A copy-write warning (Nothing funny to say): The Chrono Trigger characters
don't belong to me but Aya and Co. do.
Chapter 5
Magus was searching in the snow. Not for his sister, but for a way back to the last village. He kept raging at himself how he could lose the road on such familiar territory. The sky turned dark. //Great,// he taught by himself, //another snowstorm coming up, could it become worse?// Soon the snow started to fall and Magus pulled his cape closer to his body, after a while Magus couldn't see anything except the cold white. It slammed against his bare arms and face and it felt like his blood instantly froze in his veins. //I have to find shelter fast or I won't last long!// After a while he noticed a small cleft in one of the mountains. He made a scramble towards it and when he finally was inside he collapsed. He felt exhausted and frozen to the bone. When the feeling disappeared a little he changed his posture and sat with his back against the cave wall, he didn't care to explore the cave, he just summoned a little flame which surprisingly burned on the frozen ground. Magus stared at the little flame for a long time and then he looked outside.
//If I almost freeze to death in this weather, how did Ayla ever survive in her 'revealing' outfit// He grinned by the taught. He never taught he would miss the stupid cave-lady, or any of the other people who helped him to destroy Lavos. He missed them all, the show-off Lucca with her theories about everything, their leader Crono, princess Marle, who always irritated him with her exaggerated happiness, the robot which they so originally called Robo and he even missed his sworn arch-enemy Frog. Did they miss him? He doubted it, when he was with other people he always acted like he only cared about himself and his sister, but this was just to cover his fear. His fear that his dark side could take over. This triggered not so pleasant memories of his time as the king of mystics, he killed thousands of innocent people back then.
"Will people ever forgive me for what I did?" He asked to the flame, he didn't expect an answer. The flame faded and it started to get cold again. He started to get sleepy.
//I better get some rest, it doesn't look like this storm will end soon.// He pulled his cape closer to his body and closed his eyes, it took a little while because of the cold but he fell asleep.
Lightning struck and Magus awoke. He wanted to sleep again but then he noticed something strange, it wasn't snowing, it rained. When he looked around his heart took a leap when he saw a skeleton laying next to him.
// What on earth is going on here? That skeleton didn't lay there before.// He walked outside and saw something very familiar; his own castle.
//How did he get here? There wasn't a time-gate in that cave and if it was, it can't open by itself.// he walked towards his castle and went inside. It didn't change much on the inside, apart from the dust and some cobwebs. And he again wondered what was going on here, but his taught was interrupted with a terrifying scream coming out of the dungeon.
//What the… I taught we killed them the last time.// And when he raced down the stairs to help the person it fell upon him; //Ozzie! The green fat freak is still alive, but not for long.// When he reached the dungeon the screaming stopped, he took out his scythe and prepared for battle. "Prepare to meet your doom, Ozzie." He said while entering the room. When he was inside he froze, letting the scythe drop out of his hands. There, in a puddle of blood, with a hole in her chest, lay Schala.
//Oh god no, please don't let it be.// He slowly kneeled down next to the body of his sister, took it in his arms and started crying. After all the horrible times he had experienced it couldn't end like this. After a while, when he had no more tears left, his sadness slowly turned into rage, rage towards Ozzie. He stood up, reached for his scythe and started shouting.
"Ozzie, you sick psycho! Where are you?! I'm gonna tear you apart, limp by limp!" There was no answer, but after a while he heard laughter, he knew it wasn't Ozzie, but somehow that laugh sounded familiar.
"Finally, you're here." A voice from behind him said, Magus turned around, ready to turn him into chopped liver. But when he turned he instantly froze. Because he was looking at someone very familiar; himself.
//How, how can this be.// He taught, and he noticed his other self was holding something, when he looked closer he saw what it was. A heart, Schala's heart. He looked at the heart with terror, then at the face which was grinning evilly.
"What's the matter? Did you really think you couldn't do such a thing?" His double said, while crushing the heart with his hands.
"No." Was all Magus could answer.
"Oh really, I know you can. And you know why? Because I am you."
"No, you can't be me!" Magus shouted, he didn't know if he was shouting to his double or to himself. "I would never hurt Schala."
"Oh yes you can, just let your evil side control your choices. If you do that you can be all-powerful."
"NO!" He ran towards his evil self, ready to strike, but when the half- moon shaped blade nearly hit him, his evil self grabbed the handle. What happened then, he didn't know exactly but first his evil self pulled the scythe out of his hands and the next moment he was pinned against a wall. Magus struggled but he couldn't escape the iron grip.
"Still fighting are you? Why don't you just give in to the darkness inside you." His evil self said, tightening the grip, making Magus gasp for air.
"I will never give in to you." Magus managed to say.
"To bad, but you leave me no other choice." And then his evil self plunged his hand into his stomach. "I'll just have to destroy you."
He pulled his hand back out and let go of Magus, who collapsed on his knees. He pushed his hand against the wound to make it stop bleeding. His evil self laughed and cleaned his hand with Magus's cape.
"Now say goodbye." And he spoke some strange, ancient formulas, pointed his finger at Magus and a dark bomb erupted around him, and all he could do was scream.
Still screaming, Magus awoke from his dream. He was panting trough his mouth and his heart almost banged out of his chest. It took a few minutes for him to realize that it was a just a nightmare. //Only a nightmare, it didn't really happened.// But the words of his evil side kept bothering him: "Why don't you just give in to the darkness inside you?
He considered for a short moment to do so, but he instantly changed his mind. //No, I can't give in, if I do so, all my friends will be in danger.// But you don't even know for sure if it are your friends, and it is so hard to keep your evil inside. //What am I thinking? Of course I have to fight it!// For what? // Oh shut up!//
Man he hated talking to himself, it was so exhausting and his two sides never seemed to agree. He looked outside, the snowstorm was still raging and he was in no mood to fall sleep again, so he decided to explore the cave. First there was a little tunnel with a very low ceiling so that Magus had to walk with a bowed head, at the end of the tunnel there was a small clearing with two time-gates. One was the usual bleu color, but the other one was bright red. //A red gate, now that's something you don't see every day, I wonder where it will lead to.// And before you could say 'bad idea' he already opened the gate and stepped into it.
When Magus stepped outside again the first thing he noticed was that it was hot, very hot. When he looked up he saw the reason; wherever this place was, it had three suns.
//Right, I got the feeling I'm not on earth anymore.// Magus walked on, after a while he noticed he was on an island, with two types of weird trees. The first one had a smooth trunk and no branches and roots. The other type had a rougher trunk than the other and it looked like the bottom side had fused with the ground, it also had no branches except for four on the top which looked like giant claws. In fact, when he looked close he saw it were giant claws, and the other trees were nothing more than gigantic wooden stakes, impaling the gigantic creature. This was starting get creepy and Magus started to walk back to the gate. When he was almost there a drop of liquid fell from one of the claws onto his head, it ran from the base of his hair to his chin, leaving a trail off burned skin. It then fell on his glove and ate his way trough the leather and burned his hand. It burned so bad he went to a pool of water to cool it, but when he dipped in his burned hand he regretted it because it turned out to be the same sort of liquid. Luckily he pulled out his hand fast enough so it wasn't completely eaten away, just badly burned. //I better get back, this is a little to dangerous for me.// When he arrived back at the gate his entire left arm was paralyzed and the scar on his face burned like hell. It took a lot of trouble to open the gate with just one arm but when he was back in his own age he was glad that he didn't wash his face with that stuff. He again walked trough the small tunnel and he was pleased to see the storm ended so now he could get back to the last village and get some help with his injuries.
"Well well, look who we have here." A voice behind him said. When he turned around he saw three bugs coming out of the tunnel.
"Where are you three coming from, and what are you?" Asked.
"We are the Molochs and we're coming out of the time-gate, from the year 2300 to search for you. Isn't that coincidence?"
"What do you want from me?"
"We have strict orders to bring you to our boss, so if you would be so kind and don't resist…" Magus wouldn't let the bug end his sentence. With his working hand he summoned a wall of fire in front of the cave-entrance and ran away. He absolutely had no idea where he was going to, as long as it was away from those three bugs.
"Fool, did he really think he could get away from us?" One of the bugs said and he jumped on the ceiling and crawled above the flames. And so did the other two. When they were out of the cave they ran after Magus with unbelievable speed. Soon they had surrounded the wounded sorcerer. Magus didn't even attempt to escape, he knew it was futile in his state. One of the bugs grabbed him with his four arms, making Magus even more helpless than he was.
"I hope you realize now that it is impossible to escape us."
"Guess so, too bad you guys caught me now I'm in such a bad shape, any other time I would've crush you like I do with every bug."
"You better be happy, not many people go to our dimension and survive it."
"So that place is your home, could have found that out all by myself."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, really."
"There's no time for chit-chat boss, we promised to do it as quick as possible." One of the other bugs interfered the conversation.
"You're right let's go." The boss said and they forced Magus back to the cave. When they were at the entrance one of the bugs froze.
"Why did we stop?" The bug holding him asked.
"I hear voices." He answered, and Magus could hear the voices also.
"I hope your friend lives nearby, Prometheus, I'm freezing!" One of the voices said.
"Don't worry, we'll find Magus soon enough, there aren't much people in the dark ages you know." The other one answered.
//Prometheus?// Magus taught. //Robo!// He wanted to scream for help but the bug holding him prevented that by holding one of his claws in front of his mouth.
"Shut up, you don't want to spoil the element of surprise, do you?" He led Magus away from the entrance while the other two sneaked to the two sides of the entrance, waiting for Robo and Petra to come out.
Petra kept complaining about the cold and didn't seem to notice the bugs. But Robo did. "Miss petra, we're if we keep walking this way we are getting ambushed. " He whispered in her ear.
"Right, thanks for saying. Got any ideas?" She whispered back.
"A front-line attack is the best strategy."
"Oh, fire at will you mean."
"Yes indeed."
"What are we waiting for then? Let's get them." She summoned a little spheric fireball in her hand and she tossed it outside, after a little while it exploded, torching the two bugs and melting all the snow in the area. Petra and Robo then walked outside, stepping over the charcoaled bodies from the Molochs.
"That's strange." Petra said.
"What's strange?" Robo asked.
"Molochs always travel in groups with three or more bugs, so where are the other ones?"
"Over here." A voice behind them said, when they turned around they saw another Moloch who was holding Magus.
"Magus! Are you alright?" Robo asked.
"Oh he's fine, our boss wants him alive." The bug said.
"Alive, where are you talking about, and who is your boss?" Petra asked.
"Wouldn't you like to know, woman teacher."
"Oh why you creepy crawling…" She prepared for a fire attack but Robo stopped her.
"Don't do it miss Petra." He said. "You're bound to hit Magus, and he's in no state to defend himself."
"That's right, don't make a move or he's toast." The bug said, while slowly walking backwards to the entrance.
"Great strategy, self-thinking toaster!" Petra said, fuming with anger.
"Don't worry, I have a plan." Robo answered, ignoring the insult.
"You do?" Petra asked surprised.
"I have… Magus, bow your head!" The next thing happened in a split second. As soon as Magus bowed his head, Robo used his uzi-punch, it hit the bug right on his nose, in reflex he drew his four claws towards his face.
"Now everybody on the ground!" When Petra and Magus did, Robo started spinning around, shooting lasers at all directions. When he stopped Magus and Petra slowly raised looking at the now charcoaled body of the last Moloch.
"Nice strategy Robo, only a little bit risky." Magus said, standing up.
"I know, the slightest mistake could mean the end of you, but luckily it worked." Robo said. Petra got up as well, she walked towards Magus and looked at him interested.
"So, you're my new partner, the entity of shadow." She said.
"What are you talking about, partner? Entity of shadow?" Magus asked, slightly confused.
"That's a long story Magus, but we better take care of those injuries, they look serious, by the way, this is Petra." Robo said.
"Good idea, let's go to the end of time first, we'll be safe there. And then we can explain everything there." Petra said, they all agreed and walked off to the gate, Robo looked in interest at the red gate.
"This isn't a normal gate, where will it lead to?" He said.
"Indeed it isn't it leads to some place where those Molochs came from, every liquid in that place is like acid to the human body." Magus answered. "That's how I got those injuries."
"Alright, now get moving." Petra said, Robo opened the gate. And he jumped in.
"I hope you have an explanation for this." Magus said to Petra. "Because I hate time-traveling."
"Don't worry, it'll be worth it." She said, and jumped in herself. Leaving Magus even more confused than he was. But he decided to think about it when he gets the time, and he jumped after them.
Another chapter done, I finnaly got Magus into the story. What will happen now? Who is the last entity? And what became of Aya, Frog and Brian? Read that in the next chapter.
Chapter 5
Magus was searching in the snow. Not for his sister, but for a way back to the last village. He kept raging at himself how he could lose the road on such familiar territory. The sky turned dark. //Great,// he taught by himself, //another snowstorm coming up, could it become worse?// Soon the snow started to fall and Magus pulled his cape closer to his body, after a while Magus couldn't see anything except the cold white. It slammed against his bare arms and face and it felt like his blood instantly froze in his veins. //I have to find shelter fast or I won't last long!// After a while he noticed a small cleft in one of the mountains. He made a scramble towards it and when he finally was inside he collapsed. He felt exhausted and frozen to the bone. When the feeling disappeared a little he changed his posture and sat with his back against the cave wall, he didn't care to explore the cave, he just summoned a little flame which surprisingly burned on the frozen ground. Magus stared at the little flame for a long time and then he looked outside.
//If I almost freeze to death in this weather, how did Ayla ever survive in her 'revealing' outfit// He grinned by the taught. He never taught he would miss the stupid cave-lady, or any of the other people who helped him to destroy Lavos. He missed them all, the show-off Lucca with her theories about everything, their leader Crono, princess Marle, who always irritated him with her exaggerated happiness, the robot which they so originally called Robo and he even missed his sworn arch-enemy Frog. Did they miss him? He doubted it, when he was with other people he always acted like he only cared about himself and his sister, but this was just to cover his fear. His fear that his dark side could take over. This triggered not so pleasant memories of his time as the king of mystics, he killed thousands of innocent people back then.
"Will people ever forgive me for what I did?" He asked to the flame, he didn't expect an answer. The flame faded and it started to get cold again. He started to get sleepy.
//I better get some rest, it doesn't look like this storm will end soon.// He pulled his cape closer to his body and closed his eyes, it took a little while because of the cold but he fell asleep.
Lightning struck and Magus awoke. He wanted to sleep again but then he noticed something strange, it wasn't snowing, it rained. When he looked around his heart took a leap when he saw a skeleton laying next to him.
// What on earth is going on here? That skeleton didn't lay there before.// He walked outside and saw something very familiar; his own castle.
//How did he get here? There wasn't a time-gate in that cave and if it was, it can't open by itself.// he walked towards his castle and went inside. It didn't change much on the inside, apart from the dust and some cobwebs. And he again wondered what was going on here, but his taught was interrupted with a terrifying scream coming out of the dungeon.
//What the… I taught we killed them the last time.// And when he raced down the stairs to help the person it fell upon him; //Ozzie! The green fat freak is still alive, but not for long.// When he reached the dungeon the screaming stopped, he took out his scythe and prepared for battle. "Prepare to meet your doom, Ozzie." He said while entering the room. When he was inside he froze, letting the scythe drop out of his hands. There, in a puddle of blood, with a hole in her chest, lay Schala.
//Oh god no, please don't let it be.// He slowly kneeled down next to the body of his sister, took it in his arms and started crying. After all the horrible times he had experienced it couldn't end like this. After a while, when he had no more tears left, his sadness slowly turned into rage, rage towards Ozzie. He stood up, reached for his scythe and started shouting.
"Ozzie, you sick psycho! Where are you?! I'm gonna tear you apart, limp by limp!" There was no answer, but after a while he heard laughter, he knew it wasn't Ozzie, but somehow that laugh sounded familiar.
"Finally, you're here." A voice from behind him said, Magus turned around, ready to turn him into chopped liver. But when he turned he instantly froze. Because he was looking at someone very familiar; himself.
//How, how can this be.// He taught, and he noticed his other self was holding something, when he looked closer he saw what it was. A heart, Schala's heart. He looked at the heart with terror, then at the face which was grinning evilly.
"What's the matter? Did you really think you couldn't do such a thing?" His double said, while crushing the heart with his hands.
"No." Was all Magus could answer.
"Oh really, I know you can. And you know why? Because I am you."
"No, you can't be me!" Magus shouted, he didn't know if he was shouting to his double or to himself. "I would never hurt Schala."
"Oh yes you can, just let your evil side control your choices. If you do that you can be all-powerful."
"NO!" He ran towards his evil self, ready to strike, but when the half- moon shaped blade nearly hit him, his evil self grabbed the handle. What happened then, he didn't know exactly but first his evil self pulled the scythe out of his hands and the next moment he was pinned against a wall. Magus struggled but he couldn't escape the iron grip.
"Still fighting are you? Why don't you just give in to the darkness inside you." His evil self said, tightening the grip, making Magus gasp for air.
"I will never give in to you." Magus managed to say.
"To bad, but you leave me no other choice." And then his evil self plunged his hand into his stomach. "I'll just have to destroy you."
He pulled his hand back out and let go of Magus, who collapsed on his knees. He pushed his hand against the wound to make it stop bleeding. His evil self laughed and cleaned his hand with Magus's cape.
"Now say goodbye." And he spoke some strange, ancient formulas, pointed his finger at Magus and a dark bomb erupted around him, and all he could do was scream.
Still screaming, Magus awoke from his dream. He was panting trough his mouth and his heart almost banged out of his chest. It took a few minutes for him to realize that it was a just a nightmare. //Only a nightmare, it didn't really happened.// But the words of his evil side kept bothering him: "Why don't you just give in to the darkness inside you?
He considered for a short moment to do so, but he instantly changed his mind. //No, I can't give in, if I do so, all my friends will be in danger.// But you don't even know for sure if it are your friends, and it is so hard to keep your evil inside. //What am I thinking? Of course I have to fight it!// For what? // Oh shut up!//
Man he hated talking to himself, it was so exhausting and his two sides never seemed to agree. He looked outside, the snowstorm was still raging and he was in no mood to fall sleep again, so he decided to explore the cave. First there was a little tunnel with a very low ceiling so that Magus had to walk with a bowed head, at the end of the tunnel there was a small clearing with two time-gates. One was the usual bleu color, but the other one was bright red. //A red gate, now that's something you don't see every day, I wonder where it will lead to.// And before you could say 'bad idea' he already opened the gate and stepped into it.
When Magus stepped outside again the first thing he noticed was that it was hot, very hot. When he looked up he saw the reason; wherever this place was, it had three suns.
//Right, I got the feeling I'm not on earth anymore.// Magus walked on, after a while he noticed he was on an island, with two types of weird trees. The first one had a smooth trunk and no branches and roots. The other type had a rougher trunk than the other and it looked like the bottom side had fused with the ground, it also had no branches except for four on the top which looked like giant claws. In fact, when he looked close he saw it were giant claws, and the other trees were nothing more than gigantic wooden stakes, impaling the gigantic creature. This was starting get creepy and Magus started to walk back to the gate. When he was almost there a drop of liquid fell from one of the claws onto his head, it ran from the base of his hair to his chin, leaving a trail off burned skin. It then fell on his glove and ate his way trough the leather and burned his hand. It burned so bad he went to a pool of water to cool it, but when he dipped in his burned hand he regretted it because it turned out to be the same sort of liquid. Luckily he pulled out his hand fast enough so it wasn't completely eaten away, just badly burned. //I better get back, this is a little to dangerous for me.// When he arrived back at the gate his entire left arm was paralyzed and the scar on his face burned like hell. It took a lot of trouble to open the gate with just one arm but when he was back in his own age he was glad that he didn't wash his face with that stuff. He again walked trough the small tunnel and he was pleased to see the storm ended so now he could get back to the last village and get some help with his injuries.
"Well well, look who we have here." A voice behind him said. When he turned around he saw three bugs coming out of the tunnel.
"Where are you three coming from, and what are you?" Asked.
"We are the Molochs and we're coming out of the time-gate, from the year 2300 to search for you. Isn't that coincidence?"
"What do you want from me?"
"We have strict orders to bring you to our boss, so if you would be so kind and don't resist…" Magus wouldn't let the bug end his sentence. With his working hand he summoned a wall of fire in front of the cave-entrance and ran away. He absolutely had no idea where he was going to, as long as it was away from those three bugs.
"Fool, did he really think he could get away from us?" One of the bugs said and he jumped on the ceiling and crawled above the flames. And so did the other two. When they were out of the cave they ran after Magus with unbelievable speed. Soon they had surrounded the wounded sorcerer. Magus didn't even attempt to escape, he knew it was futile in his state. One of the bugs grabbed him with his four arms, making Magus even more helpless than he was.
"I hope you realize now that it is impossible to escape us."
"Guess so, too bad you guys caught me now I'm in such a bad shape, any other time I would've crush you like I do with every bug."
"You better be happy, not many people go to our dimension and survive it."
"So that place is your home, could have found that out all by myself."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, really."
"There's no time for chit-chat boss, we promised to do it as quick as possible." One of the other bugs interfered the conversation.
"You're right let's go." The boss said and they forced Magus back to the cave. When they were at the entrance one of the bugs froze.
"Why did we stop?" The bug holding him asked.
"I hear voices." He answered, and Magus could hear the voices also.
"I hope your friend lives nearby, Prometheus, I'm freezing!" One of the voices said.
"Don't worry, we'll find Magus soon enough, there aren't much people in the dark ages you know." The other one answered.
//Prometheus?// Magus taught. //Robo!// He wanted to scream for help but the bug holding him prevented that by holding one of his claws in front of his mouth.
"Shut up, you don't want to spoil the element of surprise, do you?" He led Magus away from the entrance while the other two sneaked to the two sides of the entrance, waiting for Robo and Petra to come out.
Petra kept complaining about the cold and didn't seem to notice the bugs. But Robo did. "Miss petra, we're if we keep walking this way we are getting ambushed. " He whispered in her ear.
"Right, thanks for saying. Got any ideas?" She whispered back.
"A front-line attack is the best strategy."
"Oh, fire at will you mean."
"Yes indeed."
"What are we waiting for then? Let's get them." She summoned a little spheric fireball in her hand and she tossed it outside, after a little while it exploded, torching the two bugs and melting all the snow in the area. Petra and Robo then walked outside, stepping over the charcoaled bodies from the Molochs.
"That's strange." Petra said.
"What's strange?" Robo asked.
"Molochs always travel in groups with three or more bugs, so where are the other ones?"
"Over here." A voice behind them said, when they turned around they saw another Moloch who was holding Magus.
"Magus! Are you alright?" Robo asked.
"Oh he's fine, our boss wants him alive." The bug said.
"Alive, where are you talking about, and who is your boss?" Petra asked.
"Wouldn't you like to know, woman teacher."
"Oh why you creepy crawling…" She prepared for a fire attack but Robo stopped her.
"Don't do it miss Petra." He said. "You're bound to hit Magus, and he's in no state to defend himself."
"That's right, don't make a move or he's toast." The bug said, while slowly walking backwards to the entrance.
"Great strategy, self-thinking toaster!" Petra said, fuming with anger.
"Don't worry, I have a plan." Robo answered, ignoring the insult.
"You do?" Petra asked surprised.
"I have… Magus, bow your head!" The next thing happened in a split second. As soon as Magus bowed his head, Robo used his uzi-punch, it hit the bug right on his nose, in reflex he drew his four claws towards his face.
"Now everybody on the ground!" When Petra and Magus did, Robo started spinning around, shooting lasers at all directions. When he stopped Magus and Petra slowly raised looking at the now charcoaled body of the last Moloch.
"Nice strategy Robo, only a little bit risky." Magus said, standing up.
"I know, the slightest mistake could mean the end of you, but luckily it worked." Robo said. Petra got up as well, she walked towards Magus and looked at him interested.
"So, you're my new partner, the entity of shadow." She said.
"What are you talking about, partner? Entity of shadow?" Magus asked, slightly confused.
"That's a long story Magus, but we better take care of those injuries, they look serious, by the way, this is Petra." Robo said.
"Good idea, let's go to the end of time first, we'll be safe there. And then we can explain everything there." Petra said, they all agreed and walked off to the gate, Robo looked in interest at the red gate.
"This isn't a normal gate, where will it lead to?" He said.
"Indeed it isn't it leads to some place where those Molochs came from, every liquid in that place is like acid to the human body." Magus answered. "That's how I got those injuries."
"Alright, now get moving." Petra said, Robo opened the gate. And he jumped in.
"I hope you have an explanation for this." Magus said to Petra. "Because I hate time-traveling."
"Don't worry, it'll be worth it." She said, and jumped in herself. Leaving Magus even more confused than he was. But he decided to think about it when he gets the time, and he jumped after them.
Another chapter done, I finnaly got Magus into the story. What will happen now? Who is the last entity? And what became of Aya, Frog and Brian? Read that in the next chapter.