Chapter 17 – The Crab Flower Club

The path to the western desert, to Qilin's domain, ran alongside the river for a ways, giving Chrono and Coppelia another good look at the gloomy paradise they were leaving. The Himmelkreuz tower seemed to stare at them the whole length of the way, an ancient monolith taking in one more miniscule, hardly notable sight in its long life of sitting and watching. Beyond the far shore of the lake, a few distant red lights flickered from what Paem explained was the Golem factory and the Dreamstone mines.

For a while, the scenery remained constant, but then the path ran up against a familiar stone wall. The wall itself looked darker than before, contrasting starkly with the bright gold metal door set in an arch made out of lighter, concrete gray blocks. Inscribed in the keystone atop the arch were symbols foreign to Chrono and Coppelia; Paem could read them.

"This is the way," she told her companions. "You can see Qilin's name above the door, even if you do not recognize the script."

Paem approached the door, looking smaller and smaller the nearer she came to it. It rose three times her height when she stood next to it, and her attempt to pull on the oversized handle just above her head would have been comical had the door not swung open with relatively little effort.

Chrono had to shield his eyes at what came out of the open doorframe: light. Bright, yellow light, white light, and a sprinkling of a rich orange light, jetting out and laying bare the blacks and purples of the surroundings with the ferocity of a stream of water being squeezed out of a balloon with a hole in it. Even with his eyes closed, Chrono saw bright spots of light dancing in front of his face, exploding and reforming and then exploding again.

He then felt someone pushing on his back.

"Hurry," Paem's voice told him. "Let's get through and then close the gate."

Hands firmly clamped over the top half of his face, Chrono trudged forward, letting Paem guide him to the other side. As he stepped under the arch, Chrono felt and heard a gust of cool wind brush up against his face. One step further, the cool wind turned hot, and the gusting sound turned into a howl. Paem let go, and a second later, the door crashed shut behind them. Chrono's head throbbed.

"You can open your eyes now," Paem said. "It's not so bad here."

Slowly, tentatively, Chrono pulled his hands away from his face. He allowed his eyes a sliver of a view underneath his eyelids to make sure the going was safe, and then he dragged them the rest of the way. The new surroundings were still light enough to disorient him until his eyes finished adjusting, but they were not nearly as bad as they appeared from the other side of the door.

Chrono's initial assessment of the new land resulted in a bit of disappointment; there was no vegetation anywhere in sight. All around, as far as he could see in any direction, there was nothing but sand. Even behind him, behind the door and its arch, he could see more and more sand, with no sign of the shiny black stone ground to which he had grown somewhat accustomed except on the door, which on this side appeared to be made out of the same material as everything in Kuei's land.

The sky overhead seemed to hang low with dirty orange clouds floating amidst a background of pale yellow. The sand around clumped into dunes in places and spread out like a lake in others, interrupted occasionally by yellow and orange rocks. An innocuous looking lizard would occasionally poke its head out from under one of the rocks, flick its tongue a couple of times, and then crawl away. Throughout, a dusty wind stung Chrono's face, sometimes whipping into gusts saturated by particles of sand and dust and dirt and forcing Chrono to hide his face again.

"Do not worry," Paem shouted over the wind. "The sand stops fairly soon, and we can walk undisturbed on solid rock."

"How far is that?" said Chrono.

"I… don't know," said Paem. "It has been ages since I have been here, and I don't like coming all that much, to be honest. It's too bright here."

"It looks pretty dingy to me," said Chrono.

"Did it when you first opened your eyes? It's entirely relative."

Coppelia interjected, "It is not entirely relative. One can perceive contrasting levels of brightness, but one can easily judge whether a light is bright or a room is dark without comparison to another room."

Paem sighed. "I don't think I've ever met someone who talked so much on so many different matters."

"I have," Chrono said under his breath.

XXX

Several long hours of marching through the hot desert air and enduring sandstorm after sandstorm did little to boost Chrono's confidence in Paem's assessment of the situation. The wind stubbornly refused to die down, and the soft ground did not give way to solid rock. Pebbles and grains and other assorted units of sand continued to batter any skin Chrono left exposed, forcing him to pull his collar up over his mouth. This protected him somewhat from the sandstorms, though it made the thick desert odors more prominent, his collar smeared with sweat and a thick layer of dust.

At last he decided to keep an eye out for any rock formations that might offer some temporary shelter so he could stop and rest and recover. He figured the pain of having to look ahead and scan the area every hundred yards or so would be offset by the chance to sit down. When he finally spotted someplace suitable, he made a mad dash for it.

The formation Chrono chose was a raised slab of rock with a smaller slab on top of it. The leeward side of the top slab had in it an inviting opening leading into a small, windless cave with surprisingly sweet air inside, as well as…

"Flowers?" Chrono sniffed the air, smiled, and let some of the tension out of his arms and legs, slumping onto the floor with a glazed look on his face.

Indeed, scattered around the room were some of the largest flowers he had ever seen, each blossom a colorful disc two feet or more in diameter, sitting atop a messy mound of leaves and stems and what looked like soil.

"This is strange," said Coppelia. "I have never before encountered a species of flower that could survive indoors while growing out of a rock. I must make a note of this. I would worry if I had not already observed plants in this realm that defied all commonsense rules of botany and ecology."

"The forest?" Chrono laughed.

"Indeed, Mister Chrono. Afterlife flora continue to astonish me."

"I'll worry more when I'm less tired," Chrono said. "For now, I just want to enjoy this little slice of heaven without necessarily making sense of it. You have to admit that it's easier to breathe in here than it is out there."

Paem nodded. "I think so, too. We'll need to stop for a rest eventually, so why not here?"

Without waiting for Coppelia to add her assent, Paem huddled against the wall near the door and almost immediately nodded off.

"You tired, Coppelia?" Chrono asked.

"I am not," she replied. "If you are, then please take this opportunity to relax and regain your strength. I shall stand watch."

Chrono wanted to argue that Coppelia was pushing herself too hard and that she should get some sleep as well, but before he could, he found his vision fading and his thoughts giving way to dreams full of the smell of peppermints.

XXX

He woke with a start when he felt someone shoving him. It was Coppelia.

"Mister Chrono," she said, "you must not sleep now. Please get up and see what is going on."

Chrono rolled himself over and then pulled himself up to his knees and then to his feet. He looked up at Coppelia and found himself met by an expression of calm worry, if there could be said to be such a thing.

"What?"

Coppelia pointed at the flowers. For a minute, Chrono could not sense anything amiss, but then it struck him that all of them—all twelve, he counted—had bent the faces of their blossoms in his direction. They also appeared to be much nearer to him than they had been when he first went to sleep.

"You are finally awake, Mister Chrono," said Coppelia. "I could not wake Miss Paem, and only after fifteen minutes of shaking you could I get any reaction. I believe the plants in here emit a sedative gas. You must overcome it and stand up."
Chrono rubbed his eyes; they stung at the touch of his sandy wrists. He then scraped the palms of his hands against each other vigorously in an attempt to remove at least some of the sand, and when he figured he had, he went at his eyes again. They stung again, but not as much.

A thought occurred to Chrono. "Are these flowers…?"

"It would appear so," Coppelia answered before he could finish. "I believe the riddle of their source of nutrition is solved. They lure their prey into their den with their aroma, and then they poison it before ingesting it slowly."

Chrono leveraged himself against his sword and stood up. "I won't be food for a plant!"

"Not for them," said a new voice from somewhere in the middle of the cave.

The voice surprised Chrono enough to shock him into full consciousness. He turned his head to face the sound.

"Not for them at all," it continued. "It's for us."

Recognition struck Chrono. "You again! Where is Disenchantment?"

The form of a demon melted into view, its tiny, beady eyes fixed on Chrono.

"She's nowhere where she can help you," said the demon. "You are to fall to Pain and Passion."

Chrono smirked and drew his sword. "Is that so? You've lost the element of surprise this time, and I am no longer unarmed."

"We have you outnumbered."

"I see one demon and a bunch of plants."

The demon howled and shook with what Chrono guessed was supposed to be laughter. "Pain and Passion and more," it said, "all against a foolish human. You will be a much easier target than the fairy was. Much easier, indeed! What a delightful turn of events for us."

Chrono dashed forward, leaped in the air, and slashed at the demon, but it floated back to the far end of the cave and laughed again.

"We do not wish our hands to become dirty," it said. "No we don't. Why don't you play with our friends? Yes, our friends."

When he landed, Chrono suddenly felt vulnerable, so he raised his sword and took a defensive stance. Nothing happened for a second or two, but then suddenly, all at once, all twelve flowers swiveled around to face him.

"What?"

"Aw, the foolish human is confused," said the demon. "Does it not want to play our game? Does it not want to stay for dinner?"

Chrono noticed one of the flowers turning away from him. He shouted, "Coppelia, protect Paem! She's still out, isn't she?"

Then the flowers charged. Eleven of them went straight at Chrono, moving as quickly as an adult human might run. With little time to sort out his options, Chrono quickly vaulted over one of the flowers and landed behind it, bring his sword down on its back as he fell. The sword sliced through the petals and the stem and down into the soil with a slow squishing sound. When he pulled the blade out, he found it stained dark purple.

"That's no plant," he muttered, and the demon laughed again, a horrible, shrill laugh than began as a cackle and then built up into a roar.

"Our friends are not plants, it says. Hee hee. Is it blind? We think it is. Whoa!"

The demon ducked as a flower, roots and all, flew from about where Coppelia was standing and nearly struck it in the head. The flower crashed into the wall and crumpled to the floor, unmoving.

"The human's friend, it has fangs, it does," said the demon. "But we are far too powerful. We will kill the human and steal his rock, we will."

"You haven't done a thing," said Chrono.

"Our friends," it countered. "Our friends are more than a match for you, when you see them for what they are. Come, friends! Trueform change!"

The ten remaining flowers stopped moving. For a second, they trembled like chattering teeth on a cold day, and then in a flash they vanished, replaced by large, round, bug-like monsters. Conspicuously, the sweet flowery smell vanished. About five of the monsters reared their heads up, bared their fangs, and shot some spines off of their limbs at Chrono.

"Yakra?" Chrono said, confused. He ducked out of the way of the shower of spines and readied himself for another volley.

"It calls them Yakra," the demon said, "when we know they are called Crab Flowers. Neither crab nor flower, but both at the same time, and all deadly. We love our pets dearly, we do."

Another volley of spines from five of the Crab Flowers whistled its way toward Chrono just as the other five readied another charge. Unable to jump over the charging line this time, Chrono ducked out of the way to the side and managed to catch one of the charging monsters with his sword.

With an icky splatting sound, Coppelia squished two more of the Crab Flowers against each other. Chrono fell back toward where Paem lay on the ground but though better of it when he remembered the spine attacks; instead, he charged the pack of Crab Flowers and cut two more in half.

"It makes sport of our pets," said the demon. "The foolish human and its filthy friend want sport, do they? No sport! We must spoil their fun. Go for the sleeping one, my pets! Kill it!"

Chrono gasped and turned his attention to Paem. Without thinking, he ran over to where she lay and shook her shoulders as hard as he could. Almost instantly, her eyes popped open. When she saw the monsters behind Chrono's back, she scrambled for her staff and clawed her way to her feet.

The demon cursed. "Why does it not sleep? We think it… aaagh, we need the flowers to make the filthy creature sleep, we do. Sneaky human, ruining our bed of flowers."

Chrono and Paem scattered in opposite directions to avoid yet another volley of spines. Without wasting a second, Chrono took the offensive and charged for the group of Crab Flowers, sword flailing. He managed to kill three more.

"You control your passion well," said the demon, "but you are your pain. Now you are your pain, and you will be more when we are through. Come, my pets!"

It raised a clawed hand in the air and uttered a short chant, and suddenly the remaining Crab Flowers glowed bright white. Each then split into two, with both resulting monsters more or less the same size as the original had been.

The demon cackled again. "More and more, the number she grows! Where she stops, only we knows!"

A shadow appeared on the wall behind Paem. At first, it looked like a shapeless blob, but it hardened into a serpent and dove toward the pack of Crab Flowers, swallowing one. For some reason, this amused the demon.

"A snake in the flowers from the snake in the grass," it said. "But we will make them faster than you can eat them, we will."

Before it even finished speaking, the Crab Flowers split again.

"Mister Chrono," said Coppelia from across the room, "I suggest we reevaluate our strategy."

"Let's," said Chrono, turning his attention to the demon and dashing straight for it. A wall of Crab Flowers sprang up in his way, but Copplia punched one on the left end hard enough to send it careening into the second and third, knocking all three out of commission. A fourth found itself a victim of one of Paem's shadow spells.

But before Chrono could close the gap between himself and the demon, another figure stood up behind it and swung a giant broadsword over its head and into the demon's back. The demon let out a shriek of pain and flew off in two different directions.

"It split, as well?" Paem looked back and forth between two demons identical to the original, each trying hard to catch its breath.

"We will make you regret this," said one of them. "Pain will overcome you."

"As will passion," said the other. "You will see. You will succumb."

The demons clapped their hands in unison and then vanished, along with the Crab Flowers, in a puff of foul smelling smoke, leaving a sulfurous odor in their wake. Chrono dropped his sword and covered his nose.

The newcomer stepped forward and bowed. When he entered the shaft of light streaming in from the cave entrance, Chrono could se that he was a tall man wearing a suit of light silver armor, red boots, a red cape, and red gloves, and a large, black helmet covering his entire head. The helmet appeared completely solid, with no removable visor. Large, twisting horns protruded from either side of the top, curling downward like canine teeth.

"You have my gratitude for freeing me from the spell of those creatures," he said. "To my shame, I did not notice in time what they were, nor was I able to stand up to their venom."
"You were here this whole time?" said Chrono.

"On the floor in the corner, out of sight, asleep," said the man.

"Did you wake when the flowers transformed into monsters?" Coppelia wondered. "That was what happened with Miss Paem."

"Aye," said the man. "That makes sense to me. But forgive my rudeness. I must introduce myself."

He bowed again. "I am called Egmont of Kalinovo, and I am at your service."