After a couple more hours of Hot and Cold, we drop the summoners off at the Water Shrine: a small mountain in the center of a huge whirlpool. Zidane sees them off, somewhat concerned whether they're going to be alright, and I'm wondering the same thing without a meatshield to cover them. If nothing else, it's going to be annoying having to rely entirely on summon magic to beat everything in their way.
Our next stop is the Fire Shrine inside the caldera of a volcano on the Lost Continent. I would assume it's Mount Gulug, but we're much too far from Esto Gaza for that. Whatever mountain this is, we drop off Freya and Amarant.
The Wind Shrine is in a canyon at the southern end of the Forgotten Continent, where we drop off Vivi and Steiner, which makes sense, as Steiner can only use half his abilities if he's in a party with Vivi, which leaves the Earth Shrine for Zidane and... oh, oh god... please, no....
Sigh... Quina. Alright, let's get this over with. The Earth Shrine is near Kuja's subterranean lair on the Outer Continent where the ground is permanently quaking.
There's actually not much to reaching the ends of the shrines, other than a few traps, and each group makes it to the matching altars where we're supposed to leave the mirrors from Ipsen's Castle in no time. Naturally, nothing's ever that simple, and placing the mirrors on the altars causes four fiends corresponding to the shrine's element to appear. Let's give a hand to our recurring franchise boss monsters: Lich of Earth, Marilith of Fire, Kraken of Water, and Tiamat of Wind. This time around, though, the fiends are actually Terra's guardian spirits, left here by Kuja. Marilith is eager to fight to prove her strength, an attitude that's very familiar to Amarant, but he denounces it now, and Marilith attacks. Steiner and Vivi are having trouble with Tiamat, who is too fast for Vivi to hit with his magic. Vivi wants to run, but Steiner tells Vivi to frag the dragon while Steiner holds her down. Oddly, we haven't seen anything that's happening at the Water Shrine since the girls entered.
Lich attacks like the others, and his is the only fight we actually, well, fight. Kind of a pity, really, since the predetermined parties could have made for some interesting boss fights tailored to the specific groups tackling them and their abilities. Then again, I suppose the designers couldn't be counting on the players to have set all eight characters up with the right abilities, or even to have actually levels up all eight characters (I know we haven't), so this may be for the best.
Back to Lich. Well, strictly speaking, all of these guys are going by the name [Element} Guardian, but screw it, he's Lich, the fire chick's Marilith, the dragon is Tiamat, so on and so forth. Lich is a spellcaster with Aga-level attack spells, and Quina's under-leveled corpse goes down before it even gets to make a second action. Reviving Quina would just be a waste of time, since Lich will almost certainly just frag it again, so we're down to Lich vs. Zidane, which I hoped would actually make for a challenging fight. Lich's Aga spells hit for around 1300, his Earthquakes for around 800, and his Double Slash for between 500-2000, none of which are more than Zidane's Auto-Regen can overcome. And, since none of Zidane's skills are particularly useful against Lich, once we finished stealing items from him, the fight consisted almost entirely of hitting the "Attack" command until we... re-kill the undead monster? Zidane is hitting Lich for around 3500 with his normal attacks. Just imagine if we actually had bonus damage against undead turned on. Lich goes down quickly after that.
We finally cut back to the summoners again, who have already met and vanquished their elemental monster without it ever appearing on-screen. Man, that's a gyp. We didn't get to fight Marilith or Tiamat, but at least they got screen time and dialogue. Poor Kraken. Then again, the game probably already filled its young girls vs. tentacle monsters quota back in Evil Forest.... Anyway, Eiko suddenly remembers why she wanted to go with Garnet in the first place, and asks her pointblank whether or not she loves Zidane. Garnet is saved from having to answer by the arrival of the airship, though.
Not everyone gets to avoid difficult questions, though, as Amarant asks Zidane why he's doing all of this. We have the choice between "because of Garnet," "because of Kuja," or "/shrug." I'm tempted to go with Garnet, but we pick Kuja, and Amarant says he understands that Zidane beat him because of their different ways of thinking.
With that out of the way, we return to Esto Gaza, where there's still no apparent way to reach the Shimmering Island. Actually, why do we need the Path of Souls, again? We have an airship (and a flying Gold Chocobo) now; why can't we just land on it?
Oh, wait, we can....
The ship gets caught in Terra's tractor beam as we fly over, and we're given the choice to turn back or let ourselves be sucked up. Deciding to go for it, Zidane orders everyone out onto the deck so we can jump off the ship and hope that the tractor beam stops us from going splat. Clearly, this is the best possible plan.
Swimming up the tractor beam and through a wormhole, we find ourselves on a crystal world that we assume must be Terra, where Garland suddenly bamfs in front of us. Zidane asks who he is, and he just asks what Zidane's name is, then cuts him off when he tries to answer. He spouts some more cryptic stuff about true origins, and then bamfs back out of the scene. Zidane was apparently the only one who saw him, as Garnet shows up saying that everyone's waiting for him.
Moving onto the next screen, we catche a glimpse of someone who looks just like Zidane, but in a pink shirt, who runs away at our approach. We chase the doppelganger, which Zidane identifies as a "her," over more several screens until we finally catch up. Zidane asks who she is, but she just responds that he doesn't remember anything and leads us a place called Branbal, which she says is Zidane's home. Just then, a huge airship takes off nearby, showing us the huge red dome on its underside. This triggers flashbacks to the destruction of Madain Sari for Garnet, causing her to faint.
Steiner stays behind to watch over Garnet while we look for a place for ehr to recover, so Eiko temporarily takes her spot in the lineup. Branbal is full of people who look like Zidane, with the same blonde hair and monkey tail. However, they talk like constructs, making references to being built, not having souls, and not needing to rest. In other words... they're just like black mages.
We find what passes for an inn and lie Garnet down, but she soon comes to, announcing that she remembers everything now. It wasn't a storm that destroyed Madain Sari; it was the airship she saw just now. The same airship that turned Bahamut against Brahne and annihilated Alexandria. That same airship has been responsible for every great tragedy in Garnet's life. Eiko, meanwhile, has received a message from the first Zidane-lookalike to meet her in an underground laboratory, where the doppelgangers are running tests on one another to refine the creation process. The first girl explains that their race is called Genomes.
Zidane mostly takes the revelation that he's part of an alien race on construct in stride, but he's upset that no one else here is really alive. The girl explains that Zidane was made for a special purpose, and leads us upstairs where more Genomes are studying a giant crystal. She explains that Garland is a Terran tasked with the planet's restoration, and that this will be accomplished by merging Terra and Gaia into a new Terra, which is how that world has always survived. When that happens, the Terrans will be restored by having their souls take over the Genomes.
It seems that Garland tried a more direct approach in the past, but it failed and forced him to wait and put this more gradual plan into motion until the Gaians learned to summon eidolons. Garland's plan is to take control of the natural cycle of souls dying and being reborn on Gaia, and Zidane was created by Garland to aid in this plan.
And it's time to go meet him.
