Welcome to Adventu, your final fantasy rp haven. adventu focuses on both canon and original characters from different worlds and timelines that have all been pulled to the world of zephon: a familiar final fantasy-styled land where all adventurers will fight, explore, and make new personal connections.
at adventu, we believe that colorful story and plots far outweigh the need for a battle system. rp should be about the writing, the fun, and the creativity. you will see that the only system on our site is the encouragement to create amazing adventures with other members. welcome to adventu... how will you arrive?
year 5, quarter 3
Welcome one and all to our beautiful new skin! This marks the visual era of Adventu 4.0, our 4th and by far best design we've had. 3.0 suited our needs for a very long time, but as things are evolving around the site (and all for the better thanks to all of you), it was time for a new, sleek change. The Resource Site celebrity Pharaoh Leep was the amazing mastermind behind this with minor collaborations from your resident moogle. It's one-of-a-kind and suited specifically for Adventu. Click the image for a super easy new skin guide for a visual tour!
Final Fantasy Adventu is a roleplaying forum inspired by the Final Fantasy series. Images on the site are edited by KUPO of FF:A with all source material belonging to their respective artists (i.e. Square Enix, Pixiv Fantasia, etc). The board lyrics are from the Final Fantasy song "Otherworld" composed by Nobuo Uematsu and arranged by The Black Mages II.
The current skin was made by Pharaoh Leap of Pixel Perfect. Outside of that, individual posts and characters belong to their creators, and we claim no ownership to what which is not ours. Thank you for stopping by.
It felt good to be out of the desert. Like a bird in flight after months underground. Like the first breath of air after years of stagnation. Kuja had lost himself in his plots and experiments and machinations, and that had been before he’d run across the mage.
Even now, the thought of that creature caused his fingers to curl. Vivi. He’d learn to hate that name in the short time they’d been been properly introduced. With his righteous speeches and his wavering eyes and those flashes of memory he’d sling like daggers. It had made his own lair feel almost unbearable, but such was the price to pay for intel.
It had been months since he’d last made a visit to the Crystalus Divider. Months he’d spent establishing new bases, prototyping new weapons, and extracting information from that hideous mage. Even so, Kuja hadn’t forgotten the gate he’d once been drawn to or the way it had reacted after his foray with the dragons. It was the most conspicuous landmark on this accursed planet, and was one worth his time and attention. Perhaps the inkling of power he’d felt here before would have faded by now or perhaps there would be no sign of change at all. Either way, he needed to test it. To examine it and record his findings. It was an arduous task, but one made far less time-consuming by his chosen medium of transportation.
’There.’ The word came slick on his tongue. Not in the vulgar tones of common Gaian, but in Terran -- a language more suited for psychic connections. ’Descend now. We’ll land shortly.’
His dragon gave a short huff of approval and angled her wings into a sloping decline. Kuja eyed the horizon, twirling feathers between his fingers to pass the time. Night had nearly fallen, but he rather enjoyed the mask of darkness and the silver light of the half-moon. It felt far more natural to him to slip between shadows -- as mysterious and unknowable as the starlit sky. This was a time for deception, and when the light of the sun meant nothing to him, he far preferred it to the pretenses of daylight.
His dragon landed about a quarter of a mile away from the Divider’s main compound. Crumbling ruins lined the road as he approached, but they were not what he was after. The main arch -- the one he’d seen react only months before -- was located at the very center of the campsite, crowded in idiot priests, wayward tourists, and travelers he had no reason to associate with. The place was known as a haven against the planet’s onslaught of monsters, and so his dragon kept her distance lest they set their human obstacles on guard. As it was, Kuja attracted only the usual number of eyes as he sauntered past insomniacs, patrolmen, and the easily woken. They watched him warily, but had no reason to obtrude upon his time.
And so he moved on.
The air changed as Kuja approached the divider. It was charged with something. Tense. The fur on his tail bristled at the change, and he slowed his pace, eyeing the towering figure in the distance. Magic. He touched the arch when he reached it, but it didn’t react. Not like it had in those first weeks upon the release of the Dragon’s Gate. There were the same runes he’d already examined dozens of times. There was that same sense of dimensional anomaly, but there was nothing to explain the sheer energy he felt thick in the air and sharp on his tongue. He brought his own magic to his fingers and touched at the side of the arch itself. It glimmered faintly. A small, green spark that traveled from his finger to the ruins’ midpoint twenty feet above him. But it did nothing else. He felt no further change.
Infuriating. His eyebrows furrowed with the cool narrowing of his eyes. Obtuse. He knew there was power here, so why couldn’t he find it?
Then he paused, hand still outstretched. 'Perhaps,' he thought. 'Perhaps it wasn’t the portal at all.' He glanced behind him, turning slowly on his heel. His eyes scanned the landscape around him, but there were too many ruins, too many crumbling walls, too many forms only a short way in the distance and the rising moonlight wasn’t nearly enough to examine them all. He kept his voice low as he called into the dusk, one hand raised in apprehension. ”Is someone there?”
As expected, the mage protested. Quite loudly at that. ”Zidane's not dumb!” it cried, and Kuja couldn’t help but roll his eyes. The mage went on about other righteous values in a heroic speech that might have come straight out of some children’s fable. Something about the intrinsic value of caring and love and friendship. It was all Kuja could do not to start laughing right then and there.
The mage was a child. It knew nothing about the nature of life.
"How do you think people remember you?" the mage shouted, and Kuja stilled just a little. ”I bet you don't even care. You don't care about anyone else's feelings at all."
”No,” Kuja said. ”I don’t.” He turned his back on the mage and took a few steps to admire his own magical flame, flickering in its holder on the wall. His tail gave a rough swish beneath its shroud. ”Do you think I’m unaware as to what was said of me? I was abhorred long before I ever laid siege to Alexandria. You saw how that grotesque elephant woman thought to thank me for my loyal service to her ambitions.” His lips twisted into a bitter smirk. ”And might I say that if her reputation ever brightens while mine remains sullied then that is nothing but the most egregious of hypocrisy.”
He turned again but didn’t look at the mage. No, instead he considered the ceiling and the hair that he shoved roughly over his shoulder. ”Why should I care at all about the opinions of people like that? Of Gaians...” Kuja paused on the word -- twisted with his own bitter disdain. Was this too much? Too personal? His fingers clenched and he felt the familiar bite of his nails into his palm. No. If the mage truly knew him (There was that terrible vulnerability again! How he longed to rid himself of it!) then there was no point in hiding his thoughts. There was no reason to show restraint now. ”They were all fated to die, and by my hand at that! The days of that planet were always numbered, and not a single soul knew it but me!” His tail lashed again. He cursed it.
Kuja’s lips pursed as he shut down the flare of emotion that had blazed in his eyes. No. This was a waste of his time.
”But I suppose the real question…” he started slowly. ”Is what to do with you.” His eyes landed on the mage again. On Vivi. He’d heard Zidane say that name before, hadn’t he? ”I can’t have you running about telling this world that I’m a war criminal, now can I?” His lip twitched with a smirk. ”So what does that leave?”
The mage had questions. Many questions and exclamations and enough enthusiasm to make Kuja’s fingers clench. But he willed himself calm no matter how much he longed to strike the saccharine naivete from the mage’s eyes.
This creature was nothing like him.
”Vivi?” he echoed with a raise of his eyebrow. ”As in life or…?” Then he paused, touching at his lips as he laughed softly. ”You mean sixty-six?” He gave the mage an incredulous look. ”V-I-V-I? That’s just another way of writing the number. Though I suppose that would explain your deviations. My first models were smaller and I hadn’t started rationing the Mist which powers your magic. Naturally, you’d be stronger than average.”
It was odd, speaking so bluntly with one of his own creations. Normally, they were nothing but soulless husks and even in his short interactions with those mistakes in the woods, he’d never really paid them much mind. But speaking to this mage (’Vivi,’ he corrected himself with a curl of his lip) was somehow different. Kuja wondered if the extra Mist might have extended the puppet’s life span. Perhaps that would explain the mage’s heightened level of awareness.
”As for Zidane, I haven’t the slightest idea. And you’re the first mage I’ve seen here with any semblance of sentience. I’ve been prototyping a new model of them as of late, but awakening is a rare malfunction and I doubt it possible in this place anyway. It has nowhere near the flood of unused souls that lurked about Gaia. A byproduct of the Soul Divider, I suppose.”
Why was he speaking so casually? Kuja’s tail lashed beneath its shroud, uneasy without his usual armor of lies and pretense and theatrics. But they’d do him no good here, not if the mage already knew his background and intentions. It was a strange thing. No Gaian had ever been aware of his true nature. No one but Lady Hilda, and even then…
Kuja scowled and shot the mage a look of pure disinterest before eyeing his nails. One of the tips had chipped in their earlier scuffle.
”Not that it matters. You’re sure to be offended either way. Weren’t you the one always running about screaming for the rights of soulless dolls?” Kuja laughed humorlessly. ”I don’t much see the point, but I suppose Gaia has a way of valuing life, doesn’t it? That’s what I took from Zidane’s righteous preaching anyway.”
Funny what a dozen years on that planet could do. It was as though Zidane’s Terran blood had been stripped away from him completely. A pity he hadn’t died of exposure when he was supposed to.
The mage wasn’t particularly fazed, not even as the air sparked magic and Kuja’s eyes gleamed with danger. No, it rose to its feet again slowly if not calmly. ”It’s not fair,” it said almost quietly, and Kuja felt his tongue ready to lash at such ridiculous sentiment.
’You want fair? You think the world owes you anything? That you deserve some peace of mind just for living? That isn’t how this works.’
But the mage continued before he could even start. ”You want to know the truth, but you get mad when you're told!" It was the mage’s turn to brim with passion, his little gloves curled together and trembling. For a brief moment, Kuja was almost taken aback.
’You want to know the truth, but you get mad when you’re told!’ The thought made his lips purse. It wasn’t that the mage had told him what he’d asked for, but rather it was what he’d said that had provoked him. The mage shouldn’t know anything. Not about Terra. And hearing it from someone else’s mouth…
It was wrong. Just wrong.
”You told Miss Hilda about everything,” the mage went on, and Kuja couldn’t help but recoil. Lady Hilda? He touched at his temple, biting at his tongue as he tried to remember. Yes, he had told her, hadn’t he? And then…
He froze. He’d left her at the bottom of Mt. Gulug. He’d hoped that she’d pass the message along and direct that idiot Zidane towards what Hilda had called “Ipsen’s Castle.” From there, they’d only need to defeat the castle’s guardian then learn of the four protective seals and then…
Kuja stared at the mage. It really was from a different future.
The mage’s eyes wavered with tears. ”You're upset, and I know how that feels. We were both born to die." Kuja winced. That was where the mage was wrong. Genomes were ageless and made far less shoddily than any black mages, but the words still stung. He felt magic thicken at his nails.
"It's scary, but it's true. That scary man made you in the same way you made me. You just went crazy though! You destroyed your home! You wanted to destroy everything. You tried to destroy the universe."
”The universe?” Kuja repeated hollowly and then gave a hard laugh so he wouldn’t have to answer to anything else. ”I couldn’t if I wanted to, and I wouldn’t want to. ‘The universe’ happens to be where I live. What would that get me?”
The mage said something ridiculous about “coming here when he died” before going on. ”That's where I learned that spell. In the world that memories of our world created, before we stopped you from destroying everything.”
Kuja frowned for a moment. In the world that memories of our world created…? What did it mean…?
Kuja froze. ”Memoria?!” The word slipped out as sudden as it was incredulous. ”You went to…Memoria?” Even saying it aloud sounded ridiculous. Memoria was more of a theoretical concept than a physical space one could visit. It was a dimension at the center of the planet, the source of the Soul Cycle, and most importantly on a completely different plane of existence. It would take an incredible amount of magic to rip open a portal to it -- the kind of power that the world had never seen. The kind of power that could…
...Destroy the universe.
Kuja opened his mouth and then closed it. He turned away from the mage and then touched at his forehead, trying hard to steady his breaths as they came. ”You shouldn’t know about that place.” The words came more evenly now even as he stifled his own panic. ”Even if you went to Terra. There’s no reason for you to have…” He let out a slow breath before turning back to face the battered, exhausted mage.
There was no reason for kindness. No reason even for patience with a puppet like this, but for all of its infinite stupidity and sentiment, the mage had been right about one thing at least. ’You want to know the truth, but you get mad when you're told.’ It wasn’t unfair to abuse the mage whenever Kuja felt the urge, but it was counter-productive. In that moment, Kuja had been the one acting impulsively.
”I was surprised,” Kuja said by way of explanation rather than apology. ”You shouldn’t know those names. No one’s ever spoken them to me on any other planet. No one but Lady Hilda, I suppose…”
Kuja couldn’t help a scowl as he crossed his arms. Talking so blatantly about Terra...It left a bitter taste in his mouth. He felt his tail bristle at his own vulnerability.
”I’d forgotten my intentions with her. As I’m certain you realize by now, I left her for you to find. Or rather, for Zidane to find. The gate to Terra had been sealed for years. Garland didn’t trust me anymore, I suppose.” Kuja smirked bitterly. ”Not an unfounded fear as it turned out.”
What was he doing? Talking to a mage about Terra? About Garland? Kuja stiffened and cleared his expression. This wasn’t what he’d come for.
”Your name.” Kuja gave a dismissive wave of his hand as he tilted his head to the ceiling carelessly. ”Or your number. Whichever you use. If I’m to have a proper conversation with you, I might as well know it. Unless you’d rather I keep calling you a puppet.” His lips twisted into a smirk. ”But I’ve grown tired of that by now.”
YAY EMOTIONAL OUTBURSTS. Sorry if this wasn't well written. I tried. T__T
Why should the world exist without me?
The mage looked frightened as he found consciousness. Good. As Kuja sneered his first demand, the mage could barely squeak out an answer. ”Doomsday.” It sounded so dramatic. Had he forgotten the apocalypse? But no, hadn’t he maybe heard the mage shout that before all hell had broken loose? That was the name of the spell then though it hardly helped him. There wasn’t magic like that in all the archives of Pandemonium, nor in the Gaian texts of Daguerreo. In short, it shouldn’t have existed and there was no way that the mage could have discovered it on his own.
Even shorter, the answer was useless.
Kuja felt his teeth grind together in frustration. He’d put in too much time and far too much work keeping the damned puppet alive for this. ”You did a lot of bad things,” it said. Oh yes, dreadful things! He’d have dared call himself villainous! ”You hurt a lot of people. Both nice people and mean but still people. You killed Dagger's mom. You made people like me, but didn't care about our feelings at all.”
”Please. I did the world a favor ridding it of that hideous elephant woman.” The sheer memory of Brahne -- of her fatty rolls and piggish eyes and that smell -- were enough to make him scowl even now. It was a crime he hadn’t done away with her sooner.
”You hurt Dagger by having people take those jesters take her Eidolons from her. You attacked her kingdom with a big dragon." Kuja tapped at the side of his sleeve, lips pursed as the mage continued the list of his many misdeeds -- staring at him with those eerie yellow eyes all the while. ”You tricked Zidane and the other mages into getting the stuff you wanted, and you tried to do to Eiko what you did to Dagger but it didn't work.”
”Yes, yes. Get on with it!” His nails dug through his sleeves into the flesh of his arms. He knew this already! He didn’t need an extensive summary! And yet here he was, waiting for the truth to drop. Did he remember anything else after that? After Mt. Gulug?
He’d left Lady Hilda there to be found.
He’d returned to his Palace and then…
His lungs chilled. No. He didn’t remember anything else, and the mage wasn’t done yet. It fidgeted nervously, twisting its hands together with its eyes slightly lowered. The seconds passed in pounding heartbeats as the mage opened its mouth again.
”I didn't see you again until we fought in Terra.”
Kuja froze. ”What?”
”You'd let your emotions give you energy just like the rest of us had at that point.”
”You know Terra?”
”You almost killed us until that big scary man told you..."
”You know Garland?!”
The mage took a breath. ”...That you were only mortal and temporary, that you were gonna die. You got really mad. You destroyed your ho-.”
His magic struck in an explosion of thunder and light. It seared through his blood and sparked at the edges of his outstretched fingertips as the air crackled its tension. The light caught the mage’s silhouette, frozen and flailing as it barrelled into the nearest wall. Kuja stalked after it and seized its throat in a talon-like grip.
”How do you know about Terra?” His voice wasn’t steady. It burned with the same murderous fire that gleamed in his eyes. ”How do you know him? That hideous, hulking-!” His throat closed shut as he shook his head. ”Garland!” He threw the mage aside and swallowed back another spell. He couldn't kill it. Not now. But if it knew Garland. If it knew Terra...
Kuja's hands balled into fists. His fingers were trembling. ”What did you do?”
The girl’s lips tightened at his name, and for the first time since he’d awoken here, Kuja felt a twinge of unease at his own identity. This world was so divorced from the one he’d known that it had been easy to forget that he was widely slandered as a war criminal on Gaian soil. Could it be that this girl had heard rumors of his name?
But no. As quickly as her unease had begun, it vanished into a fog of her own oblivious excitement. Kuja watched her more carefully than before in case she showed any further signs of dissent.
If there had been any, she was either very forgetful or a very good actress. No, she was more interested in trances and their meaning. She blathered on about how she was in control of herself and ‘wasn’t that where you didn’t know what you were doing?’ It was painful to listen to, but Kuja kept his expression as neutral as possible even as his fingers itched to strangle her.
Thankfully, the topic shifted quickly. ”So you aren't from here either?” she asked without any particular lead-in. ”I sense.....a strange magic inside of you. And your face looks familiar…” It was her turn to examine him a little too closely. Kuja flipped his hair behind one shoulder as he tried to swallow his discomfort. Somehow he found it unlikely that she’d seen anyone who looked remotely like him before.
”I think I had a friend named Kuja,” she said slowly before suddenly perking up. ”Who looked like you!"
”Pardon?” Kuja blinked at her without comprehension. A friend? Did she think they’d been friends? But she’d hardly touched on the abrupt and rather impossible subject before her mouth was racing off to something else entirely.
”You say you are researching? Have you figured out why we were brought to this land? I don't remember a thing, but it would be really nice if you knew something!”
Kuja stared at her. For what felt like ages, he stared without fully comprehending the flaming wreck of words that had spewed from her mouth like the clanking gasps of an airship. She’d known him. His name, his face, his magic. That’s why she’d tensed at his introduction, and that’s what she claimed now. Either she was insane or…
Or this was someone else he’d forgotten. His jaw clenched at the thought of it. How many more was he to meet from that impossible time of gods and endless battle? With every one, the concept still made as little sense as it had from the beginning, and with every one, he couldn’t deny the same maddening sense of deja vu. Kuja didn’t know this girl, but he’d remembered her name, hadn’t he? Terra. That name had been forced from his unwilling tongue before now, and he knew he’d had no choice but to swallow his own distaste more than once.
Terra. Nothing good ever came from that word.
”You say you knew me?” The words came slow. Careful. ”Terra. Yes. I think we’ve met before. Though how and when, I can’t say.” She’d claimed they’d been friends, but that was likely just the perception of a gullible pawn not yet thrown to the fire. Kuja knew himself well enough to guess that now was not the first time he would have tried to manipulate her with helpful charm. This could still work in his favor.
”I’ve learned quite a bit about the nature of this world in the time I’ve been studying it. If I were to tell you all of its secrets, I think we’d be standing here until nightfall.” He laughed a little, a light laugh like the chiming of bells. ”But if you claim that we were once friends, then I suppose I could take the time. It’s not often that familiar faces fly in from the ceiling, after all.” He offered her a mysterious smile before shaking his head again. ”Will this oasis do? I’m afraid I can’t offer you the accommodations befitting such a lovely woman. I’ve been forced to start from nothing as I’m sure you understand.”
He crossed his arms and looked up to consider the sky. The sun had long since passed the cave’s skylights, but he could still feel the pounding of its heat even now. ”That has been the way of it for all of us. Dozens merely snatched by some cosmic force and tossed haphazardly into a world none of us know. I haven’t met a soul who remembers how he got here, and very few come through with their life’s memory fully intact. I’d say that the vast majority bear some kind of incredible skill with magic or a blade, but beyond that, there have been few similarities between us.”
”Are you familiar at all with dimensional theory?” He glanced at the girl before shaking his head. ”I don’t expect you to be, but I think that this is more a matter of dimensions than simply worlds or planets. Of course, there’s nothing to say it couldn’t be both, but that’s a separate matter altogether.”
He turned to face her, head angled slightly as though in question. ”I believe this world to be somewhere in the middle. That there’s some force here pulling together those who’ve been lost in some way between spaces. Or that’s the short of it at least.”
He smiled at her. ”Did any of that make sense to you?”
The black mage stirred to life. At first, Kuja wasn’t entirely certain what to feel, watching it. Disgust at the puppet before him? Pride at his own work, or perhaps…
His chest seized with something cold. It had been hours since he’d let himself linger on the puppet’s last words whispered into the wind. The mage knew something that Kuja didn’t. The very idea made his fur stand on end. ’You really don’t remember?’
’Remember what?’ Even now, Kuja’s jaw threatened to clench. What didn’t he remember? Just the idea of it was enough to drive him mad. Which was why he’d put it out of his mind for the better part of ten hours. Until he had the chance to act on such a thing.
Until now.
The mage’s eyes fluttered open and then stared about in their dull and hazy yellow. Kuja’s lips pursed as he waited, fingernails digging ever deeper into the flesh of his crossed arms. The mage looked to the left and then to the right before his gaze caught on Kuja and those eyes widened. Then he looked down, gloved hands clasped like a guilty child.
”I’m sorry.”
The words were low. Quivering. Weak. Kuja bit his tongue to keep from spitting bile. Sorry? He was sorry after what he’d done? After assuring destruction for them both and nearly dragging them down together? No. If he was to pull something so brash then the least he could do was have the strength to carry it with him. That was, at least, if he had some kind of will of his own. It seemed the mage was Zidane’s pet til the end -- lost, helpless, and unstable without him.
”What was that spell?” Kuja’s fingers balled into a fist around his sleeve. He didn’t have time for mumbled apologies or even for his usual sharpened tongue. He would get his answers and be done with it. What didn’t he remember?
”I’ve seen it before but I don’t know when or where. Surely, you’ve realized by now that most don’t make the transition into this world completely…whole.” He scowled the word with all the disgust he could muster, which given the situation, wasn’t difficult. ”For the longest time, I’d thought myself above such clumsy cliches as amnesia, but it seems even the most nuanced of characters fall prey to the whims of melodrama on occasion.” He shot the mage a chilled look.
The elixir was bitter against his tongue. Kuja fought back a grimace as he downed the bottle in one agonizing swig then leaned back in his chair, eyeing the flask moodily. It had been a long time since he’d had to rely on potions as strong as this for his life. Not since Garland had turned on him in Alexandria at least. The thought of it tightened his grip on the glass and he tossed it aside, scowling at the sound of its shattering.
It had been a very long night.
The flight from the Headstone Forest to his desert lair had lasted hours. For a time, he hadn’t been entirely certain that the mage would survive the trip what with its pitiful condition. He’d restrained it with magic to the back of his dragon and then watched idly as the landscape passed beneath them, shivering slightly in the chill of the winds. Their arrival had been no easier. A mere feather or string of curative spells weren’t about to undo the damage the mage had inflicted on itself. After six hours repairing the broken puppet, Kuja had found himself longing for the quick and easy fix of merely transferring the mage’s soul to a new vessel, but without Terra's technology, he’d been stuck fixing the unfixable. Finally after a sleepless night and an exhaustive morning, he had emerged more or less triumphant.
For as grand as his accomplishment might have been, Kuja thought that he should have felt more exuberant than this, but no. After everything he’d endured, Kuja longed only for a twelve hour nap and a long, hot bath.
Kuja rubbed at his temples and straightened himself. He’d promised he’d only take a half hour’s rest in the back alcove of his library and then he would be done with it. His body protested as he forced himself upright, but he was as used to sleep deprivation as he was to keeping prisoners. He’d put the mage to sleep, and his spell wouldn’t last forever. No, if he was to make this all worth his while, he’d need to handle this now rather than later.
He had an interrogation to attend to.
The halls of his subterranean lair flickered with ethereal flames. The tunnels were unfinished and undecorated without inlaid floors or walls or pillars. In fact, they most resembled what they were -- simple cave tunnels that he’d cleared and polished and set alight the best he could manage. The modesty of it all made him long for his desert palace back on Gaia, but his palace had once much more resembled this than the masterpiece it had become. He would upgrade this place in time, but for now, it served his most basic of purposes. It was a place in which he could not be found and from which there was little chance of escape.
He’d left the mage in a room not so dissimilar from the others. The walls were made of roughly hewed stone. The floor was uneven. He’d provided the very basics of hostage care: a simple cot in one corner, a hole for waste in another, and a trunk in which he’d left spare set of mage’s clothes so he wouldn’t have to look at its ruined ones any longer. In the center of the room, there was a tall-backed chair in which he’d left the mage slumped and unconscious to wait for him. Kuja smirked at the sight of its powerless form -- so vulnerable and helpless in the palm of his hand, before sighing and muttering his spell. ”Esuna.” It came as an almost disinterested sigh. How he wished he could merely crush the mage and be done with it, but no, then his work would all be for nothing.
”I’d like to make this quick if I may.” Kuja crossed his arms and looked up to eye the ceiling. ”If you’re still sentient after that suicide missions of yours, then I have questions for you. Or rather -- demands." He gave a long and indulgent sigh. "You’d do well to take caution. After the night I had, I can imagine no greater delicacy than the slick of your blood beneath my nails.”
The clearing was silent but for the wind and the distant rustling of trees. Kuja’s nails dug deep into the palms of his hands. He could feel it screaming in the back of his mind, trapped like a thorn festering deep in flesh. There was something there. Something lost. Something he’d forgotten.
Kuja was about to shout again when he caught a stirring not too far from his feet. The sliding of broken earth, a rustle of cloth, and then a voice so soft he could barely catch it. ”You…”
His eyes narrowed as he turned to face the sound. There, veiled in shadows at the bottom of a particularly jagged pit, was the mage. Its head was slumped to one side, its yellow eyes dimmed and drooping into half-crescents. Kuja’s lips thinned at the sight of it.
Pathetic.
The mage shifted again. Pure essence slipped from its mouth as it struggled for breath. Its sagging eyes found his and there was something almost sad in them as it told him what he least wanted to hear. ”You really don’t remember?”
”Remember what?” Kuja shot the mage a sharp look, eyes blazing. ”What do you mean?” His voice was rising. Wild. The mage gave a long sigh as more of its essence slid out of it like smoke.
”In…” The word came slow. Quiet. ”In. Me. Me…”
And then the mage died.
”What.” Kuja stared at the huddled form beneath him, eyes engulfed in shadow, head limp and drooping. Motionless there, it looked for all the world like a ragged, beaten doll tossed from the heavens and left to rot. The moonlight shifted and shuddered across the broken figure before him and the wind whispered with the mage’s last words. In me.
Something hot rose below Kuja’s throat.
”Well, what the hell is that supposed to mean?!” He threw an arm in the mage’s direction, eyes narrowed, fingers sparking. ”In me?” The words were caustic on his tongue. ”'In me?' What kind of answer is that? Are you trying to test me? Was this all some kind of game?"
The mage didn't answer. Kuja's eyes flared at the silence. "You stupid! Worthless! PUPPET!”
His fist clenched and magic seized the mage in its violet grip. One swipe later and the mage’s body was sent flying like a ragdoll across the clearing, tumbling over itself through the air until it slammed boots first into the nearest tree. Kuja’s jaw clenched as he let out a noise of pure frustration through his teeth. All this time, he’d known there was something wrong. Too many times, he’d accepted what didn’t make sense. Too many times he’d met strangers who he remembered in some distant past life in the back of his mind. He didn’t know how he got here. He didn’t know how to get back, and all this time, there’d been that something, something, something lodged beneath his memories like festering Mist screaming for release.
Then this mage had come along. Waddling its idiotic way straight into his hands. And instead of telling him anything useful, it had simply killed itself.
”Stupid!” he yelled again before throwing a hand through his hair and pacing forward. ”’In me?’ Am I supposed to dissect it? Is there something in its soul? I couldn’t look through its soul if I wanted to! Not here! And where would that even get me? This was nothing but a waste of time!”
Kuja stopped. Somehow, he’d ended up at the mage’s side again. Subconscious, he supposed. He glared at the crumpled thing before him. A worthless tool unworthy of life. A creation he never should have patched together out of Mist remnants and mistakes. He sneered at it. ”At least I’m not you. Stupid and righteous and dead!” Kuja fists clenched as he drove the tip of his boot so hard into its stomach that the thing rolled over.
There was a small noise like a whimpering dog and another burst of essence from its shrouded lips. Kuja paused. Still alive. Only barely, but it was something. Kuja eyed it hatefully before kneeling in the dirt beside it. He touched at its chest and waited. Beneath layers of coat and cotton, he felt the vague, shallow rising of breaths. His fingers curled around the binding of its coat in a talon-like grip.
”Maybe you’re not useless to me afterall.” He glanced at its shadowed face, rolling onto its shoulders and the collar of its coat. His lips pursed again. ”But I can’t let you die yet. Why do you give me nothing but trouble?” He let out a short breath before rising again, mage in hand. He cast his mind into the night for his dragon and felt her hiding in a cove not a quarter of a mile away. Ava was as intelligent as she was capable. She’d likely bolted at the first sign of danger.
”I need you.” Kuja closed his eyes and let the words slip from him in his native, Terran tongue. Somewhere, far away, he felt his dragon shift uneasily. ”There was a distraction, you see. Nothing worth caring about, but I’ll need your assistance tonight.” Kuja opened his eyes and looked up at the sky, so vast and empty and gray. He wondered at the size of it. Of its expanses and shadows, and he thought for a moment that he might lose himself to it. Then he turned himself away and looked back to the mage, head tilted and eyes cool. A shadow of a smirk played on his lips as his nails scraped the puppet’s neck.
Kuja knew it instantly from the moment that the mage whispered its spell and slipped like a quivering leaf to the forest floor. The winds had changed. Kuja’s tail bristled at it; his breath stood still. In all of his life, he’d never felt anything so malicious as the energy that engulfed him now. In seconds, the skies had turned red with its bloodlust. Kuja had already forgotten their battle and stood there, awe-struck by the scene before him. It was like something out of an apocalyptic legend.
(’And on that day, the skies were drenched in blood. The air spit fire and the seas roared their judgment. On that day, the last of all, even the most cunning of evils shall know humility.’)
The sky was lit not by silver moonlight, but by fire and something else -- a rapidly approaching something that framed the sky like a lunar eclipse. His eyes widened as he realized the scale of the thing, of the five tons of stone and fire hurtling towards him, and time seemed to slow as his stomach turned and he could ask himself only one question: ’How?’
How had it come to this? How could anything in his life had taken such a fatal turn? There was no such thing as fate, as luck, as mere chance even -- no, he’d always controlled his own fate, and yet here he was. Staring down what could only be described as divine retribution. What had he done to bring himself here, and what in the names of Gaia, Terra, and everything inbetween had the black mage summoned?
The earth trembled. The winds struck across him like the wrath of a hurricane as the tree branches quivered, groaned, and snapped against its force. Was this what the people of Madain Sari had seen as they’d faced their fates beneath a fiery, bloodshot eye? There was no stopping whatever primordial spell the mage had started, and it became quickly apparent that this was not something that either of them were meant to survive.
No. Let the puppet have its death. Kuja refused to take part in it. There wasn’t time to flee nor even to teleport, not when Kuja had only barely begun to master that particular magic. That meant there was only one remaining option -- endure. Kuja dodged away from the mage lest the doomed thing try to stop him, muttering incantations as he went. Shell. Reflect. Protect. Anything that might resist the fate that came hurtling ever closer towards them. The heat singed against his skin and the inside of his lungs. The winds ripped away leaf and branch and underbrush indiscriminately as they tore at his hair and clothes and eyes. Kuja raised an arm against it and then there was impact.
The force was staggering. Oppressive. Kuja’s knees buckled at the weight of it all, collapsing into him in a landslide of metal and rock and fire and heat. Kuja pushed back with everything that he had. All of his magic. All of his energy into the spells that protected him. His vision swam with the effort. His palms clutched at scorched and broken earth. How had this happened? How and why?
He’d seen this spell before. The memory of it swam on the fringes of his splintered subconscious. He’d felt this malicious power before. The same primordial energy of a magic long forgotten. Somewhere...Somewhere in a void of shimmering stars and lit in deep red.
Somewhere wrapped in crimson feathers and a burst of violet light...falling…
The earth burned hot against the side of his cheek. Kuja shuddered as the shadows faded and he felt his body stir against rubble and ash. That terrible power had dissipated. Just a spell like any other. Kuja let out an unsteady breath as he lifted himself from the dirt. Heavy. He grimaced as he staggered upright. Heavy and fractured and limping.
But alive. Kuja scowled as he cast his gaze across the ruined clearing before him. Where there had once been a verdant den of trees, now there was only a crater of detritus and debris. He took account of every pain in his body like a mental checklist -- nothing broken, nothing punctured, but sore -- oh so sore and near collapse. Did he have enough magic left to heal himself? A little, perhaps, but he didn’t dare use it, not before he’d seen that puppet broken and dead at his feet.
”Are you still breathing?” His voice was unsteady as he called to the thing. Still choked with ash and malice. ”A pity if you are. I’ll have to fix that.” Kuja eyed the shadows coolly. Maybe the mage had been flung like a doll into the forest or maybe he’d find its pointed hat wilted and buried beneath the rubble. One could only hope…
But as he forced himself forward, a lingering thought returned to him. That strange, loathsome vision that had fluttered on the edges of his waking mind. Kuja stopped his murderous path and considered the broken earth beneath him.
Since the day he’d first arrived on this worthless planet, he’d had the overwhelming feeling that he’d lost something. Something important and painful and that he longed to forget. Since that first day, he hadn’t seen another soul who’d known him, but now here he was. Facing down impossible magic cast by a mere puppet that he’d known to cower in the wind.
How had this happened?
”That spell. I’ve seen it before.” Kuja spoke slowly, almost to himself as though he were solving a puzzle or a particularly obtuse poem. ”How could a puppet know a magic that I’ve never even heard of? It’s impossible, unless…” Kuja touched at his forehead with a grimace. His temple was pounding.
There was something there when he thought hard enough to split his own skull in two. Something dreadful and dark and covered in haze. His heart pounded at the thought of it like some residual panic left behind on instinct alone. There was something there. Something he didn’t want to remember, and yet…
Kuja straightened. ”You know something, don’t you?” His attention snapped from forest to shadows to rubble. ”Where are you? Answer me!”
