We reopen back at the Black Mage Village, where the team has decided to leave the Genomes for now in the care of their spiritual cousins. They seem to be hitting it off well, in a man with one eye leading the blind, sort of way. We also find out that the mages have named their new chocobo "Bobby Corwen," which has to be a reference to something.
Garnet has decided not to tell Cid about Kuja's plan to destroy the world in order to avoid a panic in Lindblum, which is probably already dealing with one due to the reappearance of the mist. At first this seems like a stupid idea, but then, given that Lindblum was already decimated by Alexandria once, they probably don't have much military strength to add to our quest at this point. Seems like we could at least go back to Alexandria and recruit Beatrix, though.
Mikoto thinks the entire thing is futile anyway, given that Kuja has already demonstrated that he has the power to single-handedly obliterate a planet, which kind of begs the question of why he's bothering to screw around with the mist again now. Zidane decides to adopt her as his little sister and tells her to let the big kids take care of business. I like the way Steiner puts it better, though: even a fly lives for a day!
Mist enveloping the entire world isn't the only effect of Kuja overclocking the Iifa Tree, as it has put up new roots all over the world, cutting off access to several towns and dungeons, and infesting the Outer Continent with monsters from Pandemonium. Also, there's a giant glowing ball of malevolent energy floating over the tree, out of which swarms of silver dragons pour when we approach. It looks like we're royally screwed, right up until a fleet of airships from Lindblum swoops in and blows them all out of the sky. Man, good thing we didn't bother telling Cid about what was going on, eh, Garnet? Even Alexandria gets in on the action, with Beatrix taking Queen Brahne's Red Rose into battle. The airship fleet clears the way, and because jumping into the magic portal worked out so well for us when we needed to go to Terra, we fly into this portal, too, and are promptly attacked by another boss dragon.
The dragon has several full-party attacks, but, and I hate to sound like a broken record, but once again they aren't enough to beat Auto-Regen, and the fight is mostly a matter of spamming Steal for a while, then beating on it until it disintegrates. Come on, game, it's the final disc, and the only boss that's actually been a challenge was that cheap-ass optional book demon!
We take the Invincible's teleporter, arriving at the end of a narrow stone road leading to a gigantic castle with enough spires to make a convention of gothic architects Squee like preteen girls at a Backstreet Boys concert (way to date yourself, Wryte) and a sheer drop on either side. As soon as we arrive, Garland's ghost starts talking directly into Zidane's head, explaining that this place is called Memoria, and it's made of memories.
Also monsters. Really annoying monsters that spam status effects. Because being annoying is basically the same thing as being challenging, right?
If this place is made of memories, shouldn't the monsters being supped-up versions of monsters I fought in other places? And shouldn't this place look like other places I've been? Don't get me wrong, it's pretty in a haunting sort of way, but shouldn't it be, y'know, something from my memories?
Ah, there we go. A few screens in we're spontaneously attacked by Marilith, who I wouldn't have recognized if she didn't point it out to me, because she's basically a giant cobra, and the humanoid portion of her body is basically the hood. Between that, the graphic quality, and the fact that she hunches that part of her body over so that we only actually see it during attack animations, and I would have completely missed it.
Marilith casts Reflect, Firaga, and has a couple sword attacks. She also casts the Heat status effect, which causes the affected unit to insta-die if they take any action before the effect wears off. Reflect is a non-issue, since Vivi has Auto-Reflect and can bypass hers by bouncing his spells off his own Reflect, and Auto-Regen handles most of the damage she puts out easily. Heat is a little more obnoxious, since she can apply it in between when an action command is given to a character and when they carry it out if we order the command too far in advance of the character's turn, and her sword attack can actually hit hard enough to one-shot its target if they're not at full health. Still, not much of a challenge. Marilith hurls her swords at us as a last act of defiance when she's defeated, which doesn't do much damage, and we move on.
Ah, finally something we definitely recognize: an undestroyed Alexandria Castle in the distance. Er, spoke too soon. The memory of Alexandria's destruction plays out for us, though Quina can't see it because it wasn't there. Garland speaks up again, pointing out that Kuja attacked Alexandria in hopes of claiming Alexander as his own to use against Garland because of an event 10 years ago. Remembering back to Bran Bal, 10 years ago was when Garlan tried a more direct approach to merging Terra and Gaia, and failed.
Soon after, we see one of Garnet's memories; the night she and her mother went out to sea in a storm to escape the destruction of Madain Sari. Oddly, Zidane was able to see it, too, and Garland tells Zidane that the memory was Zidane's, not Garnet's.
Garland admits to having wiped out Madain Sari because he feared the power of the eidolons. Wait, didn't we learn back on Terra that he deliberately waited for Gaia to acquire the power to summon eidolons? He says that the Gaians (and he actually uses the word "Gaians" for what I'm pretty sure is the first time in the game) once summoned an eidolon so powerful they couldn't control it during an ancient war. They broke the jewel it was contained in into four pieces, which are obviously the four gems belonging to the kingdoms of the Mist Continent and Madain Sari that Brahne was trying to collect. We climb an impossible staircase toward Invincible's giant eyeball, but at ambushed by Tiamat partway up.
Tiamat fights by lowering our strength and magic power, and draining our MP. She also has a weak wind attack that hits everyone, a powerful single attack called Silent Claw that can one-shot an unlucky target, and an attack that can hit the entire party with the Heat effect at once. Fortunately, that last one is used very rarely. She also has the ability to counterattack by blowing her attacker entirely out of the fight. The combined effect of all this isn't so much a difficult boss, but just one that takes a longer time to kill because all our attacks are so weak.
We pass through a couple more uneventful screens before coming to a vista of Terra colliding with Gaia five thousand years ago. However, because there was life on Gaia, this stopped the assimilation... somehow. It was too late for Terra to back out of the process when they discovered the Gaians, and it destroyed all life on Terra. Garland created the Iifa Tree to be the conduit for souls between Gaia and Terra. A little further in and we find ourselves under an ocean that once covered all of Gaia. Everyone has a vague memory of this, even though they couldn't have possibly seen it. Zidane guesses this means that all life comes from a common origin, but doesn't know how that could be when they're from different worlds.
Of course, all this water means it's the perfect time for the water fiend to finally appear after getting his introduction cut back on Disc 3. He has two tentacles that cast status effects and which can be killed independently of him in a couple rounds of attacks. Surprisingly, he doesn't grow them back. Kraken himself just casts Waterga on the whole group, which does low-moderate damage, and a weak single-target physical attack. Once those tentacles are gone, he's a total snooze.
Man, I hope Lich is more interesting this time around....
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