[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 26] Thunder in the Scales
Even after Nizbel’s roar died away, the bone ornaments overhead went on rattling against one another.
Lucca watched the floor before she watched the creature. Each enormous foot shoved a ridge of grit ahead of it, and every claw settled into an old groove in the stone. This was no chance clearing in the earth. The chamber had been shaped over years to give Nizbel room to move—and to fight.
Azala knew that better than anyone on the platform.
“Give us the Key and no one has to fight.”
Azala tilted their narrow head.
“That tells me only that the object matters enough to fight for.”
“It’s useless to you.”
“Use belongs to the one who possesses it.”
A claw traced the metal rim of the Gate Key. “The three of you do not dress like Ioka. You carry fangs and fire no stoneworker could fashion. You fell from a wound in the sky. And when this object disappeared, you followed it beneath the earth.”
The slit pupils narrowed further.
“Does it open a road for another human tribe?”
Lucca nearly denied it at once, then stopped.
Azala was not afraid of a glittering piece of metal. Azala was imagining a day when strangers poured through some unseen opening and took Reptite land. That fear was every bit as concrete as Lucca’s own desperation to recover the Key.
“It doesn’t summon an army.”
She lowered her launcher a fraction.
“It opens the way home for us.”
Azala looked from Crono to Ayla.
“Though the three of you do not share a home?”
Ayla bared her teeth.
“Too many words, Azala.”
“Short thoughts make short answers.”
“Words short. Fist still hurts.”
Ayla stepped forward. Nizbel lowered its head.
Crono put an arm out before her. Wait. He studied the beast’s back and neck. Nizbel was nearly twice the size of the Megasaur in the tunnel, its overlapping scales traced with pale scars. Apart from the throat and the inner joints of its forelegs, there was nowhere a blade could enter.
Azala set the Gate Key at the edge of the platform.
It looked close enough to seize. It also rested beside one of Nizbel’s foreclaws.
“Take it.”
Lucca narrowed her eyes.
“Past that?”
“If you are its owners, you can reach what is yours.”
Azala’s hand fell.
Nizbel charged.
Crono and Ayla split in opposite directions. Lucca fired while retreating. Flame burst against Nizbel’s cheek, turning its head just enough for Crono to dart in and cut at the inside of its foreleg.
The blade struck with the scrape of metal on stone.
It left only a shallow mark.
Nizbel’s tail came around. Crono ducked, but not quite far enough. The blow caught his side and hurled him toward a pillar.
Ayla sprang onto the beast from behind and locked both arms around its neck.
Any other animal would have gone down under her weight. Nizbel reared, then slammed its whole body against the floor. The chamber lurched. Ayla’s grip broke, and she rolled down its back and beyond the sweep of its tail.
“Shell too strong!”
Lucca did not answer. She was looking at the ceiling.
Soot had gathered between the torches. If she filled the room with fire, the air would become the greater danger. The stair behind them and the stone door Nizbel had used were the only exits. Azala’s platform stood above the smoke line.
“Crono!”
He looked at her.
Lucca crooked two fingers into the shape of a lightning bolt.
Crono pushed himself upright, using his sword for support. Nizbel lowered its head again. Blue light broke from Crono’s hand.
Lightning struck between the horns.
Nizbel’s four legs locked rigid.
The plates along its back lifted, blue lines spilling through the gaps. It was the same reaction they had seen in the Megasaur, but Nizbel did not fall. It clenched its jaw and forced one more step forward.
“Now!”
Ayla moved first.
She ran up a foreleg, reached the shoulder, and drove both fists between the raised plates. Crono slipped behind the opposite knee and hammered the joint with the back of his blade. Lucca’s next shot burst against the softer flesh beneath the throat.
For the first time, Nizbel cried out in pain.
But the light beneath its scales did not fade.
It gathered from neck to spine, from spine to tail. The charge thickened until Lucca’s hair lifted from her face.
She remembered the tunnel.
“Get clear! It’s giving it back!”
Crono retreated at once. Ayla was still on Nizbel’s back.
He turned without hesitation and ran toward the beast again. Planting a foot against its flank, he reached up. Ayla caught his wrist, and they jumped together just as the stored lightning erupted.
For an instant, the blast erased every color in the room.
Lucca threw an arm across her face. The shock rang through her bones. She struck the floor on her back, and for several breaths her fingers would not move. Something smelled scorched. She could not tell whether it was cloth or hair.
When her sight cleared, Crono was down on one knee. Ayla held herself upright with both hands, breathing hard. Nizbel’s scales had closed again.
From the platform, Azala said, “Nizbel devours the fire of the sky.”
Ayla looked up.
“Eats it, spits it out. Filthy.”
On any other day, Lucca might have laughed. Now she managed only a twitch of her mouth.
Nizbel turned.
This time, it faced Lucca.
Crono stepped between them. His right hand still shook from the shock, but he did not drop his sword. He spread his feet and watched the creature’s eyes, not its horns.
Lucca tried to rise. Her legs would not answer.
“Move…”
The word barely came out.
Ayla snatched a stone from the ground and threw it at Nizbel’s head. It did no harm, but it drew the beast’s gaze.
“Here! Big mouth!”
Nizbel wheeled toward her.
Ayla sprinted for a pillar. The horns nearly brushed her back before she flung herself aside. Unable to stop, Nizbel crashed into the stone. Ribs and antlers tumbled from the ornaments overhead.
One wedged between Nizbel’s forelegs.
Crono pulled Lucca to her feet.
“We have to do it again,” she said.
She tested her fingers. They moved now, though a hot line of pain ran along her wrist. The charge lamp on her launcher had gone dim.
“This time we use the discharge.”
Ayla caught her breath on the far side of Nizbel.
“How?”
Lucca looked down.
The shaken pillar had opened a crack overhead, and water dripped from it. A narrow drainage channel ran around the edge of the chamber. Only the packed sand at the center, where Nizbel stood, was dry.
“Drive it into the channel. If it discharges while we’re touching the same wet ground, we all take the hit.”
She pulled a coil of wire and a metal clamp from her bag.
Ayla frowned at the little pieces.
“Small.”
“I’m not trying to beat it with them. I’m giving the lightning somewhere else to go.”
Lucca submerged one end of the wire in the drainage channel and wound the other around the long metal rod. The tool that had led them to the Gate Key would now lead the charge away from them.
Crono understood. He ran left and struck the ground with his blade. Ayla shouted from the right and kicked a rack of bones from the pillar. Nizbel swung its head between them, then charged at the closer target.
Ayla cleared the water channel and turned.
“Slow!”
Nizbel’s forefoot came down in the wet groove.
Crono called lightning again.
The scales opened.
Ayla did not retreat. She caught both horns. Electricity crawled over her arms and lifted her red hair in a wild halo, but she clenched her teeth and forced the creature’s head down.
Crono struck the damaged joint behind the knee. This time his blade entered the gap between the plates. Dark fluid sprayed with a hiss of steam.
Nizbel’s leg buckled.
Lucca drove the metal rod between the raised scales. Pain speared through her wrist. She held on.
“Clear!”
All three jumped back.
The gathered lightning broke free.
Instead of spreading into the nearest bodies, the blue-white charge raced down the rod and wire into the drainage channel. The water boiled. Steam billowed around the chamber, and the torches along the wall went dark one after another.
Nizbel shuddered without a sound.
The scales tried to close, then sagged open.
Crono and Ayla attacked from opposite sides.
His hilt and her fist struck beneath the throat in the same instant. Nizbel’s head hit the floor. The great body tried once to rise, then settled again.
Only the hiss of boiling water and the ragged breath of the three fighters remained.
Crono kept his sword trained on Nizbel and waited.
The beast’s eyes were open, but it could no longer move.
Ayla lowered her fists first.
“Done.”
Still breathing hard, she pressed a palm to Nizbel’s neck, found the pulse, and looked up at Azala.
“Alive.”
For the first time, Azala’s expression shifted.
The Reptite leader had looked first to Nizbel’s life, not to the loss of the battle.
Lucca used that moment to reach the platform. She picked up the Gate Key. Its crystal face came weakly alive beneath her thumb. New scratches marked the casing, but the inner resonance remained within its normal range.
“Got you.”
Her legs nearly gave way as she said it.
Crono came beside her and steadied her arm.
Azala descended from the platform.
Ayla moved to block the way, but Azala only knelt beside Nizbel. After laying a hand over one enormous eyelid and checking the creature’s breathing, Azala faced them.
“Today, you leave with it.”
“Was always Lucca’s,” Ayla said.
“Possession makes the owner. I said so myself.”
Azala watched the Gate Key disappear into Lucca’s hand. “But if the road inside that object ever brings more humans onto our land, you will face more than one Nizbel.”
Lucca put the Key in the deepest part of her bag and tied the fastening three times.
“That won’t happen.”
“I do not release you because I trust your promise.”
Azala pointed to a dark side passage. Many feet were already approaching beyond it.
“If you die here, Ioka will come for vengeance. Ending today’s battle serves us both.”
Ayla glared.
“Want battle over? Stay off our land.”
“The river changes its course every year. Herds move. The earth remembers none of the lines you draw across it.”
Azala rose.
“We will not vanish.”
For a moment, Ayla had no answer.
She opened her fist and turned toward Crono and Lucca.
“Neither will we.”
Azala said nothing.
The three of them entered the side passage. Before the stone door closed, Lucca glanced back.
Azala did not stand like a defeated leader. Kneeling beside Nizbel, Azala was already giving clipped orders to the Reptites flooding into the chamber. Some examined the wounds. Others pulled the wire from the steaming water.
They, too, were gathering their own and preparing for what came next.
Night air swept through the end of the tunnel.
The three emerged aboveground. Even the heat of the forest felt cool after the cavern. Lucca leaned against a tree and opened her bag again.
When she touched the Gate Key’s crystal face, its familiar vibration met her fingertips.
The way home.
Crono looked from the device to her.
This time, Lucca kept one hand on the fastening as she nodded.
“Let’s go back to Ioka.”
The eastern sky was paling.
The long night was ending, but behind them in the forest, the Reptite signal began again.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Whether it marked defeat or declared survival, none of them could say.
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