At The Eleventh Hour
The world on the other side of the portal is rather more pleasant than I expected and I glance around with interest, forgetting my mission for a moment. I stand on a cobblestone path that is somehow suspended in mid-air, and at the end of this path is a gigantic castle topped with a rising tangle of miniscule towers. The air is warm and windless, and rays of light shine from the broken clouds to the red world beneath. From up here, I can't tell whether the closely packed terracotta bumps are rocks or roofs, and I resist the temptation to fly down and take a closer look. There's something unreal about them, as though they're only an image projected onto a screen, and I feel strangely uneasy as I scrutinise them. No, I don't think be flying anywhere. I feel the utter emptiness of pure nothing stretching away on every side, and I suddenly understand that to stray from the given path would be to leave behind everything that is real and become part of the infinite void. I wonder how it is that I can know that, and I begin my journey towards the looming castle.
"Well done. I didn't think you'd make it this far."
Garland... How did he get here? What does he want with me now? Has he come to taunt me in my final hours, or to try and dissuade me from my destiny? But try as I might, I can't feel angry at this intrusion. There's nothing left he can take from me.
"Is that really you again, Garland? What do you mean by that?"
"One can no more use one soul to travel back to the origin than walk a tightrope made of a single hair. The Iifa Tree contains Gaia's souls and prevents them from being judged by the planet. When you forced those souls-- those memories-- in the tree to come together and stretch out to the past, you formed a path of memories strong enough to carry you back to the beginning of time. Now you stand here, at the threshold of all things, and you have no idea how far you have come." His voice stops, although I know he is still watching. It's a moment or two before he speaks again, and now he sounds a little regretful. "I made you too well, Kuja. For better or for worse, you always exceeded my expectations."
And what expectations were those? To bear the dangerous brunt of the tasks Garland had intended for Zidane? To be an ignorant understudy to the true angel of death until the time came for him to emerge triumphantly from the wings? Well, this is one actor who won't be retiring quietly, and Garland has only himself to blame for that. He told me I was his right hand on Gaia, a perfect incarnation of his mighty will, an instrument of Terra's divine justice. And I believed him, and so I acted accordingly, and in turn I was treated accordingly. My losses are as real to me as if I were being deprived of my rightful and true position, and Garland either will not or can not see that. He never could.
"Shut up! You bastard! You father of lies! You never..." A sudden uprising of old memories stops my tirade, and as the long-forgotten images and sounds rise through me I remember the nature of this place. I try to force away thememoris triggered by my heated recollections, but it's as though a floodgate has been opened in my mind. The last thing I remember before being engulfed by the rising waters is Garland's quiet laughter.
