"We're close," said Marle as she tended to Magus the next morning. "I can feel it."
"Close to what?" asked Crono.
"The center," said Marle. "We've got to be. It's been two whole days."
"I hope you're right and that this really is almost over," Crono said by way of a reply. "Come on, let's go." He laid his hand on the door they hadn't come in by, and it slid open with a hum. It led to a small alcove, but before he reached the door at the other side, he stopped in his tracks. Beams of purple light shone from the corners of the room, and where they met, sparks flew as the familiar shape of a Gate popped into existence.
As Crono stepped forward, the Gate expanded into a pure black orb. Light glinted off of something chitinous within, and as the Gate collapsed in on itself again, a thirty-foot Lavos spawn crawled forward on its tiny legs. With a wail, it retracted its beak slightly and shot needles from its shell in all directions. "Watch out!" Lucca called to Magus, dodging a salvo that came at her while simultaneously casting a flame in front of him to incinerate the needles before they hit. Magus recoiled and caught the remainder of the needles with his cape as Robo launched his fist into the Spawn's beak, Ayla's foot close behind. Ayla scratched and bit as she pried Robo's fist from the Spawn's jaws and tossed it back to its owner.
The Spawn roared, and the floor glowed red and began tearing itself apart, chunks of it flying about the room. "Everyone down!" Crono ordered, and all but Robo ducked to avoid the flying stones. As soon as they settled, Crono nodded to Ayla and Frog, and the three of them converged on the Spawn's beak, hitting with both swords and a mighty kick. With a last blast of needles, the spawn shrieked and lay still. Marle stood up. "Is everyone all right?" she asked.
"I'll be fine," Lucca replied. "Tend to Ayla, though, she looks a little the worse for wear from those needles."
Marle nodded and laid her hands on Ayla's side, channeling the cool, healing power through her hands. Soon, Ayla's cuts were scarred over with new skin.
Once Marle and Frog had healed his allies, Magus opened the door the Spawn had been guarding. A curious sight greeted him: in the temple-like room, copies of Crono, Marle, Lucca, Robo, Frog, and Ayla hovered motionless, entombed in pillars of light. Lying enshrined on a pedestal at the back of the room was the rusted, broken form of the Mammon Machine. As the seven approached it, a brightly-glowing human form appeared in the air before it. The light faded, and Queen Zeal lighted on the floor.
"Behold, my pretties! Destiny, in its most brutal form." She waved her hand at the six pillars of light. "All the dreams that might have been," she continued. "All the happiness and sorrow that you might have experienced. Gone forever! For you, there will be no tomorrow!"
She turned. "The Dark Omen transcends time and space, waiting for Lavos to awaken! Destiny has led you here. And here you shall rest forever, unless you can defeat me and smash the Omen!" The mad queen looked over her shoulder, eyes glinting. "Come, dear friends," she said. "Perhaps I can persuade Lavos to share His dreams with you!" Her crazed grin widened. "Did I say 'dreams?'" she cackled. "I meant His eternal nightmare!"
With that, Queen Zeal released a halo of bright, colored light that would have left her opponents barely able to stand had Frog not thrown up a buffer of healing energy. There was a spark of tacit understanding between Lucca and Magus as Robo stepped forward between them. "Crono, distract her!" Lucca shouted.
"On it!" said Crono. "Ayla, let's go!"
Ayla nodded and grabbed Crono, hurling him sword first at Queen Zeal. He sliced at her as he passed, tucked and rolled as he landed, and leaped at her again as Lucca and Magus murmured arcane words. Again, they flickered in and out of existence as Robo rose into the air. The world turned inside out as Robo fired his laser, and the mad queen fell to her knees.
"...powers don't work... wait!" she muttered, and her eyes lit up. "Toss you to the Mammon Machine!" she said, her voice gaining volume. "You'll be one with the Omen, Lavos... and me!"
Everything went dark. When Lucca could see again, she saw that she and the six with her were floating in a blue abyss, along with the silvery ghost of what the Mammon Machine had once been.
"Blast it!" Lucca shouted to the others once her head had cleared. It was a command, not an expletive. Gathering her power, she sent a wave of white-hot air at the machine just as Crono launched a great, ionized orb. The Machine flickered for a moment, then released a column of hot energy around the entire party. Thinking fast, Magus projected a shield to absorb the worst of it.
"All at once!" Lucca called to Crono and Marle after she recovered from the hit. There was a sharp smell of ozone as Crono turned the air the bright blue-green of a static shock, and without a second of pause, Marle and Lucca released as much magic as they could at a time. The sharp change in temperature blew through the machine, and again, everything went dark.
As the world faded back into view, Lucca could hear the sound of engines. Thin, bright-pink conduits were the first thing she saw, and as she stood up, she realized where she was: on top of the Black Omen's hull. A beam of blue light shot upward, and Queen Zeal stood in the air before them.
"You cretins..." she said, face twisted in ugly rage. "I plan to live with Lavos, and control the universe forever. You will not get in my way!"
"Idiot," said Magus, looking downward. "Nothing can live forever." He turned to the woman who was once his mother. "Zeal... a pitiful woman, duped by Lavos. I myself will bring an end to all this!"
Queen Zeal glared back at him. "Prophet!" she spat. "You are doomed. I haven't forgotten what you did at the Ocean Palace. Your life is forfeit!" She glowed a blinding white, filling Magus's entire field of vision. When the light faded, Queen Zeal was transformed: a huge, gold-crowned mask of her face, flanked by two enormous hands.
Marle got out her crossbow and leveled a bolt between the mask's eyes just as the transformed queen's left hand pointed with its longest finger and shot a bright yellow ray at her. She dodged, and her shot went wild, narrowly missing the other hand, which swooped forward to grab Marle and squeeze. With a shout, Crono leaped at the mask, breathing heavily and dodging about in a blur of slashes. The mask's expression changed briefly to one of pain, and the hand dropped Marle, crushed nearly to death.
Ayla distracted the great face with a flaming kick courteousy of Lucca as Frog leaped to Marle's aid. Ayla's foot hit the mask's eye, momentarily blinding the queen and giving Marle a chance to get back on her feet. "We need to guard ourselves!" Marle gasped. "She's too strong with no wards!"
Magus nodded and threw a faint, green shield around as many people as would fit, and not a moment too soon. A glowing magic circle containing a six pointed star appeared on the floor beneath them, then erupted in a huge gout of water, leaving all six living people choking and Robo in a short-circuited heap - had it not been for Magus's shield, some of them might have been swept away. Gasping for air, Marle braved Queen Zeal's bolts of energy to get Frog, then the rest of them, back up. Crono, Frog, and Ayla converged on the mask, and in Queen Zeal's moment of distraction, Lucca pulled the pin from one of her strongest explosives and hurled it at the queen. It hit just as the other three fell away, and burst in a sphere of roiling flame.
As soon as the flame cleared, Magus was on the mask, his scythe jammed between the eyes. He wrenched it downward, leaving a huge gash. The mask fell in two, then it and the hands dissolved, forming themselves back into the human Queen Zeal. She panted, enraged. "How dare you insects come after me!" she shrieked, and stood up straight. "Oh almighty Lavos, lend me your power!"
A cold wind blew through Queen Zeal's cloak as she cackled. "At last, Lavos awakens!" she said, her face showing not a hint of sanity. "Compared to Him, you are like germs! But I... I shall obtain immortality!"
Deep under the sea beneath the Black Omen, Lavos stirred. The surface of the water took on an eerie blue glow, and the Black Omen - and every being touching it - dissolved.
Lucca, Magus, Crono, Robo, Ayla, Frog, and Marle floated in a blue void, all eyes fixed on the gargantuan beast before them. Even the four who had seen Lavos at the Ocean Palace felt not ready for it. Steeling himself, Crono charged forward as Lavos let out a chilling scream, and was hurled backwards by an explosion as Lavos summoned destruction from the heavens. The universe opened up as Magus released his power, but what instantly reduced guard robots to useless wrecks only made Lavos angrier, if Lavos could be angry. Opening its three-pronged beak, it discharged arcs of blue lightning, which Frog caught on his shield as he sliced at Lavos's single eye. "Methinks the beast art weaker than 'twas at the Ocean Palace!" he called.
"Good! Then we have a chance!" Lucca called back. Concentrating, she released a blast of pure heat. The sensitive flesh between the spikes of Lavos's shell blistered, and as it screeched, Crono and Magus leaped forward at the same time to bury their weapons in its eye. At the same time, they summoned lightning bolts, channeling them through the metal blades. Lavos gave its piercing, gurgling scream, and Crono and Magus leaped back just before it snapped its beak shut, bleeding. Frog sliced at the beak, but his sword glanced off the tough shell.
"Crono! Lucca! You magic me!" Ayla shouted. "I kick! You magic me so I kick through!"
"All right, worth a try," Lucca called back. "Get ready, and don't move until I say so! Crono, make sure you concentrate until she lands that kick!"
With that, Lucca and Crono sent their magic of heat and lightning to envelop Ayla's feet. "Go!" Lucca shouted, and Ayla leaped at Lavos.
Crono and Lucca kept their minds focused on not letting their magic hurt Ayla, and with a loud crunch, Ayla's foot broke through the hairline gap between the parts of Lavos's beak, delivering the fire and lightning. "Robo! Come pull!" she shouted, and Robo came to her aid. The two grabbed the side of Lavos's beak and yanked as hard as they could. With a sickening squishing sound, the weakened part of the beak came off.
"Get clear!" Lucca called to them. As soon as they were out of the way, Lucca hurled her most powerful bomb into the gap Robo and Ayla had left. She ignited it with her magic, and with a mighty explosion, the bomb blew Lavos's beak clean off, leaving a ragged hole in the shell where it had been. She dropped to her knees. "It's finally over..."
"Not yet," Robo beeped as his sensors whirred. "I sense a powerful life force within Lavos."
"So we have to go in there," said Lucca weakly.
Magus nodded. "We'll get to the bottom of this, Lavos," he said. Turning, he said "Follow me," and walked into the darkness of the hole Lucca's bomb had left.
Once everyone was inside Lavos, Lucca conjured a flame to light the darkness. Lavos's blood vessels gave off an eerie green glow, but that alone was not enough to properly see by. "We're all okay, right?" she asked everyone. Crono, Marle, Frog, Ayla, Robo, Magus - all were there.
"According to my sensors, we are close to the center," said Robo.
Magus nodded. "No turning back now," he said quietly, and led the rest closer and closer to the source of the booming heartbeat and raspy breathing of Lavos.
Lucca nearly stopped breathing as she looked upon what was making the sound. "This's the real thing? What... what kind of a creature IS that?" she asked. There was no way this was not Lavos's center of control: it was almost a being in itself, connected to the mainly-empty shell by thick, fleshy tubes. It looked almost like a man in insectile armor, connected to the floor at the waist. With every breath, articulated sacs moved in and out, pulsating eerily.
Magus stepped forward, eyes steely. "Finally... you have met your match, Lavos!" he shouted at it.
It wasn't clear if Lavos was responding to Magus when it spread its arms wide, but whether it was or not, there was no use in hesitating. "Hit it with everything you've got!" Crono yelled as he drew his sword. "Lucca, Magus, do that thing with Robo again! I'll - aagh!"
Crono was cut off as Lavos sprayed beams of yellow light over all seven of them. "Go!" he said as he and Frog charged forward, and Lucca and Magus began their now-familiar chant again. Robo's supercharged laser hit Lavos's inside as Magus's spell turned it inside-out, and Lavos shrieked when the world returned to normal. It struck at Robo with one of its mighty claws just before Crono released a massive ball of glowing air. As Lavos recoiled, Ayla leaped on it, scratching and biting at the joints in its armor until one of its arms hung uselessly at its side. She jumped at the other arm, but it swatted her away - and in the moment of Lavos's distraction, Frog buried his sword in Lavos's shoulder.
Even with no arms, however, Lavos was not helpless. It discharged a dark cloud of gas from the pores of its body, and while everyone was blind, shot a gout of fire at Lucca. Magus moved to block it with a magical shield as Frog blasted high-pressure water at Lavos's face.
At that, Lavos turned the ends of its fleshy tubes inward. From each of their multifarious ends came white-hot flame, enveloping the entire party. Lucca couldn't see, and all she could hear was roaring. Her scream was drowned in the overwhelming wildfire, and she barely heard someone say "No, demon, you won't take this one!" She blacked out -