[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 22] The Oldest Wind
At the End of Time, there was no visible difference between long ago and unimaginably long ago.
The pillars of light stood at equal intervals, each holding a scene no larger than a small window. In a place where the rain-soaked forests of 600 A.D. and the gray ruins of 2300 A.D. floated side by side, thousands of years looked less like distance than the space between one pillar and the next.
Lucca walked between them twice, as though personally offended by the fact.
"Melchior didn't give us enough to narrow this down. 'Before humans worked iron' could mean different things in different regions, and we don't even know when Dreamstone disappeared."
Gaspar lifted the lid of the little kettle beside the fire and peered inside.
"Then you'll have to look for an age with no records to consult."
"And what year would that be?"
"You do like numbers."
"It's a useful preference when you're traveling through time."
Gaspar chuckled.
With the end of his staff, he pointed to one pillar near the edge of the platform. Its light was rougher than the others. Deep green and red flashed inside it in alternating bursts, and up close the sound was less like wind than the beating of countless insect wings.
"That's the oldest road I've seen."
Lucca pressed the Gate Key's crystal plate toward it.
The needle spun once and stopped. The device had no way to display a date, but the breadth of the signal was greater than any Gate she had measured before.
"Approximately," she insisted.
Gaspar closed one eye.
"Sixty-five million years ago, give or take."
Marle looked as though she had misheard him.
"Sixty-five... million?"
"Years."
The questions disappeared from Lucca's face.
Calculation took their place. A girl who had been suspicious of four hundred years in Melchior's life now stood before sixty-five million. The number was so large that it became difficult to feel as something real.
Crono looked into the pillar.
There were things that resembled trees, but no forest he knew had ever looked like that. Leaves broader than a person's body crowded beneath trunks thick as twisted towers. The sky was a heavy blue, while the horizon burned red.
Robo approached from behind them, but Lucca pointed at the chest plate he had only recently had repaired.
"We'll go first this time."
Marle tapped his metal arm lightly. "We'll just find the Dreamstone and come back."
When Crono stepped toward the pillar, both of them fell quiet.
Gaspar spoke from behind.
"Remember one thing. An age being ancient doesn't make it simple."
Crono looked back.
"People have a habit of thinking that the less they know about something, the older it is, the less complicated it must have been."
Gaspar watched the fire.
"That's not a fact about time. It's only a fact about the ignorance of the person looking."
Marle nodded.
The three of them stepped into the light.
Inside the Gate, ocean, forest, ice, and red sky flickered past without order. Crono kept hold of Marle's wrist and the strap of Lucca's bag to keep them close. Then the light vanished all at once.
There was no ground beneath them.
"Again?"
They fell through black rock and enormous leaves, snapping branches before tumbling down a slope of wet earth. Crono's back struck a tree root hard enough to knock the air from him.
"Alive?"
He raised a hand. Marle appeared higher up the slope. Lucca hung about a body length above the ground, saved by the strap of her bag snagging on a vine.
"Glasses didn't break this time."
"That's the first thing you check?"
"Hard to check anything else if I can't see."
Crono helped her down.
The moment all three had their feet on the ground, they went quiet.
The air was different.
Hot. Heavy. Every breath carried wet earth, crushed leaves, and the musk of animals all at once. Somewhere nearby, flowers gave off a fragrance so strong it smelled almost like rotting fruit. The trees overhead did not merely rise high enough to block the sky; they blocked it by sheer mass. A single leaf could have roofed a hut. Rainwater pooled in the grooves of bark like narrow streams.
A cry sounded in the distance.
Too low for a bird. Too long for any animal they knew. Another heavy roar answered from a different direction.
Marle lowered her voice.
"Are there even humans here?"
Lucca opened the Gate Key.
The crystal plate still worked, but the needle would not hold steady.
"The Gate is above us. Somewhere in the cliffs where we fell from."
All three looked up.
The blue vortex they had emerged from was already gone. Only the faintest distortion remained among the rocks.
"Can we get back?" Marle asked.
"I still have the coordinates. As long as we don't lose this."
Marle pointed at the Gate Key.
"Then put it inside the bag."
Lucca narrowed her eyes.
"You remember what you said earlier, right?"
"That's exactly why I'm saying it."
Crono examined the ground around them.
There were no human footprints. Instead, large three-toed tracks appeared here and there in the mud. Each print was wide enough to fit both of his boots inside.
He looked from the tracks to the two girls.
Lucca drew her gun.
"Let's find people first."
"Before Dreamstone?" Marle asked.
"It's faster to find someone who knows where the stone is than to search the ground at random."
They started downhill.
There was nothing that deserved to be called a path. Grass rose to their waists. Vines wrapped around their ankles like sleeping snakes. Crono cut them away with his sword, only to find another wall of green a few steps later.
The blade Melchior had given him had survived repeated punishment on the Denadoro Mountains with hardly a nick. Crono found himself thinking of the maker's mark again. The Masamune had crossed four hundred years, and yet the sword at his hip and that legendary blade had come from the same hands. He still had trouble fitting the fact together.
Marle suddenly caught the back of his clothes.
"Wait."
Something moved in the grass ahead.
A small head rose into view.
Green scales. A long snout. Yellow eyes. The creature stood about as tall as a child, but it looked nothing like the imps of 600 A.D. It stood on two legs, and in one hand it held a shard of black stone sharpened into a blade.
It was not alone.
Two more rose on the left. Three on the right. Larger shapes moved behind them.
Lucca whispered, "Those are..."
"Dinosaurs?" Marle said.
"Dinosaurs don't usually carry stone knives."
The creature at the front gave a sharp call.
The others answered.
Crono drew his sword.
Two stone spears flew at once. Crono knocked one aside. Marle pulled moisture from the air and bent the other enough to spoil its course. Lucca, unwilling to set the jungle ablaze, kept her fire small and ignited only the edge of one stone blade.
Crono used the opening to drive forward, striking wrists and knees rather than cutting deep. But when the creatures retreated and called out, the forest answered them. Larger ones rushed in, sealing the group's route of escape.
"Too many," Marle said.
She swept water up from the ground and shoved the front rank backward, but the larger Reptites held their footing. Lucca looked at the dry leaves around them and clenched her teeth.
"I don't have a way to stop that many without burning half the forest—"
The largest creature on the right suddenly flew sideways.
Something had struck it full in the body.
The green-scaled form slammed into a tree trunk and slid to the ground.
A streak of red hair crossed Crono's vision.
A young woman seized the arm of a second Reptite with her bare hands and lifted it off the ground. Before it could swing its stone knife, she turned at the waist and threw it into another attacker. The two rolled together through the grass.
She wore no armor. Animal hides covered one shoulder and her waist, while ornaments of bone and tooth were tied around her arms and legs. Her bare feet did not slip even in the mud.
The largest Reptite thrust a spear at her.
She did not step aside.
She caught the shaft in one hand.
The creature drove forward, but her feet did not move. Instead she yanked the spear, pulled the Reptite toward her, and smashed her forehead into its snout.
The impact made a dull crack.
Lucca's mouth fell open.
"That's... not magic, right?"
Marle stared.
"I don't think so."
The woman laughed.
"Weak!"
She tore the spear away, threw it aside, and struck one fist against her own chest.
The remaining Reptites looked at one another.
A few rushed her anyway. She tripped one by the ankle, shoved another off balance by the shoulder, and put them down one after another. When the largest gave a retreat call, the whole group vanished into the forest.
Silence returned.
The woman turned toward the three travelers without even stopping to catch her breath.
Up close, she looked not much older than they were. There was nothing animalistic in her eyes. She simply looked at unfamiliar things without pretending not to be curious about them.
She went to Crono first.
Her eyes dropped to his sword. She reached out to touch the blade.
Crono reflexively drew it back.
The woman grinned.
"Good. Guard own fang."
Next she moved to Lucca.
She examined the goggles, gun, and metal tools hanging from Lucca's bag one by one. Even when Lucca leaned back to create space, the stranger did not seem to register the adjustment.
"You smell like fire."
"I'm Lucca."
"Lucca."
The woman repeated the name once, then looked at Marle.
Marle offered her hand first.
"Marle."
The woman looked at the hand, then gripped it. It was less a handshake than a test of strength. Marle's arm sank immediately.
"Strong."
"I was about to say that to you."
The woman laughed again.
At last she stood in front of Crono.
"You name?"
"Crono."
"Crono."
She tried the sound, then nodded.
"Ayla."
She pointed at her own chest.
"Ayla, chief of Ioka."
Lucca paused.
"Chief?"
Ayla looked as though she could not understand why the question was strange.
"Ayla strongest. So chief."
Marle laughed.
"At least that's clear."
Ayla walked a circle around the three of them, studying clothes, boots, sheathes, and finally the pendant at Marle's throat.
"You come from where?"
The three exchanged a glance.
Lucca searched for the safest answer.
"Very far away."
Ayla looked up toward the sky.
"Sky?"
It was the direction they had fallen from.
Marle gave a small shrug.
"In a way."
Ayla did not press them.
"Come far, then hungry."
She turned as though stating something self-evident.
"Come Ioka. Eat, drink, talk."
Lucca leaned toward Crono and whispered,
"Well, we succeeded in finding people from this era."
Marle had stopped looking at Lucca.
Around Ayla's neck hung a piece of red stone.
Whenever sunlight fell between the leaves, deep crimson seemed to wake inside it. The color resembled the imitation Melchior had shown them, but the depth was different. It did not merely reflect the light. It looked as if some ancient ember were sealed inside the stone itself.
Ayla noticed Marle staring.
She lifted the necklace.
"Pretty?"
Lucca moved closer.
"Can I see it for a second?"
Ayla laid the stone in her palm.
Lucca did not touch it. She only leaned close, studying the grain of the light, the fine layers on its surface, the way the red seemed to spread from within. Her breathing slowed.
"It looks like what Melchior described."
Marle asked, "Dreamstone?"
At the unfamiliar word, Ayla tilted her head.
"Dream?"
"Red stone. Very old stone."
Ayla burst out laughing.
"Not old. Lots here."
For once, even Lucca had nothing to say.
Ayla put the necklace back on and started through the forest.
"Want red stone, come Ioka. See stone. Eat meat."
After a few steps she looked over her shoulder.
"Strong people guests. Weak people guests too. But eat lots, better guests."
Marle bumped Crono's arm.
"You heard her."
Crono looked from Ayla to his own stomach.
Lucca sighed.
"I refuse to believe Dreamstone acquisition is based on appetite."
The three followed Ayla.
When they came out of the forest, the world opened all at once.
Huge herbivores moved slowly across an endless plain. Black smoke climbed from a distant volcano. The river was wider than any river they knew, and winged reptiles crowded its banks in flocks.
The sky hung low and hot.
Ayla's red hair streamed wildly in the wind beneath it.
Crono remembered Gaspar's words.
Ancient did not mean simple.
The creatures with stone blades had moved in organized groups and answered one another's signals. Ayla seemed to know them not merely as beasts, but as an enemy with a name. And the Dreamstone Melchior had spoken of like a lost legend hung casually at one woman's throat.
The most distant past they had ever reached was not an empty beginning.
People already lived here. They fought, named things, chose leaders, and made a present of their own.
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