Ollen70: This is what we call a fairly short apology chapter. Apology, because it's taken me about a year to get my butt in gear and buy a decent computer. And about that long to figure how where (the hell!!) I wanted to go with the story. So, if any of you wonderful readers are still left, let me know what you think, please. And yelling at me is totally okay and forgivable. I deserve it. And, also, if the formatting's weird, this is about the first time in my life that I've used word rather than appleworks, so we'll see how that goes.

Disclaimer: (Do I still really need to say this…?) I don't own it. I'll never own it. If I ever own it, water's gonna start turning to blood in short order. So, yeah, there we go.

The Restive

"Laud ye together,

Rise to your goal:

Cleansed is the ether,

Breathe thou, O soul!"

Goethe, Faust

Coming to was a very strange feeling for Lucca. It felt like she'd skipped something, like she'd blinked and, rather than returning to the moment she'd been in, she was suddenly somewhere else. And, what was worse, she was alone.

The chamber around her was cool, blue-gray metal illuminated by an equally cool light that brightened without giving any character to the surrounding. Like waking up in a coffin, really. A very, very large coffin. The ceiling of the chamber was high, but what got her was how far back the walls were spaced, with scaffolding and other mechanical curiosities lending an illusion of separation.

It was a lab of some kind, reminding her however distantly of a much bigger version of the Bangor dome; a bled-out, abandoned ruin in a future hopefully long dead.

Had she been sent to the future? Lorraine as playing with powers she clearly didn't totally understand, but that still seemed a little unlikely. Since they'd pushed the Eternity out of the time-stream, Lorraine hadn't actually shown any real influence over time at all. Sure, she apparently had teleport-magic down pat, and something had definitely gone on with the Mammon Machine if she'd been able to move the rest of them so effortlessly.

Or, she assumed the others had been moved too. It bothered her to think that Gaspar might still be there with Lorraine, attempting to settle with her on his own. Everything about their connection bothered her, though. If Melchior and Belthasar had the sense to track him down, she assumed things might go better, but what would be best was if she found them, got Chrono and Marle and Glenn and Magus, and then blew this stupid place into pieces with the strongest flare spell the world had ever seen.

But then, it probably wouldn't play out like that. There were things happening here that were quite a bit beyond her. Chrono's appearance in the fortress at all, for one thing. Somehow, they'd managed to make it to the Eternity without the Epoch, maybe using some kind of teleport spell of their own. Their magic was changing, and it was a frightening thought. Of everyone, Lucca knew her magic to have the most raw power – it was a source of pride for her. But to be left behind, again…

Refusing to think that way, she closed her eyes as tightly as possible, the little edges of a desperate prayer in her mind. How strange, that at that moment, she felt something… pulling. A tiny thread tugging from somewhere, as vaguely uncomfortable as the time Chrono had tied a string around a loose tooth to see if he could help her pull it out. She smiled at the thought, and the pull seemed to increase.

Divining, she though they called it, when someone felt something they couldn't see. It wasn't something she'd ever done before, since it seemed more like the mystic's type of magic than a human's, but she went with it, stepping forward timorously. A second step, and then a third, and, weird as it was, she could swear there was a voice buried somewhere in her mind, urging her along. Maybe one of the others, calling out with their magic?

She went faster now, through the massive chamber. Who knew if this would even work? It was a chance, though, and it beat standing around, waiting for something to find her.

The chamber didn't actually twist, but it felt like it did as she went, peering behind outcroppings of metal and massive, half-built shells. A voice rang, and it almost brought her to a stop. Not out loud – buried somewhere inside her. This way. Just a little further. That's it, love.

If she were going crazy, that was one thing, but she didn't think she'd ever been tempted to call herself 'love,' even in her own mind. Weird, and a little unsettling. She kept coming, though. It was a start, and that's all she needed.

Turn here, the voice urged, trilling a tiny little laugh that didn't at all seem malicious, but as soon as she rounded the large pile of slag and what appeared to be hull-plating, she froze.

"No…"

A figure, golden hair hanging to his waist, crouched before one of the metal shells. The air smelled acrid around him, and he held a tool close to his body. How he heard her over the crackle of his work, she didn't know, but it also didn't particularly matter. As he rose, she unholstered her gun.

"Stop right there."

"Not so much as a hello, eh? You wound me…" Dalton sauntered forward like a specter, and locked her fists tight around her wondershot. "Ah, well, I suppose I shouldn't have expected better. From one of those who deposed me, no less."

"Not a king then, not a king now," she told him ominously, her barrel never straying far from his face. "Try anything, and I do mean anything, and I'll take care of that other eye for you."

Dalton only smiled. In her mind, Lucca heard his laugh after he'd bound and tormented them in the queen's hall at their first encounter. "Not polite for a maid, not in the least. But I wouldn't be as foolish as that. Even moved by Lavos, I fell twice to you. I don't intend to do it a third time."

"You may not have a choice," she shot back. At this Dalton's lips thinned, no longer resembling a smile.

"If it's revenge you want, I can assure you I've suffered. My body out of my own control, then given it back in the void with the golem…" he shuddered abruptly, and she noticed with grudging suddenness that the air of danger and the crackle of magic around him was almost entirely gone.

"Are you in league with Lorraine?"

"The mad-woman? Hardly." This time the laugh was purely incredulous, but the sound of it still made her skin creep. "She might very well think so, though. Expected me to be no different from before – as if years in the void wouldn't give a man time to repent."

"It'd also give him time to plan revenge, wouldn't it?"

"In some of my darker fantasies, I certainly considered it. Not against you, fool." He smirked again. Lucca bit her lip. Different or not, she was under no obligation to like the man. "Wretched though you were, what the daemon did with my body… though I suppose I shoulder not a little of the blame, don't I? In those days power was power, to wield or to lose. I did both."

"Don't expect sympathy from me."

"Ha! I'm not as daft as that." With that, as if they were in some strange audience-hall, he turned and waved one hand dismissively. "Whatever your reasons for coming, I suggest you leave before you're discovered. Lorraine has her lackeys and her creations hunting you, and I'd truthfully rather not be caught in the middle of it."

"What are you doing?"

"My task, what else?" "You didn't think she'd free me without expecting a return on her favor, did you? And in her case, she holds magic enough to demand it."

It occurred to her then that the metal object in his hands looked strikingly similar to her own arc-welder, the latest and most extravagant tool her father had purchased for her. Overcoming her shock, she glanced into the shadows of the chamber, the horror of what she saw lapping gently like water at her feet. A metal shell, not yet covered with hull-plating or domed glass, hunched oppressively above them.

"This is… the Epoch?" Further into the shadows, more of the shapes loomed. And the chamber itself… "The blackbird?"

"Those are old names," Dalton told her, not looking in her direction. "She'll no doubt call them something else, once they've been finished. And let me assure you, the blackbird will seem very small, compared to this vessel."

"You're working for her. You might call it something else, but you're building her an army!"

"Should it keep me from being killed, I can promise you, I'd do far more than that. But this was my task. It's a strange thing, magical compulsion. So long as I keep Lorraine directly from my thoughts, it isn't difficult to be content here. Almost the way things used to be, before… well, what does that matter?"

The words weren't all intended for her. Under other circumstances, she might have liked to know what he meant, but she was still more greatly appalled at what was taking place.

"How do I break the compulsion?"

He laughed again, still mostly absorbed in using his torch, gently reddening a long strip of the metal frame. "You're the greater wizard, of the two of us. If I knew how it was done, don't you think I would've tried?"

"Well, can you fight it?"

"No, it doesn't seem so."

"So, you'll build her a fleet of time machines?"

This time, when it laughed, it was long and loud and filled with pleasure. Stopping, he paused to wipe his eyes, unconcerned by how she scowled at him. "It might not have occurred to you, curious as you are, that Lorraine's faults are nothing like your. While you ask too many questions, she never learned to ask enough."

"Cut the games, would you?"

He held up a placating hand. "I'm getting there, I'm getting there. You realize, though, that she does things a bit more… haphazardly than the old queen? Ordering me to build her a fleet because I once worked with Belthasar. She only asked if I could build her ships. The vessel I helped construct had no temporal core – Gaspar hadn't yet finished it." His grin was oddly triumphal. "I can build her all the ships she may like, and the spell will break. But they'll be as useful to her as chaff, if she thinks to change time."

"It could be an invasion fleet," she reasoned. There did seem to be problems with Lorraine's approach, but she doubted if the woman were as short-sighted as Dalton thought. She had resurrected a good portion of Zeal with apparently little trouble. "Maybe she thinks she'll conquer the world the old fashioned way."

"Hmm. Not recommended, given my own… embarrassing debut on that count, but I suppose there's always the possibility." He then turned again, leaving her standing there. She watched him for a moment.

"You don't think I'm just going to leave you here, do you? Like you can just keep working…?"

His eye almost twinkled, another very odd thing to see. "Would you prefer I come with you? Allies, or something obscure like that? Ha! What would your princess say, providing she's even still with you?"

"I'm not leaving you here," she said again, with a sizeable increase in conviction. He was obviously different from before, but he was still Dalton. The fact that Lorraine brought him here was all the reason she needed to make sure he didn't stay.

"Open your eyes. I can't break the spell, as we've well-established. So long as it' in place, I'll work." He gestured to the pile of scraps around them. "And it seems I'll be at it for quite some time. If I'd known how effective a casting it was, I would've paid more attention when some of the scholars laid it on the Earthbound. The Ocean Palace might have been finished months ahead of time." Still muttering, he lifted another thin strip of sauttering metal. She stood there dumbly for a moment, watching him feed it into his device.

"You haven't started enforcing the hull yet, have you?" It struck her all at once. If Dalton was right bout Lorraine, she might not have considered a crucial point.

"No," he replied, sounding vaguely perplexed. "I'll need all of my magic for that. And the frame of this ship isn't ready yet…"

"But you could do it now, couldn't you?"

"In small pieces, yes. But it would waste my time and my –"

She didn't wait for him to finish. Picking up an armload of bright metal fragments, she passed them to him. The arc-welder clattered to the floor.

"What are you-"

"She didn't tell you that you had to work here, necessarily, did she?"

He stared silently, awkwardly. When she thought he was bound to refuse, a wry smile skittered over his scarred face.

"Premature to say, given what a grace-less whelp you are, but I imagine I might not mind you so much as I'd once thought."

"Well, I guess that's better than nothing," she told him, relieved and still confused as to why. "Let's get out of here. I think there's a way out over there…"

Ollen70: It raises more questions than it answers, but the story's underway, and I'm thinking I'll actually finish it pretty soon. If you're wondering what happened to everyone else, give it time. We'll get there soon.

S always, reviews make writers happy. Happy writers write faster. Faster writing gives reviewers more new stuff to read. So, yeah, hooray for cause and effect.