Waking up the next day, I'm greeted by the sight of the Chocobo having brought me a dead hog. Looking at her, I leaned stiffly over to the big bird and did something I used to do for my old canine partner. I kissed the birds' beak through my lower face mask, making them squeak out a noise. Chuckling, I slowly stood up and stretched out my body, my limbs feeling like they're on fire, yet I pushed through the pain. Grabbing the hog by its tusks, I dragged it to a nearby room with a destroyed flooring leading to dirt.
Looking around the room, I pulled some Paracord from my vest and string it up from a rafter bar. Pulling my trench knife from its boot sheath, I started butchering and skinning the hog. Testing out magic a little more to see if I could drain a good portion of the blood from it. My hand glowing a crimson light with its blood being pulled from the corpse and into a ball near a corner. Sighing, I picture the ball of blood becoming a bloody iron on the outside with a section being blood inside of it.
Waving my hand, I watched the blood iron ball rocket through a broken window into a giant frog. Watching the frog which had been picked up by my goggles meet the blood iron ball head first. I watched in morbid joy at its head exploding as the ball replaced it with the gore covering the surroundings. I couldn't help but giggle like a child at what I did because this is fucking astonishing. After a while, though, I had both frog and hog meat cooking over a fire provided by Valentine, the black chocobo.
She quickly understood I was giving her a name to go by after I wrote it out. Don't let the fact Chocobo's like gristle greens fool you into thinking they won't eat meat. Valentine ripped into the meat like a savage, with Zendaya eating a large portion of the hog herself. The harvested flesh and organs of the two, and those bandits, were used to make nice with some rather big wolf cat looking things. After my first meal in this world, I began my routine from the last six years because of service.
Getting in a two hundred-kilometer run using laps around the shack, I'd move onto push-ups, crunches, pull-ups, mountain man, jumping jacks, and shadow-boxing. Got to stay limber and ever vigilant, as Sergeant Harris "Moody" Delgado used to say before the Taliban blew his brains out. The girls watched me with interest through my routine and actually tried joining in at times. Watching a Chocobo power squat was hilarious, Behemoths though can pump out push-ups. Still was hilarious when then they tried to also do jumping jacks as they both just made thuds and abused the poor ground.
After a good while, we hit the road, with me riding on Zendaya's head, Valentine in a makeshift box nest on her back. I asked if she was really okay being used as a mount, and Zendaya, in her own way, insisted it was fine. So I accepted her decision, since she seemed perfectly happy to help. However, flipping through my book on Eorzea. I found a group of people I am likely to just kill on sight. The Garlean Empire, this world's version of essentially the Nazi's and Rome mixed. There's also mention of these "Scions", a group who oppose the "Ascians" who are the equivalent of Satanists.
So the Scions are essentially the good doers and the Ascians are the extinctionists of all life. Flipping through my book further, I take note of certain events, like one called the "Fell Star" by some. It's about when the Garlean Empire used an ancient weapon against the forces of Eorzea. All brave souls who sacrificed their lives that day for a mass majority of the Eorzean armies are called Warriors of Light. As they are all but difficult to remember, as if the light erased who they were from everyone's memories.
That is concerning… something essentially erased over two hundred people from EVERYONE'S memories. Now I'm one of these Warriors of Light, the first wandering around somewhere. Rubbing my chin, I have my goggles take note of my biosignature, separating everything normal from one abnormal oddity. Entering that oddity into a locator subroutine, a white dot blipped on my map in Limsa Lominsa's capital city.
'Found you little Light Bringer.'
Using my shadow to sign to Zendaya, I give her a destination to work towards. The young behemoth grunted at me and changed course slightly, seeing a sign post. While she did that, I closed my eyes and thought back to the day before I had died.
==== Fort Hondo, Iraq ====
The sun was muddled by a desert storm kicking up outside the rec area. However, I didn't really care for that since I was currently playing with my big chunky boy. Dandy was a chunky and stocky Pitbull Shepherd mix who loved wrestling. The big cheater liked going for trying to use his weight to body slam you as he spastically would tackle you. Holding him up in the air while on my back, he groaned and pouted at me not letting him down.
"Well, that's why you don't try going for my jugular with your teeth."
He growled a gruff response, so I turned and threw him at a couch. He flailed in the air before thudding audibly into the couches cushions. Not only that, but he laid there and looked at me as if I were a horrible person. PFC Carson, who was playing solitaire, looked at us from a table and chuckled. Shaking his head while I got back onto my feet and stretched out after wrestling Dandy for two hours.
"Second Lieutenant, you and your canine partner, First Lieutenant Dandy, are pretty active. I've never seen anyone wrestle with a hundred ninety-eight pound canine for two hours straight like that. It's just unbelievable yet adorable with how much he clearly loves you. Well, besides First Sergeant Cross, he tries murdering that woman if you don't hold him back."
"Bitch, of course he loves me. I raised and trained him since he was born. As for Gloria, he hates her because she actually shot at me before. So he no likey."
Carson smirked while moving and arranging cards for his game. Straightening my clothes out, I decided to hit the showers as I smell like dog farts and drool. Waving goodbye to Carson, I head for the door, Dandy going and sitting by the private first class with a yawn. Exiting the rec, I looked around and continued to my destination. On the way, everything felt dead due to most of our boys and gals being sent back stateside.
Reaching the communal showers, I entered and instantly noticed a weird mirror in the room before you change. Standing in the mirror was… me dressed for war. He stared at me and motioned for me to take a seat, which I do so cautiously. The version of me in the mirror pulled down his lower mask and opened his mouth to talk. Just, he didn't have a tongue; however, he still talked normally.
Okay, this wasn't in my memories of this day.
"Good to meet you mortal, I am Diablos, the dark to Hydalen's light~. I won't drone on and on about doing good or evil, we both know you've sinned, you've committed crimes of war, so there's no need for all of that. Hydalen's followers, the Scions, believe that by shining away all the darkness the world will be at peace. That's a fat load of troll shit. My Ascians I admit, also try to drown everything in darkness. Both however don't see there's a balance that MUST be maintained otherwise Heaven's or Hell's gates will open."
"...."
"Come now don't let Ifrit hold your tongue, you can speak up mortal. I won't force you to, I'm evil, but I'm not one to force my will onto outsiders, that's my Ascians job. I'll get to the point though for convenience's sake, you can readily, at the drop of a hat, become a Warrior of Darkness or Warrior of Light given your circumstances. You are a Warrior of Light currently, but the moment you meet the Garlean high command, you'll become dark. Then you'll don the little halo again and dance the jesters dance. Neither of us can be even mad about it, as you, my dear mortal, AREN'T ours."
"What do you want?"
"Finally speaking, are you? To answer your question, I want you to be the linchpin. Delay the gates from ever opening. The Warrior of Light, if some cursed and dying mortal didn't change time and the strings of fate, effectively saving them. Then there would be NO ONE standing against the gates as an angel strikes them down. So I'll throw you a metaphorical bone, mortal, granting you a primary "class" for the dark title. Curious?"
Sighing I nod and mirror me smiles saying one word only before everything went black.
"Reaper."
===================
Opening my eyes slowly, I blew a black smog of smoke from my mouth that seemed to go through my mask. So I'm caught in between a power struggle? Great… something I didn't need. Looking around, I notice we're passing through a village of some sorts towards Limsa Lominsa's capital. As we passed a tree, a skeletal hand shrouded in a cloak of black smoke touched my shoulder. Glancing back, I see a half floating skeleton carrying a demonic scythe. It nods at me and fades with a whisper in the air.
"Lacron is my name, Lord of Gray…"
Scoffing, I felt a necklace made of silver and bones form around my neck. Looking at it, I see a scythe pendant hanging from it, a gun beside it, currently glowing a white light faintly. Fuck, it's official… at least I get a nice necklace out of this unwanted blessing. Just why can neither fix my fucking tongue, at least?! Sure, you give me fucking powers but NOT MY TONGUE?! Are you fucking with me, you deity assholes?!
The necklace just flashes as amused at my mind rant.