Act 2: Scene 3

It was almost painful to have to choose between refurbishing my Desert Palace and starting work on my project, but the latter eventually emerged victorious. In one of the palace's rooms, I found a snoozing moogle, which I awakened with a quick flick of his pom-pom.

"What the . . ." The moogle looked up, squinting at me before wobbling onto his legs. "Kupo!"

A small envelope was stuck to his belly. The moogle gasped and peeled it away from his fur with a few yelps and curses that were most unbecoming of a faerie.

"Kupo?! How long has Mojito been asleep?!"

"I have no idea." I smiled. "What's wrong? Undelivered mail?"

"Waaaiiii, Artemicion will kill Mojito!" he wailed, and proceeded to run around in frenzied circles until I tripped him up with some sort of torture instrument that I grabbed from a nearby wall. The moogle picked himself up and shook his head wildly instead.

"Listen, since I woke you up, I don't suppose you'd be willing to do me a favour?"

He shook his head even harder. "Mojito is busy, now, busy busy busy bus-eeeee!"

"Mognet can wait for now," I said, grabbing the furry creature around the waist. "I have a job for you to do!"

"Not fair, not fair!" Mojito squealed, and wriggled around in my hands until he popped loose. Then he made a frenzied bolt for the door. He shrieked when a fork of lightning crashed down on the flagstones before him, and covered his squinty eyes with his paws. "Don't hurt Mojito, kupo!"

"I never intended to," was my innocent reply, and following that, I stalked over to the cowering moogle and scooped him up in my arms, plopping him down on a table. "Now, listen. I have a very simple job for you to do. Think you can do it?"

Mojito scratched his ear. "Don't know, don't know!"

"It's simple. Trust me."

"Kupo . . ."

"You know of the Mist Continent, correct?"

"Kupo . . ."

"I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard for you to investigate the current political situation there for me, am I right?"

"No, kupo . . . Yowch! Yes, yes, kupo!"

"Good." With a grin, I delicately caught the tips of the little moogle's purple wings and twirled him around to face the door. "Get to it then. I want to know everything, so make sure you question your little moogle friends! And report back!"

"Stiltzkin will know," Mojito said certainly. "Stiltzkin knows everything, kupo!"

"Then you can ask him," I told the moogle. "Oh, and I suppose you can deliver that message while you're at it, as long as you don't waste too much time! I need to know, and I need to know soon!"

"Okay, okay, kupo! Mojito will hurry - but you owe Mognet a favour, Human-With-Tail!"

I couldn't help but wince. "Kuja will do fine, thank you very much. Now go!"

***

It was another three months before Mojito returned to my Desert Palace, and his news had hardly been worth waiting for at all.

"All is stable and quiet, Mojito learns," the moogle informed me emphatically. "All cities at peace!"

"Not for long," I grinned. "You're being a bit vague."

Mojito batted his wings angrily. "Mojito did Kuja's work for him! Mojito go now?"

"Oh, I don't think so."

"But . . . but . . . Mognet!" The moogle flapped his paws at the bag of mail hanging around his neck.

"You can continue to deliver your letters. But I will require your services often." Having been prepared for this moment, I delved into my pocket and produced a palm-sized object. "I believe moogles are quite taken by these, am I right?"

Mojito's jaw dropped. "Kupo nut! Kupo!"

Smiling, I held it in front of his nose before snatching it away again. "Now, do you want to tell me what's really happening on the Mist Continent?"

Mojito nodded excitedly, and I tossed him the nut. He caught it deftly and began to nibble on it, pausing between chews to announce the news.

"Sad, sad in Alexandria Castle. Princess Garnet goes away."

" 'Goes away'?"

"Yes, her soul, it returns to Gaia."

I blinked. "You mean she's died?"

Mojito nodded solemnly.

"Princess Garnet . . . Brahne's daughter?"

"That's right, kupo."

"How is she taking the news?"

"Bad bad bad, kupo! Stiltzkin said . . . her husband is doing all the work. She hasn't come out of her bedroom for days, kupo."

"Interesting . . ."

"Also keeping the news from Alexandria. No one knows yet, kupo. Mojito doesn't think King will let the people know. King is telling Alexandria that Queen Brahne is ill."

"Oh? Then how did you find out?"

"Stiltzkin, kupo!" The moogle's features softened with undeniable respect. "He knows everything!"

So - a queen in a mentally unstable condition. I could work on that. But the King would prove a hindrance. I didn't particularly want to cause any deaths just yet, but he would have to be eliminated eventually if I followed this through.

"Okay. Anything else you feel you should tell me?"

"No, kupo. You want Mojito to return and listen? Cost you a kupo nut, kupo! Mojito listen good!"

The next nut bounced off his head, and he scurried after it.

"Yes." I turned back to my black mage designs. "Keep me informed, Mojito. Return the instant something comes up."

"Kupo!" Mojito hurried out of the door, and I added a final mark to the diagram I was working on. Determinedly, I rolled up the sheet and carried it out of my as yet unfinished quarters. Due to earthquakes, several of the staircases had collapsed within the palace itself, so I had initiated simple teleportation spells like the ones on Terra to allow me access to all areas.

With a slight spring in my stride, I stepped into the one that led to the mountain entrance. The silver dragon was dozing on the ledge, its body positively gleaming in the sunlight that filtered through to the innards of the palace. Smiling, I walked over to it, scratching its eye ridges gently to rouse it from sleep.

"Come, my friend, I need some materials."

The dragon blinked drowsily as I mounted, but obediently moved its wings out of the way. "Where do you plan to go?"

"Lindblum. There are plenty of artisans there who can help me."

"Very well." It hesitated a moment as it prepared to launch into the open space beyond the entrance. "Kuja . . . do you insist on standing up?"

"I'll get it right this time." With a reassuring pat, I signalled for the dragon to take off.

***

The skies were dark over the majority of the Mist Continent. I found that there was something exhilarating about flying at night; perhaps the open, infinite space all around you, all detail shrouded by blackness. You couldn't tell how far up you were or, perhaps more accurately, how far down you would fall if fate dealt you a bad hand. Well, it was probably an acquired taste of adventuring.

I felt I was finally getting the hang of standing astride the silver dragon. Its back was quite full of various folds and crests and, if I placed my feet either side of the spinal ridge in a certain place, the hardened scales near the wing joints supported me. I'm not so sure why I found standing while riding so important, but the vision of my final revenge on Garland was always vivid in my mind, and it included me swooping down upon the silver dragon, body bent into the wind and a victorious, elated expression on my face. I suppose I wanted to look that way, because it seemed impressive to me and would obviously appear so to everyone else.

It also made me feel more confident. I was riding the dragon, not being carried by it.

"It is very dark now," it stated slowly. "I think we should find a place to set down for the night."

"Nonsense. You can see fine in the dark!"

"But I hear something."

"Hear what?" I cocked my head slightly to the left, but all I could hear was the sweeping wind of the dragon's steady forward glide.

"I smell it, too." The silver dragon growled suddenly, the sound rippling the muscles of its torso and I could feel the movement through my shoes.

"Smell what?"

And then something materialised in the darkness, full of fang and claw. It careered into the silver dragon, who swung left in the air, back winging to steady itself.

"Another dragon!" it roared.

Somehow I had stayed on my feet. "Silver? That's impossible!"

"No, not silver. But it is a -"

The silver dragon shrieked a challenge. My eyes wide, I dropped carefully to my knees and grabbed a spinal ridge forcefully. "What are you doing?! Forget the dragon, I have places to go!"

But my companion wasn't listening - it obviously had its ears full of instinct instead, and that instinct was telling it to fight. And a mid-air dragon duel was no place for me.

"Could you at least let me down first?" I tried desperately. "I'm sure you're more than a match for this dragon but you don't have to prove it!"

It was a grand dragon. I ascertained that much when it swooped down from above and narrowly missed me as it tried to clamp its foaming jaws around the silver dragon's throat. Furiously, I grabbed the creature's shoulder.

"Let's see how you like this one," I snapped, and thrust a Blizzaga spell into the fibres of its body.

The grand dragon screamed in pain and began to fall backwards, its hulking form a writhing, tortuous nightmare as the light of the spell cast it in shades of incandescent blue and white. Icy air rushed past me, and the silver dragon joined in the cacophony of screams as its opponent's claws raked across its back deeply. Instinctively, it jerked away from the pain.

It was at that point that I found myself suspended in the air by absolutely nothing. It was so dark that only when the lights of the town below me began to increase in size and intensity did I realise I was actually falling. That sudden realisation was like hitting a brick wall - something that stood a high probability of becoming reality if I didn't halt my quickening plummet.

At any moment I expected the silver dragon to swing in beside and below me and save me from an unwanted meeting with the ground. But when I flipped over and spotted the bouts of flame lighting up the sky far above me, I realised that this was not going to happen.

"Do I have to do everything myself?" I yelled into the wind, and hurriedly cast a Float spell. Unfortunately, I had left it a little too late, and my downward speed was so high by now that the magic struggled to gain the upper hand. This effectively meant that I had crashed through a roof and landed quite luckily on a bed in the room below before the spell actually started working. Of course, by then, I was no longer concentrating, so the Float spell misfired and inadvertently struck the bed that had saved my life.

I was not surprised, therefore, that the person who rushed into the room and saw the hole in the ceiling and me on a very regal bed flooded with timber from above that was, in turn, hovering three feet off the ground, yelled: "What the hell?!"

I knew the voice from somewhere. In a state of shock, I simply blinked, unable to focus on the person in question.

"I don't believe it."

"Believe what?" I asked weakly, finally rousing enough to be coherent.

"It's you. Kuja!"

Startled, I glanced up from the soft folds of the bed and fixed the speaker with a scrutinising glare. It was a shock to my already shaken system when I finally recognised who was addressing me.

The woman was dressed in a long white nightgown, but still wore her wide-brimmed hat, and that alone made her identity unmistakeable.

"Don't you ever take off that wretched hat, Faowri?" I sighed, but smiled with relief that it was her.

"No. Where did you come from?" The red mage tilted the brim of her favourite accessory a little, eyeing me suspiciously. "Anyone would think you were following me."

"Don't be silly." Groaning, I began to test my boundaries of movement. Considering that I had just fallen a damn long way, I was surprisingly unhurt. "Where are we?"

"Treno, King's Mansion." Faowri stopped studying me long enough to peer up through the hole in the roof. "Why is my bed floating in mid-air?"

"An ill-timed Float spell," I replied dazedly, rolling onto my back and gazing up at the heavens. There was no sign of two dragons locked in battle.

"Ah, so you've been experimenting with magic?" Faowri grinned maliciously. "That doesn't explain how you got up there," and she jerked a thumb at the stricken ceiling.

"I wish I could remember," I bluffed. Even the cynical Faowri seemed hesitant not to trust my well-acted performance, a shield I would use often when dealing with humans and the like in the future simply because it was so impenetrable. I had taken to deceit like a chocobo to its native forest.

"Hmph. Well," she muttered, folding her arms. "Are you all right?"

"I think so . . . aiieee!"

"I take it I didn't imagine that loud crack, then."

"No . . ." Grimacing with pain, I clutched my snapped forearm with my uninjured hand. "I didn't even feel it!"

"Shock, I guess," Faowri shrugged, and, closing her eyes, rested a hand on the bed. A soft wind seemed to course through the covers, and it gently lowered back to the floor.

I resisted the temptation to cast a Curaga spell on my flaming limb - it would blow my cover as a mere dabbler in magic, and I didn't want to have to jeopardise Faowri's friendship just yet.

"Pass it here," she said, holding out a slender hand. Gingerly, I lowered the broken arm into her palm and let it rest there. Faowri's eyes glowed faintly as she cast a spell with light fingers, and a sigh escaped my lips at the relief it offered. Unfortunately, it was only a weak version of the healing energy I was familiar with.

"Why not a higher level spell?" I demanded, feeling hard-done-to. "Are you not as powerful as you claim, Faowri?"

"I never claimed to be anything," she smiled maliciously. "But the quicker you heal, the sooner you leave here, and now that you've arrived, I think I have a task for you."

"What right do you have to -"

"Well, you owe me, Kuja, for my help at the Library and for destroying my much revered bedroom!"

I looked around at the chaos. She had a point. Shooting her a fierce look, I asked: "What do you want?"

"It's nothing taxing, I assure you," Faowri said reassuringly. "And it's probably something you'll enjoy. But first, let's see what other damage you've done to yourself."

End of Act 2: Scene 3