Cloud of Darkness

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The Cloud of Darkness is a recurring creature in the Final Fantasy series. It is a monstrously powerful eldritch abomination with feminine features that serves as an anthropomorphic personification of the Void, and often seeks to bring about a Flood of Darkness on the worlds it appears in.

The Cloud of Darkness first appears as the final boss of Final Fantasy III. It manipulates Xande into destroying the world's Crystals. Xande believes this will stop time and allow him to prolong his mortal life, but in reality this is the catalyst needed for the Cloud of Darkness to manifest.

The Cloud of Darkness is fought twice. It is first encountered in an unwinnable storyline battle after Xande has been defeated. At the very end of the game, after the party has traversed the World of Darkness, the Cloud of Darkness is fought again, but if the player has not freed all the Warriors of the Dark in the final dungeon before doing so, the final boss will have an unparalleled high defense stat and the heroes will find themselves fighting a losing battle.

In Yoshitaka Amano's illustration and Dissidia Final Fantasy, the Cloud of Darkness takes the form of a shapely woman wearing a red and black cape with the rest of its body covered in red and black markings. It has a red heart-shaped mark on its forehead, long silver hair and two tentacles emerging from its waist. The Cloud of Darkness is the tallest non-giant character in the Dissidia series.

Though the Cloud of Darkness universally takes on a feminine form, it is officially considered a genderless being that merely chooses to appear as such. The Cloud of Darkness refers to itself in the plural, using "We" instead of "I". Dissidia Final Fantasy explains this as its two tentacles having minds of their own, and the humanoid body speaking for the three of them.

The Cloud of Darkness's personality is not explored in Final Fantasy III, as it is more of a monster rather than a character. Dissidia Final Fantasy characterizes it as cruel and condescending, having a disregard for human life. In Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy it dislikes the arrival of the manikins in the cycle, feeling they are a foreign presence that disrupts the order of the cycle. It tells Laguna where the manikins are coming from to see how he handles the information, and is intrigued when he and his allies choose to track it down and close the portal knowing it will cost them their lives.