[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 25] Beneath the Footprints
The Reptite signal sounded once more, then stopped.
The forest rushed in to fill the silence. Water dripped from the tips of leaves. Somewhere high in the trees, a hidden swarm rasped its wings. Yet the measured rhythm of those three stone knocks went on echoing in Lucca’s ears.
Someone already knew they were coming.
Ayla crouched over the mud. From dozens of overlapping tracks, she picked out the freshest—the ones whose edges had not yet slumped inward.
“The three who took the Key. They came through here.”
Lucca held out the metal rod. The fine needle tied to its tip pointed south, trembled, then swung sharply to the right. Nothing lay that way but a wall of thorns too dense for an animal to cross.
“The tracks go south. The signal doesn’t.”
Ayla went to the thicket and lifted the lowest branches. Beneath them, flat stones had been pressed into the soil at regular intervals, each tilted in the same direction.
“Reptite path.”
“To hide their footprints?”
“Keeps feet from getting cut.”
Ayla slipped one bare foot between the thorns and stepped only on the stones. To anyone who knew the way, it was a road. To anyone who did not, it was a wall. Lucca glanced back at the conspicuous trail leading south. It had probably been left there to be followed.
Crono entered the thicket first.
The thorns scratched through their clothes. He used the back of his sword to hold the branches aside, clearing enough space for Lucca to squeeze through. Ayla, several paces ahead, changed direction whenever the slant of the stones did. Before long, the hidden path descended into a low stretch of flooded ground.
The water rose to their knees.
The murk smelled of rotting leaves and sulfur. Every step loosed bubbles from the mud. Lucca raised the rod to keep it dry, lost her balance, and caught her wrist with her other hand.
Crono looked back.
“I’m fine,” she said before he could ask. She forced her fingers open again. “The old injury pulled, that’s all. And the signal’s getting stronger.”
In the middle of the flooded hollow, the needle began to quiver.
Ayla dragged both of them down.
A stone spear flashed over their heads and buried itself in a tree.
Two Reptites rose from among the roots across the water. One wore a piece of bone around its neck and struck it three times with an empty hand. The other leveled a second spear.
Crono drove forward through the water.
The spearhead dropped toward his chest. He twisted, turned the point aside, and struck the shaft with his hilt. The Reptite held on and pulled instead, wrenching Crono off balance. These guards moved with less wasted motion than the ones they had met before.
Ayla charged from the side. She caught the signaler by the wrist and threw the guard into the water. Their tail swept her legs, forcing her to one knee.
Lucca raised her launcher, but did not fire. A slick film floated on the water, heavy with the smell of sulfur. If it caught, there was no telling who would burn first.
Instead, she thrust the end of the rod beneath a submerged root. A snarl of vines came loose, and a waterlogged log rolled to the surface.
“Crono—right!”
He ducked at once.
Lucca shoved the log. The current carried it into the back of the spearman’s knees. As the Reptite fell, Crono kicked the weapon away.
Ayla hauled the other guard out of the water. She did not press their throat. She only pinned their arms behind their back.
“How many more?”
The Reptite bared their teeth. Ayla repeated the question in their own language—a short sequence of clicks and sounds rolled deep in the throat.
Lucca stared at her.
“You speak Reptite?”
“A little. Learn while fighting.”
The captive made a sharp, laughing cry. The same sound answered from far off, first twice, then three times.
Ayla released it at once.
“More coming.”
The guard rolled back into the water and vanished among the roots. Crono started after it, but Ayla caught his arm.
“Leave them. They run that way, others think we did too.”
She pointed toward the false trail to the south, then turned for a cleft in the rocks on the opposite bank.
The three of them climbed out of the water and up a steep slope. Branches snapped behind them, growing nearer, but the pursuit swept south after the fleeing guard.
At the top of the rise, felled trees formed a circle.
They had not fallen naturally. Stone blades had bitten deep into the stumps, and black sap had been rubbed over the cuts to keep out rot. The earth inside the ring had been trampled hard. Feathers and bones hung between the trunks in deliberate patterns.
Lucca studied them without touching.
“A boundary marker?”
“Yes,” Ayla said. “Path to the nest starts here.”
Beyond the boundary, the forest was easier to cross. Low branches had been cut back, and stones paved the ground where water gathered. Piles of fruit husks and broken blades lay at intervals beside the trail. This was not merely a forest the Reptites hid in. It was a place they traveled every day and had shaped to their needs.
Crono stopped.
The ground ahead of him shifted.
A black carapace punched through the soil. An insect as large as a man’s torso clawed its way upward, and the earth around it collapsed. Ayla leapt back. Crono caught Lucca by the strap of her bag and hauled her clear.
A round hole yawned where they had been standing.
Warm air breathed up from below.
The needle on the rod pointed straight down.
Lucca lay on her stomach and peered over the edge. The walls were not simply packed earth and tangled roots. Footholds had been cut at regular intervals. The Reptites were using tunnels made by the burrowing insects as roads.
“The Key is down there.”
Ayla listened. From beneath the ground came the scrape of stone and the vibration of many feet.
“The nest. Definitely.”
Crono braced a hand at the rim of the hole.
Lucca looked past his shoulder into the dark. Catching up had been their goal. But now that she stood at the entrance, she felt the full weight of what they were about to do: enter the center of another people’s living space.
“We get the Key and leave.”
She could not tell whether it was an order or a promise to herself.
Crono went first.
The shaft was deeper than it looked. After two body lengths, they had to leave the footholds and climb from one thick root to the next. Ayla descended without slowing. Lucca slipped twice as she struggled to keep one hand on her bag.
There was light at the bottom.
Blue moss had been pressed into niches along the walls, filling the passage with a dim glow. Round tunnels chewed by insects alternated with squared sections widened by tools. Dried meat and bundles of herbs hung from the ceiling. Along one wall, spearheads of equal size had been laid out in a careful row.
Lucca lowered her voice without meaning to.
“This isn’t a temporary hideout.”
Ayla was looking at a set of scratched images on the wall.
Lines like rivers, mountains, and forests ran between two kinds of prints: red, five-fingered hands and black, three-clawed feet. They overlapped along the riverbank.
“Place where ground is remembered,” Ayla said.
There was no mockery in her voice.
Farther in, the passage divided four ways. The rod reacted to all of them. Lucca could not tell whether the minerals in the earth were interfering or the Gate Key had been carried along each route.
She knelt and watched the needle.
“Not the direction. The strength.”
Holding the rod level, she turned it slowly in a circle. When it crossed the northern tunnel, its tremor grew shorter and faster.
They had not gone ten paces when a massive shadow blocked the way.
The creature crouched on four legs, its back covered in overlapping plates like slabs of stone. The horns on either side of its head scraped the walls, shedding blue moss. Three Reptites waited behind it with spears.
Ayla set her jaw.
“Megasaur.”
The beast lowered its head and charged.
The tunnel was too narrow to evade it. Crono planted himself in front of the others, angling his sword across his body. The blade glanced off the Megasaur’s brow with a spray of sparks, and the impact drove him into the wall.
Lucca fired.
Flame burst across one shoulder, blackening the scales without slowing it.
Blue light gathered in Crono’s hand.
Lightning struck between the horns.
The Megasaur locked rigid. The plates along its back lifted for an instant, exposing softer flesh beneath. Lucca saw at once why the fire had failed—and what the lightning had changed.
“Now! Between the plates!”
Ayla sprang off the wall and drove her heel into the opening. Crono struck the opposite joint with his hilt. The beast sank to its knees, but the light inside its body began to gather along its spine.
Blue glare flashed across Lucca’s lenses.
“Back!”
The three of them threw themselves clear as the stored charge erupted.
Every patch of moss went dark. A Reptite cried out. Stone spears clattered to the floor.
When the light returned, the Megasaur lay on its side, breathing hard. It was not dead. The guards behind it clutched numbed arms and retreated.
Crono did not pursue. He stepped past the beast and opened the way.
“Lightning opens the shell,” Ayla said as she followed.
Lucca retrieved the rod with a hand that still tingled.
“And then it gives the lightning back.”
She had the distinct feeling they would need to remember that.
At the end of the northern passage, a stone stairway climbed upward.
The air grew drier with every step. Red torches replaced the blue moss. The chamber at the top had a high ceiling, and bones from horned and winged beasts hung from every pillar.
A single Reptite stood on a low platform across the room.
Smaller and more slender than the others, they had white scales marked in blue. Chips of red stone had been woven around their neck and arms with exquisite care. Lucca’s Gate Key rested in one hand.
The needle on her rod shook wildly.
Ayla stepped forward.
“Azala.”
The Reptite leader held the Key up to the torchlight, then looked at Lucca.
“The chief of the humans has come beneath the earth for this little object.”
The voice was low and clear. The accent was unlike Ioka’s, but the words were easy to understand.
Lucca kept her launcher raised.
“It belongs to us. Give it back.”
Azala tapped one claw against its crystal face.
“Neither stone nor bone, yet it holds a living light. It smells of the same place as the things you wear.”
The narrow gaze passed over Crono’s sword and Lucca’s goggles.
“Ioka cannot make these things. Neither can Laruba. From what land did you come?”
No one answered.
Azala did not appear impatient.
“Keep your answer. An object outlives its owner, and tells more to the one with time to study it.”
Lucca took one step toward the platform.
“You won’t get it open.”
“That is why I called for its owners.”
Azala lifted one hand.
Heavy breathing rolled from behind the stone door at the rear of the chamber.
Each footfall stirred the dust on the floor.
Ayla lowered her shoulders. Crono tightened his grip on his sword.
Two thick horns emerged from the dark. Then came scales heavier than stone, and a body that filled half the chamber beneath the torchlight.
Azala raised the Gate Key before their chest.
“Nizbel will decide whether the light truly belongs to you.”
The creature opened its jaws.
Its roar shook the pillars and bone ornaments, carrying deep into the earth.
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