Disclaimer: I do not own FF9 or any of the characters depicted herein, and I am taking no financial benefit from this. All characters and place-names in this story is owned by Square-Enix
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General Beatrix of Alexandria was not an easily frightened woman – she was known throughout the world for the opposite – and she had faced dragons and armies and stared Death in the eye, never once feeling the slightest twinge of fear.
Yet now, in the safety of the Alexandrian Castle, a fear was creeping up her spine an pulling at the most primitive of instincts – the instinct to run, as far as she could, and never turn around.
In the brightly lit ballroom, so cheerful and breathtaking in its beauty, stood the most frightening thing she had ever faced; the Creator of the Black Mages, a creature of madness and genius and merciless sanity.
Kuja.
Standing there on the dais of the throne, he was fragile and delicate, made of porcelain and feathers and metal-shod boots, and for the first time in her life Beatrix was afraid. Not only for herself, but for the fate of her beloved kingdom in this madman's hands.
For mad he was – she could see it in his stark blue eyes and in the gracefully incoherent way he moved - like a marionette with only half of his strings.
"Welcome home, sweet general." he spoke, and his voice was silk and dusty elegance and elaborate insanity. "You have finished your task with elegance, as always."
"We do not need the Black Mages, Kuja. You know that." she answered, turning defensive at his tone of voice. "Given time, my soldiers will succeed, as they always have."
"Yet time is what we do not have," Kujsa smiled like a broken puppet as he turned around to face her. "you know that, lady-warrior. The very foundation for this campaign is speed – to strike before the rat-people know that we are coming."
Irrefutable logic, to be sure, but there was a creeping sense of unease inside her when she watched the Black Mages – their blank, yellow-fire eyes never blinking as fire dripped from their fingers. Though she was endlessly loyal to her Queen, she was beginning to question the wisdom of this latest scheme.
"Consider this candle, lady-warrior," Kuja's glass-and-splinters voice broke into her doubting mind, "consider this candle, this fluttering flame, a symbol of your faith. A symbol of your faith in yourself, in your Queen, in your country. You are but a part of the White King's," here he gestured to himself, "dream, and when the dream ends, you will go out – bang!" he clapped his hands together and the flame went out, " - just like a candle. Then where shall you go, lady-warrior, lady-wrath?"
Strangely unnerved by his half-crazed ramblings about candles and faith, Beatrix took one hesitant step back, her hands now on the hilt of her sword. The puppet-man was crazy, his sanity run to the end of its tether, and he was staring at her with his wide innocent-cunning-crazy eyes, expecting an answer she was not sure she wanted to give.
"When the dream ends, will the dream outlive the dreamer?" he asked, glittering shards of sanity breaking in his eyes, "Perhaps she will, perhaps she will not."
With those ambiguous words, he stepped back into the shadows and disappeared from view, leaving her with the unshakable feeling that he had just told her something important that she could not unravel from his insanity.''''''''''''''
Notes: The run-on sentences in this fic are intentional - they are
there to illustrate Kuja's insanity and Beatrix's perception of it.