Chrono Cross: Through Heaven and Hell
An original fan-fiction by Demon-Fighter Ash
based on the Square game "Chrono Cross"
Part 1: Future's End
Chapter 1: The Secret Sea
March, 2398 AD
Kalim peered out the wide crystal window filling the southern wall of the marble office, squinting in the bright flickering sunlight as he watched silver streams of glittering hover-cars sweeping between the prismatic denadorite-coated skyscrapers. Vast flocks of distant hover-cars parted into winding ribbons and merged back into single lines like starlings far beneath the sheer obsidian walls of the military center, and he strained his eyes to make out the pedestrian walkways beneath the wispy clouds.
He caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the glass, his shaggy blue hair hanging loosely around his ears, the edges of his loose black leather jacket and dark slacks almost seeming to blend into his gray shirt in the shimmering crystalline reflection. He stared curiously into his mirror image's sapphire eyes; most of the office buildings, including the universiy where he lived and worked, now used transparent low-level force-fields as windows, and he hadn't seen his own reflection in a glass window since he was a child. He shook his head, wondering how old the stark black tower of the Zenan military command-center actually was, and then whirled back toward the oak-panelled double-doors as sharp clicking footsteps echoed through the outside hallway.
"Kalim Skuld," a deep commanding voice called out as the doors swung open, and a tall powerful man dressed in the black gold-fringed uniform of the Zenan Coalition officers strode into the wide marble chambers, a gray stubble on the older man's square-jawed, and otherwise bald, face. Kalim did a slight double-take, trying to hide his surprise; he'd seen General Sharl giving press conferences on the public holo-images, speaking on behalf of the prime-minister. Kalim had received an electronic notice to report to "office 247" on the top floor of the Monolith, the military command center that rose like a black slab from the middle of the capital city of Trann, but even the office secretary hadn't told him who he was meeting.
"The secretary," Kalim answered nervously, with an apologetic glance at the ivory-white walls of the chamber, obviously Sharl's office, "told me to wait in the office."
"That's right," Sharl nodded and Kalim relaxed slightly at the half-smile crossing the general's stern features, the man's dark eyes focused on him, "it's an honor to meet you, Professor Skuld."
"I," Kalim started to say, then paused, unsure of where to begin: that the general of the whole Coalition army was honored to meet him, of all people, or that Sharl had called him professor, when he was really just a teaching assistant, still a year away from a full doctorate.
"And you," Kalim said blankly after a moment, then added, "how are you today?"
It was a stupid question, but it had crossed his lips before he realized it, the automatic small-talk he used to deal with new people. Fortunately, Sharl either didn't notice how inane it was, or decided to simply treat it as serious and reasonable a question as any other.
"Not well, I'm afraid," he answered seriously, "which is why we've called you here. I understand, Mr. Skuld, that you're one of the most highly-respected physicists at the Ashtear Institute of Technology, the protege of Belthasar himself, back when he was a professor."
"Kalim is fine," the young man said quickly, having never liked his last name. He'd gained a reputation as Belthasar's protege, one he'd never felt he deserved--all he did was have coffee with his old professor and helped him work on some of the more interesting puzzles and theories in quantum-theory and temporal physics; he'd considered Belthasar a friend, and still slightly resented the way people interpreted that friendship as some status symbol or measure of his own talent.
"Right," Sharl nodded, "I've read some of your published papers, Kalim. You've even found ways to improve on Belthasar's theories about time, correcting some of his equations."
"I wouldn't say that," Kalim answered sheepishly, embarrassed by the suggesting that he could ever improve on his mentor's wisdom, "I just speculated that under some conditions, a non-causal influence on the past might not actually change history, but instead divide the original timeline along the probability axis, creating two or more parallel timelines that...
"But," Kalim finished with a tight awkward smile, realizing how close he'd come to going into one of his college lectures, "you said you've read them, so you know that already."
"I have," General Sharl nodded, and he gestured toward a small pale cushioned seat in front of the desk as he stepped behind the wide glass-covered stone desk and sat down, and Kalim quickly took the seat before the desk, "most of the council thinks you could be the second-best mind on the planet."
"Oh," Kalim said, and thought silently to himself, trying to figure out what to say, then simply shrugged, "even if that's true, that's still a huge gap. I'm nowhere close to Belthasar."
"Who is," Sharl replied, and settled into his own cushioned leather chair, swinging it around to face the young scientist, "how much do you know about Belthasar's latest assignment?"
"Nothing," Kalim answered, suddenly beginning to suspect why he might have been called to the Monolith, "Belthasar never told me why he had to leave the institute, he just said it was more important than I could imagine. I haven't heard from him in almost four years."
"I see," the general nodded sternly, hands clasped before his face as he grew more serious, "then it seems we have the same problem. Belthasar has disappeared."
"Wha," Kalim jolted upright in surprise, "how? He was working for the military, wasn't he?"
"He was," Sharl nodded, "but three weeks ago he failed to report for his shift. A search of the facilities found no trace of him, and he's been gone ever since then."
"It's a military facility, isn't it," Kalim suddenly said, his normally mild temper rising at the thought of his old friend and mentor vanishing in the middle of an entire army, "how could you have lost him, don't you have video-cameras and soldiers for this kind of thing?"
"We do," the general replied, "and they didn't see a thing. We've torn through the whole complex trying to find him, and so far we've found nothing. The only thing our forensic reports can conclude is that Belthasar must have left the project and covered his trail, or someone else with just as much knowledge about the project covered up his departure. We still don't know how that could happen."
"What does that mean," Kalim sighed.
"A lot of the council members," Sharl answered slowly, "think it means that he defected."
"That's impossible," Kalim quickly shot back, tensed within his seat, "Belthasar didn't give a damn about the cold war or the Choras Alliance, all he cared about was science, helping mankind..."
"It's one theory," Sharl interrupted, "and we don't have enough information yet to come up with anything else. We contacted you because you might be able to help us find out what happened to him, and to continue his work. I need to know if you'll accept the position."
Position, Kalim asked himself, who had said anything about a position? He didn't know what Belthasar had been doing for the past four years, and Sharl hadn't offered any clues. He wondered for a moment if he'd missed part of the conversation, then decided to simply ask.
"What position?"
"That's classified," Sharl answered quickly.
"You," Kalim said slowly, scratching the back of his head and leaning forward in his seat as he tried to make sense out of the offer, "you...want to know whether I'll accept a job...but you can't even tell me what I'm being offered?"
"This is the same offer we made to all the scientists involved in this project," Sharl answered, "and it's the offer we made to Belthasar himself. Nobody's regretted the choice."
"Except for Belthasar," Kalim muttered to himself, then spoke up, "what is this project?"
"What do you know," the general asked as he suddenly stood up from his desk, "about the El Nido Sea?"
"I know," Kalim repeated Sharl's question softly, having to think back to the stories he read in elementary school, "that it's a barren patch of ocean several hundred miles west of the Zenan continent. There have been stories about ships and aircraft vanishing there, dating more than a thousand years, but scientists think it's just a folktale, like the Heckran of Mystic Mountain."
"I can't tell you anymore than that," General Sharl said as he paced around the desk to stand before the chair, "all I can tell you is one of the responsibilities of your position will be to use its resources to find out what's happened to Belthasar and why he disappeared. Do you accept it?"
Kalim shook his head slowly as he tried to process everything that he'd just heard. Belthasar had worked on a military project so secret that, even now, General Sharl refused to say anything about it, and he had vanished three weeks ago--his heart sank at the thought of how long that was, at all the things that could've happened in those weeks. Sharl, and probably the whole security council, wanted him to take some assignment that they wouldn't explain, one that had something to do with El Nido...
But Sharl also said that he would have a chance to find Belthasar, maybe help him.
"Alright," Kalim said quickly as he stood up, briefly wondering if he was making a horrible mistake and swallowing the sudden burst of self-doubt and dread, "I'll accept it. I'll have to take a leave of absence from the Ashtear Institute, but I should be ready to leave, for wherever I have to go, by tomorrow..."
"That won't be necessary," the general replied quickly with a single shake of his head, his black gleaming eyes narrowing in approval at Kalim's answer, "we've already arranged your immediate transfer from the Ashtear Institute. The paperwork's been handled."
"You arranged my immediate transfer," Kalim slowly repeated in wide-eyed shock, "what were you going to do if I hadn't accepted the job?"
"I would have placed you in protective military custody," Sharl answered matter-of-factly, without even an instant's hesitation, "until the situation had been resolved. We couldn't risk any security breach by allowing you to remain a civilian, with your knowledge of the project."
"But I don't KNOW anything," Kalim muttered in disbelief, bewildered by how paranoid Sharl had suddenly become. All he could glean from their mystifying conversation was that Belthasar was part of a project in the El Nido Sea, and that he'd disappeared--and yet Sharl acted as though he had given Kalim the authorization codes and security clearance to command the whole Zenan fleet.
"We have a shuttle ready to leave for El Nido in fifteen minutes," the general continued as he turned toward the hallway, "the launch platform is on the first floor, through the back of the main offices. My secretary will lead you there. Your shuttle-flight is the Syrinx, registry XR-318."
"I don't suppose," Kalim sighed with resignation, "I can go back to my apartment and pack?"
"Give us a list of clothes and personal items," Sharl said with a quick shake of his head as he opened the polished wooden doors and turned to lead Kalim back out into the silent hallway, "and we'll have them shipped to your new location by tomorrow. We can't risk a security breach of this magnitude, even if it's just for a few minutes," then, unexpectedly, the bald-haired man smiled slightly through his silver stubble, "it may sound extreme, but trust me...you'll understand once you've arrived."
* * *
Kalim sat alone in the back of the shuttle, a small tan-colored compartment with two sets of white polyester-cushioned seats facing each other; he sat by the long curved window that wrapped across the whole front half of the aircraft, on the left seat, facing toward the open cockpit perched above the back of the rear-facing seats. The ship itself was remarkably small, the whole thing little bigger than his bedroom: a white round tear-shaped vessel with two sleek and rounded, yet also small and stubby, wings protruding beneath the crescent-shaped window that stretched around the port side of the vessel, over the front of the ship, and then back around to the starboard side. The interior was Spartan in design; a sunken square cabin with four seats for passengers, the rear-facing seats divided by three steps leading up into the open cockpit, with only the back of the front seats separating him from the pilot.
He swept his straight blue hair back through his fingers and glanced out the window, looking down at the blur of blue and white streaks beneath him as the shuttle raced forward within a stream of invisible magnetic force. The craft was far too fat, and its wings too small, to possibly support it with conventional propulsion, and the stubby wings instead simply kept it balanced while the dual magnetic projectors in the cone created a powerful magnetic tunnel around the craft. The projected field magnetically dragged the ship forward through the air like the proverbial carrot hanging in front of the donkey, soundlessly and with no exhaust or fuel.
Kalim pulled out the flat gray notebook-sized digital workpad that Sharl had given him, and pushed a small button on the plastic frame beneath the screen, the black computer screen lighting up with icons. He quickly looked over the menu and puzzled over a plain folder labelled "history of the frozen flame" before finally touching the icon with his forefinger; the screen switched to a white text-screen and he began reading the file...
"February 8th, 2393 AD - An unusual gravitational field was discovered in the barren El Nido Sea during an undersea mining expedition sponsored by the Toma Corporation. The original team, led by Taren Walker, investigated the field and found the frozen flame several feet above the ocean floor, near the western perimeter of the enclosed sea. Their attempts to remove the flame from its original location had catastrophic results, and military scientists from the Zenan Coalition were enlisted to investigate the phenomenon."
Kalim shook his head, trying to figure out what the file could possibly be referring to, then tapped the name "frozen flame," highlighting it and silently running a computer-search on the name. He'd never heard the phrase before in his life, and nothing in the text offered any hint of its meaning.
The workpad suddenly gave a quick series of chirping beeps.
"Access denied," a new window of text suddenly popped onto the screen over the file he'd just been reading, "level 3 security clearance required for information about the frozen flame."
He shook his head with a sigh and opened the machine-language program, directly accessing the network that linked the small portable computer to the processing core of Mother Brain, the planet-wide computer system.
The Mother Brain artificial-intelligence program had run all the production centers and archives of their world for almost four centuries, with the help of constant upgrades and modifications. Even so, the original programming language was fairly simple, and several years ago, on a particularly boring night, he'd entertained himself by figuring out the algorithms it used to determine a user's security clearance. He could trick Mother Brain into giving him virtually any file with just a few lines of code, and only his sense of honesty had kept him from taking advantage of the outdated programs of the Mother Brain system.
Kalim finished typing a whole slew of new security subprograms and algorithms, forcing Mother Brain to open all text files relating to the frozen flame, and he smiled a little with triumph as he pressed the enter key and leaned back in his seat, gripping the flat square disk in one hand as he waited for the file to appear.
The handheld computer gave another string of high-pitched beeps.
"Access denied," another text-box read, "level 3 security clearance will be granted upon your arrival at the facility, Lieutenant Skuld."
Kalim blinked in surprise and slowly dropped the workpad in his lap as he looked back out the window at the blurred seaweed-draped ocean far beneath the gliding shuttle; he knew the programming language perfectly, there was no way Mother Brain could have told the difference between him and any core-maintenance worker or system-operator. And there was definitely no way it should have known him by name...
"Let me guess," the pilot called back into the cabin, "FATE"s giving you a hard time."
"Well," Kalim replied, blinking with confusion, "I wouldn't say it's fate. It's really just this computer..."
The pilot suddenly laughed, his voice rising into a parrot-like cackling caw, and he glanced back at Kalim for a moment, deep blue feathers covering his head, except for a thick yellow beak and beady round black eye, then turned back to the controls as he talked in a shrill clicking voice.
"No, I don't mean it like that," he chuckled, "I mean FATE, it's the name of the computer."
"You mean this isn't linked to Mother Brain?"
"Nope," the bird-like mystic replied, "FATE's based on the original Mother Brain software matrix, but most of her core programming has been rewritten by Belthasar since then. She's the computer that runs the El Nido project's archives and technology.
"He actually programmed a computer," Kalim said softly to himself, whistling in surprise; as brilliant as Belthasar had been at theoretical physics, he had always seemed slightly out of place whenever he dealt with technology. Kalim fondly remembered all the times that he'd had to place the orders at the university's automated food courts while Belthasar silently poured over the old-fashioned paper books that he loved to read, occasional jotting down notes in the margins with the quill pens he'd made himself.
"You knew Belthasar," the pilot asked with a backward glance then, without waiting for an answer, began talking again, "he's a great guy. Most of the physicists just live in their heads, but he liked everybody, he didn't care about rank or how much you knew about science. I probably wouldn't even be here if it weren't for him; let's face it, you don't see many mystics working at the Zenan military bases, but he treated everyone the same."
Kalim smiled a little, almost looking forward to seeing the warm-hearted old professor again, before he suddenly remembered why he was coming to El Nido in the first place. His heart sank and he stared silently through the window, watching a flashing sea of ominous thunderclouds give way to the dark churning ocean once more. After a moment's silence, the bird-like pilot began talking again.
"Sorry if I'm rambling on," he chirped, "but we don't get to meet many new people in El Nido. It's been six months since I've even seen the mainland. It hasn't changed at all, but it's weird seeing all those skyscrapers and hovercars after living in El Nido for so long..."
"You're on the staff," Kalim asked.
"Yeah," the avian pilot cawked, "the whole thing's too top-secret to hire pilots from the outside, so I've got double-duty. Usually I'm on the maintenance crew for FATE's processing centers."
"Why do you call the computer that," Kalim asked, leaning forward on his knees.
"It's an acronym," the pilot replied, and then he paused, filling the shuttle with an awkward silence.
"It's classified," Kalim said with a disappointed sigh, leaning back against his seat once more.
"Yeah," the pilot said, his voice lowered slightly, and then after another pause, he spoke up, his voice quick and cheerful, "but what the heck, I'm sure you'll find out as soon as we get there anyway. The name stands for 'Flame Arbitration and Temporal Engineering' system."
Kalim tried to dissect the phrase. "Flame arbitration" probably referred to the "frozen flame," whatever that meant, but he didn't have a clue what "temporal engineering" meant--except, perhaps, for one meaning that seemed too unimaginable to consider.
A flash of deep metallic green suddenly filled the window and he felt the shuttle rock and tilt left and right as the pilot quickly wrenched the ship back upright. Kalim stared out the window and caught a quick glimpse of a huge emerald serpent undulating up and down through the clouds, supported by six slender fluttering dragonfly-wings, the sunlight reflecting off the iridescent scales and nearly blinding him; each of the thing's wings were bigger than a man, and the segmented beast itself was as large as a whale. The young man stared in shock as it disappeared into a white billowing cloud, then whirled toward the cockpit.
"What," he hissed as he finally managed to breathe, "was THAT?!"
"That," the pilot answered with a sigh, "was a wingapede. This is gonna make things a lot trickier. I'd better radio the center and tell Tessik to bring a security detail to the landing platform. Anyway, we're coming up on the El Nido Sea now. You won't get many chances to see it from up here..."
Kalim turned back to the strip of glass running along the walls of the shuttle and stared out at the vast heaving ocean beneath them, now a bright turquoise-green color. Faint feathery white clouds drifted beneath the shuttle and they suddenly crossed a wide ring of jagged coral and algae-coated islets into a huge open expanse of still blue water. He looked over the empty Sea of El Nido, stretching out from beneath the shuttle to the very rim of the horizon, then blinked in surprise as several islands emerged from the steamy mists of the tropical sea. A small desert island covered with sand lay near the northern rim of the enclosed sea, above a tiny crimson island dominated by a steep jagged volcano.
He slid quickly down the seat to the opposite window and peered out along the southern edge of the sea, to find a third island, no wider than a few miles, but covered with lush green forests and glittering pools of crystal water. He twisted his head to look back past the tail of the shuttle at the western rim of the El Nido Sea to find yet another island, a perfectly round plateau with straight rocky cliffs rising high above the crashing waves, shrouded in a deep silent fog.
The aircraft glided across another, smaller ring of bright lime-green coral, and Kalim shook his head as he stared down at the mind-bending sight within small lagoon beneath them. The ocean itself seemed to rise out of the lagoon into the sky, along three straight walls of water, the phantasmal structure capped by a triangular roof of shimmering seawater.
"What is that," he softly asked as he stared at a ring of bubbles as large as a city, set in the middle of the huge triangular shell of water that they now circled. He noticed that each corner of the shell was marked by a tiny islet, and that the shell itself seemed to glow with a faint turquoise light.
"That's the center's force-field," the pilot replied, "it's not just a physical barrier, it also refracts the optical image of the surrounding ocean around itself. It might look pretty strange up-close, but to satellites and high-altitude aircraft, it's a perfect camouflage. I'm transmitting the security codes now..."
The watery shell seemed to shudder for a moment and it suddenly began to pour away, cascading into countless crashing waterfalls; it had to be an illusion, Kalim reminded himself, since the water itself was just a mirage, but it looked as though all the water was rushing down the walls of the shell in huge thundering torrents, until the barrier had drained completely away. He now saw a single island in the center of the lagoon, nearly covered by a sterling platinum-white city that, on one side, rose into a tapering tower of alternating red and white terraces, the fortress surrounded by a hexagonal ring of roads and covered corridors at half a mile wide.
"I thought," Kalim managed to say as he stared down at the city, "the El Nido Sea was empty."
"It used to be," the pilot replied, and then the shuttle suddenly banked to the left as it twisted back around toward the central island, "brace yourself...we're about to land."
* * *
Kalim hopped out of the cramped shuttle to find himself on an empty plain of white concrete, littered with small shuttles much like the Syrinx, the landing strip stretching away into neatly-clipped grassy meadows behind him. The glass walls of the city, reflecting the deep blue sky and drifting clouds, rose up before him along the northern edge of the strip, and the tower that he'd seen from the air loomed behind the smaller glass buildings, overlooking the whole island. He could see now that the tower looked almost mechanical, like a giant fuse, the white sterling metal rings and smoothly-curved walls tapering up from the ruby-hued base toward a single horseshoe-shaped metal ring that surrounded the slender neck of the building, perhaps as a sort of transmitter. The tower expanded back out above the horseshoe into a wide cup surrounded by two rings, and he tried to figure out what purpose such a bizarre design could serve...
Several people walked briskly between the scattered shuttles and he turned his attention toward the small group now approaching him. A young woman with long straight blonde hair tied into a ponytail and a pale, tensed, triangular face seemed to lead the other two figures; her ice-blue eyes seeming to narrow at him and he glanced down at her short-sleeved white cotton shirt and tan-colored slacks.
Kalim twisted his head slightly to study the next figure: the dark-eyed man wore a tall black hat with a gold plate across the front, along with a black gold-fringed trenchcoat, the collar raised around his neck and a purple sash tied around the waist of the trenchcoat, the unmistakable uniform of a high-ranking Zenan military officer.
He glanced behind them to the third person, and then suddenly realized that it wasn't a person at all: a large round RY-series robot kept pace with the other two, his golden body divided into two segments, his chest and waist lined with studded leather flaps, and his head a flat metal saucer with two emerald-green optical sensors.
"So then," the woman called out as the group neared the shuttle, "you're the new project director?"
"The new," Kalim suddenly glanced about, making sure nobody else had stepped out of the shuttle before realizing she meant him, "wait a minute, I'M the new project director?!"
"He wouldn't know," the dark-suited man said to her as the three reached the shuttle, "the briefings only take place upon arrival. All he knows right now is that he accepted a post here."
"Fine," the woman rolled her eyes impatiently, "is your name Kalim Skuld?"
"Yes," Kalim answered quizzically.
"Then you're the new project director," she nodded decisively, "my name's Alissa, I've been the acting director since Belthasar's disappearance. This is," she gestured to the tall expressionless man in the dark trenchcoat, "Tessik, our security director and the current biological interface of the FATE system. You do know," she asked slowly, "what the FATE system is, right?"
"Of course," he answered defensively, with a quick grateful glance to the shuttle-pilot, the birdlike mystic with thick blue feathers and a parrot-like head that swivelled nervously about as he watched the sky; if it hadn't been for their conversation during the flight, Kalim wouldn't have even known that much, although the term "biological interface" still didn't really make sense to him.
"I called for a security team," the pilot suddenly chirped, "we attracted a wingapede on the way here."
"Oh great," Alissa sighed with exasperation, and she whirled around to address the security officer, "this is exactly why I wanted him brought here by boat instead of a shuttle! Every time we use an aircraft within sight of their island they mistake it for another wingapede and their territorial instincts take over."
"We won't need to waste a security team on this situation," the dark-cloaked man named Tessik answered the pilot, "I can handle a wingapede on my own."
"Yeah, we know how YOU handle them," Alissa answered, her hands on her hips as she turned back toward Tessik, "if people would just stop flying their shuttles around that island, we wouldn't have this problem..."
The golden robot quietly stepped around them as they began to argue, and he bowed slightly to Kalim before introducing himself to the puzzled young scientist in a series of high-pitched digital chirps.
"Greetings," he said cheerfully, "I am Robo, model number R-66Y. Belthasar has said much about you, Kalim. Please forgive the ill manners of my colleagues. The situation has been very tense since the disappearance of our former project director."
"So Belthasar was the director," Kalim said to himself, and it suddenly made sense. Who better for the military, he thought, to send as a replacement for Belthasar than Belthasar's protege?
"Yes," the robot answered, "he actually founded the project. What you see here represents the culmination of his life's work."
"Everybody down," Tessik's deep voice quickly shouted, and Kalim felt the bulky metal joints beneath Robo's rubber-covered hand grabbing his shoulder and shoving him face-first onto the ground. He twisted his head up from the concrete to see a deep black shadow fall over the landing strip--and then the same green scales he'd seen from the shuttle, now only a few feet away. The giant centipede-like insect hovered above the group, its emerald body arched upright, long spindly legs wiggling as the wind and deafening hum of its beating wings filled the air. The thing whipped its serpentine, segmented neck downward, sharp talon-like mouthpieces snapping and hissing at the crouched group, its legs clawing at the smooth concrete around them.
Kalim suddenly noticed Tessik still standing upright behind the creature, aiming a large coal-black gun, with a thick box-like barrel lined with deep grooves, at the insect's body. The security chief silently pulled the trigger and, for an instant, a wave of icy darkness seemed to sweep outward through the air. The wingapede suddenly gave a screeching, high-pitched cry and its snaking body suddenly twisted in on itself, folding and collapsing into a tangled knot until the giant insect finally crushed itself within its own weight. The fluttering pearl-hued wings slowly stopped beating and the monstrous bug slammed onto the concrete, wriggling legs falling limp after a moment of frantic twitching.
"What did you do," Kalim asked, his ears still ringing from the sound of its wings.
"A controlled graviton-pulse directed at the creature's center of mass," Tessik answered as he slipped the weapon back into his coat, "causing it to be crushed by its own amplified gravity. The weapon's based on Belthasar's theory of elemental energy...more specifically, black-elemental effects."
"Belthasar's theory of what," Kalim asked himself in wearying confusion.
"Well then, Kalim," Alissa smiled, seeming almost amused by Kalim's bewilderment as she turned to lead the group back to the city, "welcome to Chronopolis."
An original fan-fiction by Demon-Fighter Ash
based on the Square game "Chrono Cross"
Part 1: Future's End
Chapter 1: The Secret Sea
March, 2398 AD
Kalim peered out the wide crystal window filling the southern wall of the marble office, squinting in the bright flickering sunlight as he watched silver streams of glittering hover-cars sweeping between the prismatic denadorite-coated skyscrapers. Vast flocks of distant hover-cars parted into winding ribbons and merged back into single lines like starlings far beneath the sheer obsidian walls of the military center, and he strained his eyes to make out the pedestrian walkways beneath the wispy clouds.
He caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the glass, his shaggy blue hair hanging loosely around his ears, the edges of his loose black leather jacket and dark slacks almost seeming to blend into his gray shirt in the shimmering crystalline reflection. He stared curiously into his mirror image's sapphire eyes; most of the office buildings, including the universiy where he lived and worked, now used transparent low-level force-fields as windows, and he hadn't seen his own reflection in a glass window since he was a child. He shook his head, wondering how old the stark black tower of the Zenan military command-center actually was, and then whirled back toward the oak-panelled double-doors as sharp clicking footsteps echoed through the outside hallway.
"Kalim Skuld," a deep commanding voice called out as the doors swung open, and a tall powerful man dressed in the black gold-fringed uniform of the Zenan Coalition officers strode into the wide marble chambers, a gray stubble on the older man's square-jawed, and otherwise bald, face. Kalim did a slight double-take, trying to hide his surprise; he'd seen General Sharl giving press conferences on the public holo-images, speaking on behalf of the prime-minister. Kalim had received an electronic notice to report to "office 247" on the top floor of the Monolith, the military command center that rose like a black slab from the middle of the capital city of Trann, but even the office secretary hadn't told him who he was meeting.
"The secretary," Kalim answered nervously, with an apologetic glance at the ivory-white walls of the chamber, obviously Sharl's office, "told me to wait in the office."
"That's right," Sharl nodded and Kalim relaxed slightly at the half-smile crossing the general's stern features, the man's dark eyes focused on him, "it's an honor to meet you, Professor Skuld."
"I," Kalim started to say, then paused, unsure of where to begin: that the general of the whole Coalition army was honored to meet him, of all people, or that Sharl had called him professor, when he was really just a teaching assistant, still a year away from a full doctorate.
"And you," Kalim said blankly after a moment, then added, "how are you today?"
It was a stupid question, but it had crossed his lips before he realized it, the automatic small-talk he used to deal with new people. Fortunately, Sharl either didn't notice how inane it was, or decided to simply treat it as serious and reasonable a question as any other.
"Not well, I'm afraid," he answered seriously, "which is why we've called you here. I understand, Mr. Skuld, that you're one of the most highly-respected physicists at the Ashtear Institute of Technology, the protege of Belthasar himself, back when he was a professor."
"Kalim is fine," the young man said quickly, having never liked his last name. He'd gained a reputation as Belthasar's protege, one he'd never felt he deserved--all he did was have coffee with his old professor and helped him work on some of the more interesting puzzles and theories in quantum-theory and temporal physics; he'd considered Belthasar a friend, and still slightly resented the way people interpreted that friendship as some status symbol or measure of his own talent.
"Right," Sharl nodded, "I've read some of your published papers, Kalim. You've even found ways to improve on Belthasar's theories about time, correcting some of his equations."
"I wouldn't say that," Kalim answered sheepishly, embarrassed by the suggesting that he could ever improve on his mentor's wisdom, "I just speculated that under some conditions, a non-causal influence on the past might not actually change history, but instead divide the original timeline along the probability axis, creating two or more parallel timelines that...
"But," Kalim finished with a tight awkward smile, realizing how close he'd come to going into one of his college lectures, "you said you've read them, so you know that already."
"I have," General Sharl nodded, and he gestured toward a small pale cushioned seat in front of the desk as he stepped behind the wide glass-covered stone desk and sat down, and Kalim quickly took the seat before the desk, "most of the council thinks you could be the second-best mind on the planet."
"Oh," Kalim said, and thought silently to himself, trying to figure out what to say, then simply shrugged, "even if that's true, that's still a huge gap. I'm nowhere close to Belthasar."
"Who is," Sharl replied, and settled into his own cushioned leather chair, swinging it around to face the young scientist, "how much do you know about Belthasar's latest assignment?"
"Nothing," Kalim answered, suddenly beginning to suspect why he might have been called to the Monolith, "Belthasar never told me why he had to leave the institute, he just said it was more important than I could imagine. I haven't heard from him in almost four years."
"I see," the general nodded sternly, hands clasped before his face as he grew more serious, "then it seems we have the same problem. Belthasar has disappeared."
"Wha," Kalim jolted upright in surprise, "how? He was working for the military, wasn't he?"
"He was," Sharl nodded, "but three weeks ago he failed to report for his shift. A search of the facilities found no trace of him, and he's been gone ever since then."
"It's a military facility, isn't it," Kalim suddenly said, his normally mild temper rising at the thought of his old friend and mentor vanishing in the middle of an entire army, "how could you have lost him, don't you have video-cameras and soldiers for this kind of thing?"
"We do," the general replied, "and they didn't see a thing. We've torn through the whole complex trying to find him, and so far we've found nothing. The only thing our forensic reports can conclude is that Belthasar must have left the project and covered his trail, or someone else with just as much knowledge about the project covered up his departure. We still don't know how that could happen."
"What does that mean," Kalim sighed.
"A lot of the council members," Sharl answered slowly, "think it means that he defected."
"That's impossible," Kalim quickly shot back, tensed within his seat, "Belthasar didn't give a damn about the cold war or the Choras Alliance, all he cared about was science, helping mankind..."
"It's one theory," Sharl interrupted, "and we don't have enough information yet to come up with anything else. We contacted you because you might be able to help us find out what happened to him, and to continue his work. I need to know if you'll accept the position."
Position, Kalim asked himself, who had said anything about a position? He didn't know what Belthasar had been doing for the past four years, and Sharl hadn't offered any clues. He wondered for a moment if he'd missed part of the conversation, then decided to simply ask.
"What position?"
"That's classified," Sharl answered quickly.
"You," Kalim said slowly, scratching the back of his head and leaning forward in his seat as he tried to make sense out of the offer, "you...want to know whether I'll accept a job...but you can't even tell me what I'm being offered?"
"This is the same offer we made to all the scientists involved in this project," Sharl answered, "and it's the offer we made to Belthasar himself. Nobody's regretted the choice."
"Except for Belthasar," Kalim muttered to himself, then spoke up, "what is this project?"
"What do you know," the general asked as he suddenly stood up from his desk, "about the El Nido Sea?"
"I know," Kalim repeated Sharl's question softly, having to think back to the stories he read in elementary school, "that it's a barren patch of ocean several hundred miles west of the Zenan continent. There have been stories about ships and aircraft vanishing there, dating more than a thousand years, but scientists think it's just a folktale, like the Heckran of Mystic Mountain."
"I can't tell you anymore than that," General Sharl said as he paced around the desk to stand before the chair, "all I can tell you is one of the responsibilities of your position will be to use its resources to find out what's happened to Belthasar and why he disappeared. Do you accept it?"
Kalim shook his head slowly as he tried to process everything that he'd just heard. Belthasar had worked on a military project so secret that, even now, General Sharl refused to say anything about it, and he had vanished three weeks ago--his heart sank at the thought of how long that was, at all the things that could've happened in those weeks. Sharl, and probably the whole security council, wanted him to take some assignment that they wouldn't explain, one that had something to do with El Nido...
But Sharl also said that he would have a chance to find Belthasar, maybe help him.
"Alright," Kalim said quickly as he stood up, briefly wondering if he was making a horrible mistake and swallowing the sudden burst of self-doubt and dread, "I'll accept it. I'll have to take a leave of absence from the Ashtear Institute, but I should be ready to leave, for wherever I have to go, by tomorrow..."
"That won't be necessary," the general replied quickly with a single shake of his head, his black gleaming eyes narrowing in approval at Kalim's answer, "we've already arranged your immediate transfer from the Ashtear Institute. The paperwork's been handled."
"You arranged my immediate transfer," Kalim slowly repeated in wide-eyed shock, "what were you going to do if I hadn't accepted the job?"
"I would have placed you in protective military custody," Sharl answered matter-of-factly, without even an instant's hesitation, "until the situation had been resolved. We couldn't risk any security breach by allowing you to remain a civilian, with your knowledge of the project."
"But I don't KNOW anything," Kalim muttered in disbelief, bewildered by how paranoid Sharl had suddenly become. All he could glean from their mystifying conversation was that Belthasar was part of a project in the El Nido Sea, and that he'd disappeared--and yet Sharl acted as though he had given Kalim the authorization codes and security clearance to command the whole Zenan fleet.
"We have a shuttle ready to leave for El Nido in fifteen minutes," the general continued as he turned toward the hallway, "the launch platform is on the first floor, through the back of the main offices. My secretary will lead you there. Your shuttle-flight is the Syrinx, registry XR-318."
"I don't suppose," Kalim sighed with resignation, "I can go back to my apartment and pack?"
"Give us a list of clothes and personal items," Sharl said with a quick shake of his head as he opened the polished wooden doors and turned to lead Kalim back out into the silent hallway, "and we'll have them shipped to your new location by tomorrow. We can't risk a security breach of this magnitude, even if it's just for a few minutes," then, unexpectedly, the bald-haired man smiled slightly through his silver stubble, "it may sound extreme, but trust me...you'll understand once you've arrived."
* * *
Kalim sat alone in the back of the shuttle, a small tan-colored compartment with two sets of white polyester-cushioned seats facing each other; he sat by the long curved window that wrapped across the whole front half of the aircraft, on the left seat, facing toward the open cockpit perched above the back of the rear-facing seats. The ship itself was remarkably small, the whole thing little bigger than his bedroom: a white round tear-shaped vessel with two sleek and rounded, yet also small and stubby, wings protruding beneath the crescent-shaped window that stretched around the port side of the vessel, over the front of the ship, and then back around to the starboard side. The interior was Spartan in design; a sunken square cabin with four seats for passengers, the rear-facing seats divided by three steps leading up into the open cockpit, with only the back of the front seats separating him from the pilot.
He swept his straight blue hair back through his fingers and glanced out the window, looking down at the blur of blue and white streaks beneath him as the shuttle raced forward within a stream of invisible magnetic force. The craft was far too fat, and its wings too small, to possibly support it with conventional propulsion, and the stubby wings instead simply kept it balanced while the dual magnetic projectors in the cone created a powerful magnetic tunnel around the craft. The projected field magnetically dragged the ship forward through the air like the proverbial carrot hanging in front of the donkey, soundlessly and with no exhaust or fuel.
Kalim pulled out the flat gray notebook-sized digital workpad that Sharl had given him, and pushed a small button on the plastic frame beneath the screen, the black computer screen lighting up with icons. He quickly looked over the menu and puzzled over a plain folder labelled "history of the frozen flame" before finally touching the icon with his forefinger; the screen switched to a white text-screen and he began reading the file...
"February 8th, 2393 AD - An unusual gravitational field was discovered in the barren El Nido Sea during an undersea mining expedition sponsored by the Toma Corporation. The original team, led by Taren Walker, investigated the field and found the frozen flame several feet above the ocean floor, near the western perimeter of the enclosed sea. Their attempts to remove the flame from its original location had catastrophic results, and military scientists from the Zenan Coalition were enlisted to investigate the phenomenon."
Kalim shook his head, trying to figure out what the file could possibly be referring to, then tapped the name "frozen flame," highlighting it and silently running a computer-search on the name. He'd never heard the phrase before in his life, and nothing in the text offered any hint of its meaning.
The workpad suddenly gave a quick series of chirping beeps.
"Access denied," a new window of text suddenly popped onto the screen over the file he'd just been reading, "level 3 security clearance required for information about the frozen flame."
He shook his head with a sigh and opened the machine-language program, directly accessing the network that linked the small portable computer to the processing core of Mother Brain, the planet-wide computer system.
The Mother Brain artificial-intelligence program had run all the production centers and archives of their world for almost four centuries, with the help of constant upgrades and modifications. Even so, the original programming language was fairly simple, and several years ago, on a particularly boring night, he'd entertained himself by figuring out the algorithms it used to determine a user's security clearance. He could trick Mother Brain into giving him virtually any file with just a few lines of code, and only his sense of honesty had kept him from taking advantage of the outdated programs of the Mother Brain system.
Kalim finished typing a whole slew of new security subprograms and algorithms, forcing Mother Brain to open all text files relating to the frozen flame, and he smiled a little with triumph as he pressed the enter key and leaned back in his seat, gripping the flat square disk in one hand as he waited for the file to appear.
The handheld computer gave another string of high-pitched beeps.
"Access denied," another text-box read, "level 3 security clearance will be granted upon your arrival at the facility, Lieutenant Skuld."
Kalim blinked in surprise and slowly dropped the workpad in his lap as he looked back out the window at the blurred seaweed-draped ocean far beneath the gliding shuttle; he knew the programming language perfectly, there was no way Mother Brain could have told the difference between him and any core-maintenance worker or system-operator. And there was definitely no way it should have known him by name...
"Let me guess," the pilot called back into the cabin, "FATE"s giving you a hard time."
"Well," Kalim replied, blinking with confusion, "I wouldn't say it's fate. It's really just this computer..."
The pilot suddenly laughed, his voice rising into a parrot-like cackling caw, and he glanced back at Kalim for a moment, deep blue feathers covering his head, except for a thick yellow beak and beady round black eye, then turned back to the controls as he talked in a shrill clicking voice.
"No, I don't mean it like that," he chuckled, "I mean FATE, it's the name of the computer."
"You mean this isn't linked to Mother Brain?"
"Nope," the bird-like mystic replied, "FATE's based on the original Mother Brain software matrix, but most of her core programming has been rewritten by Belthasar since then. She's the computer that runs the El Nido project's archives and technology.
"He actually programmed a computer," Kalim said softly to himself, whistling in surprise; as brilliant as Belthasar had been at theoretical physics, he had always seemed slightly out of place whenever he dealt with technology. Kalim fondly remembered all the times that he'd had to place the orders at the university's automated food courts while Belthasar silently poured over the old-fashioned paper books that he loved to read, occasional jotting down notes in the margins with the quill pens he'd made himself.
"You knew Belthasar," the pilot asked with a backward glance then, without waiting for an answer, began talking again, "he's a great guy. Most of the physicists just live in their heads, but he liked everybody, he didn't care about rank or how much you knew about science. I probably wouldn't even be here if it weren't for him; let's face it, you don't see many mystics working at the Zenan military bases, but he treated everyone the same."
Kalim smiled a little, almost looking forward to seeing the warm-hearted old professor again, before he suddenly remembered why he was coming to El Nido in the first place. His heart sank and he stared silently through the window, watching a flashing sea of ominous thunderclouds give way to the dark churning ocean once more. After a moment's silence, the bird-like pilot began talking again.
"Sorry if I'm rambling on," he chirped, "but we don't get to meet many new people in El Nido. It's been six months since I've even seen the mainland. It hasn't changed at all, but it's weird seeing all those skyscrapers and hovercars after living in El Nido for so long..."
"You're on the staff," Kalim asked.
"Yeah," the avian pilot cawked, "the whole thing's too top-secret to hire pilots from the outside, so I've got double-duty. Usually I'm on the maintenance crew for FATE's processing centers."
"Why do you call the computer that," Kalim asked, leaning forward on his knees.
"It's an acronym," the pilot replied, and then he paused, filling the shuttle with an awkward silence.
"It's classified," Kalim said with a disappointed sigh, leaning back against his seat once more.
"Yeah," the pilot said, his voice lowered slightly, and then after another pause, he spoke up, his voice quick and cheerful, "but what the heck, I'm sure you'll find out as soon as we get there anyway. The name stands for 'Flame Arbitration and Temporal Engineering' system."
Kalim tried to dissect the phrase. "Flame arbitration" probably referred to the "frozen flame," whatever that meant, but he didn't have a clue what "temporal engineering" meant--except, perhaps, for one meaning that seemed too unimaginable to consider.
A flash of deep metallic green suddenly filled the window and he felt the shuttle rock and tilt left and right as the pilot quickly wrenched the ship back upright. Kalim stared out the window and caught a quick glimpse of a huge emerald serpent undulating up and down through the clouds, supported by six slender fluttering dragonfly-wings, the sunlight reflecting off the iridescent scales and nearly blinding him; each of the thing's wings were bigger than a man, and the segmented beast itself was as large as a whale. The young man stared in shock as it disappeared into a white billowing cloud, then whirled toward the cockpit.
"What," he hissed as he finally managed to breathe, "was THAT?!"
"That," the pilot answered with a sigh, "was a wingapede. This is gonna make things a lot trickier. I'd better radio the center and tell Tessik to bring a security detail to the landing platform. Anyway, we're coming up on the El Nido Sea now. You won't get many chances to see it from up here..."
Kalim turned back to the strip of glass running along the walls of the shuttle and stared out at the vast heaving ocean beneath them, now a bright turquoise-green color. Faint feathery white clouds drifted beneath the shuttle and they suddenly crossed a wide ring of jagged coral and algae-coated islets into a huge open expanse of still blue water. He looked over the empty Sea of El Nido, stretching out from beneath the shuttle to the very rim of the horizon, then blinked in surprise as several islands emerged from the steamy mists of the tropical sea. A small desert island covered with sand lay near the northern rim of the enclosed sea, above a tiny crimson island dominated by a steep jagged volcano.
He slid quickly down the seat to the opposite window and peered out along the southern edge of the sea, to find a third island, no wider than a few miles, but covered with lush green forests and glittering pools of crystal water. He twisted his head to look back past the tail of the shuttle at the western rim of the El Nido Sea to find yet another island, a perfectly round plateau with straight rocky cliffs rising high above the crashing waves, shrouded in a deep silent fog.
The aircraft glided across another, smaller ring of bright lime-green coral, and Kalim shook his head as he stared down at the mind-bending sight within small lagoon beneath them. The ocean itself seemed to rise out of the lagoon into the sky, along three straight walls of water, the phantasmal structure capped by a triangular roof of shimmering seawater.
"What is that," he softly asked as he stared at a ring of bubbles as large as a city, set in the middle of the huge triangular shell of water that they now circled. He noticed that each corner of the shell was marked by a tiny islet, and that the shell itself seemed to glow with a faint turquoise light.
"That's the center's force-field," the pilot replied, "it's not just a physical barrier, it also refracts the optical image of the surrounding ocean around itself. It might look pretty strange up-close, but to satellites and high-altitude aircraft, it's a perfect camouflage. I'm transmitting the security codes now..."
The watery shell seemed to shudder for a moment and it suddenly began to pour away, cascading into countless crashing waterfalls; it had to be an illusion, Kalim reminded himself, since the water itself was just a mirage, but it looked as though all the water was rushing down the walls of the shell in huge thundering torrents, until the barrier had drained completely away. He now saw a single island in the center of the lagoon, nearly covered by a sterling platinum-white city that, on one side, rose into a tapering tower of alternating red and white terraces, the fortress surrounded by a hexagonal ring of roads and covered corridors at half a mile wide.
"I thought," Kalim managed to say as he stared down at the city, "the El Nido Sea was empty."
"It used to be," the pilot replied, and then the shuttle suddenly banked to the left as it twisted back around toward the central island, "brace yourself...we're about to land."
* * *
Kalim hopped out of the cramped shuttle to find himself on an empty plain of white concrete, littered with small shuttles much like the Syrinx, the landing strip stretching away into neatly-clipped grassy meadows behind him. The glass walls of the city, reflecting the deep blue sky and drifting clouds, rose up before him along the northern edge of the strip, and the tower that he'd seen from the air loomed behind the smaller glass buildings, overlooking the whole island. He could see now that the tower looked almost mechanical, like a giant fuse, the white sterling metal rings and smoothly-curved walls tapering up from the ruby-hued base toward a single horseshoe-shaped metal ring that surrounded the slender neck of the building, perhaps as a sort of transmitter. The tower expanded back out above the horseshoe into a wide cup surrounded by two rings, and he tried to figure out what purpose such a bizarre design could serve...
Several people walked briskly between the scattered shuttles and he turned his attention toward the small group now approaching him. A young woman with long straight blonde hair tied into a ponytail and a pale, tensed, triangular face seemed to lead the other two figures; her ice-blue eyes seeming to narrow at him and he glanced down at her short-sleeved white cotton shirt and tan-colored slacks.
Kalim twisted his head slightly to study the next figure: the dark-eyed man wore a tall black hat with a gold plate across the front, along with a black gold-fringed trenchcoat, the collar raised around his neck and a purple sash tied around the waist of the trenchcoat, the unmistakable uniform of a high-ranking Zenan military officer.
He glanced behind them to the third person, and then suddenly realized that it wasn't a person at all: a large round RY-series robot kept pace with the other two, his golden body divided into two segments, his chest and waist lined with studded leather flaps, and his head a flat metal saucer with two emerald-green optical sensors.
"So then," the woman called out as the group neared the shuttle, "you're the new project director?"
"The new," Kalim suddenly glanced about, making sure nobody else had stepped out of the shuttle before realizing she meant him, "wait a minute, I'M the new project director?!"
"He wouldn't know," the dark-suited man said to her as the three reached the shuttle, "the briefings only take place upon arrival. All he knows right now is that he accepted a post here."
"Fine," the woman rolled her eyes impatiently, "is your name Kalim Skuld?"
"Yes," Kalim answered quizzically.
"Then you're the new project director," she nodded decisively, "my name's Alissa, I've been the acting director since Belthasar's disappearance. This is," she gestured to the tall expressionless man in the dark trenchcoat, "Tessik, our security director and the current biological interface of the FATE system. You do know," she asked slowly, "what the FATE system is, right?"
"Of course," he answered defensively, with a quick grateful glance to the shuttle-pilot, the birdlike mystic with thick blue feathers and a parrot-like head that swivelled nervously about as he watched the sky; if it hadn't been for their conversation during the flight, Kalim wouldn't have even known that much, although the term "biological interface" still didn't really make sense to him.
"I called for a security team," the pilot suddenly chirped, "we attracted a wingapede on the way here."
"Oh great," Alissa sighed with exasperation, and she whirled around to address the security officer, "this is exactly why I wanted him brought here by boat instead of a shuttle! Every time we use an aircraft within sight of their island they mistake it for another wingapede and their territorial instincts take over."
"We won't need to waste a security team on this situation," the dark-cloaked man named Tessik answered the pilot, "I can handle a wingapede on my own."
"Yeah, we know how YOU handle them," Alissa answered, her hands on her hips as she turned back toward Tessik, "if people would just stop flying their shuttles around that island, we wouldn't have this problem..."
The golden robot quietly stepped around them as they began to argue, and he bowed slightly to Kalim before introducing himself to the puzzled young scientist in a series of high-pitched digital chirps.
"Greetings," he said cheerfully, "I am Robo, model number R-66Y. Belthasar has said much about you, Kalim. Please forgive the ill manners of my colleagues. The situation has been very tense since the disappearance of our former project director."
"So Belthasar was the director," Kalim said to himself, and it suddenly made sense. Who better for the military, he thought, to send as a replacement for Belthasar than Belthasar's protege?
"Yes," the robot answered, "he actually founded the project. What you see here represents the culmination of his life's work."
"Everybody down," Tessik's deep voice quickly shouted, and Kalim felt the bulky metal joints beneath Robo's rubber-covered hand grabbing his shoulder and shoving him face-first onto the ground. He twisted his head up from the concrete to see a deep black shadow fall over the landing strip--and then the same green scales he'd seen from the shuttle, now only a few feet away. The giant centipede-like insect hovered above the group, its emerald body arched upright, long spindly legs wiggling as the wind and deafening hum of its beating wings filled the air. The thing whipped its serpentine, segmented neck downward, sharp talon-like mouthpieces snapping and hissing at the crouched group, its legs clawing at the smooth concrete around them.
Kalim suddenly noticed Tessik still standing upright behind the creature, aiming a large coal-black gun, with a thick box-like barrel lined with deep grooves, at the insect's body. The security chief silently pulled the trigger and, for an instant, a wave of icy darkness seemed to sweep outward through the air. The wingapede suddenly gave a screeching, high-pitched cry and its snaking body suddenly twisted in on itself, folding and collapsing into a tangled knot until the giant insect finally crushed itself within its own weight. The fluttering pearl-hued wings slowly stopped beating and the monstrous bug slammed onto the concrete, wriggling legs falling limp after a moment of frantic twitching.
"What did you do," Kalim asked, his ears still ringing from the sound of its wings.
"A controlled graviton-pulse directed at the creature's center of mass," Tessik answered as he slipped the weapon back into his coat, "causing it to be crushed by its own amplified gravity. The weapon's based on Belthasar's theory of elemental energy...more specifically, black-elemental effects."
"Belthasar's theory of what," Kalim asked himself in wearying confusion.
"Well then, Kalim," Alissa smiled, seeming almost amused by Kalim's bewilderment as she turned to lead the group back to the city, "welcome to Chronopolis."