[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 17] The Enemy's Village
The light of 1000 A.D. was warm, but what greeted the three travelers was a locked closet.
Crono braced his shoulder against the wooden door and looked back. For an instant, Robo's hand was visible in the blue afterglow left by the closing Gate. It had followed them as far as the threshold, only to remain on the other side. The light contracted sharply, as though refusing to admit a fourth body, and Robo's figure was pushed back toward the End of Time.
Lucca looked down at the Gate Key. The needle beneath its crystal plate shuddered violently, then stopped.
“Gaspar was right. The path only took three of us.”
Marle stared at the place where the vortex had closed.
“Robo will be all right, won't he?”
“He was sent back to the other side. He's somewhere safer than we are.”
There was a little more hope than certainty in Lucca's reply. She folded the device away and examined the closet door. Beyond the crack came the clink of dishes and the murmur of low voices.
Crono pressed the handle, and the door flew open.
They tumbled into the back room of an unfamiliar house. A blue-skinned couple seated at the dining table froze with spoons still raised. A portrait of a dark, horned figure hung on the wall, and the pot over the hearth gave off the scent of spices none of them recognized.
The husband rose first. His eyes, set beneath a pair of small horns, swept over the three intruders.
“So the door has dropped something out again.”
It was neither the scream they had expected nor a signal to attack.
“Has someone else come through before?” Lucca asked.
“That thing was in there before we knew this house. Sometimes the light hums, but this is the first time people have come out of it.”
The wife caught her husband's arm. She was watching their rounded ears and human skin with open unease.
“If we keep humans here, the village will find out.”
Marle took a step back.
“We didn't mean to cause you trouble. Just tell us how to reach Truce, and we'll leave at once.”
The husband hesitated, then pointed toward the mountains to the north.
“The road is blocked. A cave beneath the mountain will take you west, but Heckran lives inside it. Humans go in. They do not come back.”
“What about a boat?”
“Try the docks—if you can pay their price.”
He added the last words bitterly.
The first thing they saw outside was the statue in the center of the village: a man in a black cloak, one hand raised high. Words honoring Magus had been carved into the pedestal, and Mystics placed small lamps before it as offerings.
Some had faces like those that had rushed them with swords in the cathedral of 600 A.D., but they were not all soldiers. A child slid down the statue's steps until his mother caught him. An old man delivering bread pulled his basket closer when he saw the three humans. In every alley, ordinary lives unfolded—lives that could not be explained away with the words descendants of the enemy.
Marle spoke under her breath.
“The war ended four hundred years ago, and they still look at us that way.”
“Our side wouldn't be any different,” Lucca replied. “In Guardia, the first thing anyone would do at the sight of a Mystic is call the soldiers.”
Crono looked up at the statue's face. In 600 A.D., Magus was still alive. Here, he was remembered like a fallen hero.
The innkeeper demanded several days' worth of lodging in the Guardia capital for a single room. When they tried to buy water, the merchant turned over the price card and added another zero. Marle opened her mouth to protest, but Crono's attention had fallen on an old spear hanging at the back of the shop. Its point had snapped off, and the crest of the Guardia royal family was still faintly visible on the shaft.
Marle saw it too, and swallowed her words.
At the docks, they were told there were no boats for humans. Two vessels sat moored in plain view, but their owner turned his back and claimed the sails were under repair. The lie was obvious. That did not give them the right to force their way aboard.
The three left the village and headed for an isolated house to the southwest. The Mystic couple had told them that a human craftsman lived there.
The old man who answered the door took one look at the cloth bundle swinging beside Crono's pack.
“Can't say I've ever seen anyone carry a weapon wrapped up like laundry.”
His eyes smiled beneath his white hair, though his hands were already untying the cloth. Sunlight struck the cracked blade, revealing a dark line down its length like an exposed spine.
“One more hard blow and it would've broken toward your hand.”
“Can you repair it?” Marle asked.
The old man flicked the blade lightly and listened to its ring.
“I could make it look repaired. But delaying the moment it breaks and making a sword you can trust again are two different things.”
He introduced himself as Melchior. From beneath his workbench, he brought out a plain shortsword and handed it to Crono. It was lighter than the old weapon, with its balance gathered close to the palm. When Crono gave it a testing swing, the tip did not race ahead; it followed the movement of his hand evenly.
“A good sword won't provide strength in your place. At most, it'll spare your wrist once when you make a mistake.”
Crono took out what money he had. Melchior accepted half and pushed the rest back across the bench.
“You've got the look of people planning to cross that cave. Pay me when you return.”
Lucca was examining the strange pieces of metal propped against the wall.
“How much do you know about Magus?”
The hands clearing a place for the hammer paused.
“Ask that question in this village and every house will give you a different answer. To some, he was the leader who fought the humans. To others, he is the name left behind by defeat.”
“What about Lavos?”
This time, Melchior looked up.
“Never heard the name.”
There was nothing feigned in his reaction. Lucca asked no more, save for directions to the cave.
Warm, damp air flowed from the mouth of Heckran Cave. Unlike the late-afternoon world outside, its stone walls glowed with blue moss, and water dripped from the ceiling into branching grooves worn through the rock. From somewhere deep within came the ceaseless thunder of a current battering stone.
The first Mystics they met blocked the passage with spears and stone axes. Crono knocked aside the foremost spear with his new sword, but a hooked claw swept in from his flank. He ducked and turned its path with the back of his blade. The impact was bearable, but the edge left only a shallow mark on the creature's hide.
Lucca opened her palm.
The flame that had blossomed at the End of Time did not come at once. The wet air, the charging enemy, the sound of someone else's breathing—all of it scattered her concentration. Gritting her teeth, she gathered the heat between her fingers into a single point. A spark touched the creature's damp shoulder. Instead of dying, it burrowed inward. The Mystic twisted in shock and stumbled back.
“Cuts better than a sword.”
Lucca had no time to celebrate. She clenched her hand. Her palm was unburned, but the pulse beneath her swollen wrist beat hard.
Marle drew up the water at their feet and drove back a small creature trying to seize Crono's ankle. The water was heavier than she expected. When she changed its course, the stream struck the wall, split in two, and surged back over her knees.
“It still doesn't do exactly what I want.”
“Spekkio didn't teach us that part.”
They descended deeper into the cave, conserving their strength. Magic was no key that opened every locked door. It vanished when their concentration wavered, and using it twice in quick succession left them breathless. When Crono tried to spread his lightning too far, it raced through the water on the floor and came back toward all three of them. From then on, he called the power only while standing on dry rock.
The deepest chamber was shaped like a circular well. Black water surrounded a rocky island at its center, while an enormous whirlpool sank beneath the cliff on the far side.
A blue giant rose upon the island. Thick arms, curving horns, and hard stone scales covering its entire back came into view. Heckran looked down at the three humans and bared his teeth.
“Humans who walk willingly into Lord Magus's land.”
He swept out an arm, and a pillar of water tore across the island. The three scattered. As a glancing torrent knocked Crono off balance, Heckran hunched low and charged.
Marle pulled at the water in front of Crono. The thin veil could not stop the giant, but it stole the friction beneath his feet. Heckran's right foot slid, and his shoulder crashed into the wall.
Lucca's fire struck his exposed flank. The flames wavered on his wet skin, then spread into the gaps between his scales. The giant roared and lashed out. Lucca ducked, but the tip of one claw raked the back of her hand.
Crono stepped onto Heckran's lowered shoulder and climbed onto his back. Just as he was about to drive his sword between the scales, Heckran stopped moving. A blue shell swelled around the giant's body.
“Go on. See whether a human blade can reach me.”
Crono drew back his arm.
The shell's surface was pulling inward. It was preparing to receive an attack and hurl it back. Instead of plunging in his sword, Crono planted the hilt against a scale and pushed himself away. A heartbeat later, Heckran flung out both arms and burst the barrier. Air exploded outward, spraying shards of rock in every direction.
Lucca caught Crono's coat before he hit the water. His weight twisted her wrist, and Marle seized his other arm and pulled.
“Don't touch him while he's waiting,” Lucca gasped.
“Then only when he moves.”
Marle watched the water running beneath Heckran's feet. The moment he dropped the barrier and lunged again, she joined her hands and coiled the current around one ankle. It did not hold him, but it shortened his stride.
Crono climbed onto the highest rock on the island. He did not force the blue current blooming from his fingertips to remain on the blade. Instead, he let it run along the metal and flow forward. The light leapt from the sword's point and struck between Heckran's horns.
The giant's head snapped back.
Lucca's flame flew into the opening. The two powers did not become one, but their timing was exact. A body locked by lightning could not evade the fire. Heckran staggered several steps, then fell to one knee at the island's edge.
“Four hundred years ago... when Lord Magus summoned Lavos, humanity should have ended.”
Every trace of victory left Lucca's face.
“Magus summoned Lavos?”
Heckran answered by swinging one last time. Crono turned the blow aside, and Marle drove water against the giant, breaking his balance. His enormous body toppled into the black pool. A wave rose to the chamber walls before slowly settling.
For a while, none of them moved. Heckran's final words repeated themselves between the sounds of falling water.
Lucca was the first to speak.
“We saw Lavos emerge in 1999. But we never had proof that was the first time it appeared.”
Marle pushed the wet hair from her face.
“If Magus summoned it four hundred years ago, and it stayed underground until it destroyed the future...”
“Then we can stop it in 600 A.D.”
Lucca said it, then immediately added another thought.
“It's still only a hypothesis. We can't believe everything an enemy says with his dying breath.”
Crono looked toward the sunlight beyond the whirlpool. The current seemed to run beneath the mountain and out near the western sea. The way home had opened—and with it, a reason to return to the past.
The three leapt into the water.
The cold current seized them. The darkness of the cave closed overhead, only to give way moments later to evening sunlight and salt wind. When they lifted their heads above the water, familiar windmills and the roofs of Truce stood in the distance.
Crono pushed himself upright on the wet sand.
They had returned to the age where their homes still stood. But all three were already looking four hundred years into the past.
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