MONSTERS (A Final Fantasy 7 Fanfic)

II: Creation

The flames were all around her. An inferno that screamed and consumed all in its path. Wooden houses collapsed into piles of burning remains. Malformed figures of ashen flesh fell to their knees, wailing for a mercy that would never come, their hollow eyes melting away in the heat.

Lucrecia had fallen, begging for it to stop. For these poor people to run. But they never heard her, it was as if she didn't exist– and it always ended the same way. The flames. The screams. The suffering.

And in the middle of it all stood his ethereal presence. Long, silver hair of a gentle stream flowing over the violent flames. A black coat donned upon a powerful, beastly frame. As everyone and everything screeched and burned, he was completely untouched. The inferno did not dare harm him.

With unnatural grace, he twirled and danced with a blade longer than he was tall, cutting down anyone who tried to run from his fury. Some died instantly, a head severed from their shoulders, or a blade of steel piercing their heart. But most died in agony, bleeding out from the gaping wound of a missing arm, or grasping at their own intestines spilled from torn-open bellies.

Lucrecia begged him to stop, but he'd not listen. All he knew was rage, and all he did was kill. It was only when there was no one left to eviscerate, when every single person lay crumpled in a pool of their own blood, that he paused. His fingers tapped thoughtfully at the hilt of his blade, and he began to turn.

The thin hairs at the back of Lucrecia's neck stood on end as she caught only a glimpse of his pale face, half-obscured by the long strands that dripped from his silver mane. She could only watch and cower, tears burning into her cheeks as she froze.

His eyes were like nothing she'd ever seen. Filled with a frigid rage that burned brighter than any of the flames billowing around him. Glowing intensely in the night as two pinpricks; a green hue framing slit pupils that seemed more reptilian than they did human. Frighteningly beautiful and beautifully frightening.

Before her towered a dragon of death, divinity and despair; and she was but a helpless insect scrutinised under his gaze.

A pain throbbed in her torso. She clutched at her stomach, hitching a sob as she shut her eyes and kept a hand over the child that had been growing within her for the past nine months. However futile it was, she'd do all in her power to protect her son from the beast's burning rage.

But, upon opening her eyes... she was no longer greeted by the sight of those haunting orbs. Nor did she feel the heat of flames licking at her fingertips, or the warmth of blood spilled from the innocents around her. Around her were neatly tiled walls, and before her a toilet she was leaning over. The village of Nibelheim had not been tainted by a single flicker, and the mansion housing her was secure.

Her hand shot up from her stomach and covered her mouth as she gagged, beads of sweat trickling down her reddened forehead.

You're safe, Lucrecia thought to herself, the bitter taste of bile rising in her mouth. You're safe. Sephiroth is safe. The village is fine.

She coughed, bearing much of her weight on a single moist hand barely managing to grip the toilet seat. Her sides heaved with rapid breaths as she urged her heart towards calm.

'Unforeseen side effects' indeed, she sighed, thinking back to the meeting with Doctor Gast. If only there had been a way to know that those side effects would involve horrifying, violent visions from the moment of her child's conception. They had been subtle at first, lasting only a few seconds during the first few months– a bit of blood on the wall here, a flicker of a flame there– slightly disturbing, yes, but not something she couldn't deal with. She did not expect, however, for them to become full-blown hallucinations, so vivid and frightening that they had occasionally caused her to fall unconscious. She hoped this would not impact her child's development– and, as far as they could tell, his growth had been healthy so far. More than healthy, in fact.