FFIV - To the Moon! ...huh?

With my final party of five I continued my journey today, on the quest to retrieve the final crystal before Golbez could. There's just one problem, my crappy Red Wing airship from Golbez' armada that I stole can't fly over lava. I need some kind of... I don't know... airship engineer to rig my shit. Well what do you know, Cid is in the Dwarven castle infirmary! I guess strapping a bomb to your chess, jumping 10,000 feet out of an airship and self destructing didn't do him in. Tough old bugger...

So Cid jumps out of bed and rigs me up to fly over lava, now I have access to the whole of the under world. But before continuing I had to make some stops at a few caves which I had just been given access to. Two very annoying caves. I had to keep float on the entire time or my party would take poison or lava damage from the floor. And for some reason zoning in the dungeons took it off. I can't count how many times I took a few steps and a few hundred damage, smacked myself, and said, "Oh yea, fucking float!" (about a million times)

Anyway, for my efforts I got to meet with the leaders of the Eilodon (summons). And since I wanted to enlist the aid of the king and queen I had to beat them in their summon form as is the "Code" of Summoners (cool little antic there). So yay! I get to fight for some summons. First up on the plate was a summon I've never seen nor heard of before, Asura, a chick with many arms and swords. She healed too much so I cast reflect on her so it would heal me instead. Summon obtained. Next up was her husband who, in summon form was... Leviathan! Awesome! Well the husband was a BIT more difficult, casting fucking Tsunami left and right for 2k+ damage on the whole party, but I weathered the storm (like that pun?) and defeated him.

Armed now with a super powerful summon in Leviathan, I continued to the Secret Cave where the last crystal resides. On a side note, it wasn't until playing FF2/3/4 that I realized just how powerful the summon Leviathan was. I mean he's not as big as Odin or Bahamut, but he's definitely not on the same level as say Titan, Ifrit, Ramuh or Shiva. I've had to fight him for the summon twice now, and he's always some powerful worldly being in the game who I converse with or interact with. Cool deal, love the history lesson I'm getting playing these games. Another side note, while I was in the city of Summoners I saw another guy in another infirmary. Yang my monk, sound asleep! Man these guys are invulnerable. Will Tellah and the twins come back later too?!

The sealed cave was a pretty cool dungeon of lava, multiple levels connected with ropes and... Demon doors! Oh man, I remember these from other FF's and here they make their first appearance in FFIV. Sweet.

After a long fight down I reached the bottom and had to fight off a huge Demon door that moved toward me ominously promising instant death if I didn't do enough damage before it reached me. Reminds me of FFXII which I played last year. Anyway after beating the door and nabbing the crystal I walked on out only to have Kain turn traitor again upon hearing Golbez' voice. He pushed Cecil down, grabbed the last crystal and bailed. Fuck, I thought I finally had my final party... Son of a bitch.

I report back to the dwarven king for like the umteenth time to report that I've failed. Now he starts ranting about going to the moon, and visiting the wizards in Mysidia. The moon...? Seriously...? Alright...

Before all that nonsense though I went back to Baron (first castle in the game) and beat the undead old king to obtain the Odin summon. Gonna go see if there are any other summons before going to Mysidia and the moon...