Chrono Trigger: The Planeswalkers Chapter 22

The Dreamstone Blade

By MoxjetFF7

12,000 BC, Enhasa

After reappearing from their teleportation, Doreen began to lead Jack and Sarah through the city, pointing out certain things and explaining some of the situation in Zeal. They were going to meet Melchior, the Guru of Life, or at least that's what Doreen had said. Apparently, this had some connection to the Red TAG, but Doreen wouldn't explain.

Jack decided to make some use of this time by asking some questions which he felt need answering. "You still didn't explain why you acted like you know me." He said. "What's the deal? Think we deserve an answer."

Doreen sighed briefly. "Take a look around you," she said. "Do you notice anything strange?"

Jack did as instructed, not picking up anything. "No, not really," he said.

"How about the hair of all the females?" Doreen asked. Jack and Sarah both looked around this time, finally noticing that all of the women had blue hair, in the same shade as Jack's.

"Woah," Jack mumbled. "Why the hell didn't we notice that sooner…" he said.

"I guess I just got used to blue hair," Sarah said. "That's weird."

"Now," Doreen instructed. "Look at the men. Do you see anyone with blue hair?" Both Jack and Sarah shook their heads. Doreen continued to explain. "We believe that blue hair is a trait linked to the Y chromosome, making it impossible for a man to have blue hair. But, strangely enough, you as well as three others in this time period seem to defy that principle."

"Who?" Jack asked.

"In addition to yourself, there are three others. One is a man who claims himself to be a prophet. He appeared less then two days ago, winning the Queen over with his frighteningly accurate predictions. While he wears a hood that conceals his face, he he does have long blue hair."

"Who else?" Jack asked.

"There are two others. The first being the eldest son of the Queen, Janus, who ages eight years old. The other being her younger son, Lathain, who is only two. Both possess this strange trait which seems an impossibility according to genetic studies."

Lathain? Both Jack and Sarah questioned to themselves at the recognition of the name, but neither bothered to follow it up.

"So what does that mean?" Sarah asked.

Doreen turned down another corridor and stopped when she reached a bookshelf. Floating a few inches off the floor, she removed a large, leather bound book from the shelf and handed this it to Jack. "There is a prophesy that the coming of a man with blue hair with save Zeal. Now, we have four." She floated back to the ground. "Read this book. It contains much valuable information. Hopefully, it will help you answer more questions then I can." Jack looked at the title, which read: "The Origin of Mount Woe."

Without speaking again, she continued walking. In silence, Jack opened the book. All of the text was hand written and looked to be many years old. If that didn't tell it's age, the texture of the paper did. Flipping slowly though the pages, he noticed many diagrams of things which he didn't recognize.

Deciding to save it for latter, he closed the book. Just as he was doing that, they arrived at the end of the hall, an open door marking the only place left to go. Doreen stepped to the side and made a motion for them to enter first. They did, finding themselves in what looked like a workshop. There were many papers and tools strewn about the floor. Mounted on the walls were various gadgets and swords. The most notable feature in the room, though, was a large chunk of glittering red rock that sat on a pillar in one corner of the room. There was also a man, old by his appearance, huddled over one of the work benches. Oddly enough, there were two creatures that closely resembled Doreen standing on either side of him. It was these yellow creatures who turned to great the visitors first.

"Sis!" they said at the same time, hopping over to her. Now, the elderly man rose from his seat by the bench, grabbed what looked like a cane from it's resting place against the wall and walked over to the guests.

"Hello Doreen," he said, his voice filled with more energy then he looked to have on the outside. "Who are these people?"

"I found them wandering around Enhasa. He had this," she said, reaching into Jack's pocket and procuring the Red TAG. She handed it to Melchior who examined it closely. His eyes lit up when after a few seconds of examination.

"It's not what I think it is, is it?" he asked. "Because, that would be impossible…" Hitting the activation button, the blade of red arc waves jumped from the TAG, filling the room with energy. The two creatures resembling Doreen jumped slightly back and the blades activation. Melchior took on an extremely puzzled look as he turned the blade off and handed it back to Jack.

"They claim to be time travelers, Melchior," Doreen said. "This one with the blue hair said he found it in 600 AD."

"My Dreamstone Arc Wave Generation System…" he said slowly. "This is all very sudden," he said. "Much turmoil is entering Zeal. Now, we have two blue haired men to deal with. This is a sign....The Queen truly IS going to make a fatal mistake."

"Umm, is anyone hear confused?" Jack said, raising his hand in a sarcastic response to his own remark.

"This is Jack," Doreen said, introducing him to Melchior.

"Well, Jack," Melchior said somewhat hurried, "I would love to have a few words with you, but I must take my leave now. I shan't be long. Please, wait here and make yourself comfortable." He went over to his table and grabbed a longish red dagger off of the workbench. Nodding briefly to the two other creatures, he walked out of the room, taking a quicker pace then it looked like someone of his age could. The two creatures soon followed him.

When they were all long gone, Doreen spoke. "Ready for a brief History lesson?" Doreen asked. Jack and Sarah nodded. "The two other creatures you saw are my brothers. They're names are Masa and Mune. We are from a race called the Finori. We arrived in this planet in this era when our ship malfunctioned almost 20 years ago. We are somewhat or a group of time-travelers ourselves, you could say. It's possible that we might have been able to fix our ship, but se decided that we liked this time and the people in it. That was back when Vigo was king, however..."

"Vigo?" Sarah asked.

"The rightful ruler of Zeal," Doreen said. "He was killed defending this Kingdom. His wife took control soon after his death. She started out as a good ruler. It wasn't until she shifted to an alternate power source for the kingdom that she...changed."

"What alternate power source?" Jack asked.

"You see," she said. "That's what intrigues me about you two the most. You seem to have had some experience with the Lavoid." Jack and Sarah bother nearly fell down at the mention of the word: Lavoid."

"What do you know about the Lavoid?" Jack demanded.

Doreen chuckled briefly. "The Lavoid is the one who controls this kingdom, so to say. It possessed the queen shortly after we started to use the energy it gives off to power this place. Now, the queen is one with Lavos, hoping to use it's power to become immortal. Her daughter, Schala, had been trying to stop her, but she met...an unfortunate fate."

"She's dead?" Sarah asked.

"Far from it..." Doreen mumbled. "That is not to be worried about though. I will find a room for you to stay in. Please wait here." Quickly after, Doreen disappeared. Jack and Sarah stood in silence for a few moments before Jack started wandering around the shop.

"Wait a minute," Jack said. "So, the people here are using the energy from the Lavoid to power this flying island?" Jack asked. Doreen nodded. "Well then," Jack said, cracking his knuckles, "I should be able to get a shot at it then…"

When he examined the workbench that Melchior had been hovering over when they entered, he found what he could have sworn where the parts to a TAG. Picking up a the small red crystal that sat next to what was becoming the outer casing, he held it up to the light and quickly recognized it.

"What is it?" Sarah asked. Jack didn't answer, but instead he placed the Red TAG on the table and started to take it apart. Sure enough, the crystal on the table was cut in the exact same shape as the crystal in his TAG. Sifting through the other parts on the table, he also found a small Dreamstone rod, identical to the one that powered his own weapon.

"No fucking way..." Jack said, his jaw hanging open in shock.

"What?!" Sarah demanded walking over to Jack and looking at the identical sets of parts that sat on the table.

"He was building a TAG..." Jack said. "Not just any TAG though. He was building this," he motioned to the disassembled Red TAG, "The most powerful TAG that I've ever seen…my TAG…"

Jack started to put the TAG back together when Sarah reached over his shoulder and lifted what looked like the handle of a sword, but there was no blade. It handle itself was quite ornate, as was the pommel and the hilt, but it was also quite light. The hilt was not the standard cross-bar that they would have expected. Rather, it was more of a disc, similar to the hand guard on a Katana. Messing with it briefly, she separated the handle into two halves, finding that it was hollow.

"What is this?" Sarah asked. Jack took the halves of the hilt from her and analyzed them. He noticed that the slit where the blade was to protrude from was surrounded in a thin layer of Dreamstone. Coming to a sudden realization, he reassembled his TAG and placed the rod into the hollow handle. Placing the other half of the handle over it and locking it into place, he found that the TAG fit perfectly in the hilt.

Lifting the complete construction up, he felt for the place where the normal activation switch was and sure enough, there was a small button. Pressing it, the Red Blade of energy erupted from the hilt. However, instead of the normal shape of the blade, which was that of a narrow rod, this blade was very flat, just like the blade of a sword. The energy had been shaped to a sword blade by the slit which the energy passed through when it left the handle by the hilt. That must have been why Melchior had used Dreamstone for that slit in the hilt, so it wouldn't be destroyed by the actual blade.

"Good God..." Sarah said, gazing at the red blade. "This Melchior person really did invent TAGs..."

.

600 AD, Gate to Guardia Castle

Aragorn, Tristan and Rayith stood before the great gate that lead into Guardia Castle. The gate led into the courtyard and beyond that, all three of them could see a second gate leading into the keep. Being that the castle was in relative safety from attack due to the end of the War, the gates were kept open now. Good news had spread fast. Magus was dead. The Mystics were defeated. The people would never expect what was coming.

"Everyone ready?" Aragorn asked. "There's no going back after this."

"I'm ready," Tristan said, feeling inside of his coat to make sure he pistols in his shoulder holsters were still there.

Rayith merely nodded, fiddling briefly with her sword. Aragorn also wrapped his hand around the handle of his sword. Not removing the blade from it's resting place in the sheath on his back, Aragorn stepped forward.

"Let's go!" he shouted, breaking into a run through the courtyard and towards the door into the keep. Tristan and Rayith also started to run. All three of them picked up a slight Force Tech glow, trying to power their sprint. To the surprise of no one, they attracted some attention from the guards that were positioned all over the place.

While some of the guards started to run after them, all three of them made it to the keep without being caught, slowing down only once through the doors.

"I need to see the King!" Aragorn demanded of the guards that were standing in a state of confusion.

"A-Aragorn?" one of the guards questioned.

"It's him!" another guard said. "It's the escaped prisoner. It's Sir Aragorn!"

"Detain him!" a third guard shouted. In a moment four guards jumped at Aragorn. The knight easily dodged his assailants before running up the flight of stairs that stood before him. He stopped at the to speak to his comrades.

"Tristan, Rayith, buy me time!" he shouted before turning and breaking though the doors behind him.

"Well, this turned messy fast," Tristan said, drawing one of his pistols from inside his coat. The guards had already started to run up the stairs after Aragorn so without wasting too much time, Tristan fired four seemingly effortless shots, one for each of the guards. Each bullet nailed a guard in the back of the right knee and four separate shouts of pain were let out before the all of the guards crumbled to the ground.

Drawing another pistol with his free hand, Tristan made his way up the stairs, climbing over the bodies of moaning, crippled guards. Rayith released her blade from it's sheath and made her way up the stairs also. The both turned and scanned the room and quickly noted that mobs of guards were pouring in from both directions, all of them with their blades out.

"Crap," Rayith muttered. Turning to Tristan, she frowned. "Shall we fall back?" she asked.

"Sounds good to me," Tristan said. "I don't want to have to actually kill anyone…" The guards were now coming up the stairs. Tristan turned to his companion. "Go!" he yelled to Rayith who quickly complied. While Rayith pulled back, Tristan moved forward and kicked the live bodies of the downed guards toward their oncoming allies, tripping many of them up. Firing off as many shots to the knees and thighs as he could, Tristan finished that was left in his bullet clips before falling back also, reloading on the fly.

As Tristan and Rayith retreated, Aragorn had made it to the throne room, finding the King on the throne, as predicted. He quickly made his speech before the guards inevitably subdued him.

"Sire!" he announced. "You must listen to me!"

The King had risen from the throne and was standing in momentary shock. "Aragorn?!" he questioned. "What the devil are you doing here?!" he shouted. "You should be in prison with the rest of the treasonous swine!"

"Sire!" Aragorn pleaded. "I pray that you listen! The Mystics are not defeated! They are planing you assassination!" At this point, guards had swarmed into the throne room from the stairwells in the rear of the room. Tristan and Rayith also arrived as Aragorn was giving his speech.

"Just like last time, Aragorn? Except this time you're on my side?" the King questioned.

"Lord, you must trust me!" Aragorn commanded.

"I did, you fool," the King spat. "That almost got me killed once, and I won't be foolhardy enough to make that mistake again." The king turned around and sat down again. "Detain him," he said calmly.

"My Lord, they will kill you on the date of your…" Aragorn started to say but was cut off as about half a dozen men jumped on him and started to beat him into submission with the butts of their swords. While Aragorn fought bravely in trying to drive them off, he finally caught a blow to the back of his head and was knocked unconscious.

Tristan and Rayith watched on in horror as their companion was beaten to a pulp. After the guards were done with Aragorn, his friends decided they didn't want to receive the same treatment. They complied willingly, dropping their weapons and raising their hands over their heads. They were quickly surrounded by the guards who made haste in binding their hands behind their backs.

"Take them away!" the King yelled. "And make sure Sir Aragorn doesn't escape quite so easily this time!" The guards quickly went to work, leading Tristan and Rayith off to the dungeon and leaving four others to hoist Aragorn up and carry him to a similar fate.

.

Both Tristan and Rayith were sitting in silence while they waited for their companion to wake up. Due to the large number of Mystic criminals that had been imprisoned, the three time travelers had all been stored in one cell. There was a small bed, which Tristan and Rayith sat on, but other then that the room was bare, save for a gardarobe in the corner. Aragorn was laying against the far wall, still out like a light.

"A fine mess our knightly companion got us into his time," Rayith said. "Why did we listen to him again?"

"Because we had nothing better to do," Tristan shrugged. "Either way, they didn't bother to disarm me so escaping shouldn't be to difficult.

"They took MY sword," Rayith said. "Why didn't they take your little shooting things or whatever you call them?"

"Guns?" Tristan asked. Rayith nodded. Tristan shrugged. "Probably because they didn't now what they are." Tristan reached into his trench coat and pulled out a Cougar Magnum and twirled it around his left index finger before opening up the bullet chamber and spinning it around out of sheer boredom."

"We can't escape until sleepy over there wakes up, either," Rayith said. "Also, using magic would probably be a bad idea. The last thing we want to do is to get them to connect us to the Mystics. They might burn us at the stake or something."

Tristan rose from his seat and started pacing around the room, spinning the magnum around his finger again. "It's not a matter of the force required to escape," he mused. "It's actually getting out of this cell, getting to the king and getting him to listen to us before he just throws us in prison again."

"Good point…" Rayith muttered.

"I think that we might have been able to come up with a better plan then Aragorn's 'storm on in and yell at the King' bit. Either way, we do know that this assassination is true and we should probably stop it. If we don't, it might have a dire effect on history."

"But why?" Rayith said. "If it was bound to happen, then it would have happened anyway."

Tristan shook his head. "No, no, Ray," he said. "First off, I know for a fact that it didn't happen. I remember that from history class. Secondly, this whole thing might have been caused by that thing at Magus's castle. History certainly didn't include two groups of time-traveling teenagers storming Magus's castle and wrecking havoc."

"Another good point," Rayith said. "So how do we stop it?"

"Well, we need to show the King some kind of inexorable proof. We need to give him no other options besides believing us."

"Why do I have a feeling that doing that is a lot more difficult then it sounds," Rayith said, discouraged.

"Because it is," Tristan said simply. He sat down on the bed again and holstered the magnum in some unseen location.

Both of them sat in silence for a while whilst each of them contemplated over various plans. About half an hour later Tristan stood up.

"The only inexorable, undeniable proof there is, is the actual assassination," Tristan said, concluding his plan. Rayith perked up, listening almost intently on what seemed like an endless drawl. "Therefore, the only way we can actually save the King is to save him from the actual bullet, or well…arrow in this case."

"How do you propose we do that?" Rayith questioned.

Tristan started to pace around the room again. "It's simple," he said. "We just need to have someone jump in front of the bullet for him."

"Arrow," Rayith corrected.

"Whatever," Tristan said. "To be most effective, however, we should let him know ahead of time that we're going to be saving him. That would probably leave the greatest impact in the King's mind. This way, if we can find out some other way to stop he assassination, like finding the assassin, he'll still know it's us. Also, as long as he knows that it's us, then whatever Aragorn did in the past will probably be swept from the record."

"So, basically, we're helping out Aragorn?" Rayith asked.

"Not just Aragorn though," Tristan answered. "We're going to make sure that King doesn't die and therefore prevent history from becoming drastically changed."

"So how do we make sure he knows that we're the ones that will be saving him?"

Tristan smirked some what sinisterly. "Simple," he announced. "We'll just pay a visit to his bedroom…"

.

"You want to break into the King's bedroom, deliver a message, and then make an escape?" Aragorn said. The knight was sitting against the wall in the cell about an hour after Tristan had come up with his plan. Tristan, after pausing briefly to light up a cigarette, had explained the plan to Aragorn after he had regain consciousness. Now, the three of them were sitting in the cell debating on the best plan of escape.

"That's the idea," Tristan said. "We should wait until about four in the mourning though. Security will be extremely minimal if even existent."

"So how do we bust out of the cell?" Aragorn asked.

"I'm going to melt the bars with a little magic," Rayith said. "That should cover it." Aragorn started to get up as Rayith decided to finally ask a question that she had been thinking about for a while. "Aragorn," she said. "Now that we're in prison because of you, I think we deserve a slight explanation of your past and what the hell happened between you and the King."

Aragorn sighed deeply and sat back down. "True, I believe that you do deserve my story." He leaned his head against the wall and took a deep breath. "To make a long story short, I was wrongfully accused of an attempted assassination of the King. I was thrown in prison to be executed for High Treason against the throne. I escaped the day of my execution. That was the day I found Jack and Sarah wandering in the woods. I was still a little delirious from the lack of food and water, so I attacked them."

"What happened?" Tristan asked. "I mean, who actually was responsible for the assassination?"

Aragorn paused. "Please," he begged. "I don't want to talk about it."

"So that's it?" Rayith asked. "That's what you didn't want to talk to use about?" Rayith was slightly annoyed that he hadn't actually been concealing more of a lengthy story."

"Believe me," Aragorn said, "There is much more to this story. In fact, Mox likes this story so much that he's writing a whole separate novel about it. It's called Times of War. You can go check it out and find out about my entire past."

"What?" Rayith asked.

"Yeah, dude," Tristan said. "What the HELL are you talking about? Who's this Mox guy?"

"Oh, sorry," Aragorn said. "Never mind. Let's just say, there's going to be story on my life some day. You can read it then."

"Yeah," Rayith said sarcastically. "Sure. Whatever you say, Aragorn."

"Back to business," Tristan cut in. "We're escaping tonight. We make a quick stop at the King's quarters, tell him we're going to save him from the assassination if he likes it or not, then do something real Mission Impossible-ish, like jumping out of the window. He'll remember that."

"Mission Impossible?" Aragorn asked.

"Never mind," Tristan said, realizing that making a correlation to something in his time was a bad idea. "Either way, try to rest up. I'm setting my watch for 4:00 am. We're making our break then." No one said another word. Each of the three took a different position in the cell, trying to rest up for what was sure to be a at least a slightly stressful night.

.

"Because of my knowledge I was able to convince the queen I was a mighty oracle, but no history book could have prepared me for what happened here." -Magus

.

Authors note: keep in mind that "The Origin of Mount Woe" and all characters contained within (ex: Vigo) are copyright Nanaki Setoson. Basically all this means is that your ass better be reading Nanaki's stories right now as this novel (and all to follow it) take place in his 'universe' so to say. If you're reading this on a site where Nanaki's work isn't located, go to www.icybrian.com and find his work in the fanfic library there. Peace!

-Mox

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