Leene's Bells
Leene's bells were heard across the land this morning. A cool wind could be felt blowing into my room. I hadn't slept well last night due to the millennial fair being in town, and I was so anxious for it to come. My name is Crono. My best friend, Lucca, had wanted me to come to this so that she could show me her newest invention.
I had just wakened up now, my mom, admiring the sounds of the bells, insisted on me getting up right away. I went down stairs and talked to her to get my allowance for the week, it wasn't much, 200 GP, but I still managed. Before I stepped outside, she reminded me to feed my cat, princess. Before I got back inside, lucca was carrying two big boxes with her. So I helped her carry them to the fair, and forgot to feed the cat. After I was done with that I wandered throughout the square to all the side shows and games. For a while I felt awkward being there by myself. Finally after a couple of hours I headed up towards Lucca's display.
Right before I got there a young lady was running around, she looked lost. I walked up behind her and right as I put my hand on her shoulder she turned around real quick knocking us both over.
"Oh dear me I'm so sorry!" she said.
"Don't worry about it; I was only going to ask you if you wanted to join me on my way up to my friends show." She jumped up and down saying yes, yes! After we took off, she had to have some food, so we stopped at a food table.
The man who was running it leaned towards me and whispered, "Hey buddy, you think you could ask that young lady to sell me her necklace?" I hesitated for a moment, and then waited for the young lady to pick out something.
Finally I asked her and she replied, "This? Absolutely no way! This has been in my family for hundreds of years!"
The man just sighed and went back to reading his book, which was entitled, Ways of convincing young woman to sell their jewelry. Before we took off, the young lady introduced herself as Marle. As soon as we arrived at Lucca's device there did already people there want to try it out, though no one actually stepped forward? Lucca's Dad did everything to make it more convincing.
"Come one, come all! Be amazed as you'll be transported from one end of the Telepod to the other! If you don't believe me, it's already been tested by my fine daughter Lucca!" Finally I stepped forward and said yes.
Lucca who hadn't us as we came in asked, "Hey Crono where have you been all day, no one wants to try out my invention. Hey who's your new friend?"
I replied, "Oh this is Marle, we just met not too long ago."
Lucca didn't seem too impressed but said, "Oh well, come on up and try it Crono." Again I hesitated for a moment then took a deep breath and stepped into the machine. My heart could be felt beeping very quickly; also my hands were getting wet.
"Ok dad, lets get this baby running!" Lucca shouted. I couldn't see what was happening because of the walls being in my way, though it was for the best. In a moments time I was sent you a swirling black portal, and in another second I was back on the other telepod. The crowd both screamed and cheered at the same time.
"Wow that went better than I thought!" Lucca's father, Taban, replied.
Marle went crazy and ran up inside the telepod saying behind her, "Hey throw the switch!"
Taban and Lucca both looked at each other puzzled, "Oh well, let's get this over with!"
Right before it could work, however, a black portal appeared behind her, sucking her in. As soon as the mist cleared up she was nowhere to be seen.
"Lucca! What the hell happened?" Taban quickly cleared everyone out of the site. Lucca stood there with a bewildered look on her face asking the same question to herself, "That's so weird, it's not like the telepod reacted to the necklace she was wearing, but something else was!"
While they stood there doing nothing, I grabbed the remains of the necklace on the pod and got in.
"Crono! What do you think you're doing?"
"You're actually going to do it also? What a fine lad!" Taban admitted.
"Listen Crono, I don't know where this will take you, but I will meet up with you as soon as I find out!" Lucca said.
As soon as they threw the switch I found myself in a blue and black swirl of air spinning out of control, though it wasn't too long after that that I was lying on the ground with three green imps standing around me. They thought they could beat me in a sword fight, though their only use of weapons, were rocks! Easily enough I beat them. As I made my way down the mountain everything seemed…familiar.
The first thing I noticed about this new land was that there was a castle not too far off that looked exactly like the one in my time. As I made my way through the forest, more of those little green imps appeared with owl's that had bells around their necks. Finally I arrived at the castle and greeted by two guards.
"Hey check out that hair!" one of them pointed out.
"You're not one of Magus's troops are you?" the other said.
"Hardly, this shrimp wouldn't make the cut, now beat it kid!"
Then I heard a familiar voice, "Stop that at once!"
The guards turned around to see queen leene standing there. "This is a friend of mine, show him your respect."
"There's something odd about him though," the soldier said.
"You can't take orders!" the queen retorted.
"Yes, I mean to say, please come in sir!"
The queen giggled to herself. I went to where the king would be, but the only person there at the time was the chancellor.
He seemed to be under stress, all I heard him say was, "Since the retrieval of queen leene, she has been acting very weird lately!"
At this point I made my way up the stairs, it seemed like 20 minutes before I got to the very top of the castle.
There was a maid waiting outside the queen's room when I arrived. "The queen has been waiting for you, you may enter." She took off leaving us alone.
"Come nearer sir" the queen whispered.
I took a step forward and she started laughing.
"It's me Crono! Though, everyone refers to me as queen leene…I didn't mean to deceive you. I really enjoyed being with you at the fair, though, if you had known my true identity, would you have still been with me?"
I was at a loss for words, finally I said, "Of course, that wouldn't have changed a thing!"
"Oh crono, that's why I like you." All of a sudden the room got really dark. "Crono, what's happening? I feel like I'm being torn apart, help me Crono I'm scared, Crono!"
As I reached out to grab her, she disappeared, again.
No one else seemed to have noticed she disappeared, though when I went outside the room a guard asked me, "You're leaving already? You didn't do anything bad to her did you?"
I didn't reply back instead just ran down the stairs to see Lucca coming towards me. "Cr-ono, Crono thank heavens I found you. Did you find the queen?"
I hung my head low which signaled to her that I hadn't.
"What! What do you mean she's gone?" She looked around the place. "It all makes sense now, this is the royal family from 600 ad. They must've mistaken Marle to be the real queen. If I'm correct, she is the princess in our time, 1000 ad."
Still trying to recover from her disappearance again, I only said, "What must we do to get her back!"
Lucca sighed and thought of a plan, "Well if she disappeared here, then she must still be in this time period, but if the real queen has disappeared then how will that change history?"
We decided to investigate the area.
The king had just returned from his journey to the village. "Ah yes queen leene, she seems to have lost her royal hair pin which she has guarded with her life."
That gave us a head start now, so we went to a nearby cathedral. Before we arrived we re-stocked on our items and weapons. The only people in the church were nuns praying. As we headed towards the front there was a shining object lying on the floor.
Lucca picked it up and shouted, "Hey Crono, I've found the royal crest!"
The nuns walked in front of us and revealed their true identities. They turned out to be slithering snakes that could cast love spells on us. We tried dodging them, but one of them hit Lucca on the side.
"Oh Crono, what's happening to me!"
There was one left and I nearly was out of energy when a figure dropped from the ceiling and slashed the snake into thin air.
"Never lower thy guard to an enemy!"
It was a frog! "Crono, it's a frog, I hate frogs!" Lucca screamed.
"My appearance doesn't deceive many; I'm on my way to rescue the queen. Will you join me?"
Lucca didn't make a move towards it, simply she said, "I can't do it, not with this slimy creature! Though, if it's for the safety of the queen, then I have no other choice."
The frog didn't smile, "My name if Frog if you wish to call me that, otherwise Glenn will do." We moved on, though, we were stuck in the room with only an organ.
"Hey let me play this!" I shouted. "
Crono we have no time to be messing around, this is serious!" Lucca sighed.
"Hey let's see what this key does?" I hit it and a tune could be heard coming from it. A door appeared in the right corner of the room.
"Well, that was easy!" Everyone else just rolled their eyes as we moved on.
Many of the enemies we saw in the next few rooms were very different then the little green imps. Without being seen we've crept through each room looking for a way to open the door. At one point we arrived in a cell with two soldiers.
"Finally someone has found us; we thought we'd never be rescued!" They rushed out the door leaving us behind to fight two blue gargoyles like creatures and two heavy set henchmen. The fight seemed more like practice then for real. We headed up a narrow staircase to the room where queen leene was being held.
"Make another move and the queen is dust!" A voice rang out.
"So Yakkra, the time has come for us to cross swords!"
"Oh that won't be necessary," he replied, "Once I'm through with you you'll be begging for me to stop!"
Frog drew out his sword and said in a raspy voice, "If you don't want to make it easy on yourself, then we'll be glad to ease the pain!"
As we got closer to him, he changed into a large mole like creature with four arms. His main system of offense was charging at each one of us. Though with very little pain, we counterattacked very quickly and finished him off. The real queen was so relieved to see frog. There were two chests on each end of the table. One contained a metal sword; the other had the real chancellor in it.
"That no good Yakra, kidnapping me and impersonating me. We must create a criminal justice system to do away with such fiends!"
Suddenly frog spoke up, "I hath disgraced thee, I hath failed to protect the princess, I shall be on my way now!"
Lucca stepped out and shouted, "Wait, you weren't such a bad person after all…" Though, frog did stop as he put his hand on the castle door.
"Crono my friend, you hath great potential to become an excellent swordsman, continue to practice and one day that dream will come true."
The queen looked around for a second then said, "Hey whatever happened to that look alike of me you found in the forest?"
"Oh yeah,that's right, Marle!" Lucca remembered.
"What room did she disappear from? We may still be able to catch her!" So we raced up the stairs to the queen's room, and surely enough, Marle came in just as we did.
"Oh my gosh Crono! I don't know where I was; it was somewhere cold and lonely, is that what it's like to die?"
"Welcome back Princess Nadia!" Lucca exclaimed.
"You helped to rescue me too…Princess Nadia….uh oh. I'm sorry Crono I didn't mean to deceive you, I'm princess nadia, my father is King Guardia XXII. If you really had known who I was would you still have been with me at the fair?"
Gratefully I said, "Of course, you're a lot different than a lot of the girls I've been around…in a good way that is."
Marle couldn't help but wrap her arms around me and say, "Thank you Crono for treating me like a normal person!"
Lucca informed us that we had spent enough time in this period and that we should get back before something else goes wrong. When we arrived back everything seemed to be the same still.
"Wow what a ride!" Marle said jumping up and down.
She had invited us over to the castle, but Lucca had work to do on her telepod, "Crono be a gentleman and escort her back to the palace, I have work to do."
"Take care Lucca, it was nice meeting you!" Marle said.
As we headed back little did I know what was waiting for us when we arrived…