A to Z Challenge Day 13: Magus (the Lost Wizard)

If there was a game in my childhood that rivaled the obsessive qualities that Final Fantasy III instilled in me, that game is Chrono Trigger. Like it’s counterpart, I spent hours upon hours on this game, trying to find every item and get every one of the alternate endings (back in the days when we couldn’t cheat by looking it up on the internet). In fact, the first couple of times I rented the game I didn’t even realize that there was any more to the game than the Millennial Fair bit at the beginning. I was having so much fun with the little fair mini-games that I actually rented the game twice before I discovered that there was more game…a lot more!

I loved all of the characters in Chrono Trigger, but Magus was definitely one of my favorites. For one thing, he was an excellent addition to a party since he could use all four types of magic. For another, I simply loved his back-story. (SPOILER ALERT!) See, Magus’ real name was Janus, and as a child he was an inhabitant of the magical kingdom of Zeal. He had the misfortune to have a power-mad queen mother who decided to build a magical palace that would call forth the dread destructive creature, Lavos. She hoped to obtain its power for herself, but instead it destroyed her kingdom and warped time and space, creating a number of worm holes. One such wormhole sucked in poor Janus and sent him hurtling through time to the middle ages (many years in the future for him). He was “adopted” by monsters and eventually became their ruler, a magical villain who tormented the nearby kingdom of Guardia. Eventually Chrono and his friends take on Magus, only to discover that he has been trying to summon Lavos again, in hopes of destroying the horrid creature who decimated his life. Ironically he (along with the others) is then hurled back to the time of the kingdom of Zeal where he gets to watch the entire terrible thing happen all over again, unable to stop it, and eventually joins Chrono’s party in hopes of taking part in saving the world from Lavos’ eventual destruction.

It always struck me as this wonderful, terribly sad story. When we first meet Magus he’s a bad guy, no doubts about it, but as the story progresses we learn that he only became that way because his life and everyone he knew was taken away from him, and when it becomes clear that there’s no way he can ever change that, he decides to devote himself to ensuring that Lavos is stopped, one way or the other. Isn’t that just a great story? I always thought so, and it definitely added to the joy that was Chrono Trigger. 🙂

Fiction Fragment Friday: NaNoWriMo 2013 Edition Part 2

We are now officially just over a week through National Novel Writing Month. I’ve been playing catch-up since day three, but I’ve almost managed to claw my way back to an even keel. If I can write approximately 3000 words today (*nervous laughter*) I’ll be back on track, and then if I can do that another one or two times (*even more nervous laughter*) I’ll be feeling a little better about my prospects.

I have to admit, the story isn’t going the way I had planned, and will probably need a major gutting and possibly an entire rewrite by the time I’m finished, if it’s ever going to be publishable. But even still, I’m having fun. So here’s another little excerpt, in which our narrator, Clover, discusses some of the details of the day the world ended.

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It began as strange reports on the evening news. I didn’t understand much of it at the time, and my parents seemed unable to explain it in a way that made sense to me, but the long and short was that a hole had appeared in the sky above Russia. Authorities were flabbergasted; scientists from all over the world rushed to study the anomaly. Aircraft were sent up to get a closer look. Pictures on the news showed an unfathomable phenomenon; the aircraft could fly up above the black mass and look down on it as though it was a giant inky disk just hanging in the air. The most advanced machinery could get no readings. It seemed to be exactly what it looked like – just a huge black nothingness.

Eventually the authorities had to try something different. People were freaking out and they needed to learn something, be able to at least give the public some idea of what the hell this thing was. So they sent some specially trained men up and they attempted to make contact.

I don’t remember much, but I remember that broadcast. My parents were on the edges of their seats waiting to find out what would happen when the men approached the anomaly. There were all kinds of theories floating around; people were wondering if it would be solid, or if perhaps it would prove to be a portal to another world. The truth answered none of the public questions and was the most terrifying shock of billions of people’s lives. When the men who had been trained and prepared and sent up to this truly unbelievable experience reached out and touched that anomaly, what they received was a reaction. A violent reaction.

People screamed in horror from both sides of the television set as the huge black hole in the sky became an angry huge black hole in the sky. It writhed and wiggled, and it pulsed with a power that sent the trained men flying out of their craft to hurtle back down to the ground. Before the viewers could get over the shock of watching a group of men plummeting to their deaths on live television, the hole began to expand. It grew and grew, blotting out the sun above the camera crew, covering all of Russia and moving on to the surrounding countries. I remember being amazed at how fast it happened. The news lady had barely recovered enough to begin recapping what was happening when the sun began to fade above our farmhouse. The strange black hole had expanded from Russia to Canada in less than ten minutes.

And then everything was darkness. All over the planet people panicked and prayed and lost their minds because the sky had vanished behind a wall of black nothingness.