I apologize for the long, long break. I took a nice, needed six week vacation :) I hope to be more consistent with this story, although I find myself fighting old chapters...

Bekkler's cavern, as Lucca now opted to call it, hadn't changed a bit. The dark, damp cave-like feel made her wonder whether she had truly stepped into a circus tent when the tent flap closed behind her. Of course, she had made Robo go in first. She tried not to look at the walls, which were practically lined with strange, medieval weapons.

"Welcome," came a sudden, silky voice that made Lucca jump, "to Norstein Bekkler's lab. The spine tingling show is about to start!"

Peering from behind Robo, she cleared her throat and attempted to make herself sound less freaked out than she actually was. "We're not here for a show," she called in her most business like tone. "We... need your help."

"Well, well, well," Bekkler smiled slyly as he recognized the face peering out behind the machine. He swooped closer- closer than she liked or preferred. "If it isn't Lucca Ashtear, our most infamous genius. The pleasure is all mine."

"Er, yeah," Lucca stuttered, but then took a deep breath and stepped out from Robo's shadow with crossed arms and a small measure of confidence. "We don't really have time to talk, Bekkler. We have a problem."

"We? And who exactly do we have here?" the floating figure asked between snaps.

"My name is Robo," came the automated reply. "A pleasure to meet you."

Behind him, Alfador's tail flicked silently. His ears flattened and his eyes stared intently at the floating figure.

"How very interesting…" floating towards them to examine the motorized being, his fingers ceased the unheard tune he had kept for who knew long. One hand, strange and inhuman, scratched the surface of Robo's head curiously, then underneath his chin as though he were a kitten. "How in the world did you come up with this one? This is even better than Gato!"

Lucca had never been sure how this strange being knew so much about her. No one had ever seen Bekkler outside of his tent- not that there was much to see. Even inside, you could only see so much of him.

"I didn't make him," she began explaining, but quickly realized that she wasn't comfortable talking any more than necessary. "We need a clone, Bekkler. Can you help us?"

Finding Lucca as his focal point of interest once again, he turned to her, once again far too close for comfort. "Me? A clone? Now where in the world did you get that idea?"

"Uh…" she breathed, holding her ground despite wanting to run away screaming. Knowing that Lucca was uncomfortable, Robo positioned himself in between the floating being and his friend. "A certain Guru..."

Bekkler looked surprised at her reply. He was quiet for a moment, seemingly unaffected by the robot's wall-like proximity. "Well," he mock sighed. "I don't usually do things like this, but I'll let it slip for today. For a cost, of course." Then, as if it had never stopped, the snapping resumed and the barred gate opened. Lucca's breath caught in her throat, for there in the shadows stood a dark, familiar figure.

A very familiar figure.

Giving her some distance, Bekkler floated towards the bars, a smile more unnerving and aberrant than usual steadily growing across his painted red lips. "You like games, don't you, Lucca?"

Alfador growled.

-v-

It would have been a strange sight for anyone in passing to come across.

In what had once been a great forest, now stripped down to stumps and spattered with dead vegetation, a small, homely cottage stood out like a sore thumb on the nakedness of the land. Yet it was not the estate itself that was strange, but rather the characters currently affiliated with it. Two odd figures stood just outside the front door of the cottage. One was holding a pitch fork, glaring as though he hoped to burn a hole through the pointed metal tool, while the other was bent down to the knees in mud, using a small barrel to water the surrounding 'vegetation', which was really nothing more than wilted, dried up bushes. Perhaps they could have passed for something akin to farmers had it not been for Magus' wicked scowl and miserable disposition hovering over the scene like a rainy cloud and Frog being... a frog.

Yes, they had been wrangled into 'manual' labor.

While being introduced, Fiona had asked the 'men' to do a small favor for her, seeing as how her husband had been gone for three months in the war and she was left alone to do all the housework. That had been more than enough for Marle to comply their services, or more so, the services of the 'two fine men,' as Fiona had called them.

"Great!" laughed energetic blonde woman, who was smiling at her new help. Perhaps overly eager with the extra helping hands, Fiona passed off the pig in her hands to Magus, then attempted to further wrangle him into hauling sacks of something or other around. This had earned her nothing but a sour stare.

"Here, you can take this one, too," she began passing him something else, which he genuinely had no hand room to take (not that he had willingly taken anything from her.) Seeing his blank stare, she pouted. "Please?" she had asked again to Magus' unmoving form. Sure, he was a little… intimidating, but he definitely had the muscle to move the material. "If I don't get planting soon, there will be nothing green left here."

Magus didn't even bother looking around. The pig squirmed in his grasp. "There's nothing green here to begin with."

Fiona pouted. "Exactly! If I don't get planting soon, there will be absolutely nothing green left!"

The wizard closed his eyes with surprising patience. "You just repeated yourself."

"Hey..." Almost as if she hadn't heard him, Fiona's desperate expression suddenly melted into a doubtful one. "Now wait a minute… you look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?"

The pig wheezed and squirmed in his tight grip, trying very hard to squeal despite being squeezed short of death. Apparently Fiona didn't catch this, for she was very focused on eyeing him with a great amount of suspicion. Uninterested, Magus didn't answer, but Frog and Marle shot each other a concerned look. It would be no good having people know that an evil tyrant was traveling with them, especially not in this era.

Marle chuckled a bit, fiddling with her pendant. "I think he just has one of those faces."

Fiona laughed openly. "He's got a memorable face, all right! You look at lot like that evil Mystic leader, Magus." She spat on the ground as though it were some ritual for warding off evil. The wizard cringed ever so slightly.

A tense silence cut into the conversation. Marle's heart jumped into her throat, and she knew she had to diffuse the suspicion somehow.

"Ah... haha!" she laughed again before taking the dying pig from Magus' hands and placing it in Frog's. It gasped as though it had come up from being held underwater. "You wouldn't believe how often he gets that! Hard to even leave the house some days…" To her displeasure, Fiona didn't say anything; she just watched Magus. Marle was left standing awkwardly between the two, trying to spin something else to say. She was usually great at acting and covering up trouble, but this was tricky.

And then of course, just when she thought things couldn't get any worse, they did.

Magus opened his mouth. "And what if I am?"

Instantly, the princess wanted to smack her head into something, but she bit her lip instead; apparently subtlety wasn't a key attribute on Magus' resume. Neither was peacemaking, it seemed. The question wasn't asked expecting an answer, but rather a reaction. And a reaction it got, all right, though not the one he had expected.

"Well..." Fiona began suspiciously, then broke into a loud, amused snort of laughter. "I'd tell you you're trying too hard!" She made to give him a lighthearted slap on the shoulder which he jerked away from and missed by mere millimeters, one brow arched at her ignorance.

Either she was not the most observant person, or she had the attention span of a goldfish, for she didn't seem to notice Magus' rude mannerisms. "No," she went on, rubbing a streak of dirt across her cheek, thinking she was wiping it off. "No, even if you wanted to be him you couldn't. His last reported location was miles and miles away from here, cowering off in secret on his island. But I heard his stupid Mystics bawling though the forest a few nights before everything died, causing trouble and screamin' at the top o' their lungs. They nearly picked me off, too."

Frog and Marle looked startled. Magus' look didn't falter in the slightest.

"Uh…" Marle asked slowly, making even slower eye contact with Magus. "How... did you know they were Magus'?" For the first time, her trust in him was actually waning. Was Magus still somehow commanding his Mystic legion without their knowledge? Was he the one behind the issues happening in the forest? Frog looked equally tense, apparently wondering the same thing.

Fiona looked at her strangely. "Is that a trick question?"

Magus looked specifically to Marle, articulating his raised eyebrow and seeming to mimic the question. His eyes drifted to the pendant twirling in the princess' fingers, then back to her eyes. Marle held him with some sort of firm look.

"Did'st they mention his foul name in particular?" Frog asked eagerly, taking a step forwards. "Or anything of importance?"

"Bah, none of what they said was intelligible; just loud. But you could tell a Mystic from a mile away, and where there's a hoard of Mystics, there's an evil leader pulling the strings." Not giving the question a further thought, the woman began looking about for something. "Now where did I put that pig…?"

The intense staring match Magus and Marle had snapped dead when a loud, pig squeal cut through the thick silence. Fiona was pushing the pig back into Magus' hands despite its clear, terrified disapproval of the idea. "Here, I think he likes you."

Magus looked blankly at the pig and shoved it back into Frog's already full hands before Fiona had even turned around.

Marle shook her head. "So Fiona, what were you saying about planting?"

Fiona finally had a serious expression return to her sun-beaten, dirty face. "It's awful," she sighed. "The forest practically vanished over night; everything green, just… disappeared. The little that's left is fading just as quickly. I don't know what to do anymore."

"That's actually why we're here, Fiona." Marle put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "We want to help you save the forest!"

The woman's eyes lit up. "Really? Cause I've got these nasty little mold spots showing up all over-"

"Great," Marle interrupted. "But could I ask you a couple questions first actually? Inside?"

"Oh, of course," the woman nodded, looking a little caught off guard. She took the recovering pig from Frog's hands and replaced it with a shovel, then turned to Magus and once again, shoved the poor animal back into his hands. "We'll leave the guys out here to take care of things for a bit."

Marle cringed for the pig, but hurried the woman into the house and shut the door.

After a long minute of watching the house, Magus finally looked to the terrified creature running in his grasp. "Does she want me to kill it?"

Although it wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last, Frog shot Magus a suspicious look. "The lady need'th help, did'st she not?" He leaned towards him on the shovel, trying to read the well hidden hand of cards that was Magus. He wasn't sure what to make of the conversation that had just happened.

Magus saw this with indifference, for he had more important things on his mind. He dropped the pig and it went squealing around the side of the house.

Slowly, Frog shook his head and turned towards a large pile of dirt that needed to be moved. His trust in the wizard was low to begin with, but this threw a whole new wrench into things for the thoughtful knight. Having the time to drill over it in his mind as he shoveled didn't help, either.

Inside, Marle was finishing her unintentionally diplomatic questioning of the situation that had led up to the appearance of the strange vortex and the disappearance of the forest.

"So you've been trying to replant the whole forest on your own?"

"Yes." Fiona rubbed her sore arms and tired neck. "Till my husband gets back, at least."

Marle looked at her with compassion. "That's a really heavy load to bear all on your own. Even two people aren't enough."

The older woman smiled at her, her grey eyes shining a little despite the dust in the air. "Someone has to do it. I only have to play my part till my husband is back."

Marle admired her courage. "Well, you don't have to worry much longer, because we're going to fix things up here!"

Fiona looked somewhat skeptical at the slender, seemingly carefree blonde girl making such big promises, but she smiled all the same. "I wouldn't object to that, thank you. But honestly, I don't see how you can help that much. The king doesn't have reach of his intelligence out here…unless you can send him message?"

"Uh..." Marle's smile fell a bit. She couldn't explain why, but she felt a streak of guilt cross her with those words. Responsibility hung from her shoulders and she could not help but feel she had to take ownership of it. "No; we're going straight to the source," she finally managed, turning her resolve fully to the weary woman before her. "How did the forest disappear anyway? Fire?"

"No," Fiona seemed lost for a moment. "I don't actually know. It… it literally happened overnight. It was so strange," she nodded. "I thought I was dreaming or something. At least, till I was attacked and nearly killed; that was a pretty stark wake up."

The princess frowned. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault, lady," Fiona shook her head. "There's nothing you could have done. I'd just like to know how in the world they managed to uproot a whole forest!"

Marle was unusually silent for a minute, but then took the silence as an opportunity to press the conversation they had outside a little further. There had to be someone moving the Mystics; they were too disorganized to move on their own, which meant that Fiona was right in one sense- someone was pulling the strings.

"Are you sure you didn't hear anything important?" she tried again. "We're going after the Mystics to root out their leader, and any information you have would help greatly."

"Magus?" Marle bit her lip; she said nothing. Fiona nodded her head slowly, although she looked somewhat skeptical again. "No, I didn't hear anything particular- just grunts and yells. But I did see something strange." She stopped, thinking over the memory. "There was someone with them; someone that looked... well, human."

"Really?" Marle gasped unintentionally. "W-What did they look like?"

"Well, between the darkness and the distance, I didn't get a very clear view of whoever they were. But if I remember correctly… they had this long cape flowing behind them."

Marle nodded anxiously for her to go on.

"Their hair was really long, flowing all the way down their back, and their hands had this strange, magical glow to them."

Marle swallowed, giving a hard nod. "You couldn't hear what h- they, said, could you?"

"See, that's where I get confused," the older woman slapped her cheek and blushed. "It was defiantly a man's voice shouting orders… but I'd be damned if it wasn't a girl out there bossing them around!"

Marle's jaw nearly dropped. "A girl?!"

"She... or he... had this skirt, if you could call it that- shorter than I've ever seen in my life! And this long braid with a bow… If I hadn't been scared for my life, I'd 'a had to ask them what they meant to be."

Marle blinked slowly, as if drinking in the information wasn't possible for her. To her own surprise, she found herself not only relieved that it wasn't Magus, but joyfully relieved. As much as he drove her up the wall, she truly wanted to believe that they wouldn't ever have to fight him to the death. She couldn't bear the thought after having traveled with him so long. But now the question of who was commanding the Mystics remained. The description sounded similar to someone they had met briefly in Magus' castle once… what was the name now?

"But anyway," Fiona digressed. "If you're going to actually go after them, you'd best head to that strange vortex that showed up when the forest died. It seems to be the source of all the sand that's blown in." She paused, smiling genuinely. "You guys are either crazy, brave or stupid doing something like this." She slapped Marle on the back, catching her off guard and earning a wayward smile. "I like you."

-v-

The escape from the tension at Fiona's was well welcomed when they departed the small cottage a few hours later and moved towards the still-forming desert in the south. It was a strange occurrence to watch. Dust seemed to blow from somewhere ahead of them, spreading like a carpet draped over a floor. It was as though something were weaving a giant blanket of sand over the land. The further they pressed, the sandier the air became.

Although this made Marle feel uneasy, she was at least satisfied with the knowledge that the wizard in their party wasn't going to turn and suddenly stab them in the back. After joining the others' work, she had shared what Fiona had told her with Frog, although he was not so quick to let go of his suspicions towards Magus. But while she had a better resolve that he was not the one in control of the Mystics anymore, the question of who was now nagged constantly at the back of her mind.

At least, it did until another issue presented itself.

The sand had stopped blowing, for they were stopped at the fringes of a giant, black sandy vortex. They had reached the center.

"Are… are you sure that's the only way down?" asked Marle as she came to a standstill, staring uneasily into the sand-sucking current they were overlooking. "There's no secret tunnel in the mountains or something?"

"Alas, I fear'th not," Frog croaked. He turned to her with sympathy.

"Scared?" Magus scoffed lightly.

"N-No!" Marle shot back with more fire than ice. "I just… you know, just thought there was a better way down."

"Of course."

After having a good break from the two constantly quipping teammates and therefore not knowing that this was actually quite a civil conversation, Frog's unshakable honor shot up with fresh vigor. "The lady hath a fair question, the likes of which may have nere' crossed such a mind as thine own. Enough spat from; let us descend'th."

Taking the first brave steps into the swirling sand, Frog pushed his small body against the grain with surprising strength. Marle, and eventually Magus, followed. "Here," Frog offered his hand to the princess. "Hand and hand, we doth fare a safer plunge."

"Right, good idea." Marle was quick to take the small, gloved hand in her own, but an awkward realization hit her when she naturally extended hers back to Magus.

He looked at her hand blankly, crossing his arms over his broad chest. His brow rose just the slightest.

"Fine!" Marle stammered, a blush creeping to her cheeks as his eyes remained on her. "Go by yourself! Sheesh! You think I would want to- Eiiiiiiii!"

Frog had found the current- or rather, it had found him, and he was now very quickly being dragging towards the underground caverns. Marle, of course, was dragged along with him, taking deep breaths and whispering soothing, sweet nothings to herself which only filled her mouth with sand. Catching sight of Magus calmly plugging his nose, it quickly occurred to her she ought to do the same.

It was the last thing she remembered seeing before the sand swirled around her and her vision went black.

-v-

If there was one thing Lucca really appreciated in life above a good, reliable drill, it was the simplicity of fact. Fact was simple; it was explainable and gave reason for why's of life. Seeking understanding was her natural inclination, the building blocks of both simple and complex matters of everyday life- fact was the skeletal system of science, after all. Fact had never been a personal struggle to believe in; it simply was.

But this- this she was having a hard time rationalizing.

Down to the hem of his bandana and the shameless air of confidence about him, a perfect replicate of Crono stood before them. Only his void eyes and unmoving chest told her that this could not truly be him, but a thousand possibilities of what exactly she was looking at racked up rather quickly. The word ghost came to mind, but she had never believed in ghosts. Ghosts weren't something she could prove scientifically. Of course, neither was magic... but this was different all together.

This was beyond science… it was personal; painful. Her lip trembled, both with a strange sense of uneasiness and grief.

"Follow his motions. The longer you can keep up the mirroring, the lower the price will be," Bekkler explained. "Let's see what you've got."

Stepping from behind Robo and the growling feline, she cleared her throat, trying desperately to calm her mind.

"Ready?"

She knew she wasn't, but had no choice to be anything else. She nodded.

"GO!"

For a split moment, the tent was silence. Water dripped, Alfador's tail swept along the floor, Bekkler snapped... and then, to her dismay, the clone began to laugh. It was a deep, rich sound that didn't belong in such a place, far too lively for the cold, dirty walls or the strange clone it was coming from. Shocked, she could only stare at it. Even the laugh sounded just like his… warm, chesty…full of life. Her hands twitched subconsciously at her sides.

With everything she had, she somehow forced herself to laugh, although the noise came out sounding more like a choked sob in the end. She wanted to cry right then and there.

But then it was moving, throwing its hands left and right with no warning. The first few of the clone's movements caught her off guard, but she pushed her body to mirror them perfectly. It was painful. She felt like she was working her heart into a knot. The movements were becoming so fast that it was beginning to look more like she were dancing.

Left, down, right.

Sweat trickled down her brow.

Right, left, down.

The clone came closer.

Left, right, down.

Every part of her wanted to look away from the flailing phenomenon, but she steeled her eyes to every motion. The white noise of the room was lost to her; everything but the movements of the clone was drowned out.

Down, down, down. Laugh.

She could not blink, could not look away. One hand flew here, another there, wild and unstoppable until finally, a buzzer went off and the Crono clone with white eyes became like stone only a foot away from her.

Lucca bent over panting heavily, immensely glad and yet overwhelmingly hesitant to fully remove her eye from the clone.

"Well, you did much better than I thought," the strange being chuckled. "I'm impressed. It's rare for people to make it all the way to the end. Looks like your reflexes are as sharp as your mind."

Wiping a stray tear from her eye, she ground her teeth tightly. With great restraint, she shoved her heart back down her throat. "What's the price, Bekkler?" The scientist cut to the chase, taking one last deep breath and standing upright till a gasp escaped her posture. The clone was gone.

"For you, dear," his smile was mischievous, as though he knew something she did not. "Priceless. You earned it."

Surprised, she blinked and nodded slowly. Robo placed a hand on her back. "You did very well, Lucca."

Bekkler, content with the show, returned to his spot by the pillar.

"Where is…" with a frown, she looked back to where the clone had stood. "Where is he, Bekkler?"

"Don't worry, doll. I've already taken care of it. Your Crono clone is at home sweet home. HIS home, that is."

Part of her wondered how it had gotten there, but the other part told her she probably didn't want to know. Nothing about Bekkler's lab made any sense. Even with an overflowing range of emotion, the place was still managing to creep her out more and more by the minute, and she didn't want to waste anymore time hanging around. But she did have one last thing she needed to do.

"Bekkler…" her hand clenched the fabric over the door, not daring to look back at him. "How do you make these clones?"

He smiled and snapped, snapped and smiled. "Oh you know… just a little elbow grease."

Lucca could not have possibly hopped more that this would be the last time she would hear the dripping water of Bekkler's lab. She pulled back the curtains. Daylight filled her eyes, flooding her senses with relief and her lungs with fresh air. And then it hit her.

Bekkler didn't have elbows.

-v-

The sound of rushing water and overall commotion finally woke Marle. She attempted to groan, but quickly discovered her mouth was full of sand.

"Phewy!" she spat, desperately scraping the dry follicles from her tongue. "Goss!"

"Oh good," came a familiar, sarcastic tone. "The princess is finally up from her beauty sleep. We're saved."

Groaning the grogginess out, she attempted to sit up when a more serious voice ordered, "Marle, roll!"

Marle did as told, barely missing the stringing wrath of a giant, sandy Hexapod's tail. Turning, she finally realized that Frog and Magus were in the middle of a heated fight with a variety of strange and abnormally large sand insects. Magus was holding off another Hexapod while Frog, right behind him, slashed through the watery defense of Mohavor.

What really caught her attention, however, was the fact that they were fighting back to back. Was it deliberate? Shaking her head, she realized it had to be unintentional. But still; it was strange seeing them almost working together.

Almost.

"Whenever you're done gawking," grunted the wizard impatiently.

"Oh, right." Ice formed rapidly around her hands before being sent forth as spears into the mammoth of a beast tackling Magus. Instantly, it froze.

Leaving the rest to the wizard, she ran to Frog's side, and an untimely question surfaced. "How long was I out?"

"-Matters not," Frog replied with some strain, driving his sword into the last of their opposition. Lifeless, the creature sunk back into the sands it had crawled from. "Only that thou art of stout health?"

"Yes, I'm fine," Marle confirmed.

"Good." Frog took a moment to catch his breath and clean his blade. Without waiting for Magus to join, he began walking towards a dark tunnel. "I believe our problem lay'th ahead."

"Really?" Magus spat from behind them. "Because I believe our problem is-"

"Nere' thou mind, foul tongued fiend," the amphibian man interrupted rather calmly.

Not one used to taking orders or being told to shut up, Magus defiantly continued on. "The problem is that all of you are weak, hand-holding fools who can't keep conscious long enough to maintain a fight. She'd be dead on her own."

"Hey," Marle defended. "I can't help it if-"

"Exactly my point," Magus interjected.

Marle was beginning to poke red, but Frog was doing surprisingly well at keeping his composure calm and well pointed. "Thou would'st be one with death had'st she not restrained mine righteous anger."

Magus wanted to laugh out loud, but chose not to. Marle looked over her shoulder and 'humphed' at him.

The end of the cave led them to a large, open room with sweeping sand and a few generous treasure chests in plain sight. A platform stood out among the various pools of sinking sand with rock as the only distinction, save the elevation of the entrance they had walked through and now stood at.

"Well?" asked their caped ally, lingering in the shadow of the cave.

"Yes?" Frog replied with displeasure.

"You led us to a dead end." Unimpressed with not only the situation but also the amount of sand that had collected in his gloves, the wizard pulled them off and emptied them.

Taking much more interest in the situation, Marle walked down the last few stairs and bent down to examine the still sea of sand. Hesitantly, she stretched a foot out over the sand, padding lightly here and there as if it make sure it were safe, or at least solid. "Hmm..." upon sticking her hand into the sand, the room began to shake. "Nope! There's definitely something alive in here," she decided, turning back from the stairs. "And whatever it is, it's looking for a fight."

As if in reply, a large, bony monster emerged at the bottom of the stairs with a scream, swiping at the princess as the sand poured over its head. She flung herself backwards onto the hard stone, and it barely missed her. It did, however, pump a good level of adrenaline into her blood as she scuttled off the ground.

"Retinite," Magus breathed, holding his gloves absentmindedly. "So you're the one behind this?"

"An old friend, perhaps?" Not missing a beat, Frog jumped upon the abnormally large skeleton, his sword piercing straight through its pulsing, red middle. It screamed, deafening them all for a moment while its core evaporated. Enraged, it tore Frog from its body with its abnormally large hands and sent him flying across the sandy room, where he skillfully landed on the solitary, stone platform.

The creature let out another scream of displeasure.

"We need to ice him!" Marle yelled, taking her hands from her ears and nodding to Frog, who was keeping the beast's attention by jumping at it again. With no time to waste, Marle turned and forcefully grabbed Magus out of his thoughtful lull in the shadows, pulling him towards the fight. What Marle didn't realize was that the grip she had on his bare hand had a curious effect on the wizard.

Out of pure astonishment, Magus was momentarily shocked into submission, being dragged through the sand with the most colorful expression to light his face since… ever. No one had touched him in ages; not genuinely, at least. Having Ozzie smack him over the back of the head was as affectionate as it had ever got for him since leaving Zeal, and anyone stupid enough to come too close was soon wiped off the face of the Earth. But here this girl had the gall to take him by the hand- the bare hand- and drag him around.

To touch him.

Forcibly snatching his hand away and never minding the feeling of her skin, he scowled. "Don't," was all he said. He told himself it was for the sake of restraint; of not killing her, not that his lack of command was simply because one word was all he could muster. His hand tingled.

She touched him.

Marle, who was oblivious to Magus' inner turmoil, let loose a sheet of ice, causing the monster to freeze and lower his defensive position. "Now! Attack now!"

Frog was quick to leap at it with his blade, but Magus seemed determine to prove as difficult as possible, for he remained idle behind her, staring elsewhere with great interest.

"What're you doing?!" she groaned at him, conjuring more liquid magic from her palms. "If you wanted to stand around and look pretty, you could have gone with the others!"

'Look pretty?' Magus thought with a laugh. "I never asked to come with you two. And I don't take orders, especially from you."

Frustrated, Marle glared at him and tossed a ball of ice at his head, which he dodged easily. Seeing Frog knocked down, she gave up on Magus and set to work healing her amphibian ally while readying an ice attack for the next strike.

In his passive stance, Magus observed the two simple fighters for a moment. He couldn't help but be amused by watching their simple magic, which his trained eye studied closely. Seeing as how he was capable of replicating almost any magic, he found it intriguing to observe the differences in the way feeble humans wielded their solitary forces compared to his.

Frog simply looked like a ridiculous, well, frog- moving his magic as though he were swimming in the castle's moat. What else would you expect from such a creature?

Magus found his focus linger on the princess, ironically. By no means was she the strongest fighter on the team, but there was definitely more intensity in Marle's ice attack than his, if he could admit to there being anything 'more'. Magus had but to mutter a word and the ice appeared at his whim. For her, however, it seemed as if the ice was drawn out of her very being as though it were sweat; not just from her fingertips, but from the very core of her body, then formed and sent fourth from the hands of a fine craftsman.

He wondered what could cause such a phenomenon in a weak human, but only vaguely, for he also observed that the two weak humans were quickly losing ground.

"Looks like you could use some skill," Magus relented to join them, summoning solid blocks of ice out of thin air and hurling them at the creature with enough velocity to break the sound barrier.

Panting, Marle only glared at him and went on with her healing, grateful that he had joined the struggle. "Water lowers his defense, but only one strike at a time. I'll keep icing him if you and Frog take turns attacking."

A smile lit Magus' lips as he reached for his weapon. There was only so long the dark and mighty lord could idle in battle, and that hourglass had long since drained.