eyes.

Jasmine has posed:
The lightning arcs at the eye, flashing a blinding blue-white as it forks and sparks in all directions.

The eye detonates into a ghastly shower of ebony ichor... but since the entire creature is soaking wet, the lightning doesn't stop there -- it crackles up and down the monster's body, raising tiny burns -- and, ultimately, coruscates straight into Aerith, who is, after all, standing right on top of it.

By the time the electricity has run through her, each of the welts raised on the kraken's flesh has scabbed over with bubbling slime, and begun to heal. But this isn't the loving caress of the untainted Lifestream. A face briefly forms in each sucking wound, formed of pus and goo and one of the many souls trapped within the dark creature, and it screams as its very essence is consumed in the kraken's reconstruction.

Just as the scream abruptly cuts off, that dark eye opens, once again, as though it was never even gone.

And Aerith is assaulted by an attack on another level, as that malicious presence tries to tear open her spirit, to leave her weeping and alone in the abyss of her own mind. He whispers to her of her many failures, all the people she couldn't save, the very Planet itself fallen, in its majority, to darkness. Black ropes of pure despair rise to bind her, even as the physical arms move in for another grab.

Aerith has posed:
Oh shoot...

The current passes right through her, and since she's wet as well it takes an awful short time for her muscles to freeze up. She gritted her teeth as the shock hit home, her face stuck that way for several seconds. Then part of her felt herself slip over the edge of the surface she ran on, and she fell toward the jagged stone platform surrounding the lake, demented laughter and traitorous thoughts, sounding much like her own voice, echoing through her mind. An aura of darkness began to creep over her even as a tentacle wrapped around her, joined by two more.

Then they squeezed. Hard.

Aerith screamed, half from the slow dementia her mind underwent and half from having her nerves treated to a rough wake-up call. The one side effect of having her back in action... was that another aura, a deeper green than that of her defensive ward from earlier, rose to counter the darkness. The streams of ichor struggled, fought... and died as her inborn heritage made the whispers of doubt and failure cease.

Aerith grimaced as she struggled to get out of the grip of those arms, even as they pulled her closer to an open mouth, filled more with swords than teeth.

"I know you're hungry... but let me go!" Aerith channeled her energies, the materia on her bracelets flared, and within half a second, two spells went live. A thin aura of pale green flashed around the flower girl before she forced another sphere of flames, held in her hand like a grenade, right into one of the arms holding her. The explosion, she hoped, would be enough to make him loosen his grip.

Jasmine has posed:
There's good news and bad news.

The Fire grenade does, indeed, manage to impact directly with the arm, roasting one of the suckers (though it starts regenerating immediately) and causing the kraken to drop Aerith from its crushing hold.

The bad news is that it drops her straight into the drink.

Then it follows her, letting the water pull her downwards as it responds to her own passage. Just for good measure, some of its many mouths kiss the surface above, breathing out a freezing mist that ices it over, cutting out the last of the light, to say nothing of the air.

The darkness is absolute. An underground river may not be a true void, but in some ways, the many sensations present that would be lost in space, such as the inhomogeneity of the water, which is dense with ichor and mutated algae in some places, and thin with disgusting oil in others, and the sound, that presses in on all sides, as much a palpable force as the gaze of its many eyes, that now stare at the girl from all directions.

Transmitted through the water comes the pressure of its slow, steady, endless breathing, gills flapping in and out. But... there is no heartbeat.

She only has the oxygen she brought with her in her lungs, and there's no escape to be found, up and down quickly losing coherent meaning with the surface sealed off by ice...

Aerith has posed:
No.

She saw this coming. She'd realized it from the moment the dark intelligence became known to her. This thing was warped and twisted, the strings pulled by something not of its own mind. And this intelligence had finally trapped her, caught her. It even intended to watch her die with a glee that defied logic. As if it wanted to see her last moments.

Maybe it was right. Perhaps this was it.

The screams came again, weeping, shouting for her not to leave them. They almost made her lose her breath, such was the force with which they returned. Be quiet. Let her sleep. She couldn't do anything for them, any of them. Not like this.

There was just one materia she hadn't used, one she never intended to use, because no matter how much of her will she channeled into it, it never did anything. She kept it around as a keepsake, a reminder of her mother, the last part left of the woman that raised her.

"You already have everything you need."

Then why didn't it show itself? What was she missing?

Precious seconds ticked by as she attempted to hold her breath for as long as she could. Surely that one gem, known for merely being a piece of decoration tucked away in her ribbon, wasn't the answer, was it?

The screams returned, and she shook her head. Just go away! She was trying to think, and she didn't have much time to do it! Yet they persisted, did not cease. They knew she was about to die, and they didn't want to let her go. Her brows knitted with frustration. Maybe there was only one way to get them to be quiet.

So she made them move, made those wailing spirits that called out to her go somewhere else. She channeled the sorrow, the pleas, the wailing, right into the materia hidden in her ribbon. There, now let her figure out what to-

A flash of light erupted from behind her, just where her ribbon tied her hair back.

Aerith's eyes widened as she was flooded with new life. The voices silenced, the pain from her struggles lifted, if only for an instant. Her mind stopped bickering with itself, and in her confusion, she realized something.

It'd never done that before, had it?

If it glowed, shined, that meant she'd done something. Her eyes widened as this new piece of information struck home.

With an instinct born of a fresh drive to live, to reach the surface and break through the ice, her brows frowned and eyes narrowed. She lifted her right hand, and as if on command, a blinding sphere of light so bright it cast a pale blue aura in places, emerged just half an inch from her palm. She focused, concentrated, knowing full well she was running short on air...

When she let loose, she had no idea of what would happen. It was the first time she'd used a materia that she deemed inept, incapable of growing or giving life. What happened shocked her. The sphere of light shot forward in a raging torrent, a stream of energy that lanced toward the creature like it was guided on rails...

Jasmine has posed:
Holy, in its tiniest form, a mere fraction of its full, anti-apocalyptic potential, meets the dictionary definition of unholy.

The results are catastrophic.

There is a space of time about ten heartbeats wide that defy description or even memory -- the mind is a blank, overwhelmed by the sheer cosmic force being filled by the Lifestream as it is meant to be, untainted, uncorrupted, pure.

Afterwards, Aerith finds herself back on the ground of the forest, the sheer force of the explosion having launched her through the ice and out of the cavern she'd fallen into. There's no sign of the pool down there; it seems to have caved in, at least this section.

Out of the ground come tiny, radiant spheres, will-o'-the-wisps by the dozens, howling softly as they're released, then disincorporate, seemingly fading away into nothing. They are not recognizably part of the Lifestream, for all that they feel somewhat like souls of the departed -- this is something else, something strange.

Mysterious but not the darker puzzle: Who has been corrupting the Lifestream? How has he been doing it? Why would he do such a thing? What does he hope to gain?

She may be safe, but this isn't over... the kraken, which may or may not have survived, was the symptom of a very dark purpose, enacted over a very, very long time. A game far longer than the recent merging of the worlds, and the chaos and instability that has come of it.

Identifying the disease, much less healing it, may be the work of a lifetime.

Aerith has posed:
Aerith sputtered and coughed as she found herself above ground again, her clothing soaked through, staff still in her hands, the glow of the White Materia... yes, it had even spoken its name to her before she let loose the spell... fading out.

She recovered after a few moments, getting to her feet in far less disorganized fashion than down there. She couldn't see anything from here, the lake had caved in. No idea whether these wisps she saw were the spirits being freed... or something else entirely. She touched one before it faded... "What are you? What was that?"

Jasmine has posed:
There is no answer as they wink out, one by one. Only the sound of the wind in the trees, as the chorus of Life strikes up its grand symphony, welcoming Aerith back from her unexpected journey.

Aerith has posed:
Aerith looks up at the wisps, her face placid despite their refusal to answer. Definitely too easy, the answers lay elsewhere.

She closed her eyes and took in a breath as the very feel of life, of the energy that drove everything, warmed her bones and made her smile. Yes, answers would come later. The White Materia glowed for a brief moment, whined as if in question. What now, it asked?

Aerith shook her head. She had no idea. So many new things all at once... the most disturbing of which was that the Heartless were not the only thing to deal with. It was her destiny, her duty, to find out what was tampering with the Lifestream in such a massive way. Oh, she knew the Heartless were responsible for chewing apart the energies of her world until they were at their dregs, but it wasn't the only world that had this energy. It was everywhere, inside everyone, and it was all at risk. But she didn't have to ask the reason why anyone would want it. Faced with its very presence, its essence filling her at that one crucial moment, she understood implicitly.

Memories were knowledge. Knowledge was power. Power was change, and change was everything. Control over that much energy, Heartless or not, would shift the balance of everything that lived, be it of light or darkness. She could feel the hearts of millions crying out in pain, pulled by strings they had no control over.

She would find the one with the strings and end them. Even Aerith knew that which was unnatural had to be removed, had to die.

And she wasn't afraid of killing those who would destroy everything.

The forest did not rebel to this, only remained silent. She could feel its acceptance, and she peered back down toward the collapsed cave. "Real shame... my bag's gone." She sighed and headed back toward Goug. "I can't come back here, either. It's too dangerous."