Template:Listen "Locus" is a battle theme from Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward, used by most bosses within Alexander. It was composed by Masayoshi Soken.
Game appearances
Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
Template:Sideicon "Locus" plays during boss fights within Alexander.
"Locus" features both a male and a female singer. It is unclear who they represent, though it is likely that the male represents Dayan or Alexander itself, and the female voice is Mide. Together with the "gobbie-speak" vocalist from Metal - Alexander Awakes, who is likely to be Quickthinx Allthoughts (or, by extension, Shanoa), the three singers of Alexander's boss themes represent the three most important characters in Alexander's storyline.
The lyrics of "Locus" describe several major spoilers: Alexander's ability to travel through time ("No time enough tomorrow / For turning back to where we began"), drain the world of aether ("Ever feeding off the fallacy creating this mess / Deep down"), and simulate entire universes to calculate its optimal actions ("Your world's a fantasy, you've failed the test / Ever forging all new fallacies creating more mess / Directly through this bleak machine"). For this reason, the vocalists' words are heavily distorted, and the official lyrics were released (after much misinterpretation by fans) only after the events of Alexander: Midas revealed that Alexander could time-travel.
Though it may be a coincidence, it is somewhat disturbing to note that the female voice mentions "Falling back right into the system of / Falling back on all that's erased", and at the end of the raid, Mide quite literally falls into Alexander's core systems, which would erase life from the world by draining all of the land's aether if not for the stable time loop Mide, Dayan, and Alexander create.
The following passage is sampled in other Alexander themes — specifically, Metal - Brute Justice Mode, Exponential Entropy, and the theme that plays when fighting through Entropy within the Soul of the Creator — and thus can be viewed as the leitmotif of Alexander:
- Falling back right into the system of
- Falling back on all that's erased
- When fighting back right out of this system
- Means falling back right into this space
- Yes, falling back right in with the system
- Who'll see you falling back to the end
- When falling back is better than simply
- Falling back into pieces again
Lyrics
- Seeking the peace of reason
- Sheep in a peaceless season
- Reason to keep believing
- Waken the beast who's sleeping
- Let go this destiny, you're caught in a trance
- Ever marking time inside a dream, no sign of advance,
- You see, the mortal coil we serve is taut like a spring
- Step back! Two-step, two-step, two-step, one two three
- Our world's a fantasy, no more than a test
- Ever feeding off the fallacy creating this mess
- Deep down inside this bleak machine with all of the rest
- Break free! Two-phase, two-phase electricity
- Time turning up the volume
- Time turning on us always
- No time enough tomorrow
- For turning back to where we began
- Twenty-two sectors tested
- Fragments in one direction
- Celestial noise detected
- Delirium unsuspected
- Static tuned in to reason
- Time in the aether deepens
- Transmissions blink uncompleted
- Seven two three two three...<send>
- Arrested destiny, alone in a trance
- No escaping from this waking dream, no hope of advance,
- You see, the mortal coil we serve is naught but a spring
- Unwind! Too slow, too quick, too much to believe
- Your world's a fantasy, you've failed the test
- Ever forging all new fallacies creating more mess
- Directly through this bleak machine, with all of the rest
- DC! Dying, dying electricity
- Falling back right into the system of
- Falling back on all that's erased
- When fighting back right out of this system
- Means falling back right into this space
- Yes, falling back right in with the system
- Who'll see you falling back to the end
- When falling back is better than simply
- Falling back into pieces again
- Silent steel breathing, breathing
- Memory writing, reading
- Error! Repeat deleting
- Radicals flowing free and
- Energy slowly seeping
- Suspending all disbelief in
- Synergy with our being
- Synapses fire in three, then...
Non-Square Enix appearances
"Locus" is used as the theme of News Check 11, a news broadcast on NHK General (Japan Broadcasting Corporation).
Etymology
locus (plural "loci") means "place". It has a number of English meanings, but in particular refers to the concepts of a locus of control, the perceived degree of control one has over his life, and a geometric locus, a set of points in space that meets a set of conditions.
The Latin wordTemplate:Songs Template:FFXIV