The Shadows Chapter 8
Reunion
By Keith Adams
Magus stepped out of the swirling dimension of blue light waves that accompainied gate travel. He had seen visions in the gate, visions of things that could, or possibly must, be. He was unsure what to makeof them - he could discern no faces. They were of a dark nature, and many involved people, if they were human, clad in black robes, wearing darkened steel masks. What they were, Magus had no idea of, only that they appeared to have knowledge of magic anolagous to his own.
As Magus stepped out of the gate, he soon reliazed where he was. It was a high tech futuristic era, but broken down. The metal walls were corroded, the wiring exposed. He was in a small room, with small, dead end passages connecting to a small platform which he was on. From what he knew of the gates, Magus guessed he was in 2300 ad, the future, possibly Bangor (?) dome. This was the future that had occured due to Lavos, and had supposedly been halted with that .. things ... death in 1999, when he, Crono, and Lucca ended what would be the destruction of the world. Obviously something had gone wrong - this was the same future, bleak, without hope, that he had last visited while ressurecting Crono on Death Peak with the aid of the Chrono Trigger. Magus wished he had another Chrono Trigger - with it, he could find Schala. Schala - the person he cared for more than anyone else; indeed, I only really care about her, thought Magus. Well remembering the poisonous air that infected this time, Magus decided to cover his mouth with a cape before exiting the platform towards the South, through the still working automatic door.
Magus came out in a broken land. The ground was reddish colored, and swirls of dust filled the air. Huge craters dotted the landscape, and Magus looked at the dome he had come out of, with huge circular holes in it. There was a small "road", actually the remains of a concrete highway. To the south on the road lie Trann Dome, to the East, Lab 16, which led to Arris. Magus remebered Lucca saying that Arris was near an access point to the southern continent, where Death Peak and the Lab of Belthasar lay. Resolving himself, Magus headed east along the broken road, past the ruined remains of buildings, taking shallow breaths to avoid much exposure to the contamainated air. He came to "Lab" 16, which was the remains of skyscapers, a rocky area filled with large giant rats and shattered glass. Magus climbed up the buildings remains, ignoring the freakish mutants which populated the ruin. The mutants looked roughly like moving plants with a bird, in it's enitirety, for a head - in fact a blue jay, with a orangish mohawk. These plants crawled slowly in secluded areasb surrounded by a destroyed buildings. Magus kept moving, and in now time he had reached a flat plain, with a massive, broken dome in the middle to the southeast. It was about 6 miles off. Magus tried to get an idea of the time but could not - the sky remained a constant red. Magus feared to fly in this place - far too many swirls were the higher one went. So with aching leg muscles, Magus hiked to Arris, his Scythe slung over his back, ffeeling the cold metal of the amulet Schala gave him underneath his shirt, reminding him of his failure to continue searching for her. Magus reached Arris in a few hours.
Arris was the largest remaining dome - it was several miles in diameter, with 4 towers at each end, each with huge holes in them, as if they were bombarded from above, obviously the handiwork of Lavos. The Dome itself was not breached, having two layes, Lavos's assault (which should not have happened, a fact Magus was still not quite acknowledging in light of the fact that the planet was still the same) only partially destroyed the first, but dark black spots were still everywhere. The walls wer corroded, but without holes. Sneaking around to the front, Magus came to a flight of stairs nearly 50 feet long which led to a huge automated door. Levitating, Magus reached the platform at the top of the stairs in height, and with a quick burst, quickly reached the platform. As he approached, the doors opened, revealing a complex, intertwined series of platforms. Magus went around in back, since he knew that was where the people that inhabited Arris were. Taking a series of stairs and platforms around a huge, missle like object in the center of the Dome, Magus reached a longg platform in the back, where people lay on blankets with small potted plants. Magus saw R66-Y, the Robot who aided in the quest to destroy Lavos, near the center of the platform, and approached him. R66-Y vaguely resembled two yellow-orangish rocks with black bumps as eyes.
"Greetings, Magus of Zeal," R66-Y wwas unfailingly polite "How are you today?"
"Do you know what caused this?" Magus asked, ignoring R66-Y's greeting.
"No. There have been some new developments. Recently we discovered that the Mystics were not killed in the Apocalypse, which we didn't know before. They appear to live on the Southern Continent, on Death Peak," R66-Y answered "We don't know what to make of it. Lavos was destroyed, but the records indicate that Lavos was destroyed, but his rising knocked out all computer records beyond it. Whatever happened was not the result of Lavos, and the destruction of the planet was never due to Lavos either. Something else must have done it."
Magus nodded - a similair thought had occured to him. Magus knew that they now had to prevent this future from happening. Somehow, he felt as though the answers lie in the Mystics.
"There is only one course of action; We must go to Death Peak. If any answers are to be found, they will be found there," Magus concluded.
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