Magus remembered the cold, biting winds of the place, and how his levitation spell ceased to function in the peaks of the mountain. "Unimaginable is the power of Lavos..." The mage's own words had even then been tainted with bitterness, and now they returned to him twisted. Lavos was gone now, and the victory belonged to Magus. Though, he had to admit, Magus would have been destroyed by Lavos, his lifetime enemy, if not for the young man, Crono. Or that damn frog...
Lavos was not a person, but a force. It had caused seven people to be united and, together, they had destroyed it before it could destroy their world. None of the seven had discovered why Lavos had engineered its own destruction.
Magus had been one of those seven. A lust for Lavos's power had consumed his mother's soul. Magus and his sister had been drawn into the fray, and Lavos had separated them through time, beyond the reaches of space. Schala... The most powerful sorceress of Zeal, pure and kind, torn from her life like her brother. Magus had grown up strong in magic; in his youth, he had been devoid of it. When the time gates closed, he chose to come here, to the far-off future. Schala was still alive, and here, he might find her.
He knew he wouldn't find the dark world he remembered. The future had been changed now that Lavos was gone. But the island was still the same, frozen over and blanketed in the shadow of Death Peak. The Keeper's Dome stood unbroken, but deserted. Looking for the guru who guarded the dome, Magus had found only the Nu that had once been the guru's companion. The creature was gone to the world--Magus himself had ended the Nu's life at its own asking. It had already been alive for thousands of years; it figured its deed was finally done. Magus, hoping to find someone who could help him in the dome, had kicked the carcass and spat on it when he found it. What help could it offer? Magus found himself climbing the treacherous Death Peak on his own, a purple hood from his long cloak pulled over his head, his scythe in his hand for protection.
The path was old to him. When he had come here the first time, spawns of Lavos had invaded the peak, promising destruction to all intruders. Magus recalled with contempt the bleached skull he had found in the lair of the first spawn, when the spawn had done its job correctly. Lavos didn't rule this world, but the winds off the mountain didn't understand this, and never ceased at all. The way was still dangerous, especially alone. Snow stung in Magus's eyes, and his dark cloak was wet and dragging. Raising a gloved hand to protect his sight from the white glare, Magus tramped up the mountain.
He almost missed the figure huddled in the snow. He caught a flash of dingy color in the squall, and noticed the shape of a wrapped and shivering person in a rock crevasse on the cliffside. The white flurry blinding him, Magus attempted to discern the figure, thoughts of Schala, the object of his search, occupying his mind.
The mage saw that the figure was a woman, and his heart quickened, but it fell again when she looked up at him. She was ancient, wrinkled and shaking, half-buried in snow and her own whitened hair. Her baggy skin was blue from the cold. She noticed Magus and reached a bony hand up to him, her eyes full of incomparable sadness.
"You've come," she gasped. "Thank God, you've come."
"Who..." Magus was taken aback. "Do I know you?"
"Well, I imagine you know everyone, don't you? There's no mistake; it's I that you want."
"You must have me confused with someone else," Magus replied, trying to get a better look at the woman through the blank sheet of snow.
"Do you think I could mistake Death, with a scythe as your scepter? Come, take me with you now. I'm willing." She stretched her arm out further. Her fingernails were long and yellowed, her skin spotted. Magus drew away in disgust.
"You're delirious, woman! Here, look." In one quick motion Magus tore the hood from his head. "I'm a person, just like you."
The old woman breathed a sigh, not of relief, but of disappointment. "I'm sorry, sir. It's just that you're so pale... Your eyes are the color of blood..." Suddenly, her eyes widened and her outstretched hand dropped. "No... no... you are..." her hands dropped to the snow as she attempted to scurry away like a rodent. "Don't take me back there! I've come too far! No!"
Magus kicked snow onto the woman. "Worthless crone," he muttered. She was obviously senile. He turned away, figuring on letting her die in the snow.
He could hear her whine as he began to leave. "False prophet... Made me do horrible things to the children! Made me seal away... the children!"
Magus stopped cold. Prophet... Seal away... He felt the old woman's soul shy away as he kneeled down beside her. He tentatively reached a leather-gloved hand into the sea of the woman's hair. Afraid of what he might find, he tucked the hair back.
The ear was pointed, sharp like his own.
Then he noticed it all at once: the blue streaks in the brittle hair, the rich indigo robes torn to rags, the angel-shaped crest pinned on the tattered dress, and the twinkling pendant hung around the baggy neck.
Magus stammered in shock. He felt a tear rise to his eye and freeze there. The woman, still shaking and wheezing, brought her right arm back and scratched Magus across his face.
He shouted, hearing the grating of her rough nails against his flesh. He stumbled onto his feet and backwards, groping numbly at his left cheek. His glove was stained with blood, already freezing to crystals in his wound. He swore in frustration. Schala, his sister, sat in the snow, chunks of her brother's skin caught in her fingernails. Reflexively, Magus took up his scythe.
"I don't know what your plans are for me, monster!" shouted Schala in rebellion. "Just kill me now if you want! Don't torture me!"
"No, you don't understand," Magus explained, dropping his blade. "I'm not... I was only... " He tried to make up for his quick temper. The cuts on his face stung in the wind. "You remember the Prophet, but, Schala-- if you truly are Schala-- think further back, back to a spoiled youth in a golden palace. My eyes were brown and lifeless then. They glow now that I've discovered that the magic was always in me... Do you understand? Do you?"
Schala was speechless. Magus hoped he would remember who he was, so he desperately continued. "Lavos separated us through time. I found my magic, and grew in a world beyond this. I returned to destroy Lavos forever, thinking that maybe it would keep us from separating.
"When I first began to time travel, the future seemed-- malleable. Very easily changed. But I've discovered that what happens usually remains.
"But I have destroyed Lavos now, though you may not realize it. And I tried to find you... But it wasn't supposed to be this way. Please, tell me you understand!"
Schala choked out a reply. "J... Janus? My brother? I've found you, Janus?"
Magus's name in youth hit him like another strike. "Yes. But they call me Magus, now. They have for many years." He dropped down next to Schala and embraced her. He was relieved that she recognized him, but Magus still felt empty. This wasn't the joyous reunion he had been hoping for. "What... what happened to you?"
"What?"
"Since we saw each other last. I told you where I was, but..." Magus wasn't able to go on.
"Lavos took me away in time, too. Far into the past, where I found people who lived in the forest. They couldn't tell me the year, or where I was... They were dirty, primitive people..."
"In the forest? The Laruba people?"
"So you've met them? Yes, that was the word they used. They had no fine clothes, no scholars, no magic. But they had food, shelter... and they liked me. Their children liked me. Before I knew it, those children were growing up... and having children...
"I always looked for a way back home. I wanted to find you again. Then one day, I found the blue doorway--"
"A timegate?" Magus interrupted. "It brought you here?"
"No. It took me to Gaspar, in a place beyond time. Do you remember Gaspar?"
The keeper of the End of Time. Magus had seen him recently, and he said so.
Schala continued. "He gave me this. He said if I came here with it, maybe it would bring you." She drew a round object out from her tattered cloak. The object was yellow, fragile, and familiar.
"The Time Egg! The Chrono Trigger!" Magus exclaimed. "But, how? There was only one Chrono Trigger, and we used it up!"
"Used it up?" asked the old woman. "No, I have it, here. But it hasn't hatched. Gaspar said I needed to hatch it. It hasn't hatched, and you're still here."
"No, we used the Chrono Trigger. We used it, to save Crono. Do you remember Crono, Schala? One of the children we met, the one who saved you from Lavos. But we needed the Chrono Trigger. Where did you get another one?"
"Maybe there were two. Maybe... maybe somehow this is the same one. I don't understand time travel, but there is no time where Gaspar is. Maybe he could give the same thing twice. I don't know. But I know we're together, like we wanted..."
"No!" shouted Magus.. The single word echoed in the cliffs of the mountain. "This isn't right. We'll both die if we don't leave here now. Look at you! You haven't got much more time. But," a realization hit him, "there may be another way. A better way." He reached out his arm. "Can you stand?"
"Maybe." Schala lifted her now feeble body gingerly off the ground. She clenched onto her brother's arm and began to walk with him slowly to the summit.
"You wasted your life looking for me," Magus murmured as they ascended.
"No," Schala answered. "My search for you gave me something to hold on to." She told Magus stories of her long life, and he told her about his: about Crono and Frog, the past and future, and the origins of his magic and his new name. Their conversation was a spot of warmth in the desolate cold, but it was still not what Magus had anticipated. As he listened, he wondered why he had not seen Schala on his first journey up the peak. Then, he recalled the remains he had discovered in the lair of the Lavos Spawn. The future had been changed in more ways than one.
Magus was almost carrying Schala by the time they reached the apex of the mountain. Here the air was still, though the snow was still knee-deep. Ice crystals were clinging to the leafless branches of a single tree. "The hatchery," Magus explained, laying the Time Egg at the tree's roots.
"Now what?" asked Schala dubiously.
"Now it hatches." Magus waited, but nothing happened. What was he doing wrong? He mentally reviewed the instructions for hatching the Chrono Trigger. "A Chrono Trigger is pure potential... whether it hatches or not depends... effort... will equal..." Certainly he and Schala had made enough effort to hatch the egg. What else had the guru said? "Deceased person must be important to the space-time continuum..."
"Schala!" Magus burst. "What if you're not important?"
"What do you mean?"
"You have to be important to the world, or..."
"Wait!" Schala interrupted. "I think it's hatching." The egg was beginning to float, as if it was caught in a gust of wind. With a flash of light, the Time Egg cracked and shattered. Then, silence. "It didn't work," concluded Schala wearily.
"No, it did work! That's how it hatched before! Look to the sun!" The white sun was being covered over in shadow. Soon, the whole world was plunged into inky dar
