It was alluded to during the argument about whether to rescue Garnet or not, and comes up again after escaping the forest that monsters in this world are born from the ever-present mist that overlays the entire continent. All the people on this continent live above the mist, atop the cliffs in cities like Alexandria, which is why airships are the primary means of travel. Other Final Fantasy games offered their own explanations for the origin of monsters as well: in Final Fantasy VIII, monsters came from the moon, and in VII, they were created by the Lifestream, or by Mako poisoning. Even the ill-fated movie offered an explanation, by making the monsters ghosts from another planet, and I've always had to wonder why they bother.
Final Fantasy is, well, a fantasy world. We don't need explanations for where monsters come from any more than we need one for where cats and dogs come from, so what's the point of making plot points out of the origins of monsters? Making plot points out of the origins of certain monsters makes sense, like the subplot of this game concerning the origin and nature of black mages, considering that one of our party members is a black mage and therefore has to wrestle with these questions personally, but why is it necessary to justify the existence of all monsters this way?
The game certainly doesn't feel the need to explain the existence of the wide variety of Half-Human Hybrids running around Alexandria and other cities. Are we meant to assume that each of these hybrid races have their own cities and nations like the rat people do? We certainly never see any. Heck, the game never even bothers to explain what the heck Queen Brahne is, and she's a major villain for most of the game. Alexandria seems to be primarily a human kingdom, and no one offers any disbelief that Garnet is her biological daughter, so is she supposed to be human? Is she the female of NORG from VIII's species?
It's pretty easy to accept monsters as naturally evolved creatures of this world, since we certainly encounter enough of each kind to get the feeling that there's enough of them to make up an entire species, but these hybrid people have so few representatives of each of their races that it's hard to understand how they fit into the world with the exception of the rat people, who do have their own kingdom comparable to the two human kingdoms in size and population.
Anyway, the Ice Cavern is only a short walk from the Evil Forest, and I'm having a hard time deciding whether those names are refreshingly to the point or pitifully lazy. Either way, the Ice Cavern looks like a frozen coral reef and full of tusked furballs with an annoying ability to exchange HP values with one of your party members when at low health. There are several spots where you can avoid battles by waiting for a frozen wind to stop blowing, which is a little annoying because the wind seems to last a bit longer than its graphic does.
It also features a number of places where Vivi can use his Fire magic in a nice bit of Gameplay and Story Segregation subversion in order to reach treasure chests and, in one case, a save moogle. This, for some reason, triggers another set of Mogster tutorials, none of which have any relevance to what we're currently dong. I can't help but think that these segments would have been better integrated as an option in the menu that players could access at any time, especially since there's no option to review previous tutorials if you forgot something with the Mogster segments being presented as ATEs.
Soon after, everyone suddenly falls asleep and collapses where they stand. Zidane wakes up after hearing the tinkle of a bell, and finds a hunch-backed, winged black mage called Black Waltz #1 in a room with a frozen waterfall, who is the one causing the blizzard. I have no idea why he's called a "Waltz," but it does sound kind of ominous and cool. Whatever it means, he summons what looks like a giant winged snake made out of ice called Sealion, and attacks.
Since leaving the Evil Forest we've been fighting in a well balanced group of Zidane and Steiner as the frontline fighters, Vivi as the artillery, and Garnet healing, but now the tables are reversed as Zidane has to go two-on-one for this boss fight. As long as you can hold out long enough to Trance, though, they'll go down fairly easily. Defeating the Waltz melts the waterfall, implying that he was the one freezing the cave, which would be fine... except that Vivi said back at the entrance that his deceased grandfather had told him tales of the Ice Cavern, which would mean that the Ice Cavern has existed for quite some time. Had Black Waltz #1 been just sitting there freezing the cave for years on end? That's hard to believe, considering that Zorn and Thorn's appearance after Zidane kills him implies that they sent him in specifically to kill the party. So is this not actually the legendary Ice Cavern, just a random cavern that happens to be icy?
Whatever the case may be, Zidane returns to the rest of the group as they wake up and denies that anything happened while they were asleep because... he doesn't need Steiner adding murder charges to the kidnapping ones? I really have no idea.
The group leaves the Frozen Hole and finds themselves near a village. Zidane points out that Garnet should pick an alias to avoid being recognized, which starts another argument with Steiner, causing Zidane to drop his dagger. Garnet picks it up and asks what it is. Jeez, there's sheltered, and then there's obliviousness. Garnet wants to change her name to Dagger, which I gotta say, I've always found to be really, really dumb. I always named the female leads in these games after whichever girl I had a crush on at the time, so in that light I'll be calling her Jailbait. Wait, no, that's too many letters... alright, Dagger it is, then.
Hey, wait a minute, I just got attacked by monsters again on my way to the village! Where did they come from if there's no mist up here?!
