Standing in the field was like a dream made real for me. It has been three days since I last saw a fight and over five years since my mother decided to build a better kingdom. I felt that my life was getting better. The former Zeal Kingdom collapsed 19 years ago and to my mother it seemed to have been only minutes since it happened.
She spoke of three brave souls who arrived to deal with the threat of Queen Zeal’s corrupted mind. And how these three people confronted her directly in a palace built under the sea. She remembers it being called the “Ocean Palace”.
Mother said the newcomers threw a red knife at the machine, a machine that could extract energy from a monster living in the earth. She also recounted that Queen Zeal was her mother and she was forced to operate it, being the only one present at the time who knew exactly what was going on. Her brother, Janus, was forced to watch from a distance.
The knife hit the machine andlodged itself in the main control head. The “Mammon Machine”, as Mother called it, started discharging energy at a mad pace, until the Ocean Palace started shaking. She was terrified. She yelled, “Stop! That knife alone can’t stop it!”. But it was too late. The monster that slept under the earth was awakenedby the machine’s wild and chaotic energy extraction.
The monster was huge, as Mother remembered, easily as big as a city. It clambered out of a hole it created inthe floor and poked its ugly head through.
The three newcomers attempted to fight this demon, but it quickly knocked them down like a wind blowing out a candle.
Mother tried to help, but QueenZeal got in the way and knocked her back. That’s when one person, a prophet she never mentioned before now, approached the beast and called out to it “I have waited a long time for this Lavos. I swore long ago that I would kill you.” The prophet took off his robe and attacked Lavos, with the same end result the trioof visitors had: defeat.
All looked grim. Mother was unable to move, Queen Zeal had jumped onto Lavos’s back and declared that all the punybeings before her would make a snack for “The Great Lavos”.
I’m not sure what she was saying at this point, but somewhere in her retelling, the leader of the three visitors, aboy a little younger than I am, with spiky copper hair, got back up and tried to fight again. He got up close to Lavos and let loose a torrent of lightning at the same time he was vaporized by Lavos. The other two visitors looked on helplessly yelling “Crono!!!” as they watched.
Mother remembers sending the Prophet and the other two visitors away to safety and then being swallowed by a green portal.
I was four at the time, but mother seemed very sad every time she told the story.
It always was a sad state.
The emotion and the conviction ofthe story, it sounded real. Mother always nodded when I asked if it really happened. She commented that she was carrying child at the time, but the Queen didn’t give a damn that mother was 2 months pregnant then, no, the Queen was obsessed with obtaining immortality through the machine and making Zeal live forever.
Every night in her sleep I could hear her murmur “Please forgive me… Crono”.
I always believed the story since I first heard it, but now it seems like a fantasy.
Standing here, in this field now, I feel like I could be swept away by the breeze into a blissful slumber and experience it first hand.
I closed my eyes, lying on the grass with a smile on my face. Sleep soon claimed me.
***
An explosion sounded in the distance. My eyes snapped open to see a blood red sky and hear the screams of terrorized people.
Standing quickly, I turned to look back towards home. A bright red glare lights the horizon near my home, the sign of a fight. I made the decision to check it out and help stop whoever’s behind this terrible thing.
The trip was long and painfullyslow. I could hear the screams of everyone in the village. It spurred me on, to move faster for all their sakes.
Finally I got there, to meet face to face with the most gruesome scene I will ever remember.
Bodies lay on the ground next totheir homes, split open from neck to crotch, their entrails scattered next tothem. I felt sick. Black bits of earth spotted the land. What was going on?!
A clang of steel on steel rang outto my left. The fight is still in full tilt!!
I run full speed, unsheathing my katana, a gift my mother gave me (and the recently started family heirloom witha magical temperament), and jumped into the middle of Hell.
I could see my father, mother, and two-dozen remaining members of my family, fighting against a single man wearinga dark black cloak. His eyes were deeper and darker than the deepest hole on the planet. I froze in place staring, wishing to be anywhere else other than here.
My blood ran cold as his gaze swept over to me, a smile of death on his evil features.
My parents were yelling warnings, but I couldn’t hear them over the pounding of my heart. Steeling myself, I raised my sword and charge at him, yelling the name of my best attack: theSpinGash. I charged him and sliced into his torso at a downward angle, then spun and sliced up from below in the other direction, making a large deep tothe bone X cut on his body. It never touched him; it just passed through him, like he was made of air!
I tried again, spinning neatly and bringing my katana into his neck and out the other side like before. He smiledt hat deadly smile again and placed his arm against me.
I felt like a falling tree hit me as I was sent sailing into my parents and we went down in a tumble of arms and legs.
Gasping, I got back up, ready to go another round. I raised my weapon, but my father’s hand grabbed my wrist andspun me around to face him.
“Son, listen, he cant be beaten with regular weapons. It’s useless that way; magic is the key. You have an amazing power in you, one more powerful than your uncle’s. You will do great things someday, but I fear we wont live to see that day. Your mother and I have decided to erase your memories and transportyou elsewhere to safety.”
He stuffed an odd looking egg with my mothers ribbon in it and my mothers pendant into my hands. “These will aid you at some point, you wont know what they are, but I will plant a need to keep them with you at all times into your mind’s deepest recesses. Goodbye, my son, and good luck.”
I was still in shock from being thrown like a toy, and the news from father only made it worse. “But..!” I never got to say anything else. I could feel memories fading fast. Soon I would be a blank slate of stone. I had to act fast!
Whirling to face the demonicmonster that was grinning like the devil himself, I jumped full strength at him. My attack never made contact; it wouldn’t harm him even if it did. I just felt like I could do some good if I kept attacking.
He grabbed me by the shoulder and sneered into my face, his breath smelling like the rotting remains of a corpse.
“So, you are the hero of the Multiverse.” he laughed, “You puny human, you are like a spot of dirt to me. I will torment you by casting your spirit into the depths of the dimensions and time, to live forever!” His laughter increased, I started to black out, my memories of the last few hours starting to fade.
Out of the side of my darkening vision, I saw a man move (father?? I can’t remember, looks like him). Jumping, he yelled, “Put my son down you bastard!” (Was he referring to me? I don’t remember him…)
The last sight and thought I had was seeing this stranger get split in two, flung back into a screaming woman who could’ve been my mother glowing an odd blue, and wondering who these people are. Then a bright flash and everything darkened to black.