Chapter 22 – Amor Fatis

Chrono strained his head around to get a better look at the dying monster behind him. Its cries, though still loud, diminished steadily in volume as the thing sank lower and lower into the sand. Its head continued to flail from side to side, but with less intensity than it had only seconds earlier. Its mouth hung open like that of a giant fish caught in a hook, while its eyes, once proud and menacing, stared out from the cavity in its upper head with an almost innocent dullness, a resignation in the face of a superior opponent. For a second, Chrono almost felt like shedding a tear for it.

Chrono staggered a bit as he stumbled back toward his travel companions. Through bleary, sand-clouded eyes he could just see Paem cheering for him, and he felt a jolt as she slapped him on the back in celebration. Coppelia shook his hand with the same verve and vigor with which she did everything, almost even managing a victory smile. Even Egmont appeared to be taking in the moment, his head turned toward the monster in a contemplative stare and his hands resting on the hilt of his blade, which he had jabbed into the ground in front of him. Chrono allowed himself a deep breath.

One breath was all he could manage, however; before he even had a chance to brush some of the sand out of his hair, the ground beneath his feet began to shake more violently than it had even in the heat of battle. Chrono felt his feet knocked out from under him, and he splashed face first down in the sand. He scrambled to catch hold of solid clay with his hands so he could regain his bearings, but the quake intensified and buffeted him back and forth along the ground. His eyes shut tight to keep the sand out and his hearing overwhelmed by the loud rumbling coursing through the earth below, he found himself completely cut off from his senses, and a stabbing pain began to grow somewhere inside his forehead. The blackness in front of his eyes gave way to splotches of red and purple and eventually a shrill white, and his consciousness threatened to steal itself away at any moment.

Battered and bruised, Chrono almost could not feel when something grabbed at his torso from above, lifting him in the air and violently dragging him away. Which direction, he could not tell. Thoughts of giant gnarled claws inching out of the hole in the ground, grasping him like a mouse caught in the paw of a hungry cat, and dragging him into the unknown underground filled his already distraught mind, inducing a nervousness he rarely felt even in battle. All attempts to free himself proved in vain as his limbs refused to respond to their usual commands. Even his mouth failed to obey; he tried to let out a scream of frustration, but the sand-choked air around his head drowned out his cry.

At least whatever was carrying him had lifted him off the ground, so the shaking clay no longer pounded his legs, chest, and face into uselessness. A small glimmer of lucidity returned, allowing Chrono to consciously let himself go limp until he recovered enough to fight. His head throbbed, but not as much now, and managed to tune out the better part of the noise. Even that seemed to be getting lighter the longer he waited, as did the stinging sensation from the sand hitting his face. Finally, Chrono forced his eyes open.

He was immediately greeted by a clear view, not of the monster nor of the underground, but of the hazy yellow sky directly above him. Bending his head forward, he caught a glimpse of the monster, but now it was fading away into the distance behind him, while below the sand flew by beneath his feet. Chrono was being dragged backwards away from the site of the battle! Relieved, he let some of the tension melt away and waited patiently for strength to return to his legs.

As the distance between Chrono and the monster grew, so did the quality of the air. Eventually, Chrono found himself able to breathe normally. Around this time, his captor slowed to a halt and gently dumped his body on the sand, propping his shoulders up until he was in a sitting position.

Someone called his name, and the voice rang slightly familiar, though far-off and dreamlike.

"Chrono?" it said. "Chrono? Wake up!"

A face appeared in front of him, at first blurry and indistinct but then coalescing into something he could interpret. It was…

"Nadia?"

"Chrono?" said the face.

"It's…" Chrono managed

But it wasn't her. When the face finally settled into a clear image, Chrono saw, to his disappointment, not his true love, but someone he was not expecting. It was Disenchantment, his fairy guide.

"It's you?" Chrono's voice betrayed some of his displeasure, with a hint of surprise that she was still alive.

Disenchantment's face laughed. "Who else would it be? Did you perhaps expect an old friend, as opposed to a recent acquaintance? Regardless, you are speaking to me and not to your love, and you must make your peace with that fact, if there is indeed peace to be made with it. Have I lost you?"

Chrono groaned.

"You've wandered far since our meeting, have you not? Instead of being lost in a cave, you are now lost in a desert! Is that not the funniest thing?"

No answer came immediately to Chrono's lips, so he shook his head as best he could and stared back into Disenchantment's eyes.

Disenchantment giggled softly. "We cannot all possess a sense of humor, I suppose. Oh well. I just thought you would like to know that I found you, and I will eventually come to get you. Are you looking forward to that?"

"Come to get me?" Chrono echoed.

"Yes," said Disenchantment. "I did say that, did I not? The timeless years may or may not have been kind to me, but I can still remember what I say a few seconds after I say it. This I said, and this I mean. I will come to get you at some point."

"But…"

"But I am already here, you protest? I am both here and not here, truth and fiction, and one becomes the other in this land of existence and nonexistence. The real and the unreal become lost, mixed up, in this land of illusions and dreams. Or are you tired of that game?"

The face in front of Chrono winked at him and smiled, devilishly.

"Illusion and dreams, the reason you need someone like me to sort things out. Do you not think so?"

Chrono sighed.

"Have you forgotten so soon? Did you think I perished in that dark and uncomfortable cave? Why would I allow my end to come in such a place? Why would I allow my end to come at all before I do I as promised I would? I will bring you to meet with the Princess of the Dead, and this will happen regardless of any desire you may have to see her or not. Fighting me, fighting fate, will do nothing to change this."

A hint of a smile, a proud smile, edged onto Chrono's mouth. "I've fought fate before and won."

"Did you, now? Or did you flow with the rest of things, down the natural course of the river of time to is inevitable destination? Was there any way you could have avoided changing history the way you did?"

"I defeated Lavos because I wanted to."

Disenchantment laughed. "Wanted to, or had to? I know who you are, Chrono, and I know you could never see such a horrid end to all things without taking arms against that which brought it about. To do anything else would not have been you. With you, to help others is as natural as a stone sinking to the bottom of a pond. Are you happy to hear of rivers in this place? Are you pleased to know that the river of time can flow even in the middle of the driest desert? If this idea pleases you, then you should thank me for telling you."

As Chrono peered behind the talkative face at the sky and the sand, his eyes grew watery, and the landscape swirled and melted and mottled until the sky had turned a delightful azure and the sand he morphed into a lush green garden, dotted with the pink and blue and yellow and red and orange of all the flowers Nadia had ever shown Chrono, the air sweet as honey and the distant trees rustling musically. Through the middle of the scene ran a trickle of water, cold refreshing water, and before Chrono even knew what was happening, he was on his feet lapping voraciously at it, scooping as much of it into his mouth as he could fit in his hands, which had apparently shed their covering of sand and dirt at some point.

"This pleases you much," said Disenchantment. "I like that I have that sort of power over you. Power pleases me, and knowledge is as power here. Also within my grasp is the knowledge that the two-sided nature of things persists even here. Your cool stream is but one side of reality. Witness its antipodal nature!"

Chrono hardly heard a thing Disenchantment said, his attention to the garden's water was so focused, but he took notice when a burning sensation welled up in his chest. Pulling himself up from the water, he saw the entire garden gone, replaced by crags of black igneous rock, the air ashen and heavy, and the stream now a gurgle of fire. The heat in Chrono's stomach spread to his lung and then outward to his fingertips. He pulled his head back and shouted at the sky, a tongue of flame escaping his throat and licking the air in front of him as he did. His fingers grew hotter and hotter until they reached their bursting point, at which they caught fire and melted off. The fire spread to his upper arms and torso, and before long his chest began to burn, and his face began to crack and peel and drip onto the ground.

A scream tore through the air, and Chrono was not even sure it was his. Disenchantment laughed.

"Do you see now what it means to be in a dream?"

Chrono squeezed his eyes shut to escape the pain. When he opened them, his body was whole again, he was no longer ablaze, and he was back in the desert.

"You…" Chrono began, but he found no suitable thing to say.

"I am here and I am not here, just like the garden and the river of fire. Just like you. Later, I will be both here and not here while being there with you, and we will go to the here and not here that is the Castle of Dreams, where your Princess awaits. In the meantime, you may encounter these other places that are not places, and you may drink your fill and be burned, either way. As I told you that I am your guide, I decided it was my duty to inform you ahead of time, and I must also apologize for not mentioning the desert. That was careless of me."

"Am I, then…?" Chrono almost managed a question.

"You are still in the desert, and you are still in the woods, or at least you are not yet out of the woods. This I mean metaphorically."

"Which?"
Disenchantment's head laughed and spun playfully in a circle. "If I told you that, I might ruin the fun. Until next time, then, please keep me in your mind!"

Chrono clutched his temples with both of his hands, pressing against his forehead and rubbing. As he did so, the dream image of Disenchantment faded out into a blur and then into nothing, and in its place Chrono saw only the bleak desertscape, the remains of his battle with the monster, and his weathered body, covered in sand and bruises, arms at his side and feet stretched out in front of him. The feeling of something propping his shoulders up remained as he woke completely from his sleep, only to be greeting by another voice calling his name.

"Mister Chrono?" said Coppelia from behind him. "Mister Chrono? Are you now awake?"

Chrono shook off the dream as best he could and leaned back, sighing.

"I'm awake now, Coppelia. What happened back—?"

And in the distance, back where the monster had fallen, a fireball erupted from the ground, red flames leaping hundreds of feet into the sky, smoke billowing out like a mushroom, clay and sand flying in all directions, and a shockwave spreading out and tearing up the desert floor as it went. Chrono made himself ready for the impact.

When it hit, the shockwave knocked Chrono backwards, but Coppelia managed somehow to dig her feet into the sand and stay upright, enabling her to help Chrono back to his feet. Before Chrono could even become annoyed at losing his footing yet again and getting another coat of sand stuck in his hair, he stole a glance at the smoke rising from the explosion, and even in his current state, shaken by visions and battles and earthquakes and the heat of the desert, what he saw surprised him.

Out of the remains of the slain monster climbed a pack of Golems. Dozens of the them, and then hundreds, spun through the air, galumphed across the sand, some of them running straight to the City of God's hand, some of them in the direction of the Yellow River Fortress.