Secret chapter 2! You'll be very surprised at who it is... Zargabaath, my favorite Judge Magister! He gave some much needed grayness to an otherwise totally evil group.

(Well, Drace and Gabranth kinda sorta get excluded, but Gabranth really is evil- to his own brother!- and Drace dies, so... yeah.)

Now that I think about it, he gave some longevity to that group, too, since he's the only one that makes it through your mad one-person rampage to kill all the judges. Way to go for Judge Magisters! Them: 1. You: 6!

Also, his willingness to die at the end of the game to save the city of Rabanastre touched me. A man that willing to die for people who weren't even his own is a man I can respect.

So, now, it's...

"SHOWTIME!"

An Interlude of Secrets:

The Other Side

Children of Light

My daughter, he thought, looking at her as he tucked her into bed, is the source of my pride, the wellspring of my happiness, the thing I love most.

Zargabaath was happy. He was content, now, the war between his duty and his honor complete and Vayne dead.

(That thought freed him, sometimes. Vayne was dead. He thought this concept every morning and lived life happy because of it.)

Since he no longer had to contemplate whether he must kill his Emperor to serve his Empire, or serve his Emperor to kill his Empire, Zargabaath could live free, and the way he wanted to: with his daughter.

Zargabaath was a good man, and no good man could see what Vayne was doing and not go about trying to stop it. He had been contemplating his own attack on Vayne before the bastard fell; he would not see the Empire he loved destroyed by the evil of one man. He believed in the Empire, in the democracy it represented and the good, the ability of the people to raise their hands and shout We will choose you to be our king, and he would not see one man tear it down.

(Of course, Vayne was living proof that you could always manipulate the voters, but that was a danger Zargabaath was willing to take. At the very least, he'd had to work for it. In any other system on the planet, Vayne could have just napped until his father died and then taken the throne, evil as ever, and to Zargabaath, you couldn't eliminate all risk- just deal with it when it came.)

In Zargabaath's mind, the Empire was good. But the one thing Zargabaath also believed- and it set him apart from a lot of truly good men in his country- was that Empire must really be good, must actually be all those things it held that it was, to truly deserve its power. Thus, the reason he hated Vayne. Zargabaath has been kind to the lands under his occupation and they have repaid him for it in loyalty a hundred times over, to him and the Empire he calls home.

(The way Archadia treated Dalmasca was a subject Zargabaath frequently brought up in meetings when the territory was under their sway, and it's current freedom is something he celebrates every year with a small wineglass and an excellent port which he received, ironically, from Vayne's personal stash, since Emperor Larsa had auctioned off all Vayne's personal effects to aid in Dalmasca's restoration. The funds raised had been considerable, since the former Emperor had a considerable stash of well-made clothes, wine, and, surprisingly, more pairs of boots than anyone knew what to do with. A man who loved his boots, Vayne was.)

Zargabaath would give everything for the people- and not just the Empire's. There is a woman, in the streets of Archadia, who puts a rose on the grave of her husband every year on the anniversary of his death. He was shot to pieces when he tried to save the life of an enemy civilian on the battlefield.

Zargabaath trained the man himself. He believed that any man who would dare to call himself Judge over another man had to- above all else- hold himself to the highest conduct. He could not say I am Judge and then not live up to it.

This was not just Zargabaath's idea, though. This was the idea of his entire people.

He tells the story to his daughter at night.

" Tell me the story, Daddy," says his little girl, her small form giving no indication of the great height she will attain (when full grown, she will be a foot taller than her father), " about the first Zargys!"

Zargabaath remembered that name well; when he was little and in Children's Akademy, he never could spell his last name (is it two a's or one?) and so the teacher let him get away with Zargy. He lets his daughter get away with it too; who in the world has time to spell all that when they are little, the sun is shining, and the wind is playing outside?

(Even then, when he was a grown man with a child, half the reports he received misspelled his name, and he found it very hard to be angry with the poor scribes who wrote them- hell, he couldn't spell it on the spot himself if he couldn't take a moment to think.)

" Well," he begins, " there was once a man, and his name was Edgar, and he was famous for his machines and his ponytail and his unique way with women..."

" Not that one," she clarifies. " Before him."

" Well, before him, there once was a man, and his name was Cecil, and he was a dark man but a good one who eventually became light..."

" Not him!" she says, finally getting impatient. " The first one! The very first!"

He smiles to himself as he remembers the story that is the start of them all.

" There once was a man, all the way back at the beginning, who was a farmer, who tilled the land and filled the soil with seeds. He was a happy man, if a little lonely. He wished for great and grand adventures, but knew enough to realize that he couldn't well abandon his duties to run off and pursue them, so he stayed put."

"Then one day, he found an orb, a great, smooth glass that was dark inside, that had appeared in the bucket of his well when he was trying to haul water up one day. The orb was more than just a ball, though; it was a magic thing of great power."

" It could talk, this orb, and it told him many things. It said that it was the Orb of Water, and that Water had to find a new champion now, just like the other three elements, Earth and Fire and Air. It said that the world was dying, that each element was being weakened to the point that the whole world could collapse. And so they needed champions."

" But the element's old champions, men they had chosen from their own elements, had failed them, long ago, when they needed them; and in that was the reason the world itself was dying. The elements decided to choose new ones, those who were not connected to their element; and perhaps in that very incongruity, they would find a way to destroy what had once bested them at their own game. Thus, a man who was a child of Earth, a farmer, became Water's choice. Under its guidance, he left his farm, and followed the voice of the orb to a land called Corneria.. And there he met three others, and they were the remaining champions.

" The other champions!" she said, perking up. " Tell me about them!"

She always did love this part. " There was a cowardly mage who hid his face from the world but was very brave in his cowardice; he would shriek and scream at everything they fought, but he never, ever backed down. Air chose him, because Fire had always taken black mages, and they had decided to change."

" The red lady, wearing a feather in her wide-brimmed, bright red hat, who always wore a mask over her face- though no one ever knew why. She was a swordsman and a spellcaster, and it was Earth who took her- Earth, who had always taken to simple folk, and had never taken one so complex and complicated as this woman who wore a mask over her face and sometimes spoke in rhyme. "

" Finally, the healer, who was a very old woman, so old her red hair was but wispy strands on her head, and who muttered that she was too old for this with damn near every breath with a cantankerous sneer. And underneath all that was a thread of kindness. Fire, who had initially chosen her because Fire represented Youth and she was far past that, eventually came to realize it was that very kindness- like a warm, gentle fire- it truly admired in her, despite her outer protests of annoyance to all and sundry."

" They all met, then, and they went on their quest, the orb quest, to save the whole world."

" And the farmer," his daughter, whispering, because this is what her people are and the thought thrills her, " became a swordsman."

" Yes," Zargabaath replied. " He thought he might need it. He ended up even better than the lady- hands that work the fields become strong- and so they became the first heroes."

" They saved the world, didn't they?"

" Yes." He smiles. This is his people, he thought, and on through the line has come both he and his daughter and the children that will come after her. This is his people. " They did, and from desert to ocean to windswept plains so wide and high you could touch the sky beneath them, they journeyed on. And they finally saved it."

She smiles, nods, happy. She is smarter than she should be at her age and she understands one thing: this is her people. This is what it means to be Zargabaath, and all the names her people have held up to now: to be a descendant of the first heroes.

" So now it's up to us to keep the world safe, isn't it?"she says, voice small and tiny; this truth is great and before it all words are little more than whispers..

" Yes, my little one. It is. "

She smiles, burbling, happy; this is the choice of her people. It makes her feel... grand.

To know one has the bloodline of heroes.

Zargabaath left the room where he knew his daughter would eventually fall asleep smiling and dreaming happy dreams.

The irony? He himself would do the same. To know one was a child of light was to know peace.

And as he went to be, he pondered that, at this very moment, when almost no one in the entire world knew what the Light Warriors were, much less what they had done? Beating back evil at the start of forever? Had pushed back the final fantasy, the last ending? It was a secret that Zargabaath knew. He and his family knew. And all the cousins he has never seen

(He thought he caught a glimpse of him, once, when he said he would die to save a people; when he gave that order, and thought that his daughter would be the last Zargabaath, he caught a flash in his mind- was it a vision?- of a man wearing sunglasses and laughing and wearing the clothes of Rozarria. His family has spread far and wide.)

knew the secret as well. Here, so far into the future, Zargabaath and his people could shout the names of hundreds of heroes, thousands of heroes, who have stood and fought against the darkness. They can call the names of monsters

(My name is Zeromus Exdeath Kefka and CHAOS)

And know that their people have helped push them back. This is their people, and they will never die. Their choice, a combination of choices- his father's and his own, his daughter's and her daughter's choice, that, taken together, have made his family heroes.

It has always been their choice. And they have never regretted it once.

-

Imperial Notice

To: Judge Magister Gabranth

From: Judge Magister Zargabaath

Re: Artifact

It has come to my attention, Lord Gabranth, that the recently unearthed pirate vessel found in the beaches near Archadia has confounded our scientific community, and come to your interest. I would like to take this moment to clarify matters, as I may know the truth of the matter.

The vessel is the flagship of the pirate Farris; she was a mighty pirate lord who sailed these seas long, long ago, and it was her unique method of transportation that has so confused our archeologists. You see, Farris had a pet sea dragon; her ship was chained to the beast, explaining the large apparatus and rigging at the ship's front that our archeologists have claimed to be a "ram" of some sort- full knowing that the bronze it is made from would be a poor weapon.

The lady Farris' story is one that runs in our family, and I thought I could share my knowledge to aid in the research being done on the vessel.

Stamped with the seal of

Judge Magister Zargabaath

Imperial Notice

To: Judge Magister Zargabaath

From: Judge Magister Gabranth

Re: Artifact

Your explanation makes much better sense, Zargabaath, than what our scientists are proposing to me, but I'm afraid they don't see it that way. Most of the expedition has dismissed your story out of hand as "trivial nonsense" and insist that the ship could not possibly have been conveyed by water dragon, since the bone structure of the sea dragons of our time is too weak to move a ship this big. They still insist on believing it to be a ram, though for the reasons you already mentioned it and its own odd shape it would work quite poorly in that capacity.

I have decided to suspend all scientists working on this ship, as their lack of explanations and constant arguments are simply wasting Imperial money, and I have reason to believe you are correct in your assumption anyway.

The reason?

There is a collar at the end of the structure. More importantly, attempts to decipher it have shown that it says "Pet" in an old language.

The ironic part is that the scientists insist that this must be the name of the ship. And they claim your explanation is unreasonable!

Stamped with the seal of the office of

Judge Magister Gabraanth

- I love Zargabaath- he's easily the best person on the Imperial side in the game, even including Larsa- so here's my ode to you, little man!