From Whence I Came

“And through this revolutionary technology, my friends, my statesmen, my fellow humanity, all barriers before us will be broken. I introduce to you, the Arinsky, first vessel capable of traveling far beyond our own solar system.” The man stood on a tall pedestal, some fifteen feet above the crowd, who all roared in appreciation as he waved his arms out broadly before him. On queue, those behind him tugged upon their respective ropes, pulling off a large sheet from the giant object directly behind him. Chronus Arinborn, famous scientist and technician of Malaith, certainly had stunned the world once more.

Twenty feet away and yet worlds away altogether, stood one defiant young man. Crono Arinborn’s blue eyes pierced up towards his father, arms crossed, eyeing judgmentally. He thought he caught his father’s glance fall upon him from his tower of fame and prestige, but he did not allow it to linger, spinning away with a light “Hmph”. The two had never been farther apart than that one simple moment. Crono, having been raised in the wealthy and enlightened home of his father, had constantly lived under high expectations for academics and motivation. By the time he had finished his studies and completed his graduations, Crono had enough of his pre-determined fate. More out of spite than any lack of interest in his father’s arts, Crono chose not to follow his given path, and applied to Malaith’s standing military force.

It was there he underwent the standard four year course of a soldier. During his time his father had tried to support his son’s wishes, but artificially so. Rather than any true communication or acceptance with his offspring, Chronus sought to flatter his son for his affection through material means. He managed to get him direct tutorship under the realms most well known of combatants, Shenhale Marcuth, among ensuring him access into the top instructors as a soldier. This shallow attempt, while well-intentioned, had done little but split the pair further apart. And now here they were, with one little more than a guard of the ceremony, the other the prime of the show, standing before the world in its entirety. Crono awoke from his anxiety when a sharp elbow prodded him in the side.

“Are you day dreaming there Crono?” Magnus Martek asked from beside him. “You may not be on the best of terms, but that shouldn’t belittle the man’s achievements. Give the man a round, eh?” Magnus started clapping himself, grinning at Crono. Magnus, Shenhale’s hand chosen apprentice, had been Crono’s closest friend for the last four years; if rivalry was considered friendship. Regardless, he had taught Crono plenty of life’s harsh realities he’d missed in his rather sheltered childhood.

The next hour passed by with little attention given by Crono. His father spent a time explaining the technology, of the energies of his revolutionary reactor could be harnessed to allow near anything to travel at his claimed ‘warp speed’. In truth, it was all quite brilliant, but Crono knew it all already. He was his father’s son, after all. Then there was the obligatory time spent assuring the masses that there could be no risk involved in the vessel’s launch, that every precaution had been assured, and that everything was safe and prepared. Another couple hours passed, and when all had been triple-quadruple verified, the shuttle-looking ship made its rocket-assisted launch out of the atmosphere.
Even Crono had to admit, as old as a rocket launch seemed, the sight was magnificent. The sun had already begun to set for the night, a well planned piece of his father’s presentation. Even when it was naught but a dot in the sky, its thrusters still shined brightly and furiously upon the darkened background. The scientist’s son allowed himself to smile, ever so briefly.

And to tarnish that smile came the moment of Crono’s life he would never forget.

It started small, almost unnoticeable, save the sickening feeling that ran through everyone’s stomach. Something seemed to pulse right from the air, from very existence itself. It rolled over them awkwardly, distorting the ongoing cheers of the crowd for but an instant, but Crono of all people was keen to noticing such things. Something just felt wrong, amiss, warped. And that’s when it picked up, rolling over them all once more, and again, and again. Crono looked up into the sky, then all around him as people begun to murmur something amiss, and then once more looking for his father’s creation in the stars.

As its thrusters went dark, and its new warp engine began to emit its energies, the sickening feeling emanating through the planet itself reached up into the heavens, crashing upon the vessel. Crono went wide-eyed as he could see the unit falter, its engine seeming to die, its trajectory slowly but surely reverting back down – somewhere on the horizon. In its last moments, the engines appeared to be forcing themselves to crackle back to life, but by then it was all over. And then, it just happened. He didn’t want to try to explain it; he didn’t want to believe it. But still it happened.

When the ship crashed back, its own warp pulses emanated across the surface, clashing with the sickening feel of altered reality before, and all hell broke loose. An almost visible wave of force ran across the planet itself, cratering many in its wake, flinging others off into oblivion. Crono’s instincts alone told him to hit the deck, and thought he heard Magnus beside him do the same. But it didn’t stop there. Further waves continued to pulse; explosions rang out both near and far as whatever it was began to reach factories, laboratories, and anything of the like. Magnus was the first of them to dare stand, and Crono tried quickly to follow suite. From there, things simply became unreal, the next wave that pulsed over quite simply ‘vanished’ pieces of the planet it traversed into non existence. The next tore the flesh from bones at a seemingly random pace, skipping one and taking the next at its choosing. The last Crono remembered was when he turned to Magnus. Their eyes met, and Magnus simply grinned as the distorted space ran over them. And then he was gone. Hell – the very land Magnus had been standing upon was gone. Everything was gone, and that’s when it finally overwhelmed him.


Crono awoke in what he could only describe as a nightmare. He arose from the dirt painfully, and stood in awe at the wasteland before him. In truth, he could hardly see more than a half a mile in any direction – thick dust clouded everything, refusing to settle. The air about him seemed in a constant rush, as though a slow leak in the heavens sought to draw the precious resource away from him. He called out, screamed out, shouting for any and all who could hear him. No return call ever came.

Crono would not hear any voice other than his own for some time. He seemed to be the sole survivor of whatever events had transpired. It seemed impossible, illogical, and altogether undeserving. Had his father’s creation really managed to rip such a reaction in space itself? A device simply giving matter the weightlessness of light itself had caused such devastation? The first words he spat out to whatever forces were listening that day, after his pleas for others had ended, was only “You god damned fool!”

He spent a full year along, trapped, abandoned, stranded on the dying planet. From the tools he’d managed to salvage he created his home amongst his old, working from his father’s laboratory. An endless wasteland of supplies kept him fed and strong, but his mind wearied away. He had no purpose other than to unravel the mystery before him, and with each glimpse of study, he only drew further into madness. Nothing added up.

Ironically, as his sanity had nearly dwindled away, had even allowed him to consider ending his own existence, luck had allowed him a bit of fortune. Even through all his madness, his depression, his weakness, he had kept one thing strong and active. A simple beacon, a radio tower emanating nothing more than a simple beep into the reaches of space, was always the concern of the young Arinborn. And it was from that tower that they found him. It was using that tower’s signal that they came to him.

The Marshalship.

The ship itself, nothing particularly noteworthy in the fleet in their terms, might have well been an angel descending from the heavens onto the boy. “The Flash of Heaven”, a small scout and cruiser, had picked up the signal when investigating disturbances of a nearby dimension, thanks to the fluxuations of the unstable space still in the area. Never had there been a more awkward greeting than when the crew came upon Crono’s ‘home’.

The scouts came out to find him standing, shivering, unshaven and altogether uncleanly, holding a metal rod to the side of his head as though it were some weapon meant to pierce through.

“Y-you there! Are you okay?!” one called, shocked at the sight before them.

Crono turned, slowly at first, almost having forgotten the concept of spoken language. “Me?” he asked in response. He scoffed, almost began outright laughing, and screamed out, “Who the hell do you think I am?!” This was the final testimony of his defiance before he fell flat on his face in the dirt.


Crono awoke to find himself on ‘Verorox’, whatever that was. As his senses slowly returned to him in this strange new place, he began to coherently grasp the instructions and lessons of those around him. Within the week, after being nursed back to health, Crono was seated into the Displacement Aid Program. It was all overwhelming at first, but plausible. Why not, afterall? If his father had supposedly learned to warp through space, why could one not warp through the very fabric that created it? Within a few months, Crono was quickly accelerating his way through the common teachings of the program. Within a few more, he was an established refugee turned citizen of the CoRe itself. With no purpose or meaning immediately set before him, he began to offer his services to the CoRe Technology Initiative, a sect of the government based, as per its title, around exploring and developing new technologies.

It was through the tools and problems brought to him within this institution that a realization finally spurred over him. One eve, as this realization ran through him, he rushed to his quarters. A holograph spread itself over his wall as his fingers worked frantically, calling upon records from recent Multiverse history, a map of dimension orientation, and a simple calculator. For hours his neighbors could hear his ramblings, cursing, and occasionally the clash of scattered papers thrown off his desk as he tried to clear more space for calculation. By the morning – he’d found it, he’d found the answer that CoRe had not been able to provide for him upon his rescue.

“What happened to my home?”

Through an elaborate series of trials and errors that night, he’d tested his own theory, and found it truthful. This Reven, this supposed madman causing destruction throughout the known multiverse in an effort to create his envisioned utopia, had destroyed an entire civilization in a dimension bordered by the same ley line as Crono’s own. Given the vectors and estimated force of the assault, followed by the exit of Reven’s impressive fleet all simultaneously, had sent feedback to Malaith. This feedback, by curse of bad luck, had managed to react at just the right time with his father’s own device, the warp drive, and had caused to perpetuate a distortion of the reality itself. That would explain why people, even chunks of the planet itself, had simply phased away all around him.

And they might still be out there. Magnus, his sister, his father – his people, might still be out there.

He left Verorox on the next vessel he was able to gain civilian passage aboard, taking anything and everything he could carry with him – his custom weapons, his small supply of the rare metal from Malaith, his laptop – anything that would fit into his bags, and left. His destination was the Gatekeeper. He’d heard of freelancers, mercenaries, and civilians of all sorts offering their services to the Marshalship’s cause of ending this ‘Reven’ and his schemes. Crono applied under the request of “The most active ship in the fleet”, showing his certifications as a trained member of CoRe sciences and proclaiming himself able to withstand combat.

What better purpose had he now, after all, than to help this police force stop the one who had indirectly turned his life into a living hell, all the while holding the hope that by traveling as often as possible he might some further clues or research regarding his missing planet.