Kiros tried to look around him, but his vision was blurred and hazy. Then he realized that it wasn't his vision that was blurred and hazy, but the land, the sky and the air in front of him. It was slurring and moving drunkenly, as if it had a life of its own. Kiros took a step back and gripped both katal in his hands, readying one of them for the first strike.

The air, sky and ground swayed outward, then seemed to heave a sigh of relief as it split before his eyes. And out of the split in the world stepped a beautiful woman.

She was nothing like Adel. Adel had been inhuman, with coarse, monstrous features. This sorceress didn't walk as much as she glided forward. Her features were delicate and refined, and somehow this made the cold cruelty stamped on her features even more frightening.

She stopped a few yards in front of him, and Kiros couldn't tell if she was looking at him, or looking behind him. She seemed to be looking in his direction, but there was no indication on her face that she saw him at all.

Then she smiled. It was more of a silky smirk than a smile, full of superiority and icy power. She advanced closer to him and he held his katal up, defensively.

"Blades?" she said.

Could he have spoken at the moment, he would have had no words to describe her voice. Or rather, her voices, as it seemed to him that she spoke with two voices at once. One was a slightly higher register than the other, and had an echo. The other, deeper voice spoke with an echo that sounded backwards, as if the echo slurred into the words before she said them, and it disoriented him to the point of never wanting to hear such a thing again.

"You think that blades will effect me?"

Kiros wanted to scream, but he knew he couldn't. He wanted to ask her to stop talking, but couldn't make a sound aside from his shaky breathing. He knew that blades probably couldn't affect her, but it was all he had, and he couldn't let her kill him without even trying to fight first.

"Kill you?" she said.

The idea that she was reading his mind would have been enough to terrorize him, but then she laughed. Her laughter felt like a shard of ice in his spine. He fell back a few steps, and felt a wall at his back. He turned around quickly to look what he had backed into, but the desert still stood behind him. It was as if he had staggered into a backdrop.

"Why would I want to kill you, a pretty desert boy?" She walked closer to him, so close that he could look into her eyes and feel the chill around her. "Would you like me to kill you?" she asked teasingly. "Should I kill you? Have you done anything for which you deserve death?"

He tried to tell her no as quickly as he could, but could only manage to shake his head.

"You would like to speak, wouldn't you?" she asked, still smiling vaguely.

Kiros tried in vain to clear his mind, so that she wouldn't be able to find anything he wanted to keep from her, which, at the moment, was everything. He tried to take deep, steadying breaths, but the air was so cold that it hurt his lungs. He realized that the cold air was coming from her.

"I want you to be silent," she said, and ran her long fingernails over his lips.

Kiros struggled to stand up as she touched him. It made him cold - deeply, viscerally cold. He leaned against the desert wall behind him for support.

"You imprisoned a sorceress," she whispered.

Kiros braced himself and closed his eyes.

"A venial error," she went on. "One that I could have someday prevented if I wanted to. You wonder how I could prevent something from happening that has happened already. I don't expect you to understand; a simple, mortal soldier in an inconsequential army fighting in an inconsequential war. That's alright," she whispered, her face near his, "pretty desert boy. You don't have to try to understand anymore."

Through his fear, he wondered what she was getting at.

With her terribly cold hand, she closed his eyes. He could still see the desert though, seemingly through his closed eyes, and the desert twisted. In a sickening, spiraling mass, the desert twisted around him, and when it unraveled itself again, it faded to hazy black with vague colors of light shining into it.

He opened his eyes, and was looking up at a glaringly blue sky.

He sat up quickly. Too quickly, and the combination of disorientation, sudden movement and brightness made him have to steady himself with his hands on the warm sand. It was no longer murky, rusty sand, but an expanse of crisp, perfect, yellow gold sand.

He was home. He looked down at himself and saw that he was wearing a light, white suit that sheltered him from the sun.

And he saw also that he was a child. He jumped up quickly and tried to scream, but still couldn't make a sound.

"Kiros!"

He looked up quickly and saw a tall, willowy woman running toward him. Her hair, as black as coal, only finer and softer than his own, was disheveled around her shoulders. Bruises and welts stood out on her dark olive skin.

His mother had never looked so frightened.

"Kiros, run!" she screamed.

The sorceress, Esthar, and in fact his entire adult life forgotten, Kiros ran to his mother.

She grabbed him when they reached each other, and began to run with him. But why? What had hurt her and made her run away?

"WOMAN!" a man's huge voice bellowed.

She turned to look over her shoulder at their pursuer and almost fell.

Kiros squirmed out of her arms. Whoever had done this to her, he was going to face him and make him pay. He didn't care if it was an adult or even a giant or a monster. He took his two knives from the backpack on his shoulders, the knives with which he had practiced his fighting skills for weeks, and he turned to face his mother's assailant.

It was his father. His heroic, beloved father, who now ran towards him like a monster from his nightmares.


"You see, desert boy," a soft, comforting voice told him, "you have nothing to lose, and nothing else to hold on to. Everything you love has betrayed you or died."

His mother and father disappeared, along with the desert, and he was left in the dark with only the voice for comfort. He sought it out.

"That's right," the voice said gently, accompanied by a soft glow in the distance. He ran towards it, and it grew in size, at a rate disproportionate with his running. By the time he reached it, it had become a vignette of the murky, rusty desert. It was a doorway into that place and time, but Kiros didn't know exactly what place and time it was.

"Come through with me," she said, "my knight."

Kiros stepped through the doorway, and into the cold arms of the sorceress.


-----------------------------------


"NO!" Ward tried in vain to shout. Later, he would realize that it was better that he didn't shout, otherwise he might have turned the sorceress' attention to him, and as wrong as it seemed at the moment, he needed her attention right where it was: concentrated on Kiros.

Ward had been standing guard in the front hall of Esthar Laboratory when he'd seen what he thought of as "the shimmer." He'd witnessed it once before with Kiros and Laguna, just before they'd locked Adel away. It almost looked like an intense wave of heat rising from the ground, that made everything look wavy and shiny. The only difference was that this was much more intense, and only lasted for a moment.

Ward knew that it meant a sorceress had just cast magic. A moment later he could smell magic in the air and sense it, and he knew it was coming from the rooftop where Kiros was. As he ran to the lift to the roof, he felt inside the pocket of his jacket and made sure he had Phoenix Down with him.

Ward crashed through the door that lead to the rooftop, after putting all of his mighty weight behind it and breaking it down. When he saw Kiros fall towards what must have been a sorceress, was when he tried to scream. She was holding her arms out to him as if she meant to catch him, but instead she let him fall, so that it looked like he was on the ground worshipping her. He supposed later on that that was the idea.

Ward charged toward the sorceress and threw his spear right through her back. She arched her back momentarily as the spear entered her, and turned around to face him.

As she turned, just before her eyes met his, the spear came out through her front and landed on the ground next to Kiros.

Ward saw her eyes first, then his own eyes were drawn to the dark red stain spreading on the front of her dress. He watched, as if in slow time, as the hole through her middle sealed up. But there was a flicker of something in her eyes, almost like recognition, and something else that Ward couldn't quite place and didn't care to at the moment.

His mind worked furiously at what his next move was going to be, and he was becoming certain that it would probably be his last, when the sorceress turned and cast Esuna on Kiros, breaking his Silence. The air shimmered, but Kiros continued to lie face down without moving.

The sorceress turned to Ward once more, and Ward recognized that the look in her eyes he couldn't place before was fear. Her lips moved for a moment as if she was struggling to speak.

"Go!" she finally said.

Ward didn't have to be told twice. He ran to Kiros, getting too close to the sorceress for his own comfort. For all he knew, it could be a trap, but he couldn't leave without Kiros. He dragged him up and threw him clumsily over his shoulder, noticing that he felt cold, wondering vaguely if he was actually too cold to live very long, and storing the worry away until they both escaped with their lives. He was about to run, but Kiros was twisting out of his grip. He twisted so hard that Ward finally had to let him go and hope the idiot would actually be able to keep up. Kiros swayed for a moment and fell back down.

Ward went to pick him up again but Kiros waved him off. Ward didn't have time to gesture the thought "are you insane," as he began trying to drag Kiros away.

"Wait!" Kiros said sharply.

The sorceress stood trembling in front of them, her small features twisted in what could only have been pain.

She fell to her knees in front of Kiros. "What are you doing?" she asked him, in a panicked voice. "Get out of here!" she hissed.

"My..." Kiros began, but his teeth were chattering too hard for him to complete the word.

The sorceress seemed to be trying to cry, but could only manage strangled sobs. "You have to leave," she said, "right now!"

"My father," Kiros finally managed, while Ward wondered what the hell was happening. "Never," Kiros continued, "never did... that..." he said, looking up into the sorceress' face. "...is... a good man..." He fought to stop shivering and went on. "Just wanted... you to know..."

"I'm sorry," she cried. She reached both her hands out to his face, then stopped herself and looked at her own hands as if she was horrified by the sight of them. "I can't touch anybody," she said, and then she doubled over, wrapping her arms around her waist. She looked at Ward, and appealed to him with her eyes to run away.

Ward was more than willing to comply. He grabbed Kiros once more and threw him easily over his wide shoulders.

"Ward Zabac!" the sorceress cried suddenly, as Ward turned away. He turned back to face her, stunned that she had said his name with such clarity and will.

"Listen to me before you go, as this will likely be the last time I ever speak as Edea Kramer."

Ward nodded numbly and felt Kiros pick his head up sharply to look at her. He remembered Cid saying that his wife had left to protect the children. He'd had no idea that she was protecting them from herself.

"No time to tell you everything," she breathed. "But go to Balamb first, I have no power in the Garden. But the little girl mustn't stay with the other children. Hide her, but learn from her..." Her face twisted in pain once more and she lowered her head, gesturing weakly toward the door on the rooftop with her hand. "Leave," she breathed. Then she fell forward, landing hard on the rooftop. She writhed and cried out in pain.

Ward hesitated. He wondered how he was going to leave her to suffer in the true Sorceress' grip.

"Can't we... help..." Kiros stuttered, still hanging limply over Ward's shoulders.

Ward shook his head briskly. If one of his best friends hadn't been possibly freezing to death in his grip, he might have hesitated long enough to find out if he could help, or if he'd be killed, or worse. Rationally, he knew they had to get the hell out as quickly as they could. But it was so hard for him to turn his back on the anguished woman.

Terribly aware of the chill coming from Kiros, he turned and fled down the stairs.