[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 18] Rations on the Bridge
A royal wanted notice had been pasted to the window of Lucca's house.
The night dew had dampened the paper and curled its edges, but the red-haired boy drawn at its center was still recognizable. Beneath the portrait ran a list of charges: abducting the princess, escaping imprisonment, and assaulting soldiers of the Crown.
Marle reached to tear it down, but Lucca caught her hand.
“If we take it down now, we'll be telling them we were here.”
“Everything on it is backward.”
“That's what makes the paper so dangerous. It can be a lie, but if someone in uniform hangs it up, people learn to run first and ask questions later.”
Taban was waiting inside. His gaze moved from his daughter's soaked clothes and swollen wrist to Crono's new sword and Marle's bloodstained bandage. But he did not begin with questions. He lit the stove, brought out three towels, and bolted both the door and the shutters.
As Lucca condensed the ruins of 2300 A.D., the Day of Lavos, the people they had met at the End of Time, and Heckran's final words into one breathless account, Taban repaired the damaged casing of the Gate Key. By the time the story ended, his hands had stopped.
“You're going into the past because of one claim that Magus summoned Lavos?”
“We're going to check because it's the only lead we have,” Lucca said. “If it's true, 600 A.D. is the earliest point where we can prevent the catastrophe. If it isn't, we need to learn who believes it, and why.”
Taban knew the stubbornness in his daughter stood on the far side of a decision already made. He sighed, reached beneath the workbench, and brought out ammunition and several small power cells.
“Then at least don't try to fight with an empty launcher.”
He handed Crono a leather scabbard. The sword from Melchior slid into it perfectly.
Marle sat before the stove drying her wet gloves.
“What happened at the castle?”
“The king announced that the princess had been bewitched by her abductor. The Chancellor split the guard between the harbor and the square.” Taban looked at her. “Even if you go back, the story they made will be waiting for you before anyone hears your own.”
Marle turned one glove inside out. Water still dripped from the lining.
“I have to return someday.”
“Someday and today are two different words.”
That night, the three climbed to an abandoned Leene Square. Festival banners still hung overhead, but cloth covered the stalls, and royal seals had been stretched around the demonstration grounds. The empty chair belonging to the child whose cat Crono had found rocked gently in the wind.
Lucca ducked beneath the seals and restored power to the Telepod. As Marle's pendant gathered light, the air folded inward. The Gate they had first opened on the morning of the Millennial Fair appeared once more.
In the distance, the lanterns of approaching guards climbed the steps.
“Go.”
Taban remained beside the machine.
Lucca looked at her father, then nodded.
The three passed through Truce Canyon in 600 A.D. and entered the End of Time. Robo sat beside the brazier. As Gaspar had warned, he reported, only three travelers had crossed the Gate to Medina; he himself had been forced back at the boundary.
“Any damage?” Lucca asked at once.
“None. While awaiting your return, I corrected the response delay in my right hand.”
He spread his fingers. A joint that had lagged before now bent at almost the same moment as the others.
Marle sat beside Robo and repeated Heckran's words. The brightness of his eyes changed for a time, as though he were calculating.
“The records of 2300 A.D. indicate that Lavos emerged from beneath the earth. The time at which it was summoned cannot be confirmed.”
“That's why we're going to 600 A.D.”
Robo stood, but a harsh grinding came from inside his chest. Lucca heard it and shook her head.
“You sit this one out. You're still carrying damage from the factory.”
“My combat functions remain operational.”
“Being able to do something doesn't mean you should.”
Robo looked at Crono. Instead of answering, Crono pointed to the repaired seams across Robo's chest plate.
“We'll come back.”
“I will record your return as a mission condition.”
The three stepped into the pillar Gaspar had marked for 600 A.D.
Guardia Forest smelled different from their last visit. Smoke and blood mingled beneath the scent of rain-soaked earth. Wagon wheels had carved deep ruts into the road to the castle, and carts bearing wounded soldiers rolled north.
The guard at the castle gate recognized Crono.
“The swordsman who rescued Her Majesty!”
The title stopped Crono short. In 1000 A.D., he was a prisoner; here, the same name was welcomed. The judgments of two eras felt as close as though only the forest separated them.
The soldier had no time for celebration. He looked south.
“Magus's army is pressing Zenan Bridge. If the bridge falls, the road to the southern villages will be cut.”
“What about the royal army?” Marle asked.
“They have men, but no food. The supply wagons were attacked, and the kitchens say they can't strip the castle bare...”
The castle was quieter than a battlefield, and all the more chaotic for it. Groans of wounded men sounded down every corridor. Young soldiers with their armor half on tied one another's straps. The king and queen were receiving reports from the southern front.
Marle started toward the queen, then stopped. The princess who had fled the royal court of 1000 A.D. was nothing more than a distant descendant here. Unable to explain who she was, she looked instead toward the inner kitchens where the food was stored.
The head cook was hacking meat with a heavy knife and shouting at his assistants.
“We barely have enough for the wounded inside the castle! What wagon do you expect me to send to the bridge?”
Lucca examined the storeroom. The flour sacks had been scraped nearly empty, but several bundles of salted meat remained on a shelf close to the ceiling.
“What about those?”
The cook's knife buried itself in the block.
“Royal emergency stores. I can't touch them without an order.”
Marle pointed to a soldier being carried in on an empty stretcher.
“If the bridge falls, there will be fewer people left to eat them.”
“Easy to say. Who's going to carry them?”
Crono took hold of the cart beneath the shelf.
The cook looked from one of them to the next, yanked his knife free, and cut the cords around the salted meat. He loaded the largest bundle onto the cart, then tossed onions and hard bread on top.
“Tell the captain this is to fill his soldiers' bellies. It is not an offering for the funeral of some fool playing hero.”
Barely twenty soldiers stood behind raised shields at the northern end of Zenan Bridge. Wind off the river knifed through the gaps in their armor. In the middle of the bridge, a shattered wagon lay tangled with human bones. At the southern end, the standards of Magus's army appeared and vanished in the mist.
The captain closed his eyes for a moment when he received the food. The effort not to show his hunger only made his face look more hollow.
“You have my thanks. But I cannot draw civilians into this battle.”
Crono looked across the bridge. A Mystic in a black cloak walked among the bodies with a long scythe in his hands. Behind him, smaller creatures gathered bones into a single mound.
Lucca spoke.
“We're looking for Magus. We have to take that road.”
“Then I have all the more reason to stop you. Set foot on this bridge now, and you'll find no road—only a grave.”
Marle cut a loaf and handed a piece to the youngest soldier. When his trembling hands failed to hold it, she set it on top of his shield.
“Eat first. A starving man's judgment should not be mistaken for an order.”
At first, the soldiers watched one another. When the captain nodded, they divided the bread and meat. The sound of chewing barely carried above the wind. No one ate his fill. Many tucked half their share inside their armor, as though saving it for a comrade who might not return.
Before the meal was over, drums sounded in the south.
The scythe-bearing Mystic raised an arm, and the mound of bones shuddered. Ribs, arms, and jawbones torn from different bodies interlocked under the pull of black energy. A giant skeleton rose, its upper body filling the width of the bridge. Beneath its pelvis hung a second face, upside down.
The captain raised his shield.
“Form the line!”
The first collision drove three soldiers backward. When the skeleton's arm raked across their shields, the metal rims folded like paper. Crono moved through an opening to the front. He did not try to cut the bones. He struck where the joints met, turning their path aside.
Lucca's fire clung to the skeleton's shoulder. As the black energy receded, the bones of its upper body spread apart. But when the flames traveled downward, the face beneath its pelvis opened its mouth and swallowed the heat. The extinguished fire returned as black smoke and engulfed Lucca.
Marle spread water into a rounded sheet and forced the smoke away.
“The top and bottom are different!”
She immediately sent the stream at the lower face. This time, the dark membrane between the bones stiffened as though frozen. One enormous leg tilted.
“Fire above, water below!” Lucca shouted.
The enemy was divided in two, yet moved as one body. When the upper arms reached for Crono, the legs below kicked shards of bone at Marle. If the three fought separately, the narrow bridge left them blocking one another's retreat.
Crono looked at the soldiers' shield wall. He raised a hand to the captain and pointed right, then moved against the left parapet. Understanding him, the captain advanced his soldiers one step. Six shields drove against the creature's lower body and pinned it in the center of the bridge.
Marle sent water through the gaps between them. It spread over the stones and froze into a thin sheet, trapping the skeleton's feet. Her lips turned pale, but she did not release the current.
Lucca waited for the upper body to raise its arms. The instant the black heart between its ribs lay exposed, she kept the fire narrow and drove it in like an awl. Flame erupted from within, arching the torso backward.
Crono sprang from the parapet. Blue light gathered for an instant at his sword's point. Rather than release all the power at once, he traced the blade along the black grain binding the ribs. Lightning leapt from joint to joint. The skeleton's arms came apart one by one and crashed onto the bridge.
As the upper body collapsed, the lower half thrashed wildly. The soldiers' shield line broke, and the captain rolled across the stones. The inverted face opened its mouth. Cold rose across the entire bridge.
Marle could not uncurl her frozen fingers. Crono stepped in front of her, but no light remained in his sword.
Lucca loaded the last power cell into her launcher.
She did not aim at the face. She fired at a cracked paving stone beneath the skeleton's feet. The explosion was small, but the seam—already weakened by repeated freezing and thawing—split wider. Crono drove his heel into it, and the captain and his remaining soldiers thrust forward with their shields.
One side of the stone gave way.
The skeleton's lower body pitched toward the river. With the last of her strength, Marle drew water up from below the parapet. A heavy column struck the pelvis and carried the giant bones over the edge. The black energy snapped. The body scattered into separate pieces and sank beneath the river.
The Mystic with the scythe retreated into the southern mist. The soldiers did not pursue. Like survivors rather than victors, they called one another by name and caught the arms of the wounded.
The captain lowered his broken shield.
“Beyond the bridge lies the village of Dorino. Its people believe a newly arisen Hero will defeat Magus.”
“A Hero?” Marle asked.
“A boy appeared carrying the Hero Medal. They say he's searching the Denadoro Mountains for a legendary sword.”
Lucca looked at Crono. Heckran's final words, Magus, Lavos, and a sword that could bring Magus down now pointed in the same direction.
Some of the food remained on the bridge. Marle picked up the bundle and returned it to the surviving soldiers.
The three walked south without waiting for cheers. Behind them, the soldiers raised their shields once more. Ahead, a mountain range rose through the fog of war like a black spine.
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