[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 31] Where Only Magic Could Reach
The cave had preserved the years behind its sealed entrance as a smell.
Marle covered her nose and mouth with one sleeve. Cold dust, wet stone, and leather that had rotted long ago met her all at once. Behind them, the divided cliff still gave off a low resonance.
Crono lit a torch.
The flame reached across the wall ahead. This was no natural cavern. The floor had been leveled for walking, and shallow niches had been cut at regular intervals along both walls. They might once have held torches or lamps. Every one of them was empty.
Frog led the way with the Masamune drawn.
The Hero’s Badge struck softly against his chest with each step. The sound was faint, but Marle heard it with peculiar clarity. So did the name he had spoken before opening the mountain.
Glenn.
She did not use it yet. Learning a hidden name did not allow her to cross all the years in which he had refused to speak it.
Wings stirred overhead.
When she raised the torch, a little bat hung upside down from the ceiling. Its eyes were red. The same creature had watched them at the entrance. As soon as the light found it, it opened its wings and flew deeper into the tunnel.
“It was watching us.”
Marle drew her bow.
Frog shook his head.
“If it serves someone, killing it may warn its master.”
“We split a mountain open. Do you think they still don’t know?” Crono asked.
“Then save the arrow all the more.”
Marle released the tension on the string, but memorized the direction the bat had taken.
The passage soon divided into three. Water moved somewhere beyond the left branch. A rusted iron gate hung halfway down across the right. Long scratches crossed the floor straight ahead.
Crono crouched to examine them.
“Something was dragged.”
Between the scratches lay a chip of blue paint from a Guardia soldier’s armor.
Frog chose the middle path.
“One of the soldiers who tried to enter the castle.”
They had gone only a few steps when the rubble on either side of the passage moved.
At first Marle took the creatures for rats. Then gray things with long ears and wasted limbs crawled from the stones on all fours. They carried broken knives and pieces of bone.
The first sprang at Crono.
He cut upward with the short sword. The blade clearly passed through its shoulder, yet no blood followed. The gray body came apart like smoke, then closed over the wound.
Its knife drove toward Crono’s side.
Frog turned it with the Masamune. The impact threw the creature into the wall. Its body bent, but did not break.
“Steel doesn’t hold them!”
Marle loosed an arrow.
Cold burst from the tip in the creature’s chest. White frost covered its body. It took one more step, then shattered like glass across the floor.
The other three charged together.
Crono planted his sword and raised one hand. Blue lightning ripped through the narrow tunnel and struck the first two. The smell of burning filled the air as their gray forms collapsed.
The last creature leaped for the ceiling.
Frog did not swing. He raised an open palm, gathering moisture from the walls into a narrow stream. The water caught the creature by one ankle and dragged it back to the floor. Marle layered ice over its limbs.
The Masamune drove through the center of the ice.
Blue light followed the blade. This time the sword did not simply pass through the gray body. Water made a path, and the Masamune’s power traveled along it into the creature’s core. It gave a thin cry and collapsed into ash.
The cave fell quiet again.
The ash moved without a breeze. It slid toward the wall and seeped into cracks in the stone. A dim violet light traveled through the cracks and vanished. Marle followed the grooves with an arrowhead. The same channels crossed the walls, floor, and ceiling like a net.
“They come from this place,” she said. “Or the cave takes them back whenever they fall.”
Crono glanced behind them. The split entrance was already hidden beyond the turning passage.
Frog waited until the last of the violet light had faded.
“Then the entire cave is both gate and guardian. Stay long enough, and we may meet the same creatures twice.”
They would not have much time to rest.
Frog studied the water still clinging to his hand.
“It is not the steel. I must drive the power inside them.”
“Spekkio told you to practice while staying alive, didn’t he?” Marle asked between breaths.
“Such thoughtful practice partners.”
The laughter did not last.
Crono pulled his sword from the floor and pressed a hand to his side. His face gave away nothing, but his next breath came late. The bruise from Nizbel’s attack had not healed completely.
Marle pushed his hand aside.
“What did Lucca tell you?”
“I told her I knew.”
“That was why she said you had the face of someone who didn’t.”
The bruising beneath his clothes had faded to yellow, but its edge had gone red again. Marle reached for the herbs.
Frog knelt first.
“Allow me.”
He held his hand just above Crono’s side. A thin layer of water formed beneath his palm, neither cold nor hot, but close to the temperature of skin.
Marle saw that he was no longer trying to force a wound closed as he had with her hand. He moved the water in slow waves, drawing heat from the bruise and loosening the rigid muscles around it.
Crono’s breathing evened out.
“It is not healed,” Frog said. “Only eased.”
“Good.” Marle wrapped a broad bandage around his waist. “If it stopped hurting entirely, you’d do something foolish.”
They continued down the middle passage.
The red-eyed bat kept the same distance. They heard it ahead, only to turn and find it hanging from the ceiling behind them. Whenever Marle lifted her bow, it slipped behind a pillar.
The second chamber had been cut deep into the rock. A single narrow bridge reached the far exit. Somewhere below, unseen water ran fast enough to make the stone tremble.
Crono stepped onto the bridge first.
When he reached the middle, gray creatures dropped from holes in the ceiling. Two blocked the way ahead. A third landed behind them and rushed Marle.
She turned and fired. Frost locked one of its arms, but there was no room to dodge on the narrow bridge. Its broken knife came toward her face.
Water erupted from below.
Frog spread both arms. The water rose into a wall as high as their waists. It swept the creatures from their feet, yet divided beneath Crono and Marle, leaving dry stone under their boots.
“Now!”
Crono’s lightning struck the water.
White light filled the chamber. The creatures trapped in the wall burned from within. Before the charge could reach any of them, Frog released the water and let it fall beneath the bridge.
The last creature tried to flee. Marle’s arrow struck its back, wrapped in a thin strand of water from Frog. The gray body froze and fell into the chasm.
Its impact was lost far below.
Frog gripped the stone railing and recovered his breath.
“A warning that lightning travels through water would have been welcome.”
Marle looked at Crono.
“Lucca would have explained it ten times.”
Crono only said, “You did well.”
Frog watched him for a moment, then laughed.
“A longer explanation than yours.”
Beyond the bridge, the path bent downward. Black candles occupied every niche in the walls. Their wicks had burned recently. Someone from Magus’s castle still used this road.
Marle lowered the torch.
A man lay on the floor.
The blue cloak of a Guardia soldier had dried nearly black. Claws had torn the front of his armor open. He had been dead for days, but his right hand remained stretched toward the wall.
He had written in blood.
Half the words had blurred. The warning remained clear enough.
The jester in Magus’s castle changes his guard when struck. Do not keep attacking him the same way.
There was no name or company beneath it.
Frog closed his eyes, then folded the soldier’s hand across his chest. The Hero’s Badge touched the dead man’s armor with a small sound.
“He found the entrance,” Marle said.
“And did not return.”
Frog drew the soldier’s short sword and leaned it against the wall beside him.
“We will carry his warning.”
The path beyond was narrower and steeper. The gray creatures came twice more, but the travelers no longer wasted their strength on empty cuts. Marle pinned the creatures in ice. Frog used water to hold them and open a path into their magic. Crono sent lightning or the force of his blade through the opening.
Fitting their movements together took more than words.
Once Frog released the water too quickly and Marle’s arrow passed through empty smoke. Once Crono rushed ahead and broke the distance between them. They did not repeat either mistake in the next fight.
Wind met them at the top of the final stair.
It carried night air, snow, and bare stone instead of decay.
They stepped out of the cave.
There was no moon. South of the mountain, evening still lingered over the forests and fields. Only the land to the north lay beneath an absolute night.
Magus’s castle stood at its center.
Black towers leaned against one another. A winged stone figure opened its mouth toward the north from the highest roof. Not one window held a light, yet the clouds above the walls glowed red.
The bat circled over their heads.
This time it did not fly toward the castle. It hung from a dead tree nearby and waited.
Marle set an arrow to her string.
“That thing does not belong to the cave.”
“It never did,” Crono said, watching the castle.
Frog sheathed the Masamune. The two presences inside the blade were still, but the Hero’s Badge trembled faintly against his chest.
No guard stood on the stone road. No torch burned along the walls.
The castle doors were already open.
As though someone inside had known they were coming.
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