And let the confusion continue! For Golbez anyway. Lets see why he's takin' that nice long nap eh..? This is going to be a rather long chap as two people have a LONG overdue confrontation...and I tip my hat to the legend that started it all. ^_~

And if this seems a little disjointed with previous chapters- it's meant to. The dream is it's own reality.

One simple realization dominates my waking thoughts as I come around- I HURT. Every last inch of me is just one long, aching pain...

"Golbez...?"

Someone catches me by the shoulder and turns me over onto my back...and I sincerely want to tell the person what I think of them doing that. I lay on my back a moment, blinking up at too bright a light that's only adding to my pain...but the face hovering over me steals any thought on my pains...my physical ones anyway.

Long white hair barely kept from falling over his shoulder by a loose tie, eyes the same sharp, sapphire hue of Cecil's- but there the resemblence to my brother ends. The rest...I've beheld any time I've looked in a mirror, only older and more careworn. There's lines about eyes and mouth that I will not have for some hundred or more years yet if my lunarian blood is stronger than my human- but there is no denying who stands over me now...

"...Fath....Klu Ya....?"

His lips turn into a sad, deep frown when I fail to finish the first word...I can't call him father. He never was one. I can remember too many times spent chasing him, trying to get him to even just LOOK at me, even if it was only for a moment...was it any wonder I could never truly recall his face? All I had ever seen, it seems, was his back as he always walked away....

How can I call someone such as that father?

How coldly you think of me....but given how your thoughts run...

I start at that voice slipping through my thoughts, disrupting them- and earning a sharp hiss from me as I push myself sitting up once more, glaring up at those eyes. For a time, that old hatred is back, the one that made me so easy a target for Zemus... sharp and bitter like a wine grown overly old, and leaving an equally foul taste behind in my mouth.

"If you have something to say, Klu Ya, use your voice and stay out of my mind! So you're the one who's been meddling all this time?"

The old paladin sighs and closes his eyes a moment..simple as that is, it makes him easier to bear being around. Nothing to remind me of how much Cecil really was like him. They do say the eyes are the window to the soul after all- and my violet eyes, a gift from my human mother, were nothing like his. I guess that should tell me that my soul was nothing like his...never has been..and likely never will be...

"I was not trying to meddle Golbez...I only wanted to protect y-"

"Well you certainly picked a damned fine time to start trying THAT! If you haven't noticed, it's a little late! Where was this "protection" when Zemus came back then? You were too busy protecting your precious little heir to even realize I was gone!"

A smack in the face, that. Klu Ya's head jerks up, eyes wide...his mouth works for a moment, then he bows his head, eyes closing again.

"....I didn't have a choice Golbez...."

So faint, I barely caught it. I almost wish I hadn't. I push myself to my feet and glower down at the kneeling paladin- he didn't have a choice? About letting me be taken? The hell he hadn't! He could have simply kept me home, noticed I even existed that one day and-

".....You don't understand, Golbez...come, I think this will help you understand a great deal."

"Forget it!"

"You don't have any more of a choice than I do in THIS instance. You sent yourself to this dream- the only way to leave it is to finish it...or die. Which would you rather?"

Well if he was going to put it that way.....

"Fine. If it gets me away from you, lets get this over with..."

The paladin sighs and stands, gesturing for me to follow. We're in some sort of forest, one I've never seen before- odd when you consider a dream should be made up of things from your own memory- and soon it gives way to a plain leading out to a rolling set of hills....and a massive structure towering in the distance. The sky above us is dark, almost pitch black- within the forest had been brighter.

"That is where this all began, Golbez."

"Wonderfully cryptic statement, Klu Ya- but it's going to remain as such until you actually explain it."

The paladin's lips quirk into an odd smile then and he turns to look at the building once more...gesturing to the sky as well, where a single moon and what looks like a broken moon hover overhead, barely visible in the inky miasma trying to blot the sky out.

"Millenia ago, our ancestors came to a world that was dying. It was a world without balance, pure unadulterated chaos. It had lost the most ancient of battles and thus was doomed to die. In their arrogance, they thought to save it and defy destiny. That shattered reality in ways we could never understand...but that will come in a moment. Merely watch for now.."

Seasons begin to soar by- the "broken" moon in the sky slowly becoming a form much more familiar- the Lunarian ship. Meanwhile, the darkness about the temple began to twist the marshes, plains and forest about it, steadily reaching onward....and in time, four figures emerge from it's gates. A giant skeleton clad in armor of an age long forgotten even in this young time, a woman with the tail of a serpent instead of legs and six arms, each wielding a different weapon and with flame for hair, a massive creature with long, writhing tenatacles that tore through even stone as it shambled it's way to the sea...and then, a dragon with several heads, each roaring as its wings spread to the sky and began to ascend...

"Four harbringers were born of this chaos to bring Fate's hand about. A world had lost it's final test and thus should end. When our people saw the birth, they sought to stop it, seeing this as their chance. They dyed their hair black to better disguise themselves and descended, battling the creatures later dubbed "Fiends" to turn the common hand against them. It is easier to turn someone against something if they think it evil after all. But even we couldn't defeat them. Not entirely."

The temple vanishes- replaced now by visions of battles all around...lunarians stealing the power of these creatures and sealing them away...into crystals.

"...as fascinating as this is, Klu Ya...WHY is it so important? What is the balance that was disturbed?"

Needless to say my patience is starting to wear a little thin. I can see very little connection to this past and the current problems I've found myself tangling with...

"Watch a moment.."

The crystals are created- the "fiends" as they'll forever be known as after this time sealed away after the Crystals were born..but only four. I can distinctly recall there being eight of them...and what a pain it had been to gather ALL of them together....

"We "saved" this world, or so we thought. But when we defied destiny and broke the fated path...we shattered everything. Reality sundered, creating so many variations, all because one world lived when it shouldn't have. And so, for two thousand years, this imbalance continued..made even worse by us."

"I'm saying it again Klu Ya....WHAT balance?"

"How many crystals did you see, Golbez..?"

"..just four."

"Yes. Four crystals in the world ever shown to the sun's light. Earth, wind, fire and water- the fourth most ancient balance and the one creation itself is based on. But there are others. Can you guess them?"

Wonderful. I"m back in elementary school. I simply glare at him a moment, then shrug as I watch the darkness recede about the temple...which begins to fall into ruin even as we watch, ages passing.

"Good and Evil would be the one above that..but you said fourth most ancient..."

"Good and Evil is the next balance above that of the elements- but it is not the highest. There are two above that one. The most ancient of all was the one defied on that day...the balance of Creation and Destruction. It is what makes up the fabric of all things, and the one we defied because we could not see past it. We have three balances then given...the most ancient, then the most well known and misunderstood one of Good and Evil...and then that of the elements. What is the second balance? it's being defied before your very eyes right now..."

Creation and Destruction.....Good and Evil....the Elemental Balance... though he's right. There IS a balance missing- though it's one I would have place as being after the elements...

"Black and white magic..?"

A shot in the dark- and not fully on target if that lopsided smile is any indication, but it must be CLOSE...

"I ask AGAIN, Klu Ya..what does this have to do with us and the Dark Moon?"

"To understand anything, you have to see it from the beginning. Now let me show you the Lunarian's most ancient wrong- and what you must do to right it. This is the last twig on this part of Reality...it must NOT fail as the others have... and this is the least I can do...after what.."you" did to bring this dream about."

"I don't suppose I can get you to explain that statement..?"

"When has anything ever been that simple? You learn nothing if you always have the answers GIVEN to you, Golbez."

Ah, for the days I could just irritate Fu So Ya into flat out giving me an answer...or even when Zemus simply GAVE me the answers to hasten my learning. And it certainly doesn't help that it feels like I've been practically handed the answer...and just don't know what it means....

(Continued in: Ancient Wrongs)

For the solely SNES and PSX/PS2 generation of FF fans- this whole chapter is chockfulla refs to the very first Final Fantasy game that came out on NES. a timeless classic and a hundred times harder than any of the later releases. the building in question is the Temple of Fiends- a name that will make any "first generation" Final Fantasy fan shudder in recollection of that damned final dungeon. >.<;; let alone the battle waiting at the END of it..