Does night follow day, or day follow night?
Is heat merely the absence of cold, or is cold the absence of heat?
We live in a world of both good and evil, light and darkness, the flame of hope and the cold taste of that which is forbidden. We know no other way. But in the final end, only good or evil can triumph.
Day, night. Heat, cold. Light, darkness. Hope, despair. Good, evil.
Choose.
There it was. Standing like a stone hurricane in the midst of an otherwise peaceful time period. It's snow-covered peaks were barraged by rampant winds and bone-chilling temperatures. Magus watched the Gate behind him shrink into obscurity, knowing that it would be reopened from the other side at the end of one half-hour. He had that long to find the Star Crystal and learn what he could about his step-father's research in the field of magic powers.
But where to start looking? There were a hundred thousand places one could hide the secret entrance to a laboratory so long as the searching area was as big as an entire mountain.
Magus looked out momentarily at the surrounding area. High-tech domes and mini-domes dotted the otherwise lush landscape in the distance, and there were almost no signs of human life outside of the domes and the paved roadways which interconnected them. 'A society so devoted to it's technology that they isolate themselves from anything with leaves and roots; how sad.' Magus scoffed to himself. 'A society like that is simply begging for the same fate that befell Zeal kingdom in the form of Lavos.'
Back to the mountain. Magus quickly decided to try utilizing the black wind to guide him. He closed his eyes and focused.
"Do you really think he'll be able to locate Verran's laboratory?" Belthazar inquired. He had his arms folded and was leaning back against the iron fencing at the end of time, a skeptical look on his face.
"Why, do you think he won't be able to?" Melanchoir asked.
Belthazar made a disapproving grunt.
"You heard his story, how he turned on humanity for revenge against Lavos. I'd dare say there isn't a drop of purity or pure intention left in him."
"What does that have to do with anything?" Melanchoir retorted. "Besides which, this is Janus we're talking about. True, he's changed-"
"He's no longer Janus; he said so himself." Belthazar stated reproachfully. "The Janus that we knew was shy and felt it was difficult to find any friendships outside of the three of us and his sister. This 'Magus' is a ruthless destroyer, deciever,-"
"Stop it!" Old Man Gaspar stated. The other Gaspar continued his thought. "Do you always judge books by their covers, Belthazar? Janus as we knew him had a good reason to be friendly with only a select group: we, along with Schala, were the only ones in Zeal not caught up in the lure of immortality through Lavos. And we all know that Janus had premonitionary feelings about how evil Lavos truly was."
"What are you saying?" Belthazar inquired harshly.
"If you dislike what he's had to do and who he's become, you can blame Lavos and the environment he grew up in for most of it." Gaspar stated.
"… However, all this brings up one very interesting question." Melanchoir stated, drawing everyone's attention. "Magus is the result of a chain of events caused by Lavos; you can hardly blame him for most of what's happened to him. However, because of the time changes, there should now be another version of him, a Janus who never faced the kinds of darkness that Magus has. I personally would be interested in seeing the vastness of differences that can potentially exist within a single individual like Janus."
"Perhaps,…" Belthazar stated, only slightly interested in the idea.
"Gentlemen," Old Man Gaspar suddenly announced, getting everyone's attention. The elderly time guardian had a distinctly concerned look on his face. "… I've just had an incredibly disturbing thought."
"Yes, what?" Melanchoir inquired.
"Janus isn't the only one that will be changed because of what has happened to the time stream." There was a tone of urgency in his voice. "In fact, almost the entire future of our world, including the future of Crono and those who stopped Lavos, was able to become what it is because of the fall of Zeal kingdom. Simply put, the eras Crono and his friends are from don't have a giant floating island hovering in the skies; it simply isn't there. But if allowed to continue to exist, Zeal kingdom will drastically alter the future in ways none of us can predict!"
"Goodness gracious!" Melanchoir exclaimed.
"What?!" Belthazar was quite surprised.
"Calm down, calm down." Old Man Gaspar stated. He paused for a moment to clear his throat. "The changes in the timeline shouldn't be a difficulty as far into the future as Magus has gone; at least, nothing should have changed that would get in his way,… but I'm afraid that Zeal kingdom's very existence has even now changed history for the worse. For the sake of the history of our world,… I'm afraid that Zeal kingdom cannot be allowed to continue."
"Can't you see what's happening in the time stream?" Gaspar inquired.
"… No, not fully. The time currents are still rearranging themselves, shifting between dimensional frequencies and such. The changes are there; there's simply too much leftover static for me to discern too many things. Once it quiet's down, things will be clearer, but the facts are clear: so long as there's a change that certain events, or worse, time travelers, can change preset events, our world won't be safe."
Magus couldn't believe what he wasn't sensing.
It was as if the black wind was totally silent. In hiding. He grunted in frustration.
'Well then,' He figured. 'I'll just have to come up with a better way…'
History had indeed been altered, every time period previous Zeal having been drastically changed. To start things off, a few years after the failure of the Mammon Machine, queen Zeal suffers from a fatal disease and the kingdom is quickly overrun from within by the Mystics, sending the Enlightened Ones earthbound along with all their magical powers. In the year 600 AD, empires of magic-using human warlords decimate the landscape, poisoning the seas by the sheer carnage as the Mystics watch on from the floating islands, waiting for the ragged remains of humanity to destroy itself. In 1000 AD, those humans still alive, led by a warrior named Crono, infiltrate the floating islands and defeat the Mystics, who had long-since been thought of by the remaining humanity as the 'gods of magic'. Crono proved that notion wrong, but at the cost of his own life as he destroyed the central energy generators of the island, and himself as well. Eventually, with the floating islands destroyed, magic powers became the worst of taboo, and so, seeking shelter from further devastation, humanity hid itself away inside glass-domed cities where they'd be protected from the few remaining Mystics, humans as a whole turning to technology rather than magic to bring itself into a stable way of life…
But all this was completely unknown to Magus as he searched the mountain, using his powers to send wisps of Dark Mist all across every surface of the giant rock. It was kind of like echolocation of a sort: he'd focus on controlling and guiding the Dark Mist, and when it found any tunnels into the mountain he would follow his findings and search out the area. In a way, his own impromptu black wind, one that now hid the entire surface of the mountain in it's shadowy dark vapors.
Magus was at this for about twenty minutes before he found it. Yes, a tunnel, with a fake-rock door keeping it concealed from the common eye. Dissipating the Dark Mist with a thought, Magus headed for the location, realizing that he'd employed a large amount of his energy up with such a time-saving magic maneuver, energy that it would take him some time to regain. But he hardly noticed; his mind was set on the secret entrance and the mystery of what it hid.
It caught everyone, including Old Man Gaspar, by surprise. As the flash of light lit the area, momentarily filling the entire End of Time with searing brilliance, the gurus were all forced to shield their eyes as hot white light filled their field of view. Even after the light faded, splotches of uncontrolled color still hazed everyone's view,… but their hearing was still crystal clear.
"…Where are we?" Asked a strangely familiar, and yet different, masculine voice. The voice seemed to be coming from over where the pillars of light were.
"… I don't know…, wow, look at this place." Came an even more familiar feminine voice. At the sound of this voice, all of the gurus suddenly froze in mid-breath, almost unsure of what they were hearing, and even as their eyes cleared they were almost afraid to look.
"… Are we… dead?" Asked the female voice, slight fear sounding in her tone. "Oh my gosh, are you sure you did it right?"
"I,… I,… I don't know." Stuttered the male voice. "I was sure that the Gate was stable…"
Here it was. Magus had to admit to himself that the entrance was incredibly well hidden. The fake rocks met the real ones with practically no deviation in realism. But his Dark Mist maneuver had proven otherwise to him. The entrance was at the base of the mountain, on the western side, hidden additionally by a large cluster of bushes. Anyone looking at the site would never have guessed it to be the secret entrance to an underground chamber.
Finding a way to open the door was far simpler than finding the door itself. A Dark Bomb blew away the false rocks with ease; Magus didn't have the time or patience to go searching for the switch that opened the door, assuming it was switch-operated. Wasting no time, he bolted into the tunnel even before the debris had a chance to clear. Using his energy fields to both defy gravity and propel him forwards at incredible speed, Magus flew straight down the unbending tunnel like a superhuman dark-blue blur.
At the end of the tunnel, he discovered a massive metal door. Once again, no apparent means of easy entry. Once again, not a problem.
Using a Fire 2 attack, Magus quickly turned up the temperature on the center of the door, leaving the frame intact so that it wouldn't give the tunnel cause to cave in on him. When the door refused to simply allow him to melt a hole through it, Magus switched to plan B. As the effects of his Ice 2 attack caused an even quicker and more sudden and drastic temperature change in the door, Magus was easily able to simply punch apart the brittle steel with his fists, sending fragments of ice and metal flying like glass shards.
The area beyond the steel door was like stepping from one universe to the next. If he had been anyone else, Magus's jaw would have dropped from the sheer amazement of the lab. Instead, he simply raised one eyebrow in surprise. The lab's floor was made of millions of reflective blue crystals, yet was as smooth as glass under his feet. The domed ceiling was a silver-like metal, reflecting almost like a mirror. There were little or no walls in the room to speak of; the lab was ringed with large computers, bookcases, and hundreds of devices that Magus didn't recognize. The computers seemed to be hybrids: part Zealean technology, partially the technology of this time period, and part something else that Magus couldn't put his finger on.
And on a high-tech pedestal in the very center of the room, engulfed in some kind of protective energy, was a brilliantly gleaming crystal that seemed to radiate light. It had seven points, and definitely gave off the appearance of a miniature star in crystal form.
"Incredible…" Magus said, for merely a moment allowing himself to get caught up in the otherworldly splendor of the place. Then, remembering his task, he quickly walked over and reached for the crystal. But the energy fields seared his hand, and he quickly retraced. He stifled the urge to dwell on his injury, noticing instead the strange phenomenon of the defensive field: that, while leaving a burning sensation on his hand, it had left his glove unscathed. Pulling the glove off, he looked at the burn mark on his hand and quickly realized that the nature of the energy field was to keep out anything living. "There must be a way to deactivate the field, so I won't risk harming the crystal."
Going over and examining what appeared to be the primary computer interface terminal, Magus quickly browsed through a long list of programs, most of them with names and functions that Magus had little chance of making sense of.
But one in particular stood out to him. Halfway down the list, a program labeled 'JOURNAL' caught his attention. Selecting it, Magus then selected 'READ', then 'FEB 12', the most recent entry. It was an audio file.
"February 12th, 2300 AD." It was a strong masculine voice,… presumably his father's. It sounded tired, yet held a tone to it indicative of someone who at one time had been royalty. The voice continued as Magus listened, spellbound. "My research seems to be going nowhere. I miss my daughter and step-son greatly,… but I know that there is no turning back. The powers of the Star Crystal, I realize now, dwarf in comparison to those of that fiend, Macbeth, and even if I did find a way to harness the crystal's power into a weapon, it would do me no good against either him or Lavos."
"I have been forced to come to the same conclusion about Lavos that I came to during my time in Zeal kingdom, that it is a parasitic beast controlled by some kind of power-hungry monster not unlike itself. From my studies of the three Lavos Spawn that inhabit this mountain, I have realized that I myself will never have the power to stop Lavos. In fact, I fear that no human will ever find a way to defeat Lavos; the level of quantum manipulation power simply isn't conceived naturally in mankind, and not even I with everything I know about the magic arts stand a chance."
"But I have not yet given up hope. No,… one day, perhaps my dreams will come to pass. If someone younger and stronger than I were to rise to the level of mastery I have achieved, they may bring humanity one step closer to defeating Lavos. My step-son, Janus, shows just such a level of promise. I can't explain it, not all of it, but somehow he seems to possess sheer energy that I've never before observed in humankind, even though it's deep within him and, at the moment, subdued and hidden. I still have yet to unravel all of the mystery of his origins and strange power, but the one conclusion I can draw for certain is that, given time, I believe he can mold his powers into any one of the four basic elements, or perhaps even achieve Prism or Solar."
"… Perhaps I'm just a foolish old man, rambling off about dreams that may truly be nothing more than dreams. But I think of Janus and Schala often because I'm so lonely,… and I suppose it's only natural that, with the Star Crystal complete, I would turn my mind towards the greatest mystery of my life: Janus's origins. Perhaps some day, through some turn of events, the truth will reveal itself. Until then,… I suppose I am left to ponder the unknown."
The readout on the screen indicated that the message had come to it's conclusion. Magus was silent for a long moment, thinking, digesting all that his step-father had said.
'Macbeth,' Magus thought to himself. 'He mentioned Macbeth. What does that mean? How could he know who Macbeth is??'
And, like his father before him, Magus too now also wondered silently at his origins. He had known since a young age that he was 'adopted', but only Schala had been open enough to tell him that the Earthbound Ones had found him nearly frozen to death in the snow, an abandoned infant with no known past. His condition, Schala had told him, had deteriorated so much that without his step-father using magic power to revitalize him from near-dead, he never would have survived.
But for the moment, riddling about his unknown past was a pointless gesture. At the bottom of the option menu was an option 'STAR CRYSTAL'. It yielded 'SCAN', 'TRANSFER POWER', and 'ENERGY FIELD'. Magus quickly selected ENERGY FIELD and was greeted with "password required to perform this function" from the computer's audio system.
Magus inputted 'Zeal', 'Nu', 'Schala', and 'Janus'. The fourth password did the trick, and Magus felt a slight appreciation somehow because of the reference. Three more options now presented themselves: 'MODIFY FIELD', 'ACTIVATE', and 'DEACTIVATE'. ACTIVATE was grayed out, to symbolize that the option was already in use. It wasn't a hard decision anyway.
With the energy fields gone, the crystal's true glow filled the chamber, bouncing white light off the blue-crystal floor and reflective ceiling to give the entire room a shimmering effect the likes of which Magus had never seen before. Walking over, he slowly reached for the crystal and, after reassuring himself that the protective fields were neutralized, grasped the crystal by one of it's elongated silvery points.
Maybe he was expecting some kind of surge of energy to go careening like an untamed lightning bolt through his body, or to be blown backwards by some incredible flash of power. But nothing felt different. The crystal still retained it's breathtaking shine, and other than feeling slightly curious and disappointed, Magus noticed no changes within himself either. Choosing to be rather safe than sorry, Magus carefully tucked the crystal away and left the lab.
What he didn't anticipate was what he'd find waiting for him in between the cave entrance and the Time Gate. Somewhere in the time he'd been down in the lab, a large crowd of futuristic soldiers carrying what looked like laser guns had gathered at the southern base of Death Peak, away from the cave entrance but directly between Magus and the Gate. And based on the weaponry and the robots they had backing them up, they didn't look too friendly.
"It's him! I saw him!" Shouted someone from towards the back of the crowd. "He's the magic user, the one who turned Death Peak black!!"
That, of course, was a reference to Magus's Dark Mist maneuver. As the rows of soldiers aimed their weapons on him, Magus took that to mean that magic users weren't welcome guests in this time period.
"Just look at him! He's even dressed like a wizard!" Someone else shouted.
"He must be the one." Someone else concluded. "C'mon, 'Merlin', admit it!"
Magus grunted and turned his head slightly to one side.
"Something tells me that you people don't like me very much." Magus stated. "Normally, I wouldn't mind staying to chat, but I've got travel arrangements that have to come first. Now kindly step aside and let me through."
"Not a chance, 'wizard'!" Shouted a man who appeared to be in charge of the soldiers and random robots. "Don't you know that it's illegal to use magic? Now either defend your innocence or surrender."
Magus laughed jeeringly.
"Guilty as charged." He laughed. "But I think I should warn you that I never surrender, and I don't take threats lightly." The second part of the statement was far more in a serious tone.
"Are you telling me you won't come quietly?" The commander barked. Magus nodded mockingly, much to the commander's unamusement. "Well then, we'll just have to take ya in by force!" He turned to his units. "All weapons on heavy stun! Fire at will!"
Magus easily blocked the barrage of various-colored lasers using a Magic Wall attack, sending the beams bouncing straight back at the soldiers and robots who fired them. This sent the small army into momentary disarray, and in the chaos Magus spotted an easy opening and flew straight down the middle of the troops, literally. Using his energy fields to speed him along like a living blur, he was quickly out of sight of the hostile military group within seconds.
'Illegal to use magic.' Magus scoffed. 'What idiots.'
"I've retrieved the Star Crys-"
Magus cut himself off mid-sentence. Just as he was stepping out of the pillar of light at the end of time he spotted two figures standing nearby the gurus, two figures that at first he didn't recognize.
His mind quickly took inventory of the entire situation, Magus pulling logic from the images before his eyes in such a manner that Sherlock Holmes might have been impressed by his deductions. The gurus, even though half-hidden by fog and a distance away, didn't seem threatened by the two newcomers; on a similar note, the two unknown persons didn't seem defensive or to have taken the gurus hostage. Neither person seemed to be armed, although odds were that they were magic users. That could mean either that these two figures weren't enemies,… or that an overly clever ambush had been set. Lightly gripping the handle of the concealed Lunar Cry, Magus headed slowly forwards to the small wooden gate, senses heightened by his warrior's instincts.
As Magus pushed the gate open, Melanchoir looked over at him. Magus could tell by the old man's demeanor that something had him worried, yet not immediately concerned. Magus took that as a sign that the two people were, at the least, not hostile.
Then the first shock hit him like a bolt out of the blue. As the girl turned to look in his direction, Magus quickly recognized her. Long, flowing blue hair. Deep, compassionate eyes. Long light-purple robe.
For half a second, Magus held his breath in disbelief.
"Magus," Melanchoir stated. "Allow me to introduce a pair of accidental guests that just dropped in. I believe you recognize your sister Schala."
It was Schala, without a doubt. Magus could tell that on first glance. But something was different about her. His sister had been around age 18 when they had first been separated by Lavos so long ago, but now, she looked at least several years older, more developed. Magus guessed that, minimally, the girl who stood before him was truly a woman in her early twenties.
"And this,…" Melanchoir began as Magus got his first look at Schala's companion.
He was no less a shock than Schala herself was. Long, flowing blue hair likened to an ocean breeze. His nose only slightly shorter, rounder, and flatter than Magus's. Deep red eyes that lacked the coldness, hardness, and bitter strength and power that blazed like a trapped flame in Magus's eyes, replaced with a strange gentleness and a quieter strength and power that was there nonetheless. Similar to Schala, he wore a long, powerfully-white robe and had silver-metal armlets on his wrists that were decorated with large rubies and small blue sapphires.
Magus couldn't believe his eyes. It was like looking into a mirror, and looking back across history all at the same time. Melanchoir continued his sentence.
"… this is Sir Janus of Zeal kingdom,… six years after our departure."