DISCLAIMER: I do not own Chrono Trigger or
the characters, just the plot in this
story.
The
Black Wind
Part IV
Chapter I
BY
D A R T H V A D E
R
Magus felt
an uneasy ping envelop him. He'd been in an unintentional trance for a while
and had only now snapped out of it.
He gazed about his lavish surroundings within his castle, east of the
area that would've been known as Fiona's Continuent, depression filling his
emptiness instantaneously. Here he sat, at the end of a long throneroom, ruling
all of Guardia, and all he could do was wallow in his own self-pity.
Not quite true. Everyone thought he ruled Guardia. They believed it
without question. Everyone thought that except the one 'person' who had his own
absolute control. That 'person' was a pickle named Ozzie.
Magus had no intention of ever trying to rule the stupid kingdom. He only
wanted privacy and secrecy, so no one would bother him or anything while he
conducted research on Lavos and his home, the Lost Kingdom Zeal, in hopes of discovering
a means to find his long-lost sister, Schala.
Though Ozzie looked like a pickle, he was actually a pretty smart 'man'.
He quickly realized, from the musings of the foolish boy, that the boy was
actually the last surviving Mystic. This Mystic would prove ideal for
motivating his troops. All Magus would have to do in exchange for his privacy,
along with near-unlimited resources to conduct research, was act as the new
leader of the army.
All this paid off greatly for Ozzie. His army defeated Guardia, though
with heavy losses, and they did this by disposing of the kingdom's greatest
warriors: a spiky-haired mute, a tin can, and a cocky egghead with an unsightly
pilot helmet and goggles that looked strong enough to see the back side of the
moon.
Magus, however, got the sour end of the deal. After years and years of
tedious research, the man had finally found a chant that he thought could
summon Lavos, so he could finally get some answers. The chant, which he had
deciphered from an ancient tongue which existed even before the time of the Ice
Age, translated out to say 'Neuga, ziena, zieber, zom...now the chosen time has
come....Exchange this world for...!' and then he would say exactly what he
wanted. In this case, Magus would say 'Exchange this world for Lavos!'.
But, unbeknownst to the poor, tortured soul, he'd mistranslated one tiny
word: He came up with 'Ninga' instead of 'Neuga', and so nothing happened when
he recited the chant. He never even figured out what went wrong.
And so, running out of ideas and research material, Magus reluctantly
gave up his search and planned to live out his life in misery, for he would
never see his sister again.
"Janus?"
Schala repeated.
"Wha?" Janus snapped out of his trance. "What's up?"
"Come on! We're gonna miss the celebration."
"Huh? What celebration?"
"Silly! The one that acknowledges the end of Lavos's evil reign over
the world and the one that marked our decision to return to the ground!
Remember? It was only two years ago."
Janus
thought back two years, to the Ocean Palace scene. He and the gurus had just
shown up (along with Alfador, can't forget Alfador) at the Mammon Machine room.
Queen Zeal and Schala were already there; three corpses lined the floor and
five of Zeal's greatest scholars observed. The corpses were a spiky-haired kid,
a frog, and a really good-looking blond wearing next to nothing.
"Good! We're not too late," said Belthasar.
"Melchior, now! Before it is too late!" said Gaspar.
"Right," said the Guru of Life. He summoned up some magical
power and Schala's pendant reacted by glowing blue, rather than the red it had
been glowing. Gaspar and Belthasar unleashed their own power, and in an
instant, they were all in Lavos's room.
"Gurus!! What are you doing?! It's too early to..."
"We know. That's why we're here!" said Gaspar.
"We can't allow you and Lavos to tear the world asunder," said
Belthasar.
"Janus, now!" said Melchior.
The boy joined hands with Melchior and Gaspar, and the four of them
formed a circle. Schala, already exhausted from everything she'd already been
forced to do, said, "What are you doing...?"
"Ok," said Janus, "Neuga, Ziena, Zieber, Zom....Now the
chosen time has come..." and he paused. The gurus joined him in chorus,
saying, "Exchange this world for purity!!"
And then a huge glow enveloped the four of them. Queen Zeal watched in
horror as Lavos continued meditating, not expecting to be summoned this early
and therefore unaware of anyone else being there with him.
The glow transfered itself from them to Lavos in the form of a pure white
laser beam, and the creature evaporated into ashes. Soon after, they were all
in the Mammon Machine room again.
"I'll take care of the machine," said Schala. No one was there
to stop her; Queen Zeal had passed out when Lavos was destroyed and the
scholars observing had run away in terror.
Schala marched up to the Mammon Machine with her pendant in hand and
raised it high above her head. She muttered a few words, and then hurled the
pendant at the infernal machine. Both objects vanished forever.
"Oh,
THAT celebration," Janus agreed. "Ok, let's get this show on the
road."
They stepped out of their quarters in the palace, and Schala teleported
both of them to the site of the parade, on a road right outside the cave once
known as Algetty.
Two years earlier, after Queen Zeal returned to normal, she immediately
ordered that all the dreamstone still existing be completely destroyed. This,
of course, meant that Zeal would no longer be able to float, so everyone would
have to return to the ground.
To the surprise of everyone, even after all the dreamstone was gone, the
Enlightened Ones mysteriously retained all their magical power. They used this
to their advantage by bringing the Ice Age to an end. Plant and animal life
became abundant again, and soon the world was even more of a paradise than Zeal
had been. Soon, some of the Earthbound Ones got their own magical powers, and
by the time a year had gone by, everyone had access to magic.
Back in the present, the Queen sat on a throne in the first float in the
parade. In front of her and on either side sat the three Gurus: Gaspar,
Melchior, and Belthasar. "Now," said the Queen, amplifying her voice
through magic, "In honor of this great holiday, I'd like to give a very
special thanks to the three Gurus of Life, Time, and Reason, and to my two
loving children, Schala and Janus Zeal, who requested not to appear on the
float this year. Everyone give all of these people a hand!"
CLAP
CLAP!
"King Magus? Hello? Are you alive?"" asked the Chancellor.
"Hm? Oh, yes, I'm alive. What is it?" asked the aging Magus. It
had been almost 150 years since he'd accepted the offer of becoming the new
king of Guardia, and 150 years since he and Glenn had bravely battled Lavos the
Evil One. He had survived, but poor Glenn had not, and neither had the foolish
boy--Tata--who had been accompanying them.
"There seems to be a domestic dispute. These people are from Dorino
Village, and one claims that the other stole a chicken and a cow of his. The
accusee denies ever having laid eyes on the accuser's livestock. They want you
to settle the agreement."
Magus smiled. Though this might seem like boring work to an outsider,
this was actually his favorite part of the job. He'd taken a special sort of
joy in being the king of Guardia, one that had sort of filled the empty space
in his heart that had been created when he lost his sister. In other words, he
was actually content with his life. "Alright, send them in," he said,
trying to sound falsely agitated with such a trivial dispute. The Chancellor
knew him better than to buy it, though, and smiled to signify this. Both of
them shared a brief laugh together, and then the Chancellor went to the front
door and opened it to let the feuding parties in.
"JANUS!!!!"
yelled the rather preturbed woman.
"What??? What's wrong?" Magus answered in a compained tone.
"And I told you, it's Magus, not Janus."
"You've been in a trance for the last five minutes. I've been trying
to get you out of it. Now come on, let's go!"
"Where are we going now?" Magus asked.
"To offer our condolensces to Crono and Marle, since the king died
and all. Now hurry up, we'll miss the boat," said Schala.
"Alright, alright, I'm coming," said Magus. He sluggishly rose
from the cushioned chair he was in and waited for Schala to give up and leave
the room without him. Then he smiled. They'd argued playfully like this ever
since a few weeks back, when Magus had finally got his sister back from 1999,
after over twenty years of searching.
"Allll aboard! This is your captain speaking. We will be taking a
ferry ride to the harbor in Truce Village. Please enjoy your brief stay on our
quaint little ship," said the captain. Magus got himself situated for the
ride.
Magus
was sitting, cold, sick, and lonely, on the dirty, damp, rusted metal floor of
the dilapidated dome. He'd been sitting like this for the past few weeks,
barely even moving to breathe.
He looked behind him. There was one of the doors, created by his wicked
mother when Lavos came up. It was completely sealed, and the only means of
getting inside was something Magus didn't have. Of course, that wouldn't really
matter anyway, since the only thing of value ever contained within was long
gone. That thing was a time machine, created by Belthasar and named Epoch by
some idiotic juvenilles. They'd foolishly taken it to the Day of Lavos, hoping
to have some sort of victory, when a stray bolt of energy shot upwards from the
beast and crashed into the time machine, sending it hurtling to the ground. The
resulting crash killed all six of them.
Of course, Magus had no knowledge of exactly what had happened. He simply
wwatched them leave and when they didn't return, he went to the future using
Lucca's Gate Key and figured they hadn't succeeded. With a sunken heart, he
decided to reside in Belthasar's old place.
Also behind him were two computer terminals. Both had been burnt out
during the Guru of Reason's experiment, which transfered his brain patterns
into a poor, unsuspecting Nu robot.
The robot. Magus scoffed at the long-dead thing and stood up to walk to
it, just so he could give it a good, swift kick in the head. His hair extended
all the way to his knees; he had stayed in that dome for a good five months.
Plopping himself back onto the floor, he concentrated on a stain on the wall
and forgot about everything else around him.
Schala
awoke abruptly. It was the middle of the night, and here she found herself,
sitting up straight in her bed, panting heavily. "Stupid dream," she
told herself, and laid back down.
This was seriously worrying her. The same dream, five nights in a row. A
strange man with semi-long, purplish-blue hair holding a sickle, beckoning for
her to join him in another realm....
She shook it off and decided to call Lucca the next morning, then went
back to sleep.
"What's
up?" said Lucca when she finally answered the signal.
"Hi Lucca, this is Schala. I think I need to get away from Algetty
for a couple days. Can you arrange something for me?"
"No problem. How long do ya want to get ready?" Lucca spoke
through the trans-temporal communicator.
Schala answered through hers, "Two hours should be alright. Is that
good?"
"Sure. I'll be there in two hours. See ya then! Bye!" said
Lucca, and she hung up.
Schala stepped outside of her hut and called a town meeting. The fifteen
villagers gathered around. "Good people of Algetty," she said,
"I am afraid I must leave the village for a few days. Urgent matters call
for my attention. I am very sorry, but that's the way it is."
After the meeting was over with (no one was particularly concerned about
her leaving), Schala was overcame with an irresistable urge to go to the North
Cape. With no idea why this was happening, she went over there.
There she sat, on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the beautiful
horizon. The sun was looming over the calm sea and creating dozens of beautiful
reflections on the water. She was virtually in a trance and couldn't figure out
what was coming over her.....