Web of Illusion Prologue
By Soothseeker
For countless centuries, man has called this world home. He has run free through its warm, grassy fields, explored the muffled darkness of its mountain caves, and conquered its seas with his limitless ingenuity. For generations man has even ruled this world, whether he preserves it through peace or ravages it with his weapons of war.
Regardless of man’s place in it, the world was here long before he was. Next to the life of the world, the life of man is infinitesimal. Whole eons of his presence add up to a grain of sand in a searing desert, a fleck of salt in an endless ocean. Compared to the world, mankind has existed for nothing more than the blink of an eye.
However, a single blink – a single moment of darkness in the midst of a life of vision – is all the time evil needs to lay down its roots. In the instant that the world’s eye closes, it is defenseless. The laws that man has abided by ever since his origin – unseen equations like gravity and love that hold him completely mystified – disappear to nothing with the fading light. The smallest brush from the hand of darkness is enough to send the whole world spinning into chaos.
There has been at least one time that man can recall when the world’s defenses were laid bare by the forces of evil. As the world blinked away the painful tears of its birth, a dark star fell from the starry sky and took seed in the virgin soil. It was not until eons later that its true portent was finally realized: it was a monster, one fallen from heaven but born in hell. In the blink of an eye, the darkness laid siege to the world, biding its time until the day that it would fill the sky with fire and ravage the fertile plains until nothing was left.
Yet the rules still live, even in darkness. Their distant echoes, muffled by evil’s dark funeral shroud, may still be heard by one who listens carefully. The world is old, but older still are the laws that govern it: love. Hatred.
Time.
These laws are older than man, older than anything he could ever imagine. Even the wise years of the world pale in comparison to their lifetimes. From its vast knowledge, that infinitely powerful force known as Time called forth a hero from the bowels of unmade promises and years not yet come. As a shadow crossed the sun, the one called the Chrono Trigger rose up to challenge the darkness that sought to silence the world forever. When the battle’s dust had faded, the evil was gone, and sunlight shone strong across the wide-eyed world.
However, any good craftsman has the sense to keep his tools as long as they are useful. Even the most unskilled war general knows better than to sacrifice his most powerful soldiers. Time is reluctant to let go of its tools. Though one battle has been won in the life of man, the world must continue to spin; day is inevitably followed by night.
Even the eye of the world must blink more than once.