A Step Onto Chronos Chapter 25

Assault on the Black Omen

Shadic the Hedgehog

It wasn't hard to find the Omen, because, as soon as we came out of the Gate cave in 12,000 BC, it was floating almost directly above us. I flash-flamed into Barog, keeping a tight reign on my emotions as I picked up Lucca and took off for the landing platform. Magus and Glenn landed moments behind us, as the Epoch came flying out of warp and deposited the other half of the team nearby. We approached the entrance as one. On the way, I returned to my normal form, determined to be Barog for as little time as I could manage.

The door opened and Queen Zeal stood there, waiting for us.

"Fools! Have you not learned your lesson? We are made immortal! We shall live forever with Lavos, who feasts upon this planet from within!" she cried, a manic gleam in her eyes. "Now, he rests and gathers strength, but in a mere 14,000 years, he will emerge to -"

"Shut it, Queenie," I interrupted. "We're here to keep Lavos from doing any such thing. And on top of that, your precious Black Omen is going to go down with him, so no more immortality for you."

She glared at me, then summoned the Mega Mutant. "The only purpose left to you is as a sacrifice! Do yourselves a favour and remember that!" She faded out, leaving us to battle.

The Mega Mutant, being the weakest of the Mutants, was taken out by one attack from each of us, and they were each our level two spells. Lightning 2, Fire 2, Ice 2, Wind 2, Chaos Flare, Dark Mist, Laser Spin, and Earth 2 were rained upon it, striking both body parts at once, and destroying it utterly. We didn't need to name this eight-fold attack, but I mentally catalogued it as the Elemental Barrage.

We continued on, ripping through all the enemies that got in our way. Sometimes we'd accidentally heal them, only for the next attack to reverse the healing. We split up within the group depending on how many monsters we were facing, but we usually fought in pairs consisting of myself and Lucca, Marle and Crono, Ayla and Robo, and (surprisingly) Magus and Glenn. Sometimes we'd mix-and-match to use the occasional triple-tech or quadra-tech, but mostly we just slaughtered all the monsters we came across.

Fighting the walls was an interesting experience, and the eye enemies were tough with their ability to Lock our magic, but the most annoying enemies were the Metal Mutants, who would target one person to drain from the whole battle, and it was usually Robo. As we reached the teleporter leading to the elevator, we stopped and used a few items to heal us up before continuing. Every time we came to a room with panels that looked like Panels, I would blast the wall, just in case, and I was continually apprehensive about running into the next Mutant, not remembering where exactly it was.

We stopped and shopped with the Nus that apparently lived in the Black Omen, and I sympathized with the shop-keeper, as it had to be difficult to get customers on floating death machine. We fought our second Tubster after that, followed quickly by a pair of Gato rip-offs that got Lucca both huffy about having her work stolen and proud that her work was worthy to be copied.

Our third Tubster fight came in a room with a rather interesting statue that made me think of a fairy of some kind, and it was accompanied by a pair of Flyclops. But our previous experience with the monsters let us make short work of them. Another Gato rip-off battle occurred after that, save that it was only one and accompanied by a turret-like monster. We reached another teleporter after that, though this one was of a different configuration than the last.

After that came a part that made me groan after I saw it: the maze. I intensely disliked mazes like this, as I always got lost in them in the game. We then encountered a group of creatures that looked like they were made from sewage and made noises like "Narble" and "Ghaj." We soon discovered that using magic on them caused them to hit us with a spell that made us like we used all our magic in one go, so Ayla beat them down with her fists (then disgustedly wiped her hands off on the floor). After the maze (and two more "Ghaj" creatures) we came across a Safe Sphere and rested for a while, using a Shelter to fully cure us.

As we continued on, the floor ahead of us glowed with the colours of the original four elements before, finally, the Giga Mutant appeared. We launched another Elemental Barrage, but the thing didn't go down so we blasted it with another, and resolved to destroy the Tera Mutant with our most powerful spells all at once, like what we had done to the Retinite, only bigger. I mentally dubbed the combination of Luminaire, Flare, Dark Matter, Ice 2, Hurricane, Meteor, Holy Flare, and Electrocute as "Omega Barrage," and we continued onward.

After the teleporter in the next room was yet another elevator, and we were attacked by two-headed snake things just like the last ones, once again making short work of them, but then we were unexpectedly attacked by the winged yellow guys, one of them immediately dropping Magus on his head, which was immediately cured by Marle. Lucca and I simply used Twin Flare and disintegrated them almost immediately.

It seemed that this elevator was more enemy-infested than the last, as not much later, another pair of blue Gatos dropped out of the sky beside us, narrowly missing Crono and Ayla. After making short work of them, I started to wonder if we were becoming over-powered, before I remembered that eight people would be faster at destroying them than three, anyway. We got off the elevator and continued, smashing through anything that got in our way again.

Our fourth Tubster battle put us up against two of them, but our teams of Crono, Marle, Glenn, and Ayla and Magus, Lucca, Robo, and myself were able to utterly ruin them. After that one, my panel paranoia paid off as I destroyed four of them just before their electricity would have arced through us all. Immediately after that was the Tera Mutant, which we quickly unleashed the Omega Barrage on, the mixture of the six elements (plus robot's electricity and a second fire technique) blowing it and the door and most of the wall behind it into oblivion.

We passed through the open hole and down a long hallway, before entering a room that seemed to have six Panels in it. But instead, a purple light shone through the room, a small Gate forming before expanding into a Lavos Spawn bigger than the ones we had faced down at Death Peak. I was momentarily surprised, as I had known that the only Lavos Spawns in the game had been the ones on Death Peak, there weren't supposed to be any here! I quickly reminded everyone to focus on the eye, because the shell's counter-attack could potentially slaughter all of us at once, especially considering the size of this one. The battle was rather grueling considering we couldn't use our wide-area destruction techniques on it, having to focus everything we had on one spot.

Eventually we managed to defeat it, but we stayed behind in that room for a while to recuperate from the beating we had taken. The next room's only enemies were a set of four normal Panels and one that looked more ornate. A quick Flare took care of them all in one shot, though. A Safe Sphere appeared and a Shelter was used before we moved on to the next room, the weirdest room in the entirety of the Omen.

I'm not sure if they were clones floating in tubes, or if they were holograms, but every few feet along the hallway, were us. Including Magus and Barog, something I knew wasn't in the original game. We walked along apprehensively, massively creeped out by the stillness of the floating copies. I assured everyone that we wouldn't have to fight them, but the shivers weren't going away. We approached the ruins of the Mammon Machine, and the Queen once again appeared before us.

"I know what you have seen," she said. "It is your futures that slumber in this hall. Destiny in its essential form. All the dreams that might have been. All the happiness and sorrow that you might have known. Your tomorrows, as they have been witnessed." She turned away from us before continuing. "The Black Omen transcends time and space, drifting through the all and nothing, waiting for Lavos to awaken..." She turned back, her royal cloak flapping majestically in a wind none of us could feel. "Destiny has led you here, and here you shall remain."

"Destiny? Hah!" I retorted. "The only destiny is the one we make. This flying fortress is going down, you're going down. Lavos is going to die. That's all there is to it." We all pulled out our weapons and prepared to fight.

"Come, children! Lavos slumbers and I will guide you to the depths of his dream! Oh, did I say dream? I meant his eternal nightmare!" She started cackling madly, and then the battle started. We didn't attack her as extremely as we had the Mutants, but attacks from eight different sources still took a toll on her.

Halation was a horrible experience, the wave of rainbow energy seeming to bring back every wound we had ever suffered. It was only by the virtue of Marle and Glenn acting as dedicated healers that kept us from dying every time she used it. After a couple minutes of battle, she suddenly groaned.

"My powers don't seem to work here. Ah, but I've an excellent idea! I'll feed you all to the Mammon Machine! You'll become on with the Omen, Lavos, and me!" She floated above the wreckage of the Machine and suddenly everything went dark. Next thing we knew, we were standing in front of the whole and original Mammon Machine.

"Glenn!" I shouted. "Remember how the original purpose of the Masamune was to stop this thing as the Ruby Knife? Well, it still works that way! Start beating on it with your sword!"

"What about the Murasame?" asked Crono.

"The Murasame was created when my dad's sword struck the Machine, drawing out Mura and Samé. I don't think that hitting it with it's supposed power source is going to be very helpful here."

"Ah. So you're going to be using magic?"

"I'm going to be using magic."

We assaulted the Machine with the Masamune in every combo attack we had with Glenn, as well as using a majority of our purely magical combo attacks. It was rather surprising how quickly the thing went down, actually. Everything faded out again, but when the light returned this time we found ourselves standing atop the Omen.

In a series of flashing lights, the Queen appeared. "You maggots... I am the Queen who shall rule for all eternity at Lavos's side! YOU WILL NOT STAND IN MY WAY!"

"Fool," muttered Magus. "No thing, no life, can last forever. You are deceived. A pitiable plight... One deserving of mercy, at least. I will put an end to all of this!"

"Accursed prophet! Do not think I have forgotten your transgression at the Ocean Palace! YOU shall pay for it now with your life!" In a bright, white light, the Queen's human form disappeared to be replaced by a floating head and hands, each hand as big as one of us.

This time we did launch the Omega Barrage at her, and though it seemed to affect the head pretty badly, the hands were mostly unaffected, and even blasted Magus and I with a technique that drained us of our magic, and Robo and Crono got caught with one that wounded them severely. Thankfully, we had picked up a lot of Megalixirs along the way up the Omen, so it was quickly fixed, but with our ability to cast widespread damage curtailed, we were in for a long battle. Not even using physical techniques like Uzzi Punch or Stone Toss seemed to phase the hands any, only causing them to retaliate with their magic and life draining attacks.

It's difficult to describe the battle, what with eight combatants on one side and three-in-one on the other, but after sustaining heavy damage (Halation again, ugh), and using a great many Elixirs and Megalixirs we managed to kill the head. And with the head, the hands disappeared as well. Then Queen Zeal reappeared.

"How- how dare you...? Lavos! Lend me your power!" at this cry, a bright light emerged from under the Black Omen. "At last! Lavos awakens again! Before him, you are as grist before the wheel! But I shall attain true immortality!" She faded away as the light grew brighter, until it swallowed the Omen. Then we found ourselves standing in front of Lavos, the great destroyer himself.

"Shit."

-The Hero of Oakvale, Fable.

A/N: I wrote this whole chapter while I ran through the Black Omen on my DS using Magus, Lucca and Robo. I changed a few things from the DS, especially some of the names I had already made references to, like the Tubster and Uzzi Punch, but it was nice to play the whole game through anywhere I wanted to. Please, tell me what you think (I know that I didn't have much dialogue or battle descriptions in this chapter, but at least I got it out before next year, right?), and the next two chapters should be up soon, followed by the Epilogue. Why two? Well, there's the battle against Lavos, then the game's ending (with Barog-Joe thrown in). The Epilogue takes place a few years after that.

Oh, and I want everyone's opinion. Should I go through Lavos taking on the forms of previous bosses, or should I just skip straight to fighting his shell?

And yes, I realize that my chapters have been getting shorter for a while now, but the last regular chapter and the epilogue should make up for that.