melodiesoflife | Event || In Your Worst Memory

Event || In Your Worst Memory

Characters: All Heroes of Light. Only those who signed-up can start a memory.
Where: Interdimensional Rift
When: May 27th - May 30th
Summary: The Heroes of Light relive some of their worst memories, with a twist. All characters participating in this will be physically missing from Crystallis for the duration of the event.
Warning: It depends on the memory.

Where you were or what you were doing— It does not really matter. Not any more. Everything around you freezes, nearly as if time itself stopped, as if the world was frozen in time. And before you have a chance to understand what is happening, you can hear a voice right behind you.

"Kali Shashidhwaja."

Should you turn around, you may see a child who seems to be the only one aside from you unaffected by what is happening. And as she stares right at you, it makes no doubt these strange words are aimed at you. But before you can reply to her, the world around you collapses. Reality twists and shatters... Or maybe you are the one who is collapsing and shattering away from reality as you know it. No matter what the answer is, it will only take a few seconds for you to find yourself sinking into a void, Crystallis vanishing into the distance. There is nothing but darkness as far as the eye can see.

And once again you feel different: all the powers from your Jobs are fading. Not only that, but you might find that your Crystal is gone and your clothes back to what they were before you woke up in Crystallis. It is silent, cold and before long it feels as though life itself is slipping out of you... And yet, slowly the world reforms around you. The darkness fades away and a new world appears, yet at the same time this is not a world.

This is a memory. The question is, is it yours or that of someone else?

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After watching the scene unfold before him, Morgan can't help but freeze.

"What? But that's not, that's not how this goes!"

Father was definitely still alive! He had seen this before, and Mother scaled back the blast, and Father survived! And then Basilio showed up and helped them all escape, and Grima was reborn, and that was definitely how it went! So, why did his father's body look so limp? Why did his mother look so upset? Unless...

There's a sinking feeling in his gut as he realizes that this is their future. Or rather, this is the timeline that would become the future that they all ran from. This is when the pieces started falling into place, and assured Grima's victory. This is what doomed them all.

But it was just a dream, right? Just like he saw with Yuffie, it was nothing but a dream. It wasn't their future, just a bad, distant memory. But, even knowing that, he's still shaking.

Contrary to his regular composure, he's not going to actively approach any of the other Heroes. He's pretty shaken by the entire thing, and he can't seem to muster up the strength to actually move.

There were many people that Robin didn't want to see this. None of the Heroes, to be certain. She did not want Jade Curtiss or Sephiroth to witness it -- to think her a madwoman or worse -- but more than any of them, Robin did not want Morgan to see it. Many of them were acquaintances; some were friends, who she held dear, but they were still new. Morgan came from her world, though. He was the son that she didn't know she had. He was a sign that her future might not be bleak, that even if she never reclaimed her past, there might be something wonderful in the days ahead.

When he cried out like that, she slumped back down to the ground. Her hood fell over her head, shadowing her eyes entirely. It hid the tears welling up in them. That future felt out of reach now.

Was this what awaited her? Killing Chrom and driving her allies away?

But as Morgan thought: this was only a dream, and dreams played by different rules. They also played unfair. Robin wasn't paying attention when Chrom's corpse lurched. It was a terrible, jerking motion; like nothing alive, but rather like a chain being pulled taught suddenly. The legs moved independently, before the corpse bent up to its feet. Falchion did not remain in its hand, and as it swung its head up, the eyes had sunken in...

...and burned with a red, otherworldly glow.

In a freakishly fast motion, it picked up Robin's sword where it fell. It grabbed the steel sword in both hands -- and Robin looked up in time to see the blade swinging down to meet her.

As soon as he had realized they could no longer affect the scene before them, Jade had settled for watching in silence. It had almost seemed like they had succeeded, and the sorcerer's last attempt attack had failed--

Only for Robin to mortally wound Chrom. That was unexpected.

Even as the Heroes were returned to the memory -- or the vision of the future, as it might be -- Jade said nothing. Instead he watched Robin intently. She hadn't been planning for this, that much was clear. If she had wanted to commit murder, there had been much easier ways to do it without going through all this trouble. Either this was a cruel change from what had actually happened, or a reality she wasn't allowed to change.

Just then, the lord's dead body moved. Jade found himself staring in morbid fascination as the newly made Risen rose, like a puppet being pulled up by strings. It was the sudden grab for the sword that snapped Jade out of it, and he dove forwards, leaping in front of Robin and bringing up his spear to block the swing.

"Robin, on your feet! It's not over yet!"

The third voice pulls Morgan back to his senses. Unfortunately, he only snaps out of it as the Risen starts to swing the sword. From where he's standing, there's nothing he can do but scream.

"Mother!"

Thankfully, he sees one of the other heroes swoop in and block the blow. That's right, he had to pull himself together. This was a battlefield, and he couldn't let himself be distracted, no matter how wrong this was. There would be time to worry when the battle was over.

He's still shaking as he manages to open his tome and call forward a fireball; he's too distracted to concentrate properly, however, and the spell misses by a wide margin, instead scorching the floor.

At first, it all came in slow motion for Robin. Watching Chrom -- or the creature that used to be him, raising his body back up -- swing a sword down at her filled her with terror. She waited, as if locked in a trance, and Jade's words somehow pierced through the terror of that moment. No, she realized, it wasn't over.

Then her sword clattered into Jade's spear, with a loud clang of metal on metal. The Risen lord turned to look at Jade and opened his mouth with a snarl. But then Morgan's cry caught not only Robin's ears, but the undead's. Chrom's head turned, twisting around far more than it could in life, to look directly at Morgan. The fireball slammed into the floor nearby. Those burning red eyes regarded him with no emotion, no care for his son.

Then he bounded forward, sword raised, and tried to break away from Jade.

Robin's heart sank. She turned, and loosed a bolt of lightning into Chrom. The Risen stumbled and slowed, but didn't stop running. "Morgan! Look out!"

She glanced at Jade. Maybe he could use more of that magic.

Unfortunately, strong fonic artes would take too long to cast. The undead lord would reach Morgan before Jade was half-way through the incantation. Weaker artes, meanwhile, would do no better than Robin's magic. Unless...

The floor was still scorched where Morgan's spell had struck. Fire meant Fifth Fonons, concentrated and ready to be used.

Taking advantage of the few seconds Chrom was stunned by Robin's lightning spell, Jade stood in the exact spot the fireball had hit just moments ago, and called upon the leftover fonons in the scorched floor. "Crimson fury, burn! Eruption!"

The normally weak Stalagmite arte was powered up. Rather than merely rupturing, the ground beneath Chrom erupted with a burst of magma; no matter where he moved, there was searing lava to greet him.

It's a good thing that Jade manages to get that spell off, because by the time Morgan registers that Robin's safe and he's in danger, Chrom--no, he corrects himself, whatever it was that used to be Chrom--is already engulfed in the spell. It hits him pretty quickly how badly that could have gone if the other Hero hadn't been present.

He nods a quick thank you, before trying to compose himself. He wasn't sure if there would still be a threat once the fire subsided, but he had to make sure he was prepared either way. His legs feel pretty weak, and he's still shaking, so he takes a few steps back and draws his sword, going on the defensive.

It was a small mercy that Risen did not scream. They merely made that wheezing, unnatural groan regardless of what happened -- and thus, when magma exploded underneath the Risen's feet, Robin and Morgan weren't treated to the former prince's screams. He still flailed, though, trying in vain to escape the spell. The lava had him, though, and he burnt bright and fierce for a moment.

Then he collapsed, so much ash and dust, like the other Risen had. As the ash collapsed downward, Robin was left staring -- both at the remains of Chrom, which already scattered, and at Morgan. She glanced away from her son, then, and from Jade too.

She didn't know how to face either. The hand she put over her face had the dark violet mark of Grima on it.

She kept herself from sobbing or any other such display. It was just a dream, she told herself. Except, it had been her dream, and not one that she shared with others. She felt sick to her stomach and shuddered, before her hand fell away. She took a deep breath. It didn't stop the shaking.

Then, she spoke in a voice that lacked the firmness that she hoped for: "I... I'm sorry."

With the Risen breaking into ash and dust, Jade merged his spear with his arm again and straightened. It seemed the battle, at least, was over.

Looking from the remains to Robin, and then to Morgan, he took note of the identical attire -- as well as the fact that the boy had called her "Mother" earlier. More timeline confusion, then -- and while Chrom's role in all this wasn't as clear, Jade thought he could see some resemblance in Morgan, in more than just hair color.

He kept that bit of speculation to himself for now, however.

"I would prefer an explanation over an apology. Is what we just saw real?"

Breathe in, breath out Morgan repeated the mantra over and over. The threat was out of the way, so now he just needed time to pull himself together.

After he manages to compose himself, he turns towards the other Hero, the one who had helped them. They'd have been in serious trouble without him, but at the same time, it was something that might have been better for no one else to see. It's not strange that he'd want an explanation either, but that was gonna be pretty hard to pull off.

"Yes. No. Kind of?" Maybe he'd be okay with 'It's complicated' as an answer?

"I don't know," Robin admitted, in answer to Jade's question. She looked sideways at Morgan -- did he know more? -- and then she looked back down at the flagstones of the Dragon's Table.

"It's a vision that I've had," she said. "But it feels real. It doesn't feel like a dream. Something between a memory I've forgotten and a nightmare. Except... it's never come to pass. I've fought with Chrom in my world, and we only fought that sorcerer once. He died by our hand, when he tried to assassinate our leader."

They thought, then, that they had saved Emmeryn. They were wrong.

"But this was different than my vision, too," she admitted. "In my vision, it was just Chrom and I, against that sorcerer. And Chrom--" She looked down at the ash, and her head fell. "He never... I always killed him after something took me over, but he never... was changed into that."

She closed her mouth after that.

Edited 2015-06-29 19:27 (UTC)

Jade mulled over this information. It had never come to pass, yet Morgan seemed to know how it was supposed to have gone. The future, then, one that had happened to him but not yet to her -- at least, that's what it sounded like. Jade wondered what the odds were that he had wound up with two coworkers headed for a future of betraying their comrades.

"Every memory I've seen before yours seems to have been twisted to test its owner's resolve. Chrom's transformation was probably just that. As for the rest of it..." He gave Morgan a pointed look. "I'm afraid I can't help you there."

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Event || In Your Worst Memory

Let me know if you need a different tag! \(^o^)/

this is wonderful :D and also I AM SO SORRY, THIS IS THE TWIST THE MODS GAVE ME

Because the FEA canon wasn't painful enough?

No dreams, only tears now.

Morgan D:

brb setting your dad/husband on fire, don't mind me

nbd

it's roasted Chrom D:

what's wrong with having a barbeque?

roasty toasty exalt

one sovereign of ylisse, please, extra crispy!

(chr)om nom nom~