Magus' Child Chapter 4
By FlashFyre5
The smith hammered relentlessly at his great project. It was the culmination of a lifetime of work, a sword so great that nothing could stand up to it, made of a nearly indestructable metal called adamantite, it could only be heated enough to work with the hottest fires, and even then, it was incredibly strong. As Melchior worked on the sword, he wondered why he had finally compelled him to make such a weapon, for he knew, as he put his very soul into the sword, that he could never finish it. The making of a perfect adamantite sword was beyond the ability of any human, even an Enlightened One, and yet, he worked at it, and when he felt his life force fading, he channeled his magic, spirit, and life into the sword, that one greater than he could one day finish the great weapon, with his direction. He saw his body die, slumped at the anvil, from the great ruby on the hilt of the unfinished sword, and knew that he had done the right thing.
“Melchior! Melchior!! Where are you, you old creep?!” demanded Crono, wandering around the smith’s bedroom.
“Crono, get in here!!” cried Lucca, from the forge “I think he’s dead!”
“Damn!”
“Okay, so what do we do now?” asked Marle “We know that the dragons are looking for their lost child, and we needed Melchior to make something that could find him.”
“We give up.” said Lucca in a subdued tone “Magus’s spell doesn’t work, and Lectral disappeared with his corpse after he died. Lectral was the only one that could have fixed it, and now he’s gone. Melchior was our last shot. So, like I said, we give up.”
“Wow, this is one HUGE ruby.” Muttered Crono.
“What?” Marle queried.
“Oh, it’s just this ruby, its bigger than anything that I’ve ever seen before, and there’s a copy on the other side, too!” Crono said in awe as he showed an unfinished sword to his companions.
“Wow, that is pretty big. Where did you find it?” wondered Lucca.
“Back here, behind the anvil, beside this sheaf of paper” he said, waving a wad of paper.
“Lemme see that!!” yelled Lucca. He did, and as she flipped through slowly, Crono peeked over her shoulder. There was a bunch of writing that he didn’t understand, as well as some drawings of swords in different stages of construction.
“So, what does it say?” demanded Marle impatiently.
“I don’t know,” said Lucca “it looks like some writing that I saw in Zeal, but from the pictures, I’d guess that it’s a ‘how to’ manual for building a sword.”
“Melchior needing an instruction booklet for making swords, right.” said Crono sarcastically.
“Oh well, it doesn’t matter. Let’s bury them with him. He died the way he wanted to, at the forge, working on a project. Maybe someone will finish it someday,” said Lucca sadly.
And so, working together, they rose a mountain from the bottom of the ocean and buried Melchior in it with his tools, weapons, and his final, unfinished project, sealing it with over a ton of rock. Every second of every minute, unbeknownst to them, unseen eyes peered through time to watch and learn; eyes that belonged to a friend.
Now that he knew where Melchior had been buried, Lectral slowly trudged up the icy slopes of Mt. Woe. As he headed toward the tomb of the greatest weaponsmith ever, he reflected back upon the years since Magus’s death.
Upon hearing the Guru’s proclamation, Lectral grabbed Magus’s body and, with his pure grief, tore a slit through time, and went back in time to the 1500’s. He slowly traveled to the ruins of Magus’s keep, and made, from the crumbling blocks, a grand tomb for the only father he had ever known. He wept there for, what seemed like years. An indeterminable time later, he rose from the stones, and a great plan began to form, one that just might get the vengeance he so needed. First, he had to get the materials: two huge rubies, about fifty pounds of adamantite, and the greatest weaponsmith of all time. The rubies and the smith, Melchior, were easy enough to find, but the adamantite was the tricky part. Adamantite was the only metal strong enough to penetrate the thick scales of a dragon. The dragons, realizing this, gathered it all up, and hid it on some far and hidden plane of existence. Nobody knew where, but Lectral had a spell that would let him peek through time and space, and even through the planes. And so he searched for seven long years, when, at last, he found it. Using a powerful teleport spell, he pulled enough adamantite through the planes to suit his purposes.
After he had rested, he ripped another hole in time and, bringing his smith’s tools, he went to 11,934 B.C., to become Melchior’s first forgemaster. Lectral pounded the basics of weaponsmithing into the young boy’s head. Finally, when he had no more to teach the brilliant young child, he left a detailed message for Melchior, telling him to only open it after the coming of Lavos to Zeal. The message told him of a cave, where he would find the supplies to make a truly great sword. At the height of his career, and only then, he was to begin the work on it. Also, it held instructions to build a house nearby.
Lectral then went to 980 A.D., and left the adamantite, rubies, and an instruction booklet in a cave near where Melchior would one day live. Finally, with everything ready, the exhausted Lectral returned to the 1500’s and slept for a month, in the process losing the ability to travel through time. Then, he built a great forge and waited, and watched.
Crono and his party searched far and wide for a means to send the dragons home, or find their lost child, always meeting with failure. Then, Melchior began the creation of the sword, and Lectral watched as the final parts of his great plan fell into place. He needed the smith’s knowledge to finish the sword, but the creation would take longer than the old man would live; so Lectral made the two rubies were Souljars; magical devices that allow a person’s soul to live forever inside them, and even speak, after a time.
And so, thought Lectral, he would complete the sword, and have his revenge. The knowledge of the long dead smith would see to that, he thought wryly, as he blasted the rock around Melchior’s tomb to rubble, and took the unfinished sword in his hands, shouting “I will have my revenge!”
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