Chapter 3—Voice of the Night
Timeless
When the darkness surrounded Kain this time, he remained conscious. It seemed like the darkness was not outside but, rather, inside his own mind, as if his mind had put up a barrier to the outside and forced him to see inside himself. The feeling was very strange. Kain involuntarily kept trying to open his eyes, but they were already open. A sudden terror creeped into his mind. Am I blind? Did that portal somehow damage my vision? The young man couldn’t even see his own body, although he could feel it.
“’Through Chaos will I go, to a journey beyond death!’ …Hmm…I always did like that poem. Very suiting to my own personality. Very suiting to your predicament, now, as well.”
The voice seemed to come from inside his own mind, as well, but it was not Kain’s voice. Its timbre was dark, deep, spoke of the void and of a certain cynicality. It was wise, yet young. It somehow seemed familiar to him.
The voice continued. “A pity that the people of Truce cannot realize the truth in your lyric, that they only see the harsh core of reality and turn away.”
“Ah…what is happening? Who are you?” Kain was now bewildered beyond his logic. All of the events that had happened to him—in the space of one day—had shattered his perception of reality forever.
“You wouldn’t understand it now, most likely—let me just say, I am someone who is a part of you. In everything you do, my blood is there, guiding and shaping it.”
“What do you mean by that?” The words sent shivers down Kain’s spine.
“I meant what I said. Nothing more.” The voice seemed slightly annoyed, as if Kain were wasting time. Something inside Kain wished not to displease the voice, and so he changed the subject.
“How do you know about my poetry?”
“Why, I’ve read every poem you’ve ever written! Even watched over you as you wrote them, unseen by your eyes.”
Kain digested this information for a moment. It was all so surreal… it was impossible. Most of the poems he wrote were written in places of total solitude. Although his poems had been read by many people, very few of those people actually knew him, and even less spent time with him.
A thought occurred to him. “…Are you my father? Are you Crono Triggara?”
The voice laughed uproariously for a moment, then subsided. “Ah…far from it. Or, perhaps…not as far as you may think. Yes, my blood is in you, I am a part of you. But I am not Crono Triggara. Oh, no.”
A question rose in Kain’s mind, but he didn’t speak it.
Are you…God? Or an angel?
But, no, the voice was tainted with sin, much sin. It could not be so…
A part of his mind, the dark part, said: Perhaps it is the devil.
But, no, that cannot be.
Kain decided to ask something else. He had to know more.
“Can you tell me…where am I? What time this is? And…are Lacan and those four soldiers…did I really kill them?”
“You and I are in the limits of your own mind, now, Kain Triggara; Your existence and mine are currently in a timeless place at the apex of two epochs. And….yes…Lacan and those soldiers are dead, due to your hand. But not due to your will or your mind as you know it to be now.”
“What do you mean by that? And how did I get here?”
“Why, I guided you here, through your mind. I wished to reveal my existence to you, and to do this, I chose this timeless place. And….I meant what I said, and nothing more!”
“Then…are you saying…that somehow, you control me? Did you ‘guide and shape’ my will into killing my instructor and soldiers of the Guardia army?” Kain’s words were accusing, like knives of paranoia that were hurled at their unsuspecting target.
“If you wish to believe that, you may. I cannot tell you everything. You must find it for yourself.”
“I must know the answer!” Kain was desperate. He feared that he was insane, he needed to know what was going on.
“I cannot tell you any more. All I can say is this: Do not jump to conclusions. Doing so could lead to your destruction.”
With those words, the voice became silent, and the world returned to Kain. Once again he was in the strange black tunnel of blue lightning, floating aimlessly.
“Wait!” he cried out of pure desperation, but he knew that the voice would not come again for him.
Then he saw another circular viewport come into his view. But the world he saw was not Truce of 1023 AD. It was very different indeed—and Kain was being drawn into it. Kain knew he could not resist—he had nowhere else to go, could not go back to the world he knew.
He remembered what the strange voice had said. And then he realized: He knew what had happened. The voice had never denied taking control of him. And the darkness was the same that enveloped him before he had awoken in Truce Canyon.
The voice that had entered his mind had taken control of Kain’s body and killed Lacan and the Guardia soldiers. There was no other explanation for it.
As Kain entered the portal to the new, unknown world, his only thought was that, if he ever found the man the voice belonged to, he would get his revenge for Lacan. He would butcher the man alive.
.