Camelot owns Golden Sun! I don't own any of these characters or places – it's just an interpretation of them! (Okay, a weird one, but still.)

Hi…Rialys again, somehow getting my act together with fanfiction. Thanks to everyone who had a look at the last piece of work I did (and BIG thanks to those who reviewed ). I've spent too long stewing on holiday in Scotland with no computer access, so now I'm going to get writing again.

Yes, this is probably going to end up being weird. The characters are probably going to act out of character. The romance bit won't show up till later. But never mind that; here's chapter one. Oh, and 'henge' (as in 'Stonehenge') is an old English word for 'gallows'.

Edit, August 21st, 2011: Well, elements of these earlier chapters have started to bug me, so I'm reuploading them with edits and, hopefully, improvements. Not much will change, but hopefully it will make things a little less confusing in the first few chapters. These updates will be irregular, guys! Sorry if things start getting messy.

Shout-out of many thanks to jollygreendragon for giving me a couple of pointers on this story!

Orphans

The scaffolding of the henge had been put together in a matter of hours. The wood was cheap, common pine, chosen for the sole reason that the scent of the wood had the possibility of drowning out the stench of the scaffolding's purpose. Of course, the short Jupiter Adept watching from under the cover of the nearby forest thought, Pine's always used to remind the Venus Clan how low they are to the Mars Clan. He watched, the blood vessels in his throat twisting into a large knot, as three of his friends were led out onto the scaffolding, unrecognisable by their black-hooded faces.

One of his companions gripped his shoulder, her lip quivering as she watched the grim, silent audience of the Venus Clan. "Why did it come to this, Seer?" she whispered, her voice cracking.

"Wings, be quiet or they'll hear us!" the boy called Seer hissed back, meeting her brimming pale blue eyes with his own lifeless purple ones. "It's not our fault."

"It's starting," the older man behind them murmured. "Wings, get a grip."

The Mercury girl bit down on her lip hard and looked back at the scaffolding, blurry through her tears and loose strands of blue hair. She could still recognise the older members of their squad by their clothes and heights. Two men, followed by a shorter woman, stood on the wood that was wet from the rain. Despite the coarse hoods, she could see that their heads were all held high enough to be proud that their time was coming to an end. They would become martyrs for the squad. No…they would become martyrs for the entire resistance.

The knot in Seer's throat tightened, almost throttling him, as he stared at the five people walking onto another platform close to the henge. So, the rumours are true, he murmured internally. The Lords and Ladies do appear at the executions.

It was the young woman on the end of the line of Ladies and Lords who strode towards the edge of the platform with a crisp roll of parchment tightly clutched in one hand. With a cursory glance at first the crowd, then the henge, she snapped the scroll open briskly and began to read the dark green sentences scribed on it. She opened her mouth as wide as she could to amplify her voice. Not that it would be necessary, when the crowd was as utterly, dismally silent as it was. Nonetheless, it was expected of the Third Lady of Mars to be completely above her inferiors. You can't get more inferior than the Venus Clan, she thought.

"The three members of the Venus Clan before you, Jasper, Kyle and Dora, have been found guilty of high treason to the empire by involving themselves with the rebellious group known as the Seekers. Their punishment for this crime," she continued, raising her gingery eyebrows imperiously, "is to be hung by the neck until they are dead." With this, the Third Lady let the scroll snap closed and turned to the black-garbed man on the scaffolding. "Commence the execution!"

Wings couldn't bear to watch as the man pulled on the lever for the trapdoors. Burying her face in her pale hands and letting her tears drip through her fingers onto the loamy ground did little to help her. The sound of death reached her ears, drilling through her skull into her mind like a crossbow bolt through plate armour. As a healer – an Imilian healer, an Angelical! – she knew that death always found its way in, and was used to dealing with it. But for members of her squad to be executed…

She felt Seer put an arm around her to try to comfort her, and their leader rubbing her shoulder.

The leader had the ability to keep an eye on everything. So, even as he was conscious of Wings' distress, he was still watching the three hanging bodies of his former comrades be cut down and handed over to the First Lord's famous incineration squad. Inside, he seethed. Since when was there not a time that Venus Adepts returned to the earth? he thought bitterly, yellow eyes narrowed. He flinched; a shard of memory had stabbed him.

Between himself and Seer, they managed to bring the desperately sobbing Wings back to her feet and walk away into the forest. The leader looked at the blond boy. "Seer, don't forget: we have to get that letter from their house."

"But Mia…"

"Seer, I'm not fool enough to enter the Venus sector during the daytime. You're going later. And you of all people should know to not use your real names outside of the ship."

Everything was smoothly under control when the Mars Lords and Ladies left for the long, if refreshing, walk back to the Mars Clan enclosure and their palace. The First Lady sniffed at the backs of the Venus Adepts that were leaving the clearing, before turning her head and smiling at the youngest of the Ladies. "Excellent projection for your first time, Lady Kay."

"Thank you, Lady Menardi," the Third Lady replied, nodding respectfully to the older woman. "I am glad to serve the Clan."

"I'm glad you got my old job," the Second Lord grumbled. "I hated doing that."

"Agatio, is there any job you don't hate?" the Second Lady said curtly, glaring at the heavily-armoured man. "No, there isn't. So shut up and hurry back to that torture chamber of yours." She glanced at Kay. "Yes, Lady Kay. Your performance was more than satisfactory. And the eyebrows were meticulously timed."

Kay flushed slightly from the praise. Ha! Even Karst couldn't find any fault in her work, for once! Never mind the woman's hint of sarcasm. "Milady, I have only studied my arts from the very best, which is to say yourself and Lady Menardi."

Inspecting the straps on his immaculate armour, the First Lord didn't bother to look at Kay when he spoke to her. "I expect no less from our chief interrogator. Although…" At this Saturos did meet Kay's eyes "…I did expect a little more to come out of the interrogations. We still only have sketchy notes on the Seekers, and nothing like enough of them."

"I am incredibly sorry, Lord Saturos. Unfortunately, they all proved incredibly stubborn, even after torture. And that Jasper had the slashed circle mark; indubitably, Milord knows what that means." Kay hadn't, at the time of the interrogation. Now, after serious research in the archives, she knew more than well enough to never go near a slashed circle Venus Adept.

Menardi placed a red-scaled hand on Kay's shoulder. "Lady Kay, I personally expected no less from Seekers. You did well to discover their true names and the truth that they belonged to the group. And now," she added, "Let's get back, before the idiot guards raze the palace to the ground."

"Talking of razing," Saturos said, "am I allowed to send the squad round to remove the Seekers' cottage yet? The brats can find somewhere else to go. Unless you want them questioned, Lady Kay?"

Kay allowed herself a genteel half-smile as she nodded to the First Lord. "I would like to talk to the three orphans before something tragic happens to them. Lady Karst, may I borrow one of your investigators?" She noticed the querying glare on Karst's stern face. "The cottage may contain other valuable information about the Seekers, and Jasper mentioned a letter during his interrogation." Obviously. You didn't pay attention to anything I said at our last meeting, did you? Ugh.

The Second Lady nodded. "I'll send Jenna round in the morning."

By the twilit end of the day, the entire Venus Clan had 'surreptitiously' sneaked glances at the three teenagers making their way towards the rundown cottage they knew as home. The execution had at least been clean, and fairly swift, but that wasn't enough to stop the Clan muttering about it – and whether the children left behind by the newly dead were dangerous to go near or not. Jasper's son was already similar to a bramble patch when it came to people he didn't really know or trust. Like as not, now the boy would be even worse.

"Where are they?"

"Over there – can't you see them? Two boys and a girl."

"The poor things. I hope they'll be alright."

"Poor things? Thought you couldn't stand them."

"Did you know Jasper was slashed circle? What's the betting that –"

"Shut up and get lost!" one of the boys yelled. A pair of dark, stony eyes glared at the handful of people following the three orphans. "All of you!" he added, narrowing his eyes until they were slices of angry boulders. Breath catching in his throat, he turned from the gossips irately and strode towards the dilapidated cottage.

Hearing the latch click shut, the slightly shorter boy looked up at his fuming friend. "Hey, Felix…if it's any help, I don't like it either."

Felix sighed at the smiling boy. "Yeah, but you're too docile to get angry. Where's Sheba?"

"In our room."

They both became incredibly interested in the state of the floor. Eventually, the younger of them gulped, licked his lips, and risked speaking again. "She must've…well, she doesn't get on with the other girls anyway, so…she…"

"Isaac, don't start. I hate the fact we can't help her during the day, when she's picked on most. Some good we are at keeping promises, now we've both got to work full-time just to stay alive." Felix sat on a stool by the fire, ripping the yellow band from his ponytail and roughly combing out his hair with his fingers. He hung his head, letting the dark brown strands of hair hide his face from Isaac. "I've already betrayed Dad."

"Why do you always see the negatives?"

"Because most of the time we end up stuck with the negatives. Or did you forget we're Venus Clan, Isaac?" He sighed again, turning his head to look at the flames that danced in the battered hearth, the light claiming the bare walls of the room for its own. Just like Mars had eventually grown so powerful it had taken over all of the Clans and ruled them. "I promised I'd keep Sheba safe."

Isaac rolled his eyes and tugged off his scarf, exposing the ring of pale scar tissue at the base of his throat. "We're doing our best," he pointed out. "Besides, she can take care of herself. They can't use psynergy on her, 'cos she's not aligned to a Clan, and she's quicker than most. You just like being a pessimist."

"Shut up. I found her, so I'm responsible for her." Felix looked up at Isaac, who was smiling at the ceiling and toying with his long scarf. The older boy shook his head in despair. "Carry on like that and I'll strangle you with that bloody scarf, one of these days."

They glared at each other for a bit, trying hard not to laugh (hollowly) at the pointlessness of arguing with each other. It always ended up the same way: there would be a disagreement, and then they'd reach a point when they couldn't say anything. The subject would change; time would move on. That was the way it had been ever since they'd first known each other. That was the way it would stay. Or would it, now their lives had changed from being decent to harsh?

Before the night their parents had been taken away for questioning, the evenings had been a time to relax, to be happy with the family. After that night, from the moment the sharp-tongued Second Lady of Mars had bundled the three adults out into the cold, it simply wasn't the same. Sheba, normally a fairly talkative girl amongst her family, barely spoke. Isaac retreated into a happy imaginary world of his own behind his deceptively blue eyes more often. Felix had already been incredibly protective of his friend and adoptive sister; now he could barely stand people he didn't know looking at any of the three of them.

"Whatever," Isaac eventually said, rolling his eyes again. "Your threats have no substance. Look, if everyone's going to die, then let 'em have some fun while they're alive. And – ack!"

"What was that about no substance?" a girl's voice teased as the scarf was wrapped tighter around Isaac's neck. "And what's for dinner?"

Felix muttered under his breath, "If you actually strangle him, Sheba, he can't tell you." He risked looking up at the two of them and realised with shock that a smile was yanking at his lips impatiently. Isaac's face was gradually turning into an overripe plum with a spiky mould of blond hair on top of it. Sheba was looking devious, something she hadn't risked for weeks, while she continued to carry out Felix's threat. "You do realise he can't breathe?" Felix commented.

"Oops."

She's faking it. That smile's fake. Underneath it, she's probably still trying not to cry like she did this morning when she almost broke down on top of us. She cried so hard…I wanted to cry with her.

Isaac bolted from the room the moment he was free from the unusually deadly grasp of his precious scarf, leaving a grinning Sheba with her adoptive brother. The fourteen-year-old carefully folded up the long stretch of yellow material and left it lying on what was left of the table after Lady Karst's visit. Sitting in front of the fire with her legs crossed, Sheba gazed at the flickering image of the fire's shadow while she waited for the question she knew would come. It's my fault for saying nothing, she told herself. He worries so much…

"What did they say?"

She stared at her hands, clasped tightly together in her lap. "Nothing. But they looked at me like I was some sort of pretty poison. You know? The look that means they're interested but they're frightened of you. So no real change." She slid her eyes sideways to glance at her brother, swallowing nervously when she noticed how his left hand had formed a tight fist on his knee.

"I should be glad you've not been in another fight."

"If you worry too much, you'll end up sounding like someone's wife," Sheba retorted. Or rather, she tried to. Her thoughts caught up with her mouth before the second part of her sentence could come out, and she choked on half of the words. The painful reel of the day's memories inside her head forced her into seeing everything about the morning over again, repeated in monochrome with occasional blotchy splashes of colour.

Dora had been so kind to all of them. She had always cared for them, even though Felix and Sheba weren't relatives or were in more trouble than ever. And she was dead. Like Kyle. Like Jasper. And it looked like there was absolutely no reason for the three of them to have been taken from their home, interrogated, tortured, and finally hanged.

Salt water trickled gently down Sheba's face. The week's worth of grime coating her cheeks was unable to stop it. Her hands couldn't. The thin, ragged material that passed for her skirt only made her knees get wet from the tears that soaked through it. Does the Mars Clan only live to persecute the Venus Clan? she thought. Just to make sure Venus never can be happy, does Mars like to kill the Clan's people? Or – or – or is it that Mars wants to hurt us because of something?

Isaac entered the room, a loaf of hard bread in his hands, to find Sheba firmly clinging to her brother while she sobbed into his shoulder. Noticing his folded-up scarf, Isaac knotted it around his neck, put the bread down, and cast another glance at his friends. In the firelight, their dark silhouette was more than enough to show their emotions. The same emotions that tortured him. Loss. Anger. Pain.

"Are you so docile you can't have feelings anymore?" Felix said quietly, ignoring the wet lines on his face as he caught Isaac's eyes and held them. "Or are you just making things worse for yourself?"

None of them ate that evening. Sharing their misery was more important.

The timber planks of the deck were darkening in the downpour that started several minutes before Wings, Seer and their leader reached the ship. Seer glared up at the bruise-coloured sky before sighing and glancing at the older man. "Mariner, you can't be serious about sending us out in this weather."

"We don't have any other choice. Tomorrow there'll be Mars Adepts all over the Venus sector, and we'll have no chance of getting Jasper's letter." Mariner's startling yellow eyes focused on Wings. "You'll have the cover of the weather and the dark tonight, so Cloak will be even more effective than normal. You should reach the house by dawn."

Once out of the intense downpour that had become an even heavier torrent of stinging raindrops, the three Adepts made their way along the corridor and into one of the many rooms. Maps and sea charts festooned the walls; several small tables were cluttered neatly with an assortment of collapsed telescopes, compasses, paperweights, more maps, and the occasional barometer. In the centre of the room a polished circular table stood on a multi-patterned rug. Spread out over it was yet another large map, marked in places with red ink. Thick black lines sprawled over the heavy parchment, depicting with great accuracy the four main sectors of the area: the palace and the wealthy city surrounding it; two smaller, neat suburbs; the quarries, fields of crops, and the rundown scattering of cottages of the Venus sector.

"Seer, Wings, you should already know the route to the house blindfolded. When you get there, there should be a letter addressed to either me or the Revealer somewhere. Make sure you find it without making the three who should be there wake up."

Wings gazed sadly at the map, tracing the red-inked route with her fingers. "What if they do?"

"We'll just have to put them back to sleep," Seer replied, still glowering out of the porthole at the rain. "This weather might be useful for our purposes, but I might shrink if I get wet…"

"Seer, how about you cut the melodrama about being short?"

"I haven't grown in the last three months!" Seer moaned, hunching his shoulders. "My sister was horrid about me being a dwarf when I was little. It was awful. You think I want her to be right?"

Wings cut him off from getting tetchier about his height quickly, just to avoid the cleaning up after lightning bolts flash-fried another table. "Yes, but the Revealer isn't like that at all these days, and people don't shrink because they've been exposed to water." She smiled at him. "Your height doesn't matter, Ivan. Let's get some rest and set off in a couple of hours. The sooner we get that letter, the quicker the search for the Acolytes can continue." She patted Seer's shoulder. "Come on. It'll be warm before you know it."

Sheba blinked tiredly at the ceiling and rubbed crusts of sleep from her eyes. The fire had burned low, so now the incandescent embers were all that made it possible to see in the otherwise black of night. Sitting up, Sheba felt the cold air nip at her bare arms and legs, and she shivered. Why was I sleeping there? she wondered, before noticing Felix and Isaac sleeping on either side of her. Oh. I remember.

She screwed up her face to stop more tears from falling. The three of them had done plenty of crying for one night.

The cold was probably going to get to all of them soon, so Sheba headed upstairs and into the cramped room they normally shared to find the thin blankets they tried to sleep under at night. As she pulled the blanket off the third straw mattress, something pale hidden in the straw caught her attention. Her inquisitive fingers prised an oblong of rough, grainy paper from the mattress; it was sealed firmly with marine-blue wax. Turning it over in her hands, she peered at the black squiggles on it in a shaft of moonlight coming through the broken shutters. They looked like writing.

I'll have to get Felix to read it for me… Sheba thought. Huh…I really should've tried harder with my reading when I was younger. But what's this doing in our mattresses? She frowned at the envelope for a few moments, then shrugged. It could be anything. Not much I can do about it but get it read…

Tucking the letter down the front of her shirt, she picked up the blankets and slipped back downstairs into the main room. She had to try sleeping again if she was going to keep up at work tomorrow.