The man’s eyes opened. Through cold, pale blue orbs, he faintly registered the hazy gray earth beneath him just as a sudden splitting headache forced him to screw up his eyes in agony. In the darkness once more, his addled brain strove to comprehend the faint vision that it had seen, but the pain shooting through every fiber of the man’s body made the task excruciating.

All the same, the person in question was a very stubborn man… even if at the moment, he barely had the capacity to know that fact himself.

Obstinately, he opened his eyes once again. Now, his vision had improved enough that he could make out various dark shapes surrounding him, even as torturous pain throbbed inside his skull. Every little movement a struggle, he slowly brought his hand up to his countenance to brush away blonde locks that fell down in front of his face. His vision obscured no longer, he cast his eyes around to what lay before him.

The only things that he saw were grains upon grains of sand.

Cursing, he tried to push himself up off of the ground with his hands, but he only succeeded in losing his balance and falling face first into the sand. He yelled out another stream of expletives at the top of his lungs, but found no satisfaction in it; the earth muffled his voice. Again, he closed his eyes, blotting out the pain and anger he was feeling… and trying to remember why these powerful emotions now surged through his body in the first place.

Abruptly, he remembered.

Kefka Palazzo opened his pale, soulless eyes once more as he huffily jumped up to his feet. He scanned the landscape around him with disdain, taking in very little except the fact that he stood in a small oasis, with palm trees to the left and right of him and a tiny pool of water only a few paces ahead of him. This bit of luck slightly appeased Kefka… until the maniac turned his gaze to his clothing. Cape, shirt, pants, even skin… were all covered in sand, dirt, and grime.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHH!!!!”

With an inhuman scream, Kefka set to leaping up and down, frantically trying to brush all the tiny grains of sand off with his hands.

“I hate sand! Ever since that time…”

Out of the blue, Kefka’s face visibly relaxed, and he settled down. His face was almost peaceful as he regarded the land around him, except for the hard, insane spark in his eyes.

“But I showed them… I showed all of them! I burned their homes, I burned their friends’ homes, I burned everything they knew! Uwehehehehe!”

In an eerily calm fashion, Kefka resumed to brushing the sand off of his clothes and skin. After a short while, the jester’s clothes were practically as good as new… except for the brown, militaristic-looking boots that the man wore. Shrugging, Kefka quickly flicked his hand directly at the boots… and bathed each boot in a jet of red fire.

The sand was gone after a few seconds of this treatment. But so was a part of each of the boots. The outer layer of the shoes had been singed, and the coloring of the boots was now simply a scorched black.

Kefka merely shrugged.

“…You know, I think it suits me.”

As he took stock of the situation around him, Kefka noticed a different necessary that he had to worry himself about. His tongue was parched; his lips were chapped to the point that they were starting to bleed… He needed water. Grateful for his luck, Kefka rushed over to the nearest oasis, and bent over to cup the water below into his hand.

A spilt second before he touched the water with his hand, Kefka stopped, his hand suddenly stiffening. Narrowing his eyes, he drew up from his crouch to survey the water before him.

For the water was purple.

Startled, Kefka considered the sight before him. Only once in his lifetime had the jester come across purple water before… Stepping backwards in incredulity, he felt his foot trod on a tiny object, and bended down to pick it up.

It was a vial, just a tiny little vial… with a trace of a deep violet color swirling at its bottom and a tiny piece of parchment adorning it. On the parchment was scrawled a skull crossed by two skeletal bones. And next to that symbol was a little note, written in ornate, tiny handwriting.

Find me.

Kefka stared at the bottle for a second, and then furiously threw it as far away as his thin arms could take it.

“You pathetic, sniveling, wretches! You rotten sons-of-*****es! I’ll… I’ll… I’ll…”

And furiously, Kefka simply gestured in turn to all of the tall palm trees surrounding the oasis, bringing to life fires on each and every one of those trees’ thin trunks. Once every single tree was ablaze, a still steaming Kefka stormed off westward, leaving a conflagration blazing in his wake.

By the next morning, nothing was left of the little oasis except for a pool of poisoned water.