This is a bit of an experiment for me, being a multichaptered fic if I choose to continue it from here. The idea stemmed from a late-night conversation with a friend when we were trying to tie all the Final Fantasies together into one enormous, conglomerate timeline. As always, I do not claim that anything recognizable as canon is mine. Just this story.
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Prologue
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.oOo.oOo.oOo.
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Eons ago, long before the war between Zanarkand and Bevelle, there was a catastrophe, a sundering of the world.
The southern continent plunged into the sea, vanishing in its entirety underneath the waves. The northern landmass narrowed to a strip of its former size, the rising sea levels consuming the vast forests, spreading plains, and high mountains indiscriminately. The immense deserts of the central continent were decimated, the surrounding oceans swallowing up the seas of sand and completely separating it from the rest of the land. Intense volcanic activity spawned island chains in the south; the phenomenal release of dust and gasses changed the world's entire climate.
The great kingdoms of the time were devastated, unable to recover. One lay in ruins in the wastes of the sandy island, the geologic cataclysm having taken its swift toll. Of the other greater two, the northern empire would be almost entirely consumed by the sea, but from its flotsam and jetsam would rise the civilization that would build Zanarkand. The other, to the south and west, would find itself facing plagues from worsening living conditions and famine as the weather changed. Its slow, ominous decline eventually drove all people from its lands until it, an empty empire now, succumbed to time and the rising sea and vanished beneath the waves.
The remaining peoples, in need of a strong will to guide them in the desperate times, found none. The gods of old had long ago been defeated; their crowns stripped from them by the mere mortals they ruled. And so they created one. Not just one, many. And so the Fayth came into being.
They were not creations of Yevon, as most today think, but of those people who survived a, dare I say it, much greater tragedy than Sin itself. The bravest, strongest souls of the world willingly chose to be bound within stone for all eternity. They discarded their human names and chose names from the legends of those past kingdoms of faded glory, names of airships and of heroes. Bahamut, Ifrit, Shiva, and Valefor are all those that remain of the original Fayth. Others, like valiant Alexander, wise Hilda, mighty Leviathan, and whimsical Strahl have been lost, either to war or… other fates.
Time passed. The most powerful and ancient beasts and fiends were mostly either killed by the Sundering of the World or hunted to extinction by humans. Some still live even now in the dark corners of the world, away from the prying eyes of warriors strong enough to challenge their might. It was in these times that new sentients appeared into the world.
The Ronso rose from great winged cats in the northern wilderness, now balancing on two legs and with only vestigial wisps of their former impressive wingspans. The Guado appeared from the swamps, retaining in their skin and hair the colors of the land of their origin, and in their demeanor the unforgiving trickery of the quicksand marshes. Of the Hypello there is no knowledge.
Of all of the new races though, only one people were once Hume. They called themselves the Al Bhed. Mostly human in appearance and physiology, the Al Bhed were thought to have been descended from the union of humans and another race, one of those lost to the changes of the world, a species that was sensitive to Mist, the ethereal material pyreflies are made of. This was thought to be because of the one major difference that separated the Al Bhed from the humans: their eyes. The spiral pupil of the Al Bhed eye refracts the light received from Mist in an unusual way. To an Al Bhed, they see not only the fiend, but snatches of the person it once was. The pyreflies, no matter how twisted with the rage, grief, and longing that caused the once-living being to become a fiend in the first place, still hold echoes of their time as a being on the mortal plane. This allowed the Al Bhed to separate what was fiend from what was merely beast, and in those days without monks or summoners, the Al Bhed were the protectors of the people and the hunters of monsters, their swift machina chasing the creatures down and the hunters slaying them, allowing the souls trapped in the fiends to rest in peace.
These days passed as well, however, and as the number of fiends diminished, the population of Humans, Ronso, Guado, and Al Bhed rose, leading to the creation of the great civilization city-centers of Bevelle and Zanarkand. And… well, the rest you know as history.
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.oOo.oOo.oOo.
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I wonder why it's always at the most inconvenient of times that my mind likes to remind me of Mom's old stories?
A young girl in a wetsuit broke the surface of the Moonflow in a rush of bubbles, blond hair, and pyreflies.