ChargewithSword
Zelda Dungeon's Critic
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2009
- Location
- I don't want to say.
My name… is Silver the Hedgehog. I am one of the few survivors left in this world, held up in a city known as Station Square.
For as long back as I remember I've been living a very dismal life. This could be attributed to my world being a living nightmare. The sun never shines through the darkened sky, and the ground below the city highways is always lit with flame.
These flames are the sick creations of a being named Iblis.
I can't really describe Iblis as a physical being. It is an immortal creature seemingly forged of shadow and flame. It constantly thrives on the suffering of others around it. Its resting place was a throne of fire on the outskirts of the city.
We can never defeat Iblis. No attacks can harm its unnatural hide. We can't outrun it either, for its gaze is everywhere. All we can do is hold out. Hold out for a miracle to come, as the demons of Iblis close in. We can only wait… for oblivion.
When all hope seemed dead though, I was given a small spark of it.
It all began one day when I was scavenging for food. Our supplies were running low and my comrades decided to send me to find some. They knew, as well as I did, that such a task was folly. There was no food to find for miles. Either stocks were destroyed or looted by us. Now we were on the verge of starving to death.
Still, I was committed to search. I could not let myself be ravaged by despair, lest I attract Iblis' eye which was not something to do when alone.
As I stood upon a rooftop I heard a voice call out my name. "Silver!"
I turned to see that it was my friend, Blaze the Cat. As her name suggested she was a Mobian feline with violet fur. She was the supportive figure of our group; always there to offer a helping hand. What's more important was that she was our only fighter who could battle Iblis' demons in close combat. This is because she had the ability to harness flame and bend it to her will, allowing her to use the demons' fire against them.
"What is it Blaze?" My question was silly; it was not hard to tell why she had come.
"They've come again! We need you on the front!"
The mere mention of this left me sour. This had been the third attack on us this month, and our supplies and morale was being exhausted. If this our demise was almost certain.
Despite this hopeless situation, I shoved my despair aside and flew towards our base with Blaze running behind.
I was also an important asset to our cause. I had been gifted with the powers of telekinesis. This let me breach the demons' defenses without hassle. I could hold objects in a hovering stasis and throw them with little effort. I was also able to hover long distances without tiring, letting me traverse the landscape of our harsh world. Despite this, I was, frustratingly, no match for Iblis.
Our base was a stronghold building that once belonged to a large military operation known as G.U.N. Now it was our final sanctuary.
The building was on a high ground above the rest of the city, allowing it to avoid much of the destruction below. This position was our advantage for interpreting incoming attacks, but left us stranded if we needed to make a quick retreat.
Within nary an hour, Blaze and I had arrived there, and the situation was grim. Our forces were barely holding together as the onslaught battered them. Demons came by the score, ripping apart everything in their path. Their screeching cries perverted my ears with poison of betrayal and death, but I would not stand for it.
Blaze and I joined the conflict, in which we proceeded on our own rampage. The smell of brimstone would pervade the area as I sent demons hurtling towards one another. Blaze's kicks of flame sent chills down my spine as the demons affected by them whooshed by me.
This sudden retaliation had worked in our favor. The demons were mindless brutes also driven on the suffering of others. I and Blaze's appearance had given hope to our forces slowly robbing the demons of their fuel. They fell to despair and anguish as we pushed back. Eventually they gave up the fight and fell back to the fires below. The day was ours… at least for now.
None of us cheered. To us, this was just another delay of the inevitable. I could just picture the smug grin on Iblis' face as he laughed at our efforts to survive! We were like paper in the wind; it was impossible to fight back.
In the calm after the battle, I walked to a ledge and looked down to the fires below. I contemplated to myself whether it was worth continuing this struggle any further. Then, I felt a hand on my back.
"That won't solve anything Silver."
I looked to see that it was Bentley Beaver, the leader of our troop. He was a family man by heart and hated fighting. Despite this, he accepted the responsibilities of being leader when no one had to the morale to command. He took charge and offered his own words of wisdom when situations were grim, and gave our group reason to smile vainly, at least.
I turned to face him, my eyes squinting. "Then what else is there Bentley? We spend our days living in fear, and sleep with restless nightmare! Why not just end it now and be done with it?!"
He stared at me with solemn eyes and sighed. "Because we live in the first place, Silver. We have an obligation to the age of peace that could come. We don't know the future or if we'll survive for a time of peace, but I know that if we do nothing, then we'll most definitely never see it. You want to at least try to see it don't you?"
I nodded silently. "Y-you're right, I'm sorry Bentley."
"Don't apologize to anyone Silver. I've almost done it three times. Just know that there is no easy way out of this. Think about the friends who may choose to stay alive despite you dying; that always helped me at least."
With that, Bentley walked away, leaving me in thought.
If I did die, would my friends still fight? Would they feel betrayed but still continue this struggle? Could I even consider myself their friend if I did such a thing? That's what went through my mind as I wrapped my head around the concept.
I was then approached by Blaze, her purple dress marred by the ashes of demons.
"Blaze, if I die… would you still fight?" The question came up so suddenly that she was left stuttering in surprise.
After she took a deep breath she let herself think out what she wanted to say. "I consider you a good friend Silver, and a wonderful ally. While your loss would be great, I would still fight. I could never give up after that, not unless I could avenge you at least."
I looked to Blaze and sighed. I let many thoughts rush to my head at the point, some of doubt, others of fear, and others of anger.
I suddenly scream and let loose my rage against a broken pillar, shooting it far off to the distance. I then collapsed on the ground and began to sob, surrounded by the loneliness of this desolation. No one else but Blaze was outside now. Everyone had gone inside while me and her stayed behind.
"I just wish there was something we could do! Something to end this all, but nothing has worked!"
After that all went silent, but the sounds of crackling fire. It was truly a place of despair, where the only hope could be found in the leftover life. However, even that was fading away to a silent end.
Suddenly, the silence had been broken by the sounds of deep throated laughter. It was deep and exaggerated, holding back no shred of insanity. Then, it just stopped.
Blaze and I turned to pinpoint the location of the laughter, but found no trace of its origin.
"And here I thought the only problem was your outrageous hair." We looked up to see a black hedgehog. He had eyes as green as sludge that never blinked. His quills rose upwards with streams of blue around them. What was most queer about him though, was that he had no mouth.
We held our guard up as he slowly descended. "Who are you?"
"… I am Mephisto the Dark, and I have the answer to your problems."
We were taken aback by his reply, slowly forgetting our guard. Still we didn't forget ourselves completely. Most others here would have thrown themselves to his feet at these words.
Blaze was less stunned by his words though and held a tighter defense than me. "What can you do?"
"The better question is: what do you need to do? Everything has an origin, like a chicken from an egg, or a migraine from an idiot." Upon landing he began to walk towards us in a puppet-like manner.
"What you need to do is to find the one responsible for this catastrophe. Only then shall you destroy Iblis."
"And… how can you help?" I slowly motioned to Mephisto, growing more curious as time passed.
"By providing you the means to find this person."
With a snap of his finger, Mephisto produced a dark orb. He then handed it to me, which I reluctantly took.
I looked into the globe and felt myself falling to darkness. Soon my entire world was surrounded by flame; an endless flame, with nary a sign of anything else. Then, from within the endless wall I could make out the figure of a human girl. She was lean and pale, with dark red hair. Her dress was a regal attire suggesting royalty of sorts.
She looked to me with an expression. Her baby blue eyes turned red with fire, and her body began to twist. She rose with girl and became the spitting image of Iblis!
I wanted to run, but was frozen in place. I was helpless as Iblis began to destroy everything. Even its very flames were subject to its wrath, falling one by one into nothingness. Then Iblis set its sights on me and prepared to finish it.
Suddenly I was thrust into reality. The orb was gone and I was now lying in Blaze's arms. Mephisto was rubbing his chin slightly.
I slowly got up and looked around, Iblis was now gone and everything was back to normal. Then Mephisto grabbed me, pulling me to him.
"What did you see?!"
"What did I see?"
"This isn't a game of, "ask me another"! What did you see!?"
He was ferocious, but took care not to hurt me. Blaze's battle position definitely seemed to assure him not to do that.
"I-I saw… a girl. She became Iblis, and began to destroy everything!"
Mephisto let go of me and turned away, apparently wrapped in thought.
"What you saw was, the Day of Disaster, the day when Iblis was unleashed upon the world. That girl is the one to blame. She is, the Iblis Trigger!"
I began to pace rapidly, muttering those words as if they were a drug. Iblis Trigger. I finally had a concrete answer. It was so exhilarating to not be left in the dark.
"So how to we stop this Iblis Trigger?"
Mephisto looked to me with his beading eyes. "To do that, you need to change the past."
I was swept away in a storm of shock. "That's impossible though!"
"…With my help you can. I can move, unhindered, through time."
"Maybe you can, but what about me and Blaze? Any false move could doom our existence and cause a time paradox!"
"Not if you were to remove yourself from time. If you did so for only this moment you shall go unhindered through time. Your past self will still exist because time is unable to remove all of you. So it must alter itself so that you will be born and eventually be led to this moment whether there is an Iblis or not. You shall still retain your memories as well. Not as bad a deal as you believed, eh' killjoy?"
My hope rose as he continued to explain. Our home had a chance, and I could be there to see it! I didn't care what risks would be taken; only the goal and prize were before me.
"What's in it for you?" Blaze's voice woke me from my dream; a reminder of the risks in trusting this stranger.
"Me? I get to sleep at night." Mephisto had rushed his answer like as if he didn't want to delve any further into the subject.
I couldn't help but be suspicious at this moment. Mephisto's appearance was somewhat convenient, almost too. Still he had presented himself as an aid to our problems. His words were still ringing in my mind.
"So, now that, that's out of the way, do we have a deal?" He stuck an open hand to Blaze and I.
We looked to the hand and then to one another. I could see within her eyes that she didn't trust Mephisto at all. Still, she wanted the same thing I did, and that was a world of peace. Even if Mephisto was shady, he was our only hope.
We nodded to each other and gave our hands to Mephisto. When we made contact I felt enormous amounts of pain surge through me. My veins tightened, and my breath quickened as the world began to dissolve around me.
All things were near, and not there at all. I was nowhere, but somewhere. I was caught in-between. It was a feeling of nothingness.
In this void I could hear the voice of Mephisto call out, "I shall send us back in time before the Day of Disaster."
From there, my experience had been unreal; otherworldly. No words in English, Japanese, Latin, or any mortal language could possibly describe the absurdities there.
Within what felt like second, I was thrust into another location. There I saw colors and things I barely knew. The ground was soft and green, kind of like the spare apples we kept in storage. The sky was an odd color I had never seen before, but it was beautiful to look at. Then there was these large, brown objects sticking out of the ground with other shades of green on their crowns. This had to be the past, and it was all so beautiful.
Then, I noted neither Blaze of Mephisto were beside me.
After pacing around for about fifteen minutes I had decided it was time for action. I knew that Blaze had to be around the area somewhere and that I would eventually find her. Right now, I had a duty to fulfill and I couldn't wait. So I took to the sky with haste and caught glimpse of a city to the distance.
Though the view was splendid, I had no time to gawk at such pleasantries. I charged off to the city with the weight of the future on my hands.
So that now brings me to my current situation. We now stand on the brink of destruction as the world lies on my fingertips. The Iblis Trigger is out there somewhere, and I will kill her, for the good of the world in both times…
For as long back as I remember I've been living a very dismal life. This could be attributed to my world being a living nightmare. The sun never shines through the darkened sky, and the ground below the city highways is always lit with flame.
These flames are the sick creations of a being named Iblis.
I can't really describe Iblis as a physical being. It is an immortal creature seemingly forged of shadow and flame. It constantly thrives on the suffering of others around it. Its resting place was a throne of fire on the outskirts of the city.
We can never defeat Iblis. No attacks can harm its unnatural hide. We can't outrun it either, for its gaze is everywhere. All we can do is hold out. Hold out for a miracle to come, as the demons of Iblis close in. We can only wait… for oblivion.
When all hope seemed dead though, I was given a small spark of it.
It all began one day when I was scavenging for food. Our supplies were running low and my comrades decided to send me to find some. They knew, as well as I did, that such a task was folly. There was no food to find for miles. Either stocks were destroyed or looted by us. Now we were on the verge of starving to death.
Still, I was committed to search. I could not let myself be ravaged by despair, lest I attract Iblis' eye which was not something to do when alone.
As I stood upon a rooftop I heard a voice call out my name. "Silver!"
I turned to see that it was my friend, Blaze the Cat. As her name suggested she was a Mobian feline with violet fur. She was the supportive figure of our group; always there to offer a helping hand. What's more important was that she was our only fighter who could battle Iblis' demons in close combat. This is because she had the ability to harness flame and bend it to her will, allowing her to use the demons' fire against them.
"What is it Blaze?" My question was silly; it was not hard to tell why she had come.
"They've come again! We need you on the front!"
The mere mention of this left me sour. This had been the third attack on us this month, and our supplies and morale was being exhausted. If this our demise was almost certain.
Despite this hopeless situation, I shoved my despair aside and flew towards our base with Blaze running behind.
I was also an important asset to our cause. I had been gifted with the powers of telekinesis. This let me breach the demons' defenses without hassle. I could hold objects in a hovering stasis and throw them with little effort. I was also able to hover long distances without tiring, letting me traverse the landscape of our harsh world. Despite this, I was, frustratingly, no match for Iblis.
Our base was a stronghold building that once belonged to a large military operation known as G.U.N. Now it was our final sanctuary.
The building was on a high ground above the rest of the city, allowing it to avoid much of the destruction below. This position was our advantage for interpreting incoming attacks, but left us stranded if we needed to make a quick retreat.
Within nary an hour, Blaze and I had arrived there, and the situation was grim. Our forces were barely holding together as the onslaught battered them. Demons came by the score, ripping apart everything in their path. Their screeching cries perverted my ears with poison of betrayal and death, but I would not stand for it.
Blaze and I joined the conflict, in which we proceeded on our own rampage. The smell of brimstone would pervade the area as I sent demons hurtling towards one another. Blaze's kicks of flame sent chills down my spine as the demons affected by them whooshed by me.
This sudden retaliation had worked in our favor. The demons were mindless brutes also driven on the suffering of others. I and Blaze's appearance had given hope to our forces slowly robbing the demons of their fuel. They fell to despair and anguish as we pushed back. Eventually they gave up the fight and fell back to the fires below. The day was ours… at least for now.
None of us cheered. To us, this was just another delay of the inevitable. I could just picture the smug grin on Iblis' face as he laughed at our efforts to survive! We were like paper in the wind; it was impossible to fight back.
In the calm after the battle, I walked to a ledge and looked down to the fires below. I contemplated to myself whether it was worth continuing this struggle any further. Then, I felt a hand on my back.
"That won't solve anything Silver."
I looked to see that it was Bentley Beaver, the leader of our troop. He was a family man by heart and hated fighting. Despite this, he accepted the responsibilities of being leader when no one had to the morale to command. He took charge and offered his own words of wisdom when situations were grim, and gave our group reason to smile vainly, at least.
I turned to face him, my eyes squinting. "Then what else is there Bentley? We spend our days living in fear, and sleep with restless nightmare! Why not just end it now and be done with it?!"
He stared at me with solemn eyes and sighed. "Because we live in the first place, Silver. We have an obligation to the age of peace that could come. We don't know the future or if we'll survive for a time of peace, but I know that if we do nothing, then we'll most definitely never see it. You want to at least try to see it don't you?"
I nodded silently. "Y-you're right, I'm sorry Bentley."
"Don't apologize to anyone Silver. I've almost done it three times. Just know that there is no easy way out of this. Think about the friends who may choose to stay alive despite you dying; that always helped me at least."
With that, Bentley walked away, leaving me in thought.
If I did die, would my friends still fight? Would they feel betrayed but still continue this struggle? Could I even consider myself their friend if I did such a thing? That's what went through my mind as I wrapped my head around the concept.
I was then approached by Blaze, her purple dress marred by the ashes of demons.
"Blaze, if I die… would you still fight?" The question came up so suddenly that she was left stuttering in surprise.
After she took a deep breath she let herself think out what she wanted to say. "I consider you a good friend Silver, and a wonderful ally. While your loss would be great, I would still fight. I could never give up after that, not unless I could avenge you at least."
I looked to Blaze and sighed. I let many thoughts rush to my head at the point, some of doubt, others of fear, and others of anger.
I suddenly scream and let loose my rage against a broken pillar, shooting it far off to the distance. I then collapsed on the ground and began to sob, surrounded by the loneliness of this desolation. No one else but Blaze was outside now. Everyone had gone inside while me and her stayed behind.
"I just wish there was something we could do! Something to end this all, but nothing has worked!"
After that all went silent, but the sounds of crackling fire. It was truly a place of despair, where the only hope could be found in the leftover life. However, even that was fading away to a silent end.
Suddenly, the silence had been broken by the sounds of deep throated laughter. It was deep and exaggerated, holding back no shred of insanity. Then, it just stopped.
Blaze and I turned to pinpoint the location of the laughter, but found no trace of its origin.
"And here I thought the only problem was your outrageous hair." We looked up to see a black hedgehog. He had eyes as green as sludge that never blinked. His quills rose upwards with streams of blue around them. What was most queer about him though, was that he had no mouth.
We held our guard up as he slowly descended. "Who are you?"
"… I am Mephisto the Dark, and I have the answer to your problems."
We were taken aback by his reply, slowly forgetting our guard. Still we didn't forget ourselves completely. Most others here would have thrown themselves to his feet at these words.
Blaze was less stunned by his words though and held a tighter defense than me. "What can you do?"
"The better question is: what do you need to do? Everything has an origin, like a chicken from an egg, or a migraine from an idiot." Upon landing he began to walk towards us in a puppet-like manner.
"What you need to do is to find the one responsible for this catastrophe. Only then shall you destroy Iblis."
"And… how can you help?" I slowly motioned to Mephisto, growing more curious as time passed.
"By providing you the means to find this person."
With a snap of his finger, Mephisto produced a dark orb. He then handed it to me, which I reluctantly took.
I looked into the globe and felt myself falling to darkness. Soon my entire world was surrounded by flame; an endless flame, with nary a sign of anything else. Then, from within the endless wall I could make out the figure of a human girl. She was lean and pale, with dark red hair. Her dress was a regal attire suggesting royalty of sorts.
She looked to me with an expression. Her baby blue eyes turned red with fire, and her body began to twist. She rose with girl and became the spitting image of Iblis!
I wanted to run, but was frozen in place. I was helpless as Iblis began to destroy everything. Even its very flames were subject to its wrath, falling one by one into nothingness. Then Iblis set its sights on me and prepared to finish it.
Suddenly I was thrust into reality. The orb was gone and I was now lying in Blaze's arms. Mephisto was rubbing his chin slightly.
I slowly got up and looked around, Iblis was now gone and everything was back to normal. Then Mephisto grabbed me, pulling me to him.
"What did you see?!"
"What did I see?"
"This isn't a game of, "ask me another"! What did you see!?"
He was ferocious, but took care not to hurt me. Blaze's battle position definitely seemed to assure him not to do that.
"I-I saw… a girl. She became Iblis, and began to destroy everything!"
Mephisto let go of me and turned away, apparently wrapped in thought.
"What you saw was, the Day of Disaster, the day when Iblis was unleashed upon the world. That girl is the one to blame. She is, the Iblis Trigger!"
I began to pace rapidly, muttering those words as if they were a drug. Iblis Trigger. I finally had a concrete answer. It was so exhilarating to not be left in the dark.
"So how to we stop this Iblis Trigger?"
Mephisto looked to me with his beading eyes. "To do that, you need to change the past."
I was swept away in a storm of shock. "That's impossible though!"
"…With my help you can. I can move, unhindered, through time."
"Maybe you can, but what about me and Blaze? Any false move could doom our existence and cause a time paradox!"
"Not if you were to remove yourself from time. If you did so for only this moment you shall go unhindered through time. Your past self will still exist because time is unable to remove all of you. So it must alter itself so that you will be born and eventually be led to this moment whether there is an Iblis or not. You shall still retain your memories as well. Not as bad a deal as you believed, eh' killjoy?"
My hope rose as he continued to explain. Our home had a chance, and I could be there to see it! I didn't care what risks would be taken; only the goal and prize were before me.
"What's in it for you?" Blaze's voice woke me from my dream; a reminder of the risks in trusting this stranger.
"Me? I get to sleep at night." Mephisto had rushed his answer like as if he didn't want to delve any further into the subject.
I couldn't help but be suspicious at this moment. Mephisto's appearance was somewhat convenient, almost too. Still he had presented himself as an aid to our problems. His words were still ringing in my mind.
"So, now that, that's out of the way, do we have a deal?" He stuck an open hand to Blaze and I.
We looked to the hand and then to one another. I could see within her eyes that she didn't trust Mephisto at all. Still, she wanted the same thing I did, and that was a world of peace. Even if Mephisto was shady, he was our only hope.
We nodded to each other and gave our hands to Mephisto. When we made contact I felt enormous amounts of pain surge through me. My veins tightened, and my breath quickened as the world began to dissolve around me.
All things were near, and not there at all. I was nowhere, but somewhere. I was caught in-between. It was a feeling of nothingness.
In this void I could hear the voice of Mephisto call out, "I shall send us back in time before the Day of Disaster."
From there, my experience had been unreal; otherworldly. No words in English, Japanese, Latin, or any mortal language could possibly describe the absurdities there.
Within what felt like second, I was thrust into another location. There I saw colors and things I barely knew. The ground was soft and green, kind of like the spare apples we kept in storage. The sky was an odd color I had never seen before, but it was beautiful to look at. Then there was these large, brown objects sticking out of the ground with other shades of green on their crowns. This had to be the past, and it was all so beautiful.
Then, I noted neither Blaze of Mephisto were beside me.
After pacing around for about fifteen minutes I had decided it was time for action. I knew that Blaze had to be around the area somewhere and that I would eventually find her. Right now, I had a duty to fulfill and I couldn't wait. So I took to the sky with haste and caught glimpse of a city to the distance.
Though the view was splendid, I had no time to gawk at such pleasantries. I charged off to the city with the weight of the future on my hands.
So that now brings me to my current situation. We now stand on the brink of destruction as the world lies on my fingertips. The Iblis Trigger is out there somewhere, and I will kill her, for the good of the world in both times…
This story is more of a test of my new writing skills. I had learned a few things as I created my Little Waterbender fic, so I decided that I should test it out in different waters.
When I was looking for inspiration I found a movie on Sonic Next Gen. The movie was pretty alright but the story was lacking on many points. I thought to myself then, "This would make a perfect test."
I decided to change a few things to fit my ideals for the story and created an outline and character bible.
After I finished the Bible and this, I decided to put them away for a while until I finished my Little Waterbender Fic. So who knows, maybe I will do an entire fic on Sonic 06', but we'll see about it.
P.S I renamed Mephiles to Mephisto because I felt like it. I still retain the pun on the name though. Mephiles is a pun on the demon of Faust lore: Mephistopheles. Mephisto is in the same context.
Sonic 06' (c) Sega (but they wish it wasn't)