I had a very interesting CT dream.
In this dream, a fierce battle was waging outside Guardia Castle. Nadia and I (for I was Crono for part of this dream) had fought valiantly, but we hadn't used magic in several years and were exhausted...and enemies kept coming. We were within the castle, which had been infiltrated, and both of us were fighting alongside Guardian soldiers. Nadia turned to me and said with despair that we were not going to be able to hold off the invasion much longer. I shook my head and said that we would surely drive them back eventually, but I knew that it was a lost cause. Fires were blazing in several rooms, and though they would eventually burn out (stone doesn't catch fire, after all), the smoke and heat was making us both dizzy.
Suddenly, one of our maids appears out of a dark corridor and tells us to follow her.
"Please, both of you need to escape. The castle is surrounded..."
"That makes it a little difficult to escape then, doesn't it," I retorted, bashing a Porre soldier who had a Guardia soldier pinned down. The Guardian ran him through while I had him distracted. Nadia looked indignant.
"We can't abandon our troops!"
"You can't afford to die...who will Guardia rally around when you're dead?"
"We're not going!" I yelled, "So why don't you save yourself while you still can?"
She glared at me. "No, I have to get you both to the basement." She grabbed Nadia by the arm, pulling her down the dark hall she'd come out of.
Basement?! There were no secret passages in the basement! Nadia and I had been all over the castle, finding its many secret paths, not to mention pored over every architectural drawing we could find. I ran after them, but even though the maid was pulling Nadia (who was resisting as much as she could) she was running faster than I could follow. I ran as fast as I could, down so many halls I became completely turned around, and finally we went down a flight of steps and through a large wooden door. I ran through the door, entering a dimly-lit room with some pillars supporting it and a strange door at the far end. Nadia told me to watch out, but the door slammed and bolted behind us.
I sat next to Nadia, who began to cry. Her father had been killed in battle, and it had only just begun to sink in.
"We're trapped, Crono!" I put my arm around her, and she cried into my shoulder. "We're trapped while Guardia is destroyed...and...my father...now I'll never get to tell him..." Nadia had come up with a brilliant new idea, the details of which she wouldn't even reveal to me. She was going to tell her father and the Chancellor at the next meeting, which would have been...the next day.
We sat there for a while, and eventually (finally!) I was a third-party observer again as Crono and Nadia got up their courage and explored the room. It was not the basement they'd known, it was a completely new room. The door in the corner was locked, but Nadia found a key in the darkest corner of the room and opened it. The two stepped into the room...and vanished.
Character switch! It's Lucca time!
Stuff that happened but that I did not actually dream...things that my character knew already:
Some time after Crono and Marle vanished, the maid led Lucca (who was searching for them) to the secret basement and explained the small room: a Time Machine built by the Zealians who were scattered in time. They were the ones in the room when QZ set off the Mammon Machine in the Ocean Palace, and had worked through history to build a time machine to send them back to shat was left of their kingdom. The maid explains that she, too, is related to that family. They originally appeared in 400 AD, and taught their children about their heritage and mission. They agreed that as soon as one of them finished the machine, that they would go back in time and take their ancestors to Zeal; however, this maid, having completed the machine, decided that she would use it to save her king and queen, whom she knew personally, rather than her ancestors, whom she never even met. She agreed to send Lucca back to 600 AD, the same era as Crono and Marle ended up.
Lucca arrives in 600 AD several weeks after Crono and Nadia, who have been helping Leene fight against a rogue wizard who has been harassing the populace. Many people have gone missing, and strange creatures reminiscent of Glenn's frog-form have appeared. This new wizard is unassociated with the Mystics, and is, in fact, disliked strongly by them. Crono and Nadia found out that the creatures were, in fact, the vanished people, turned into animal forms. C&N are currently organizing a secret group to take down the wizard, while Leene fights in the open.
Also, Lucca's a powerful magic-user, because along with her normal inventing and tinkering, she's also been honing her magic skills.
Back to actual dream events...
Lucca walks through a fairground with colorful tents. It's in the middle of a great open field, and Guardia Castle is visible to the North. Zenan Bridge is only a few miles to the south. At this point, I'm looking through Lucca's eyes...as I walk to a tent on the outskirts of the fairgrounds. Two guards stand by the entrance, but I reassure them that I'm only passing by; that tent, is, however, the one I'm about to enter. I go around the back and pull up the fabric to enter. Withing the large tent are about twenty cages, each containing an animal with human proportions. There is a tall cat with long brown hair and a dress, a young pony looking depressed in his cage...I motion for them all to be silent, because they are shocked at my entry. A wizard had turned many townspeople into animals such as these, much in the same way as Magus had done to Glenn in the past. Said Wizard...we'll get to that later. I quietly release the creatures and instruct them to head through where I entered the tent and go straight until they reached a forest, and to keep going straight until they met with Crono and Nadia and the others of their kind. I have worked my way through half the cages when...
"Lucca?!" A voice comes from behind me. I turn, and there stands Glenn...once again a frog.
"What the--Frog?!"
"That wizard reverted me to this form! Release me, so that I may have my revenge!"
"Ssh! I can't do that now! Join the others and head to the woods South of here to meet up with Crono and...Marle. We can kill him later, but if you try anything now, it could seriously hurt all of us!"
He agreed to meet with Crono and Marle, and get the full story of our arrival in that time. I finished releasing the others, and the dream again fast-forwarded...
Stuff the characters knew that wasn't shown in-dream: Much later, after beating the wizard--who was, in fact, Nortsein Bekkler--within an inch of his life, he agreed to return all those who wished to be human again back to their original forms. Bekkler, an individual who was capable of traveling through time at will, but only to
festivals, had been causing mischief for his own reasons, which remained hidden. He did reveal, however, that much of the work done on the Time Machine had been done by himself. After defeating him and releasing the creatures from their forms (though some chose to stay that way) we were faced with a problem.
Glenn was still a frog. And he hated it. After only a few years of being human after so long as a frog, he was furious.
Ok, back to in-dream events:
We went to see Magus, who had changed considerably, now looking a lot more like Guile. Um...he was tanner, not quite as gaunt, and had his hair in a braid. He wasn't all flamboyant like Guile, but his wardrobe was less evil warlord...ish. He stood atop a large stone spire surrounded by cracked stone and ruined...ruins. It was the remains of Ozzie's Castle, which had been subject to looting, and later, to vandalism, and even later, to complete destruction. The spire Magus stood on was actually once part of a tower...the top of it.
Frog stepped forward.
"Janus...! You cast this spell on me all those years ago! Dispel it!" But Magus only laughed. He explained that Glenn's new enchantment was different; a 'willful' curse. He told Glenn that it he really wished to be human, it would already have happened. Glenn calls him a liar, and Magus laughs again.
"So what? Even if I
were lying, I couldn't help you. You'd have to go to Bekkler again, but...since the festival's already ended, he's not in 600 AD any more. Go on, get lost. I've got better things to do than argue with a conflicted amphibian." And he vanished. So, too, did the dream.
That's the extent of it. I'm sort of miffed that the dream completely skipped the battles, but it was a cool dream nonetheless. At least, I enjoyed it.
So much so that I drew Marle, Lucca, and Glenn's new forms as I remembered them!
Frog...MarleMage LuccaAh, right, forgot to mention...after the killing of Lavos and return to home times, Lucca was pretty much the only one who actively worked to become a powerful magic-user.
Besides being in my dream, I've also been playing around with a fanfic idea...but I won't get into the details.
To make a (very) long story short, it occurred to me that, unless Magus joins your party, Lucca is the best Magic-User. Frog and Marle are more focused on healing, and while Crono has Luminaire...I always thought that Lucca had the best Dual Techs. (Frog Flare pwn'd Lavos for me)
Wouldn't it make sense that she'd continue to practice magic after the adventure? I can see her thinking of Magus as sort of a magic-user role model. He's a such a high level of magical prowess, and while Lucca's no shadow user, she aspires to be as good at fire magic--or better--that Magus.
That's my opinion.
