Cast

Cast
Sunnepho

Disclaimer: All characters and settings are property of Square Enix, and no copyright infringement is intended in the writing of this fiction.

--

It is the sensation of flight that comes to her mind most often as she sits upon her crystal throne.

It flits by, bringing with it the sting of cold air and the slap of her hair against her cheek. She can feel the bunch of muscles under her thighs as the wyvern slaps its wings down upon the stream of wind that drives past.

Her sister once said that she dreamed the entire time, in her crystal sleep. That it was warm, and lonely.

In the drowsy silence, she forgets her name.

No.

They are sharp, the claws inside her breast. They seem to rake across the inside of her ribcage, and she struggles for breath until she realizes that her frozen lungs need not heed her.

Lightning. She is Lightning. Ephemeral; a force of destruction that fades away before the eyes.

In the halls of Valhalla she sees everything.

--

There is someone sobbing. It’s that sort of persistent, buzzsaw whine that drives spikes into her teeth.

She sees a figure laid flat upon a pile of animal skins, and though its chest moves, Lightning recognizes death when she sees it. Its fingers are twisted, and she thinks of charred claws and the bright red eye.

“But what is it?” someone is shouting.

The response is slow in coming. “It is a crystal shard,” says the girl sitting by the bed. She is looking down at the dying man. “A shard from the Fall. It has lodged itself into his chest and suffocates him with his blood.”

“The Fall was centuries ago!”

The sobbing increases in volume as if to compete with the anger in the speaker’s voice.

The girl looks up, then. With pale hair in pale eyes, she looks directly at Lightning.

“History is broken.”

--

She recognizes the twisted metal of the Vile Peaks quickly.

She sees a small child of indeterminate sex hopping from the mangled casing of one of the war machines. It swings its arms, humming as it picks it way up another mound of garbage.

The elbows of the child look enormous against the thinness of its arms, and Lightning sees the scrap metal slide under the child’s feet before it happens. Dust and noise fills the air, and it quickly settles again.

The humming stops, and Lightning thinks she will remember the child, if only because no one else will.

--

The pillar picks up the colour of the sky, she thinks.

It traps the light, bouncing it from surface to surface until it glows blue against the brightness of the grass.

There is movement, then, and Lightning wishes for the rough grip of her blade in her hand when monsters swarm the ground. They are small, and excited, and they pass straight by her without noticing.

The plants at her feet bend and jostle as if blasted by a gale, and she swivels to see the dripping bulk of what could be a flan at her back, if flans blotted out the sky. It roars again, and she grits her teeth against the stench she can’t smell.