To Save a Life

Where Have Yo+u Go+ne

Latula waved at me as I drifted by, I was searching through the bubbles hoping for some sign of where Cronus had gone.

After he disappeared right before the end of the game, we all assumed that he had gone off and gotten himself killed.

Not long after we began to notice certain... improvements in some of us.

Meulin actually turned around to react to some talking to her. Kurloz, while still quiet, could speak again as though he had never bit off his tongue.

Even Mituna was back to the way he used to be.

However Kankri hadn't taken things well since then. When we all died and came to the bubbles he immediately set out to find him.

Kankri came back weeks later, alone.

Soon after we started to worry, no one had seen him at all since the morning he disappeared. We began to take shifts looking for him.

When the new world started we all gathered to see what it was like. We were fine for a while, until Mituna saw Cronus' new self.

He was cold and distant, kismesis with Aranea and flushed helplessly for Meenah. It broke our hearts and Mituna wailed.

His new self was unwaveringly loyal until he found the Empress he adored and would gladly give his life for, didn't even know his name.

He shattered, the powerful terrifying being that he had become seemed to fade away within moments. I could see our Cronus then, hidden in the cracks of the massive troll. Soon he was back to what he was doing, yet he lost Aranea in the process.

Then the time came when I was slave to her, she taunted him and he broke again. Yet rather than fall and cry, he turned on her a fury like no other. He didn't kill her, no that would have been to clear, too easy.

He yelled and while he yelled, she laughed. Then it happened, the last straw his battered mind could take. He raised his gun and rather than point it at her, he pointed it at me. Then I fell, no longer alive, but I was smiling despite this. The fury he had unleashed had freed me.

He hardly seemed to come up again for some time, until he went to speak to Kurloz. A joke ended his life. A simple joke took him away yet again.

Now we hardly cared what the new word made, we lived for us.

I kept searching while I reminisced, just as I was about to give up I saw something new. It was a tiny bit of bubble that I had never seen before. I shimmied in and stared in awe. Floating before me was a violet bubble.

I gently reached forward and brought it closer to me, I could feel him in it. It wasn't him, not exactly, but it was a memory.

Cradling it close to me I ran back to the others. After several minutes of panicked searching I had everyone there. I gently placed the bubble between us and played the memory.

I wasn't surprised to see Cronus, but I could see everyone was slightly worried. Then I noticed the environment, it was a cave, his Denizen's cave.

I turned back when I heard his voice, only to find he had left this as a message, "Sorry guys, but...," He gave us a fanged, sweet smile, "Vwell it's worth it."

I thought it would end when another voice came through, "Goodbye, Cronus Ampora, Bard of Hope."

We all stared as the bubble shrank and turned into little more than a marble.

"What the shell was that?" Meenah almost screeched.

"I think," Aranea began, "He made a deal with his Denizen."

"What s9rt 9f deal c9uld such a 6east make," Kankri growled.

"Fo+r us," I said, gaining everyone's eyes, "No+t lo+ng after I assume this to+o+k place, the three mo+st no+table injuries amo+ng us just so+rt o+f... vanished."

"H3 d1d 7h4t t0 h1m53lf... f0r u5?" Mituna whispered.

"I believe so+" I whispered, "I do+ believe so+."