Omake Zone 03: Survivor
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
DISC UNKNOWN
Valerick Goodliffe was weary from battle. The years wore on his soul. He stood atop a barren cliff, and his weather-beaten boots shared the same arid brown hue of the surrounding rocky crags. It had taken him a relatively small “forever” to climb up to this point, just so he could ponder this specific view, as was his annual custom. But what was “forever” to a man who had been alive now for centuries?
The brightness of the day seemed to highlight the pure blue of the sky above him. Doughy clouds rode the jetstream lazily through the sky, casting fat shadows on the landscape far below, and making the sharp noon sunlight spilling through between them look like the pillars of a forgotten heaven. Through sun-creased eyes, Valerick took in the vista before him, his violet eyes no less vibrant and striking than they had been hundreds of years earlier. He closed them for a brief moment and inhaled the cold air of that high altitude deeply. He held the breath for a few long seconds before exhaling slowly from his mouth. He opened his eyes once more and gazed into the far horizon in the distance. He saw what lay there and thought back to when it had all began. The memories taunted him with meaninglessness. He clenched his fist hard, grimacing. The feeling there was that of life, and the fact that he, amongst all of them, still had it was a familiar stab of regret that only he could know.
A sound in the distance behind him brought his hunter’s instincts back. He hurriedly pulled the ghillied parts of his jacket over his head. Focusing his thoughts on his Earth materia, he activated a quicksand spell and sank instantly into the liquefied soil around him. Several lifetimes-worth of personal training had taught him to hold his breath for inordinate amounts of time, but that failing, he could always use the breathing tube installed in the hood itself. He waited there, buried in the ground like a corpse.
The sound grew louder. Whatever it was, it was closing fast. The sound didn't make sense. It was a rhythmic drumming beat. As the sound drew nearer, his sharpened tracking senses could pick out other details: there were three of them, and they were leaping the rocks of the cliff face, ascending with speed. The drumming grew louder until whatever they were stopped just above the top of Valerick’s buried head.
The rhythmic drumming also came to a stop.
Again, they've found me, Valerick thought. And so, I must close the circle again as well.
Valerick's mind galvanized, refocusing on the instincts and training that had kept him alive for this long. A mantra as familiar as his own name resurfaced like dark echoes in his mind.
Kill the closest while finding cover.
Eliminate the other threats.
Run. Escape. Survive.
With cold, murderous clarity, Valerick erupted out of the earth in an upward spiraling maneuver. With his combat knife held out before him, his entire body became an impaling spear. The wetness and warmth all around him was the evidence of his kill. As gravity reclaimed his upward launch, he spun back to the ground, blood and chunks of viscera flinging off the spinning flaps of his jacket.
He landed on the ground in a ready stance and surveyed the kill.
A large red lion (maybe a tiger?) thing lay torn apart on the ground. It bore a scarred right eye and a tattoo of a “XIII” on the shoulder of its left foreleg. The end of its tail was smoldering like a flame that had just been doused.
Just beside the slain tiger-beast thing were two cubs of the same species. They were nudging the body of their dead elder with their tiny muzzles.
Valerick stood there dumbfounded.
“Oh,” he fumbled, “Um-”
Inexplicably, the cubs began to speak.
“Dad? Dad, wake up! Come on, dad, you gotta wake up…”
Valerick wanted to be anywhere but here. He sheathed his knife and began backing away, the vista of Midgar in the distance--now completely overrun by centuries of vegetation--would not serve as a balm on his soul this day.
Not after this.
