Author's Notes: I own none of these characters, though I could dearly wish to own Kuja. They're all Square's.

It's very pretty.

Hours. I've spent hours looking at this jewel, seeing the deep red in its centre and the flashing light along its cut lines, summoning up all my magic to wash through it and see within its darkest depths. I've investigated it with my magic and with all the technology the castle offers me (ah, Terra, how I miss thee). I've called in all Tot's old scholars after the man himself left for Treno, all of the Queen's white mages, the Queen herself, and in the depths of my extremity I even turned to the two jesters. ("I do not know what you want of us!" "Know what you want of us I do not either!" So enlightening.) And after all of this, all this study, all I can say is that 'it's very pretty'.

I manage to restrain myself from hurling the jewel to the ground and throwing a Flare to follow it, a show of self-control that no one will ever remark on. Instead, I keep my calm, lay the jewel gently in its stand on my desk, and smile that amused smile that has already marked me in this castle.

Eidolons! I have studied and studied and studied that great power that even Garland fears. I have studied until I made Tot, for all his absent-minded scientist ways, look like the greenest student in Alexandria's libraries. And it has given me nothing but frustration!

Everything I read links jewels and eidolons. Everything. "The Eidolon and I", one of the most useful texts I found, said it simply: "A Summoner can use a jewel to contact an Eidolon, wherever that Eidolon rests. While the Summoner has that jewel, he may call that Eidolon from where it lies, and then command it. Slowly, the Eidolon and the Summoner become linked, until the Summoner may draw the Eidolon into himself and have no further need of the jewel."

Plain and simple on the page. But there is nothing in this jewel that suggests an eidolon may rest beyond it! And if my power cannot find it out…

A knock at my door. I turn to face it, stilling the growl that comes automatically to my throat on being disturbed. "Come in." I command, and they do. Zorn first, Thorn second, as ever, with that peculiar sameness of gesture that marks them as One above and beyond being Two. They file in front of me, Zorn to my left and Thorn to my right.

I never understand these fools, even though they give themselves to me above and beyond anyone else. Why do they turn to each other and leap into the air before they begin speaking? What possible purpose could it have?

"We have been thinking about your jewel, Lord Kuja." announces Zorn.

"Searching through our memories and Tot's books, we have been." Thorn adds.

I laugh at that. "I highly doubt you have discovered anything I have not found, fools." Not an insult, pure and simple what they are. Or… perhaps, what it is. Two bodies, one Meltigemini.

"Maybe you are right."

"Right, maybe you are."

"But this book was hard to find."

"At the back of the library, it was, and nothing has it to do with eidolons."

"Then what has it to do with my problems?" They are beginning to irritate me. I wonder, perhaps, if I would regret sending the hot embrace of Firaga to claim them both. On the off-chance that I would, I decide not too. If they have a point, though…

"It is… difficult to describe."

"A certain ritual, it is."

"Designed to steal… extract… magic from mages."

"Work as well, it would, on a Summoner's power."

"…Maybe."

Zorn always was the clever one. He knows what I would do to them – it – if they made me a promise that did not live up to its expectations.

"So where is this book?"

"Give it to us the librarian would not."

"He said it must remain in the library."

"Even when we mentioned your name, Lord Kuja, adamant he was."

"I think that he is scared of you."

Well he might be. With that, I stand, and turn away from the jewel. I will need to read the book, of course – no sense in raising my hopes for no good purpose. I think, though, that this time I might have what I need.

I look to the garnet as I leave, daring it to contradict me.

The jewel glints in the sun, as if it knows something I do not.