Story:Kings of Strife/Part 9

Part Nine
Although she was never one to turn down time for mental solace, even Maria had to admit that the car ride was beginning to become boring.

The journey from Norzaven back to Shorica had been an uneventful one. No more ambushes, no more air pirates, no more killing. Somehow Crono found a way to keep them from being detected by the local government, an ability that Maria pondered for the entire airship flight but eventually gave up on trying to figure out. Then the two arrived in Lipten City, a city on Shorica's northern coast that had good relationships with Norzaven. After that, he had bought a rental car, just a simple one without a cover, in order for them to drive down to Origania on Inusia’s eastern coast. Even though the mercenary had claimed it was the easiest option for them, Maria had a hard time believing it was the cheapest, considering all the money he had to shell out in order to gain rights to use the car. That had led her to thinking and wondering where he could have gotten so much money. Did being a mercenary pay enough for him to spend thousands of dolarov on airship flights and rental cars without breaking a sweat? She could have sworn she had heard him gripe about how little his job pays before. The facts just didn’t add up.

But she didn't have the guts to ask him any more questions, not after their spat at the inn. The relations between the two had been strained since then and conversation was minimal, and it pained her to realize that it was her fault. No matter how she looked at it, there was an unmistakable guilt around the past week for Maria, because she knew that she depended on Crono and then had the audacity to question him on his actions. Did she have any right to do so? Of course not, she knew. Of course not.

Even though she had wounded and disappointed him, Maria still remarked on how devoted to her he was. After all, spending the money on the rental car and then singlehandedly driving it across the Inusian country was entirely for her sake. “I am entirely dependent on him,” she had realized one windy morning, “and he wants to let me off somewhere with all of his being.” That thought wounded her, it truly gave her pain unlike much she had felt before, which led her to believe that she didn’t want to leave. Should she have made that clear for him? Would it make him feel better? No matter how hard she tried, Maria couldn’t bring herself to vocalize these sentiments. Not after the last time she tried that in Norzaven.

Somehow she knew, even without these conclusions, that Crono’s search would turn up fruitless. The book had said that the village had burned down two years ago, so what could he hope to accomplish by visiting its ashes? “Perhaps he’s just trying to put some distance between the men who attacked us,” she had reasoned. They had faced some seriously dangerous people, and all of them wanted that “crystal” that Crono held. Just what was it and why was it so important?

Maria had managed to ask him this a mere day after they started to drive across Inusia, but he had refused to answer and kept his bag near his person even closer. Whatever it was, he was extremely protective of it, and this only illustrated to Maria how little he trusted her. Not only did he mistrust her, he ardently refused to follow her advice, she noted, when he stopped sleeping again. The last time he had gotten a glimpse of sleep was on that last airship flight back to Shorica, but since then he had been driving non-stop. It wasn’t any of her business, she had to remind herself, but it was still concerning to her. Could a person go that far without sleeping? Wouldn’t he end up becoming weak and eventually hurting himself?

It wasn’t any of her business.

All of these factors combined to make the cross-country road trip a thoughtful yet bleak distance for Maria Zorphan. She had the whole of the small car to herself, but she sat in the front passenger seat, next to Crono. He never even looked at her anymore, or at least not when she could have seen him. No, he was always driving. It was obvious to her that he believed in the journey, that no matter how weak his body became, he would continue to war against the elements and accomplish his goals. She admired and feared for him.

The rest of their journey was uneventful at best, at least for the next three days. Crono stopped off shortly at Illusia City for enough gas to make it to Origania, but the stay was quick in order to evade capture. Maria wanted him to stop somewhere so that he could get some rest – she had no idea how to drive – but he angrily rejected her idea. How stubborn he was!

After that, the two of them steered clear of civilization as entirely as they possible could. A vast desert took up most of central Inusia’s land mass, and thus the two had to actually drive around the area instead of swiftly and easily driving straight to the eastern coast. In his mind, Silverius calculated that the trip would take them about another week.

Five days afterwards, they were very close to their destination on the southeast corner of Inusia. Mountain peaks were beginning to be visible on the eastern horizon and the smell of the ocean was beginning to mingle with the wind. The sea smell began to lift Crono's mood, and Maria began to notice his spirits perk up. Instead of the strained silence the two previously enjoyed, Crono began to take breaks from driving and even practice his swordplay with exaggerated yelps and hum personal tunes as he fed campfires. Despite the glee that she felt over his raised moods, a degree of hesitation still existed within her. Was he simply glad that he was close to returning her, or could the sea air truly have such an effect over him?

Furthermore, should she have been ashamed of how furiously she pondered his every move? Maria analyzed herself as being very calculating and indeed focusing on various minutia, but she couldn’t agree if she was simply caring for him or hating his stubborn demeanor. Thus no matter how Crono changed, Maria was continually in serious thought, and her own demeanor did not budge an inch.

Finally on the sixth night of travel, the two had stopped for the night in a clearing near a forest. Lush, hilly plains stretched to their left and behind them, and Crono insisted they stay close enough to the forest that they wouldn't be visible from the plain horizons. Crono had begun to go about analyzing the car’s situation and putting in more gas from the few containers he held extra while Maria wandered a few feet off and stared off into the western distance.

It seemed to her that the earth was very beautiful no matter where she went. The air above Norzaven, especially the comet shower she had witnessed, were beyond beautiful and enchanting. But even here, in the rolling hills and the tall forests near her, the environment was something to behold. Unlike the northern trees that they had passed through, these forests were made entirely of tall grey stalks and were carpeted by leaves of various colors. Autumn had progressed so that the chill was beginning to run around the globe and shook the color from all of the trees around her. Nevertheless, the forestry was so dense that it was impossible to see more than a few feet into the forest, despite how there were no leaves to speak of on any branches.

A wave of energy flowed into Maria and lifted her spirits exponentially. Fueled by the adrenaline she had gained from the surrounding natural wonder, she held onto her cloak and walked over to Crono and the car. It was time for her to stop being timid and start speaking her mind about something, she resolved.

Close to the forest, Crono had set up a campfire that now rose quietly and low. He dusted his hands and stood with his back to Maria, also staring into the dark forest. In the horizon, the sun was setting, framing the land with a new darkness that only filled the dead forest with more shadow.

Maria sat on the ground near the fire, making a noise as fallen leaves below her moved. Crono started upon hearing them and, gazing at Maria with his dark eyes as if seeing her for the first time, he sat opposite her near the fire. The two of them were silent for a moment, each watching the embers flick into the air.

She knew that the conversation had to be started directly and honestly. “I’m sorry for what I said back in Norzaven. I was a fool.” Crono looked down and to the side. “Don’t mind it. I’ve already forgotten. You’re fine.” He had indeed not forgotten and both of them knew it, but Maria was sure that her apology would mean something to him, at least.

“Alright then…” She coughed. “Do you mind me asking you a question?” Perhaps it was too soon to ask, she reasoned, but it was something she had been wondering since the two of them had first met. Crono shook his head to signify that he didn’t mind the interrogation. “Why do you wear those bandages on your right arm?” Her quiet voice, although barely registering over the crackling fire, still stabbed into Crono’s ears with their caring and awkward tone.

His immediate reaction, a darkened expression and a clasping of his right arm into his torso, proved that the subject was sore for him. Maria regretted instantly her asking, but he said nothing to prove that he did not want to answer. She waited patiently for his response as he looked straight into the fire as if to search for something burning beneath its embers.

“I… I hurt myself when I was a kid. My father… No, my mother. She died when I was just a baby. I don’t remember her at all. My father became a blacksmith and we moved to a small town. Of course I was fine, but he wasn’t. Every day without my mom was torture for him and he only saw me as the catalyst for that. So eventually he went crazy and murdered the entire town before he tried to kill me.” Crono spoke with a blank expression despite the severity of his words and began to unwrap the bandages from his arm. Maria, already shocked at the content of his answer, was speechless upon seeing what was beneath his bandages. Tens of deep, discolored scars covered his skin and wrapped around the arm. “I had to kill him to survive. When I disposed of his body into a shredder, this happened. I… I loved him, but he hated me no matter how I tried to please him. He’d always hated me.”

“…” Nothing else was said for a good minute as she thought of something, something to say. Idly, she pulled the comb from her cloak pocket and began to comb her long hair. Most of it was pulled into a ponytail, leaving her face to be framed by a short amount of hair, but she ponytail itself was curling up again and it soothed her to right it. “I notice you’re growing a beard. It’s… nice.” The best thing she could do was not to refer to his story. It was extremely obvious how painful it still was to the mercenary.

Silverius’s face flashed with irritation as he rubbed at his jaw, feeling the small hairs that had begun to grow. “Yeah. I haven’t shaved in a week, at least. Thanks, I guess.” The response was cold and detached. He made a mental note to shave soon. “I hate it.” “Don’t hate it! I love it.” Instantly she replied, although why Maria could not answer. She tried to cover up her unexpected passion with more words. Crono stared at her with confused eyes. “Don’t hate anything. It’s… It’s not good for you, I don’t think.”

The two of them looked into each other’s eyes for an eternity, silent and thoughtful. The mercenary found himself gazing into Maria’s black eyes, drowning himself beneath her dark obsidian pools, losing his breath at every feature of her porcelain, perfectly pale face. Now Crono’s lip shook as he opened it slowly, ever so slightly, and replied without moving his eyes from Maria’s gaze. “I don’t hate you.”

Maria’s eyes widened and she looked away. She could feel her face reddening. What did this mean, what was he trying to say? Was she just overanalyzing again, or did he…?

As if to grab her attention again, Silverius stood up and disrupted the leaves around him. The fire between them roared and rose higher than ever. “Maria, I... I don’t want you to leave. I don’t know why, or what it is about you, but I think…” He knew not what he was saying nor why he said it, but Silverius continued to speak with rising passion. His hands gripped into fists, mirroring his rising aggression and self-empowerment. “I love you.” Now he looked earnestly into Maria’s eyes, searching and waiting for some sort of response. Still she avoided his gaze.

Indeed Maria Zorphan was filled with a tempestuous inner state. Could what he said truly be in earnest? Just before, for weeks even, Maria had been sure that he despised and resented her! Could all those times she caught him looking at her been of affection? Did he enjoy her dependence upon him as much as she did? Could all those gazes upon her form he gave been of admiration rather than disgust or curiosity? Did she love him back? Everything was happening so fast…

Now she looked at Silverius with those wide eyes of hers and he could feel his heart breaking. Inside he knew what she was to say, he knew that she did not feel the same, and so he ran into the forest. So deep was his shame and embarrassment that he didn’t bother to grab his jacket or re-apply his bandages. Maria wanted to reach out to him but couldn’t and simply watched as he ran off into the darkness. A colossal pain gripped her heart and threatened to stop its beating. “He is gone… And I am a fool! Do I love him, truly? Is that what this is? I cannot say…” Tears began to fill her eyes and she closed them but the tears still fell. In her darkness, she could only see Crono and his horribly pained face as she could say nothing in response.

****

“God damn it!” His cursing resounded through the dark forest as the mercenary pounded his fists upon one of the bare trees. “What kind of a bastard fool am I? What happened to never loving again?” Now he found himself crying, wet and hot tears running down his face and falling to the leaves below him. “What happened to Dad?! Didn’t I…” He punched again at the tree in front of him, and then again and again. It only hurt his knuckles and his pride that he couldn’t just fend off his frustration. “I told myself that I can’t ever love again… What’s wrong with me?”

“Why did I open up to her like that? Why did I just make a fool of myself?” He only stopped attacking the tree when he found his hands becoming numb. Now he turned himself around and leaned on the tree while holding his head in his bloody hands. “I’m such an idiot…” The conclusion had been clear to him all along. There had been no possibility of her returning his feelings, especially not when he had tried to hard up to now to keep them hidden entirely.

How could he have lost himself to her like that? Never had a woman made him feel such a way before. Every relationship he had in the past was purely physical, only something to satisfy his needs, but this one was different. Sure, Maria was attractive and appealing, but that wasn’t why he was so weak around her. Only on the car ride had he realized that it was indeed love, but he had resolved never to mention it. How could he have let himself down like that?!

His head snapped up as a stick cracking rang to his ears. Night had fallen and the forest was mostly silent - Crono was almost certain that it wasn't some rogue squirrel climbing a tree that he heard. It was unnaturally quiet, in fact...there actually were no squirrels around, or birds or anything else. He looked around the dark forest without moving. His field of vision was small and his visibility low, so he relied on his other senses to alert him to his enemy. But what he heard next was not a sign of movement, nor a shift in weight. It was a voice, raspy and disconnected. Forced. Unnatural.

"You shouldn't have left the girl..."

Crono, filled with rage, jumped into the air and swung towards the voice with a tree branch grabbed with his left hand, drawing his gunblade from his waist with his right. “You fucker!!” He pinpointed the voice and was slashing downwards before he could clearly see it. His attack missed its intended bisection of the man in the woods, but he managed to drive his sword in between the neck and the left shoulder. As he landed, the sword cut down to the man's waist, cutting the intruder almost in half. Blood splashed a little on Crono's clothes, but not a whisper of pain left the man's lips.

Upon further inspection, Crono found the man he attacked to be... necrotic. His clothes were torn, and his skin was gray and peeling, revealing dark red, decrepit insides at parts. The wound Crono inflicted was very deep, and the man's left shoulder drooped off his body as a result of it, bleeding all over the place. But the man gave a jerky smile and his cut lips opened as a voice left them. Alarmingly, neither the man's throat nor his mouth moved as he spoke. "You made a mistake... Heeheehee..."

Crono put both hands on his gunblade handle and frowned at the victim. "I'm getting real damn tired of you painkiller addicts. You don’t know anything about me!" With a mighty swing and a frustrated grunt, he pulled his blade towards the sky, successfully cutting across the ragged man from left waist to right shoulder. His upper torso and head detached from the rest of his body, and blood drenched the surrounding trees, some getting on Crono's clothes and face. He wiped his face on his right arm, half surprised that his bandages weren't there to absorb the blood. Crono looked down with disgust and then satisfaction when he realized that the man was indeed dead and no longer moved.

And then he fully realized the threat that the man gave him. All he could think of was one word, one single burst of color, rejection, disbelief. “No”. He turned the way he came and ran down the trail, carelessly pushing aside branches and not bothering to holster his sword or silence his movements. “Not her! No fucking way! Maria!”

It took Silverius about a minute to arrive at the clearing, but it felt like hours in his mind. No matter how hard he pushed himself, he felt as if he were going too slowly. He wouldn't make it.

Contrary to his beliefs, when Silverius arrived at the campsite, he was greeted by the sight of two men, strikingly similar to the man Crono struck down earlier, carrying Maria away. “What the fuck are you doing?!” He yelled when he arrived and shot his gunblade at one of them. Bullets punctured the man's back, but he didn't move at all, even as blood spilled down his legs. Frustrated, he shifted his stance and began to dash towards them. "You put her down, you bastards, right n- Augh!"

His assault was halted by a kick to the side. Crono landed rolling, springing back up to his feet in a moment, looking for his assailant. He was met by a man in a deep red cloak that went to his ankles. The man was obviously extremely old, as wrinkles adorned every inch of skin he possessed. A withered frown graced his face, and his eyes were almost squinted close. One sunken hand held a black staff adorned with jewels and glitter all along its base.

Silverius slashed at him, evoking a surprisingly agile dodge from the man in the robes, before he gave up and turned away from him in disgust while running towards the men carrying Maria away. Before he could get far, however, he was jerked off his feet and held in the air by another two pairs of arms.

Silverius struggled with all his might, yelling frustrated cries as he did so, but he couldn't escape the grip of the two pairs of arms holding him back. One of them pressed so hard on his right hand that he involuntarily let go of his gunblade. "Maria! Maria, get away!!" He continued to cry to her even as the men pulled him backwards, but she did not budge. Her head was loose and her struggle nonexistent. They must have knocked her out.

And then she was gone from his sight.

Just the thought that they laid a hand on her enraged Crono, and he continued to struggle with no end, pounding his assailants with his elbows and a few kicks. They, like the others, seemed to feel no pain, and with his gunblade on the floor in front of him, Crono couldn't kill them.

A moment after Maria left his vision, the man in the burgundy cloak walked in front of Crono and turned to look at him. Within his marble gray eyes, Silverius could see a tumultuous glare that he met with his own hatred.

"By all means, dear child, continue to suffer. I'm not to kill you yet, but rest assured; your time is coming." Strikingly, his voice was the exact same as the one he heard from the herald earlier in the woods. Crono stopped struggling for a moment to resentfully stare at the decrepit man as he followed Maria and her captors.

Crono was restrained for another 30 minutes, by his count. After the first fifteen minutes, he ceased his struggle. It was futile. The men holding him, like the others before them, seemed... invulnerable. And they smelled like pure decay. But suddenly their hold on his arms fell with a hiss.

The mercenary landed to his feet, surprised, and looked around the dark forest. There was nobody else there. The entire forest was silent with the night. He looked back behind him and saw two corpses on the floor. He had heard no attack, no cause of death; it was like the men just stopped living. Their eyes were glazed over, their bodies still and lifeless. Crono staggered away to his gunblade and picked it up, holding it aloft and not turning his back on the bodies until they were gone from eyesight.

Silverius found his coat on the floor where he left it, but his bandages were gone. The fire pit was now ashen and lonely. Crono sighed and re-attached his sword to his belt as he put on his coat. The night was chilly and dark, but he could slightly see footprints in the forest mud. He still had time to find her.

“I will find you, Maria. Because I…” No matter how strongly he felt or how much he needed to have her returned to him, Singun Crono Silverius could not say the words that he wanted to. He couldn’t say the words that he needed to.

****

The mercenary stopped running for a moment to bend over and rest his hands on his knees. He was completely out of breath from his near-constant running. He was filled with burning resentment and inescapable despair. “I have to catch up to them… No matter how heavy their lead, I can’t allow myself to be weak…” The trail behind Maria and her kidnappers was beginning to get thin, he could tell. Pretty soon he wouldn't be able to follow them at all. And that would mean he failed. He swung his gunblade in the air, his vision red with fury.

"A bit angry, aren't we?" A feminine voice snapped Crono alert, but didn't refresh his energy. He wildly swung his sword at the source of the voice, but she dodged backwards effortlessly. "Now now, you're in no shape to fight me. I don't think you'd like to die here, in the middle of the hills at night." The female that spoke to him looked at him with a grin, her calm alto raising rage in him. Yet even in his state of mind, he couldn't deny her claims.

“Oh, now who the hell are you?” Crono halfheartedly swung again, but she dodged without so much as a word. He closed his eyes and dropped his sword, allowing both hands to cover his eyes in desperation. “Where are all you people coming from?”

"Come now, warrior. There's no reason to despair. Although I’ve been watching you for some time now, in order to protect my charge, now I've broken my pact and decided to help you." The woman, cloaked in the night’s shadow, eagerly stalked around him, not letting her eyes leave him. Crono let his arms fall in his act of bending over to pick up his gunblade as he glared suspiciously at the woman who had appeared. After a moment he was able to see her and her appearance quickly drew warning sirens in his head - this woman was strikingly similar to the foe he fought in Norzaven. She had a similar build, held a sheathed katana in her hand like the enemy before, and wore a similarly bright jacket with the hood donned, although its colors looked to be reversed.

“I am having foolish hallucinations, that must be it!” he spoke to himself. How could the same man he near killed be here now, in a different gender? The questions were piling up too fast for him to make known, but by now he was beginning to regain his breath. A course of action began to form in Crono's brain, and he raised his sword at the girl again. She stopped in her tracks, a confused but offended look on her face. He could breathe easily now, but he didn't bother to say a word. He would probably need all his strength to fight this phantom. The enigmatic woman shook her head and walked away from Crono.

"I thought you had more brains than this, you brute. Are you really going to waste time on fighting me when I'm sitting here telling you I can hel-"

"You shut your damn mouth!" Crono's voice cracked while he spoke, for reasons he cared not to think about, but he did his job in interrupting the woman. She looked at him with a face that was somewhat surprised - emotion didn't express seem to express itself very well on her face, but its roots were obvious. Crono took a breath and continued to speak. "I don't give a shit who you are. If you really wanted to help me, you'd know what I'm trying to do and that I don't have time to fuck around with you. I can find her. I will find her. And I will cut you down if I have to! I don't know who you are or why you look like.... that man, but I do know that I'm getting real sick and tired of people who don't know how to stay six feet under where they belong! Now go away, or I'll blow your damn brains out!"

His speech took its toll on the woman, for she turned from his gaze while he spoke. When Crono had finished talking, she did not move out of his way as commanded. Instead, she turned towards him again and held the sheath of her sword towards Crono.

A single rain drop fell on it, soon followed by another. The two of them locked eyes, and once again Crono noted a presence of vibrant, unflinching red eyes. He let no weakness show through his hardened face, proving to the girl and to himself that he had no regrets. The woman laid her left hand on the hilt of her sword and unsheathed it gracefully. The mercenary snapped his gunblade back to his side and clicked the chamber of its firing mechanism, just in case. Rain began to fall heavily between the two. Mud would soon follow, he thought.

A flash of lightning commemorated the two sword wielder's movements. Their blades clashed, and although Silverius should have been stronger and he did have a larger, more powerful blade than the woman's, her arm nor blade didn't flinch or shake for an instant. She broke the sword contact and sidestepped Crono as he faltered before she jumped into the air.

He didn't have time for hesitation, and rolled backwards as the woman's sword flashed through the darkness. She landed where he was before, and Crono stood up warily. She's fast, faster than the other guy, he noted. Crono sighed and shrugged off his jacket, allowing it to drop in the mud. The extra freedom of movement could likely save his life.

The woman didn't waste another moment before she rushed towards Crono again. He barely managed to block her slash, but he did, and it pushed her back a few inches in the mud. “I’ve got you now,” he exclaimed.

Silverius shifted his weight to his back foot and aimed his gunblade at the woman's chest, point-blank range. She raised her katana to slash away his blade, but wasn't quite fast enough - while she did manage to divert his blade, the bullet still hit her in the shoulder. The recoil and blast from the shot sent both of them backwards, the woman a bit farther away than Crono. His butt was flat in the mud, his entire body soaked due to the now pouring rain, and his breath was failing him again after his extended run. “Will I be able to keep this up?”

His rising weariness only heightened his priority of ending the battle. Crono stumbled to his feet, one hand on his knee for stabilization as he struggled to find air. He made a double take when he saw that his enemy was already standing with her weapon to the ready, even though her left shoulder was massively injured. The bullet had right through her skin, but the close-range blast managed to singe off most of her jacket's fabric on her right arm along with its skin, and blood streamed down the now useless appendage. Yet she stood as nimbly as she did before, her sword stance unaffected. The only change was her weirdly twitching right hand and the katana sheath that she could no longer hold was on the floor.

Now she made the first move. Her right arm swaying behind her, the woman stayed low to the ground as she prepared a rising strike to Crono. He dodged it with some difficulty and focused the rest of his energy on the opening she had left herself in. “I must stay calm,” reasoned the mercenary.

With her right hand useless, the woman could no longer hold up her sheath to cover her rear, and now she was defenseless. Crono swung downwards with both hands on his gunblade with enough force to cut her in half, and would have succeeded had his target not then do what should not have been humanly possible.

The woman stopped in her tracks - apparently the mud gave her extra traction - and turned in what looked to be an intensely painful maneuver. Her waist twisted impossibly, her right arm swung behind her, and her left drove the katana in the way of Crono's attack, all in the span of a moment. His sword went down all the same, and was slightly impended by her weapon; instead of cutting the woman open from neck to waist, it only managed to sink into and break her collarbone. The strike ran true all the same, and it disgusted Crono how it drove her maimed shoulder upwards and forced her neck to bend. Before Crono could react any more, she raised a foot incredibly fast and kicked him right in his stomach. He fell backwards, pulling his sword with him and out of the woman.

The mud splashed all on Crono as he fell into a puddle, every muscle in his body crying out as he struggled to get the wind back into him. Meanwhile, the woman stumbled backwards from her kick, her limbs looking oddly out of sync. She couldn't fully control herself and eventually fell back into the mud herself.

As he took back his bearings, Crono opened his eyes and let the rain fall on his body with no attempt to move. His thoughts hurt him more than his wounds. “With all this rain and mud, the ground is a mess. I’ll never be able to find Maria’s trail now... I’ve lost her.” Inexplicable despair and disappointment rushed through his veins, crushing him beneath the horrible pain and hatred, and he rolled to his side and clenched his eyes closed. All he could do now is scream.

"Graaaagh! God damn it! God damn this all! I’ve… I can’t believe this! Right when I actually told her!” He got on his knees now, his head facing the ground and his clenched fists supporting him. "Damn that fiend who stole her from me!"

The woman spoke, amazingly calm and monotone despite her disgusting injuries. "Not one for calm decisions, are you? You know, I told you so." She only managed to enrage Crono more, and he whirled his head to her unmoving position in the rain.

"You shut the FUCK up! Damn you, too! If it wasn't for you... You..." Now he sobbed openly, his tears mixing with the rain on his face. She shot down his rage with more of the same calculating, steady tone. "Regardless of whether or not I arrived, the rain would have ruined your search anyways. You shouldn't be damning me. I'm your only hope at finding your girl. I know where they went. I can help you. Trust me - I didn't kill you, did I?"

There was nothing left for Crono to say, and nothing left for him to do but to crawl to his coat and lay down on top of it. The pelting rain fell unceasingly. He had no options left, he realized, but to trust this mysterious, benevolent entity, but it didn't help his feelings at all. If anything, all his despair and rage were replaced by a heavy, dreading sadness. Disappointment. Even if he did find Maria and save her from the crazed men who tried to kill their own allies, he would never be rid of the knowledge that he failed her in the first place. All he had to do was take a little girl to her home, and he was too criminal and incompetent to do that. The woman chuckled, as if she could read his thoughts. "Our name is Cidolas Teftah. We are here to help you.”

...End of Part Nine.

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