Eiko's home is called Madain Sari, and looks like it never recovered from a tornado. Those whole place is a big stone ruin populated almost entirely by moogles who all obey Eiko for some reason, even though at least some of them appear to be adults. Also, one of them lives inside Eiko's clothes. Geez, and I thought it was creepy when everyone was talking about how sexy the teenage girl was....
Eiko drags Zidane aside and is eager to know more about him, and ecstatic when he says he wants to know more about her, too. Zidane wants to know about Eiko's ability to summon eidolons, while Eiko wants Zidane to fill out a dating site profile. The screen fades out and in, indicating that we've skipped a conversation where I can only assume that only one of us had our questions answered, and it wasn't Zidane. Garnet gets jealous that Zidane is paying attention to a six-year old, then Eiko gets jealous that he's paying attention to a girl who's already gone through puberty, indicating that they have more in common than magic schools.
The moogles have been cleaning up while we've been talking, and Eiko runs off to cook dinner once they report that they're done, telling us to come by later to eat. Until then, we're left to kill time alone again. Vivi has wandered off to think more about his conversation about death back at the black mage village, while Garnet reflects on being in the legendary Village of Summoners, and how she feels incomplete with her eidolons gone, even though she had always considered them a burden of conscience before losing them. At the same time, Eiko is commanding her brigade of moogles to help her prepared dinner by scavenging ingredients and helping in the kitchen, hoping to woo Zidane away from Garnet with her cooking because she doesn't want to be alone anymore. Good thing none of her moogles were around to hear that last bit....
Eiko also sends a moogle to show Zidane the most important part of the village, the Eidolon Wall, in another attempt to impress him. Mission failed, since he naturally brings Garnet along, given that the party's summoner would probably like to have a look at a shrine dedicated to summon creatures. The moogle explains that the summoner tribe who dwelt here until about ten years ago maintained the shrine for almost 500 years, painting the images of eidolons they discovered in their research on the walls. The summoners sought to be closer to nature, and believed that the eidolons were the guardians of nature. Garnet recognizes some of them as her eidolons, including the satanic Kirby that inhaled Lindblum, so maybe there are a few holes in that theory.
We leave Garnet to look at the shrine for now. Eiko's moogles have fished Quina out of the river while trying to prepare for dinner, and it's probably for the best that we never know what it was doing in there. Being uncharacteristically cogent for a moment, it explains to Eiko the virtues of preparing food for more guests that are expected, and gives her cooking tips. With Quina's help, and a little extra fire from Vivi, Eiko finishes up and we sit down to dinner, where Zidane makes a joke about all the other summoners hiding underground, which Eiko confirms: they're all underground because they're dead.
Aaaawkwaaaaard....
She explains that a natural disaster struck ten years ago, wiping out most of the tribe, and the survivors died off in the following years, including her parents and grandfather, the latter of whom died a year ago. She can't leave the village until she turns 16 and her body builds up the resistance needed for summoning eidolons because until then she can't choose an eidolon of her own, and has to just keep summoning a wide variety of eidolons. That wouldn't even make sense if we hadn't already seen, heck, met her far away from her village, and Fenrir is the only eidolon she has. Why would summoning one eidolon be more straining on the body that summoning a bunch of different ones? What benefit is there to choosing just one eidolon to the exclusion of others? Did something get mistranslated her, or what?
She also explains that summoners communicate with eidolons through their horns, and wonders how Garnet can do it without one.
After supper, Zidane tries getting information ou of Eiko again, and asks about the Iifa Tree. Eiko says that it's too dangerous because an eidolon the summoners failed to control is sealed inside of it. Zidane asks if she'll unseal it for us so we can enter, but even childhood crushes have their limits, and she flatly refuses. We stay the night, but Zidane wakes up later to find Vivi outside still worrying about everything he's learned about himself and the other black mages. Zidane has been advising Vivi not to dwell on it so much ever since we originally found the black mages under Dali, but now he tells Vivi that he doesn't have to try and follow Zidane's path if it's not right for him. It's a simple choice: he can either worry about it, or just do what he thinks is right. For Zidane, that means trying to protect the people he cares about without concern for whether he can succeed or not.
Then Zidane and Vivi do some male bonding letting themselves go together under the stars, which is actually less homoerotic than I'm implying.
Morning comes and we prepare to depart. Zidane promises Garnet that we'll come back again, and Eiko rejoins us with a promise to unseal the Iifa Tree, having eavesdropped on Zidane and Vivi talking the night before and being swayed by Zidane's talk about protecting his friends. Zidane is happy to have her along, and Garnet is jealous again. Kind of insecure being jealous of a six year old, sweetie.
The first thing that's apparent about the Iifa Tree upon approaching it is that it's surrounded by mist. So much for the Mist Continent being the only place with the stuff. The mist seems to be coming from the tree, which makes me wonder where the mist comes from back on the Mist Continent. Eiko puts on a childish show of breaking the seal, which is actually pretty anti-climactic. A few air bursts pop around us, and a Ruby accessory drops into our inventory. Eiko says the eidolon asked her to skip the normal spell, and Garnet thinks to herself that she didn't hear anything.
We work our way along bridges of roots suspended hundreds of feet in the air, pausing occasionally to fight zombies, flying flowers, or the big brother of the Evil Forest's hentai monsters: a giant wooden phallus with eight tentacles. Reaching the trunk of the tree, though, we find an artificial platform with a magic elevator in the center. Nobody knows what to make of it until Zidane tries standing on it, and soon the entire party is riding it down into unknown depths. Seems kind of dangerous having an elevator that automatically descends as soon as anything puts weight on it rather than having some kind of manual controls. What if you and a friend were carrying a sofa, and the elevator went down after only one of you was on it?
We descend deeper into the root system, where we quickly encounter a dragon zombie that casts Lv 5 Death like the dune buggy of doom did. Unfortunately, unlike the doom buggy fight, this time half our party is at a level to be hit by it. Nuts. It also has the ability to zombify us, which is annoying enough without it also triggering Auto-Potion, and it turning out that potions also hurt zombies in this game. Fortunately, Life is an auto-kill on zombies.
A little further down we find a spiral staircase descending into a bottomless pit that glows radioactive green. Naturally, our first thought is to find a way down. We find another elevator, this time shaped like a leaf and unresponsive until all four of us climb on, that travels down the outside of the spiral at breakneck speed. With not so much as a safety rail, it's amazing no one falls off. Zidane guesses the glowing green powder in the air is canceling out the wind, but that doesn't explain the momentum. Before we can dwell on this any longer, though, Eiko summons her undermoogle to get his take on things, and tells her in Pokemonese that he senses abundant life below them, which he can do, because moogles are fairies.
We get attacked by more zombies that have apparently learned to parachute onto fast-moving leaf elevators, and then go right back to talking.
The group believes that the Iifa Tree is the source of all mist, but don't know how that's possible if mist only appears on the Mist Continent. Uh, maybe that means it isn't the source of all mist? Vivi thinks there must be a connection between Kuja, the black mages, and the mist, which is a surprising revelation, in that I thought we'd already figured that out several hours ago when Queen Brahne basically said as much when we were eavesdropping on her aboard her airship.
A zombie dragon attacks and is auto-killed with Life, after which we reach the bottom, where we appear to be perched atop a giant harp. Garnet comments that the whole thing likes like a cross between a plant and machine. We don't have long to poke around before an evil Sudowoodo drops on top of us, disappointed that we aren't Kuja. The tree-creature explains that mist is a byproduct of some kind of refining process, and seeps out through the roots of the tree, which we've already seen go all across the Outer Continent, but apparently also reach to other parts of the world. The tree-creature says that it pumps mist into the Mist Continent to stimulate aggression, building to war, and ultimately the end of civilization. Kuja just uses the mist for the creation of black mages. The tree-creature says that its death will put an end to the creation of mist, and dares Vivi to attack, dismissing him as a puppet, but Vivi's ready to go.
Evil Sudowoodo also casts Lv 5 Death, which only targets Eiko now that I'm gained levels on a couple other characters, but it's still royally annoying to deal with. It also uses a couple different multi-target attacks and casts Fira, but more importantly, it counterattacks with a multi-target spell dealing around 600 damage to each character whenever it's hit by a fire spell. The worst thing it does is cast Mustard Bomb, which causes the target to die if they perform any action before the effect wears off. All of the party members have learned the Body Heat ability by this point which would neutralize this effect, but none of them have it set because this is the first enemy we've actually encountered that could do it.
Once again, I wind up getting sick of trying to steal the last item from the boss, and just kill it. The load-bearing boss dead, we flee from the tree, and cut away to a cinematic of the mists rolling back from the lands of the Mist Continent. Back outside, Zidane hopes that our efforts will attract the attention of Kuja, but Vivi has other things on his mind. Without mist, there will be no more black mages. By killing the mist master, Vivi has snuffed out his own kind, and he's afraid that the others will hate him for it. Eiko won't hear any of it, though, and tells him his brothers will definitely be proud of him.
You know, in most other RPGs, we probably would have just won the game by killing the ancient evil that creates monsters and manipulates nations toward the end of all civilization. And we're still only on disc two of four here?
