The Flaw of Jupiter, a golden sun fanfic

Disclaimer: I do not own Golden Sun or any of the characters, places or concepts associated with it.

The Flaw of Jupiter

As her parents had hoped, Marcia's power had matured to become a gift and not a curse. The greatest of Jupiter's blessings had bloomed for her like the flowers of Osenia's deserts after rain. They were proud of her, the woman they had raised to never see except on feasting days when the people of the temple and the city mingled freely.

The pleasures of the material world were the price and the robes of the priesthood were her reward. To see with eyes blessed by Tyr, voice of the wind god Astraeus, was an honor beyond any other save to wear the mantel of the high priestess herself.

She was going to be late if she didn't pick her feet up.

Marcia hastened down the corridor that would take her to the inner sanctuary. The stone sylphs gazed serenely past her. Images of sylphs could be found everywhere in the temple complex, they were the ultimate symbol of the wind; wise, coolly beautiful, sky borne and untroubled by the strife caused by the material world. Like many others in the Jupiter Clan Marcia had always found herself drawn to these angelic figures. It was her greatest dream to also acquire wings, to soar above the clouds as free as the birds.

Jose had always snorted at that particular dream of hers. And then how, he had asked her tugging at her braids, would you fit through doorways? You'd have to go in sideways and even then you'd be knocking feathers off left right and center. Not a very graceful way to get about, is it? Especially not for a would-be-priestess.

Jose was waiting at the end of the passage for her. Marcia walked faster, her soft blue robe fluttering around her ankles. Her childhood friend looked as untidy as ever, even given the occasion. His simple dark robe hung open revealing the thin shirt and pants he wore beneath. Jose towered above her and above everyone else he met, but as he'd never really grown out of the ganglyness he'd acquired as a teenager he didn't cut a very imposing figure.

Their relationship had always been rather unconventional. If they hadn't grown up together Marcia probably would have found herself disapproving of him, as many others amongst the wind god's disciples did. If he hadn't displayed such an extraordinary talent for the control of lightening and plasma Jose almost certainly would have found himself expelled from the order many years ago. He could be extraordinarily contrary when the mood took him. Marcia knew that at one point the high priest and priestess had considered separating them to preserve her from his all too worldly influence. They had refrained from it because, at a time when she had been nearing her full induction into the order, he had been all that was keeping her alive. He had been the only one obstinate enough to interfere with her psynergetic visioning to remind her to eat.

'Morning, Cia.' He joined her as she swept though the door that lead from one passageway to the next.

Still disturbing the silence of these halls, my friend? Marcia smiled faintly.

'I'm amazed your not,' he shot back at her. 'I thought you'd be jumping for joy, singing in the mess hall, leaping up to kiss your sylph friends on the lips.' Jose gestured to the carving of the winged being that adorned the walls. He had come to understand that Marcia's greatest joy was to use her abilities in service of Tyr – something he would never experience himself – and was not above teasing her about it.

I don't need to show my happiness by such crass means, it would be unbecoming. We take joy from this act of piety together.

'Why this act of piety? Don't you mean this act of discovery? We're finally going to find out what's going on! What's going to happen next,' Jose said sounding like a child who had just been given an enormous box of toffee and coco. 'And we're going to be the first ones too, the first people in the whole of Weyard to know. But I shouldn't be talking like this,' he said the exuberance draining out of his voice and the laughter lines on his face deepening into a frown. 'Because we still don't know which way it's going to go, do we?'

Don't worry, Jose, she said turning to look at him as they reached the door that lead to the inner sanctum. What will be, must be. Trust in the wisdom of Astraeus.

'That's all very well for you to say,' he muttered under his breath as the young attendant of the alter, Selena, opened the double doors a crack to admit them.

Pain and light filled the twisted reflection of the world. Images flickered before her eyes before being torn away again. The circle reached out to seize one, it slipped away. Another came closer, they pulled it towards them and-

There was a Lighthouse towering above them. Not the soothing violet of Jupiter but a cold harsh blue. Mercury. It stood alone before the sea, dark and rippled by the efforts of the wind. But no, they saw, not the wind. Where as the waves should have been thrown towards the shore, instead they were being pulled inwards, against the Lighthouse. Streams of water, enough to fill whole rivers, were winding their way up the surface of the colossal structure. Freezing as they got higher.

The circle was tossed away from the strange sight and into another.

About twenty people sat around a large, circular table. Talking, discussing, arguing. It was difficult to make out the words that were being said for they were distorted, almost in the way that light is as it passes though a piece of twisted glass. There was shouting now. One man stood gesturing emphatically. Then the person he had pointed to also leapt to his feet. They grew closer to each other almost screaming, the other people leaning away from the pair. The dagger was drawn.

A thin, snake like line of people was shuffling away towards the horizon. Old men and woman, children. People leaning on the shoulders of others or being carried by their friends. One figure paused and looked back towards the place where the circle watched from. He would have been close enough to touch if they had truly been there. Marcia felt one of the others pulled away, dragging the rest of the circle with them. The young man looking though them had a livid red scar running though what had once been his left eye.

Marcia was searching properly now, lightly skimming across the scraps of visions searching for the right ones. The rest of the circle allowed her to guide them. In this place there was no true leader, but of all of them Marcia was the oldest and had the most experience. She caught a flash an emerald banner snapping back and forth in the wind and dived after it.

The battle beneath them raged like a storm swept sea. Green fought blue. No arrows were flung through the air but great bolts of psynergy crackled and snapped like lightening. The armies' greatest casters blazing with the colours of their elements were overlaid with just a hint of gold. A deep surge of power came from the green army, not directed at the opposing force but at the ground on which they stood.

Giddy with confirmation, the circle of seers was flung away from the scene like a rag doll and pitched into another.

People huddling behind an enormous gate that was shaking the dust from itself in time with the deep booms they could hear.

Two young children running and laughing as one fled before the other, racing along a wall made from great slabs of stone.

An old woman seated at the peak of a tall mountain, a pregnant gibbous moon hanging low against the horizon. She opened her eyes to gaze at them – to gaze back at them – and they were the clearest, purest gold. The look she gave the circle was oddly like an accusation.

Young men paraded in front of an aged general, their helms glinting brightly in the hot sun.

And then there was Mercury Lighthouse again, clawing its way into the sky. Marcia felt the circle's other members falter; felt their shock. The tower was completely ice bound. Smooth bulbous sheets of the stuff writhed around it, spreading out into the sea and curling up into the air to encase the aerie. The beacon itself pulsed eerily, its unearthly glow marred by the sphere that surrounded it. Its cold power was spreading outwards. The circle could feel its tendrils creeping around them. Someone panicked, the same person, Marcia sensed, who had broken their focus on the line of refugees.

It was time to go back and Marcia slowly prodded the circle away from the enthralling sight. Minutes might have passed, or it could have been hours. As long experience and being nagged by Jose had taught her; the trick was to find what you wanted and come back without losing yourself to the allure of other, irrelevant visions. Along that path lay the fate of those seers who spent days in deep meditation, stopping only when their bodies were too weak to sustain their power and even then only long enough to catch a few hours fitful sleep.

Seers died young. It was the price of their incredible, wonderful, beautiful gift, and one they were only to willing to pay.

Her back was stiff and the circulation in her lower legs had slowed down enough to make them numb. That meant the least eight or nine hours must have past. Outside the temple walls the cicadas would be singing and most of the city's people would be lost in dreams.

Hearing the person on her left collapse she turned and was unsurprised to see Raul, a man is his late teens who had wiry hair and an unfortunate tendency to stutter, sprawled on the floor. Marcia guessed that he had been the one who had let his concentration falter twice. This was the first time he had participated in a group with such strong seers, after all. He was only here because Gabino had fallen ill the day before.

Tyr has given us the blessing of these visions, sounded the voice of the high priest, Alvaro, in her mind. His projection failed to mirror the utter exhaustion that Marcia and the other four seers felt. Now we must pray that Astraeus will grant us that wisdom to understand them.

I thought it was clear enough, Jose said, eschewing verbal communication for once, his thoughts both dry and slightly worried. Marcia knew that his words had been for her and her alone; no one would dare speak like that to Alvaro.

Jose, Marcia sent exasperatedly as Alvaro continued, Long work is ahead of us, and hard times, but we will see them through.

Jose shot a concerned look at her from where he stood near Astraeus' alter, where young beautiful Selena had wrapped herself around a gilded statue of a sylph and was clinging to it like a life line. She saw his gaze wonder across the other seers.

Come with me afterwards, you look like you could use some choclartal. Bring Ileana if you can. She needs it too by the looks of her.

She looked back to Ileana. The younger woman was breathing heavily and skin that should be a rich earthy brown was paling rapidly. She seemed gaunter than usual too, robes hanging off her frame and veil slipping from her hair.

As Marcia got unsteadily to her feet, Alvaro knelt beside the unconscious Raul and opened one of the boy's eyes and peered into it for a moment before the high priestess Olivia helped him pick the seer up and carry him away towards the infirmary. Offering a hand to Ileana, who took it and it used it to haul herself up, she whispered soft words of praise to the less seasoned seer before leading her over to where Jose stood by the door.

Thank you, brother, sister. Ileana sounded exhausted but elated. I still lack your fortitude in the wake of these sittings. The Jupiter Adept's eyes seemed to glaze over and her thoughts when they came sounded as she was far away. Was it not wondrous? To see strange lands and stranger sights? The water Lighthouse was magnetic, was it not? The powers, the knowledge, granted to us by Astraeus are truly great blessings.

As the three of them made their way away from the inner sanctum and towards the now more certain future, Marcia heard the bitter retort Jose muttered under his breath. 'The knowledge is only a blessing if you do something with it.'

A/N: I feel obliged to explain the meaning behind the title of this story, so here it goes. In some places I've heard reference to different personality traits being associated with the different elements; fire gives things like creativity, honor and duty; earth gives determination, thrift and wealth; water gives emotion and empathy; air gives intelligent thought and reason.

There are also suppose to be negative things associated with each element too, and whether I actually read it somewhere or just dreamed it up myself (I honestly don't remember) I fixed upon the idea that the flaw of air is to be dispassionate, uncaring and slow to act.

This story is my idea of what the Wind Clan were doing before the beginning of the War of Alchemy; the one before the games or – if you wanted to take a darker view of things – the one after.

Please review.