The ogre laughed. Or snorted more accurately in his hideous play at laughter. It made Kuja’s eyes tint with even greater disdain -- something he hadn’t previously thought possible. The creature in front of him was blunt and boorish and lacking any sense of aesthetic whatsoever. At least Zidane had bathed every now and then.

And then the creature spoke. "Please. Acting stupid only wastes your time. You'd have left before I had said anything if this wasn't what you wanted."

Acting stupid? Kuja raised an eyebrow. Truly this ogre had no sense of complex thought. The fact that he could string a full sentence together astonished Kuja to no end.

”It’s of some value,” Kuja admitted with a wave of his hand. ”But I have no real use for it. There are enough artifacts scattered about the country to sate my curiosity. It would hardly pain me to lose it.” In fact, he thought he wouldn’t mind at all. It was the perfect provocation to end this assault on his senses once and for all.

But for now he would listen. As much as he was loath to admit, the ogre’s intentions had caught his curiosity nearly as much as the amulet.

The man spoke with a strange kind of authority. It was the tone of someone who considered a battle already won. My dear, sweet idiot. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.

The ogre raised his eyes. "What happened when you fell into the Iifa Tree after you were defeated?" he asked, and for a moment, Kuja could only blink. What happened after he’d…?

Kuja burst out laughing, pressing a palm to his forehead as he tilted his head to the sky. ”That’s what you wanted to know?” How stupid could he be? ”You came all this way for the Iifa Tree?”

His laughter ended, but his smirk remained. After everything that the man had witnessed, after everything that Kuja had done, and all he cared about was what happened between himself and Zidane. He hadn’t exactly overestimated the man’s intelligence, but this…?

Kuja lowered his hand, crossing his arms again. If that was all it took to earn his amulet then he considered it done. ”After I landed here, my memories of it have been foggy at best. An effect of the dimensional portal, I assume.” An irritable effect. One that he had worked to rectify. ”But as you’re likely aware, I chose to teleport you from the heart of the planet where you would have otherwise been trapped. I’d say you owe me your lives.” His lips touched with a hint of laughter. Oh the irony.

”Zidane chose to be an idiot and run into an enraged Terran ruin. What he hoped to accomplish is beyond me, but we spoke. I wasn’t exactly in my right state of mind.” Not a state that he could appreciate now at least. The shadows of memory felt distant and detached. If the ogre hoped to see some significant change in his character then he would be sorely disappointed.

”The tree...attacked…” Kuja’s eyebrows twitched into a furrow. He hadn’t considered the next part implicitly. What had happened next? He touched his lip in thought. ”I...used the last of my magic. A teleportation spell.” And then what? He remembered the dizzying motion then hard ground beneath his back. Was there anything else? Was that where he’d...died?

”I assume Zidane survived, but beyond that, I can’t say.” He lowered his hand again, and gave the man a cool look. ”Now the amulet if you wouldn’t mind.”

ulla

If he had to choose one word to describe the Wanderwood, it would be “enchanting.” It had a certain peace to it, walking along its bubbling brooks and cascades of flowering ivy. It was the kind of place that seemed that nothing ill might ever touch its borders -- a haven for those of sound mind and pure heart.

Kuja hated it.

He hated every softened step into its spring grass. He hated the fairy lights that hung about the trees in colorful wisps. He hated the quiet glens and the endless bird song and the persistent smell of dew. More than anything, however, he hated that he’d had to come here in the first place.

It had been exhausting work tracking down ancient artifacts and legends lost to all but ruins and half-disintegrated scrolls of parchment. He’d started at the Metaia Temple -- once a scholar’s haven and now a scholar’s tomb. The quest and the company had nearly broken him, but it had proven useful in its own way. He’d found a list of lost shrines among the outer reaches of the country. And now he was the most useless of scavenger hunts.

Kuja slowed to a stop, touching at his temple. He should have reached the shrine by now. There was supposedly some artifact or another buried deep within the forest’s heart. He’d felt its magic as soon as he’d set foot here, and it hadn’t been hard to track. Still, with nearly an hour behind him, he felt no closer than he’d started. And wasn’t that rock familiar…?

Kuja tilted back his head and laughed. ”I’ve been going in circles.” Hot rage clenched his throat, and he scowled, throwing his hand aside. ”How? I’ve followed it exactly! How could it-?”

”Kupopo!”

Kuja stopped and glanced behind him. He caught pink fur and a red pom-pom. He turned to face it, fingers clenched. ”Can I help you?”

It blinked back at him stupidly. ”Kupo?”

”Yes. Kupo. Now what do you want?”

It bobbed in place, wings fluttering as it squeaked. Kuja closed his eyes and counted to ten. A moogle. Of course he’d found a moogle. Where weren’t they, really?

He opened his eyes, and the moogle was right in front of him, head tilted with its paw at its cheek. ”Kupopo?”

Kuja turned away. It bobbed around him, squeaking its exclamations until it was back in his face. ”Kupo!”

”Could you not?” Kuja swatted at the thing, batting it away as he walked past, trying to think. He touched his bottom lip. If he was going in circles then what did that mean? He wasn’t mistaken about the artifact’s magical signature. How could it have led him astray?

”Kupopo…” The thing sounded like a dejected puppy. Good. Maybe now it would leave him alo-

The magic shifted. Kuja looked up in time to see the moogle fluttering away through the trees. It had opened something. Some kind of barrier, perhaps? He raised a hand. ”Wait!”

The moogle paused, hovering where it stood. Kuja cleared his expression. ”I’m lost,” he said. ”Perhaps you could be of some hel-?”

The moogle gave an ecstatic ”Kupo!” and bulleted towards him so fast that Kuja struggled not to take a step back. It was in his face. It smelled offensive.

”The Shrine of the Sun,” he said. ”Do you know where it is?”

It looked confused. He saw a single thought churn through its rusted mind and then shudder to a stop.

”An old ruin.” He said, pronunciating to the point of farce. ”It would be centuries old. There’s magic inside it. Some kind of artifact?” Nothing. His eye twitched. ”Stone with a sun on it.”

There was a moment’s pause and then the moogle jumped into the air with an excitable squeak. It streaked towards the forest, bobbing up and down in time with its wing beats. Kuja blinked and then followed.

Putting his faith in the competence of a moogle? He really had lost all hope, hadn’t he?

A short and irritable journey later, and the moogle brought him to a cheerful glen. As Kuja emerged from the trees, the moogle stopped and turned to look back at him expectantly. ”Kupopo!”

Kuja passed it wordlessly, taking in the sight. To one side, a shimmering waterfall. On the other, a patch of wildflowers, and in the center of it all was a shrine reaching up towards the sun in a pointed spire. Kuja smirked. Well, it seemed the moogle had been good for something after all.

A ray of light from spirits deep

The sun that glints upon the spire

Betrays itself and magic’s fire.”

Kuja approached it carefully, eyes locked on the ruin before him. There at its front face was the faded insignia of the sun. Below it, crumbling columns supporting an ivy-laden staircase. He stepped lightly, hand ready to deal with any traps its guardian might have set. He had experience with ancient shrines, after all. None of them pleasant.

The stairs led to a shadowed hall, diminished by the forces of nature and time. At its end was an altar inset below the mosaic of some nondescript goddess. He started towards the altar, reached about halfway, then stopped.

”Empty?”

He hurried forward, all caution forgotten. Sure enough, what had once been the resting place of some great treasure was now only a forgotten and dusty dais. He stared at it without comprehension. ”It should be here. Why isn’t it-?”

A shadowed form caught his eye. He swiveled towards it, eyes narrowed. A dark figure supporting the wall, arms crossed. It didn’t look human in proportion, exactly, but it was close enough. Kuja gave a short, chiming laugh and tilted his head, finger at his lips.

”I believe you have something of mine,” he said. Something he would take by force.

ulla

“Unfortunately, yes. So are the fiends that come from normal cases of unsent souls. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”

Unfortunately. That wasn’t the word he would have used. In fact, it took everything in him not to laugh. A soul with strong enough convictions. That would most certainly be him, and with his natural psychic prowess who was to say how twisted he’d actually become? Gaia had no interest for him now -- not with the story ended and the tragedy revealed. But Spira…

If he could solve the puzzle of their dimensional banishment, perhaps Spira would prove a far better stage.

Yuna suspected nothing of course. In fact, she seemed entertained. ”I think you’d look rather nice performing it,” she said with a hand over her mouth to contain her laughter. ”Your clothes seem to flow well.”

Did she think his fashion was some kind of exotic costume? Kuja touched at his lips, stifling laughter. It wasn’t the first time someone approached him with such assumptions. It wouldn’t be the last either, and he found that he didn’t entirely mind. It was a demeaning assumption, but it meant only one thing. They thought his beauty worthy of performance. All other implications meant nothing to him.

”Better than one would expect.” Kuja lowered his hand, but his smile remained as mysterious as ever. ”Though it is occasionally...restrictive.” Even with his magic, there was only so much he could do for the metal of his armor and pauldrons. A pity. But then, he supposed it was worth the protection.

The trade for covering his skin, however, was not one he was willing to make. His magic would do fine in that case. He wove it about himself in iron threads.

He listened to her lore, religion, and history. They were not eidolons, it seemed. Not guardians of the planet, but human souls in eternal bondage. How macabre. He would certainly have no use for such a thing though linking to them was something else entirely. If he learned the ritual, could he then call upon them at his will? It was certainly easier than extracting them from the summoner herself, but it might take time.

Not that he particularly minded. Patience was something he had in no short supply.

”Sin?” He wanted to laugh. It was such an apt name that it bordered on absurdity. What kind of hack had looked upon the beast and thought to land so squarely on its nose? Still, he kept a somber mask with pinpoint precision. He could ridicule it later. For now, there was only his actor’s facade.

”A thousand years…” He touched upon the number thoughtfully. ”Then it hasn’t worked, I assume.” You know what they say about trying the same thing over and over again. It was a mark of stupidity. ”Have you tried other methods? Perhaps eidolons-...Pardon, aeons aren’t the most effective of tools?”

His head spun with possibilities. If he were to take residence in Spira, that threat would have to be dealt with. He assumed that there were simply no minds sharp enough to dismantle the problem. Gaians had always been shackled by what they thought they knew. Kuja, however, thought to question every angle, fact, and detail. That was the mark of true intellect. Perhaps if he were to study this Sin...

That name was laughable even in thought. He’d make certain never to speak it aloud. His mask might crack.

”But that’s outside my expertise. I’m certain you know more of the situation than I do.” His lips twitched. ”You sought to rid the world of this beast then? You must be quite determined.”

ulla

Gilgamesh lived. In fact, he seemed entirely unharmed by the ordeal. Why magical protections for a sword would not extend to the sword itself was entirely beyond him, but Kuja could have laughed at the turn of events. Of course it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t because Gilgamesh was a creature riding on nothing but an inexplicable wave of good fortune. His skills, work, and intellect meant absolutely nothing.

As did Kuja’s in the face of it. Oh how he loathed him.

A thought crossed the madman’s eye. A look of which Kuja hadn’t seen yet and likely wouldn’t see again. Logical reasoning. My but Kuja had thought him entirely deficient of it. And it had only taken him within the hour.

’You appear quite accomplished for a practitioner of the mystical arts. My role here seems rather redundant, considering how swift your reactions were.’

Only now did he question it? Had not a single suspicion crossed his mind? Had he not stopped for a single breath to consider the ramifications of Kuja’s presence? A gullibility that would usually bring Kuja satisfaction was nothing less than sad in its resolution. Not that Kuja pitied it. He quite thought that it needed to be put out of its misery.

”A brilliant observation.” Kuja made no effort to hide his contempt. Whatever should come of it, he hardly cared. If they parted ways then they parted ways. And if they fought to death than even better. ”The temple rests in the depths of a wasteland. How did you think I made it this far?” He laughed. ”Of course I could do it myself, but you have a sword and I’d rather preserve my magic than waste it on zombies. You have your precious plaything. If you would return the favor, I’ll give you one command. Watch the door. Even you couldn’t fail that.”

But he could. Oh he most certainly could. Kuja had no expectations of him whatsoever. Gilgamesh existed on a separate planet from the very concept of competence.

Kuja trailed to the shelves of scrolls and archives. He had little hope of finding the temple’s secrets so easily, but he had to start somewhere and here was as fine a place as any. He pulled a book from its dusty alcove and opened it, scanning over the contents with a careless eye.

Kuja would achieve his goals the same as he always had -- by forging a path inch by clawing inch. Luck had nothing to do with his success, and he wouldn’t have it anyway. There was only himself, his will, and his own ambition. He and that idiot were nothing alike.

ulla