Golden Sun belongs to Nintendo and Camelot, not me. Support them if you like the series! I just write fanstuff. And if you feel like borrowing any of my original ideas, please, go right ahead.
Rief stared slack-jawed. "Umm, do you need any help with those?"
"No thanks! I've got it!" Maddie responded. She dumped the pile of rolled-up scrolls unceremoniously onto the kitchen table. Several rolled off onto the floor, and she tried unsuccessfully to catch them. When she leaned down to pick them up, several more rolled off. "Oh dear..." she said.
Rief walked to the table and opened a scroll at random. "Is this a map?" he asked.
She nodded. "My dad was an architect. He worked on some of the renovations for Bilibin Palace... including, umm, the dungeons, sadly. T-to be fair, he opposed the decision to put in psynergy traps!"
"Psynergy traps?" Rief asked with a raised eyebrow.
"That's why it's safe to put Adepts in there," she answered. "You guys cast a spell, and poof, it drains you dry! It's horrible and everything but the only other option they would allow was to put in shackles that do the same thing, only all the time, and that might kill people which isn't what a prison is for-"
"Oh, gosh..." Rief said slowly. "I really, REALLY hope Sveta doesn't try to use psynergy to escape, then. Beastmen are vulnerable to that sort of thing. A few days ago she just LOOKED at a psynergy vortex and her immune system shut down for a while."
Maddie nodded with confidence. "Then you'll just have to be a hero and set all your friends free, and I'll help you!" She opened a few more maps. "I just gotta... uh, find a secret passage or something. There's always one of those, right?"
"...Not really, no," Rief said. "Most palaces are designed for safety and comfort, not to make it easy for sneaky adventurers to steal all the gold."
"B-but..." Maddie stammered. "But the Warriors of Vale were doing that stuff all the time! They used their powers and made new entrances, and then they'd sneak in and fight the bad guys... or they'd find some ancient treasure, and give it back to the people who lost it, or even bring it along to fight OTHER bad guys with!"
Rief stared at Maddie. She stared back. She blushed after several seconds.
"W-well... let's get looking, shall we?" She retrieved a pair of reading glasses and put them on.
An hour or so later, they had made no progress whatsoever.
"Yeah, sorry," Rief finally said, "I don't think your dad designed anything for the purposes you're thinking of."
Maddie flopped down in a chair, defeated. "B-but... there has to be something... some puddle you can freeze to make a perfectly-aligned pillar, or some hidden staircase that leads you around the guards..."
Rief laughed. "Afraid not. I might just take the frontal approach, regular soldiers don't stand much of a chance against a powerful adept-"
"But they do!" Maddie shouted. "They've been looking for you all along! If they could capture your friends, they can capture you, and I don't want you to die!" She stopped and blushed. "That's not... I mean, you helped my brother, and..."
Rief sighed, but smiled to try to calm her. "I'm sure it'll be okay. Thanks for trying to help. Maybe something else will come up."
She stood up slowly. "I... I'll get started on dinner." Amidst the clanging of pots and pans, she tried to engage in small talk. "So where are you from?"
"Uh, Imil, actually," Rief said. "Up north."
Maddie dropped the saucepan she was holding and spun. She slammed her hands on the table excitedly. "You mean near Mercury Lighthouse? Have you ever been there? Inside, I mean? Have you seen the beacon-"
"Whoa, uh... yeah," Rief said, raising his hands in an attempt to slow the torrent of questions. "Yeah, Imil is near the lighthouse. I've been inside, once, but not very far. The beacon is hard to miss, so yes, I've seen it. Why the sudden interest?"
Maddie brushed a strand of hair away from her face. "Well, I... I've never been away from the city! I've read all about these exciting places and I've always wanted to go to them but I NEVER HAVE and my parents travel but-"
"Deep breaths," Rief advised.
"S-sorry, sorry!" she said. "My parents have all these books, and I can learn about new places, but I've never traveled. I can't visit any of them. So when I meet people who have been to far-off locations, I just... I get excited, is all!" She blushed. "You're so interesting, Rief..."
Rief folded his arms proudly. "Well, I HAVE been just about everywhere. My friends and I traveled a lot over the past few months, and when I was younger, my sister and I were tutored by Kraden the Scholar. He's a fan of learning by experience. Is there anywhere you want me to tell you about?"
Maddie gasped. "Wait, that old man... you said his name was Kraden! Is he... THE Kraden? You learned under THE Kraden?"
"Yup!" Rief exclaimed. "He's a good friend of the family. Nice guy." His smile faltered. "I sure hope I can save him."
"Th-the chronicles of the Warriors of Vale are my favorite stories ever!" Maddie said. "When they started saying Adepts were evil, I didn't believe them, and now you're here, and I was right, Adepts are sooo cool, and-"
Rief cleared his throat loudly.
"I'm so, so sorry, I just get so carried away..." She blushed again. "I'm... I'm a bit of a history geek. I read all I can about real-life adventurers in books, and we have all of the Chronicles of the Sun. I read them over and over! So when I heard you knew Kraden, it was... it was so exciting, like..." She paused. "Are the Warriors of Vale really real? Do you know them?"
Rief scratched his head. "Uh... maybe we can talk about something else, your heart rate and anxiety levels are disturbingly high and I'm worried you might..."
She stared straight into his eyes and wore a grin from ear to ear.
"Well, uh..." Rief coughed. "Mia lives in Imil, too. And she... taught me psynergy?" Hey, he was being honest.
"You're... you're KIDDING!" Maddie said. "You actually know her? I know someone who knows Mia of Imil? Oh, I can't..." She sighed happily. "I feel faint."
Rief stood quickly and positioned himself to catch her in case she actually fell. "You know what? I think it'd be better for your health if I stopped talking about myself right now," he said.
She moved toward the couch in the nearby living room and motioned for him to follow. "But you're so... interesting!" she said. "Me, I'm just a city girl, alone, with no one to care for her and all of the responsibilities her parents left to her..." She paused for effect. "Just waiting for someone to come by who can show her how good life really can be... like somebody out of a fairy tale..."
Rief swallowed hard and followed her to the couch. He sat down next to her. "Well... I feel weird just talking about myself, I guess. And yeah, I am actually a little worried about your health. Mercury Adepts can sense people's vitality, and your heart rate's kind of disturbingly high-"
"Oh, there are lots of reasons for my heart to be pounding!" Maddie responded, leaning a little too close to Rief. "Loooots of them."
Rief blushed. He was speechless.
"Oh, that reminds me," she asked, "You don't have a place to stay, do you? Not one that you can get to safely, since the city guards might be on the lookout for you." She put a hand on his shoulder. "...Maybe you can stay here? We have a bed..."
Rief choked a little. "Umm, a bed? Singular?"
Maddie shrugged. "Well, two. But Roger's got the other one, so I guess we'd have to share." She batted her eyelashes at him. "You wouldn't mind, would you? I mean, I'm seventeen, it wouldn't be improper-"
Rief stood quickly. "Okay, so, I just want to say, uh, it's not that I'm not... uh, interested, and I'm kind of enjoying this, this is kind of weird, having a gorgeous city girl inexplicably fawning over me-"
"You're rambling, Rief," she interrupted. "Also, you think I'm gorgeous? Why, thank you, I-"
"WE MET AN HOUR AGO," Rief said sharply.
Maddie blushed. "I... w-well... okay, yeah, but it's been a nice hour!" She paused. "And I saw you yesterday, remember? At the marketplace-"
"Yes, before I probably trapped you with walls of ice for a good long period," he replied quickly.
She stood up after him and clutched her hands to her chest. "You could have killed me and my brother! You didn't, even though everyone else was trying to kill YOU! Right then, I thought, 'One day, that man is going to be the man I-'" She caught herself. "Th-the man I bump into, and then he comes home and fixes my brother's broken leg!"
Rief raised an eyebrow.
"It was an oddly specific thought, and that's why it must've been an, an omen! Or something!" She sighed and, her eyes almost tearful, she approached him and took his hands. "It's written in the stars, Rief! Don't you see?"
Rief looked out the window in a panic. "It's mid-afternoon! There are no stars out!" he said.
"No, I mean..." She put her arms around him. "I think I've been waiting for you to show up my whole life. Rief..." She looked into his eyes. "Will you marry me?"
Rief very carefully removed her arms. "I have to go," he said quickly.
"B-but-"
"My friends are wasting away in prison, and since one of the safety measures might actually kill one of them, I think I may as well just hurry in right now."
"But they'll kill you-"
"Maybe not!" he said. "Maybe I'll get in safely, get them out, and we can be on our way! And maybe I'll see you again if that happens."
"P-please don't-"
"You seem like a nice girl, Maddie! You really do! And if I survive, let's be friends. I'd like to get to know you better. Maybe we can meet for coffee or something, as long as we go a little more slowly."
Maddie watched helplessly as Rief opened the door. "Don't die, Rief... please..." she begged.
He shrugged as he started to walk out. "I'm sure something will turn up." He marched right out the door.
A second later, Maddie heard a loud thump. "Ow, what?" Rief shouted.
Another voice echoed from outside. "Sorry, I wasn't watching where I was going, and- oh, hey! Rief! How's it going? What are you doing in Bilibin?"
Maddie hurried to the door. "Are you okay, Rief?" she asked.
He was flat on the ground, having been knocked down (apparently accidentally) by a taller man. He wore a long, dark coat and a sword on his back. His hair was blonde and spiked forward, and the thin beard on his jawline gave him a look of maturity that belied the youthful glow in his eyes.
The man looked at Rief, then at Maddie. "...Is this your girlfriend or something?"
She shook her head quickly. "Well, umm, no. I mean, kind of. I mean... no, we just met an hour ago."
A redheaded woman leaned over to look through the doorframe. She paused for a second, looking Maddie from top to bottom, and then a wicked grin came over her face.
"Called it," she said, elbowing the man in the ribs.
"Doesn't make it any less of a terrible thing to say," the blonde man muttered.
Clearing her throat, Maddie extended a hand in greeting. "I'm Madeline. Maddie to my friends."
Rief looked up in horror and made a sharp cutting motion across his throat, but the tall man didn't notice.
"I'm Isaac. Nice to meet you. This is my wife Jenna, and my friends..." Two more men came into sight, one of them with a large red mustache to match his spiky hair, and the other much shorter with blonde hair and striking purple eyes. "...Garet, and Ivan," the man finished.
"Isaac, Jenna, Garet and Ivan..." Maddie said slowly. She took a deep breath in and let it out. She clenched her fists hard. "...Of Vale?"
Isaac nodded. "You've heard of us?" he asked.
Maddie passed out.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Remember Jenna's totally-uncalled-for comments back in Chapter 3? I did not remember what she said about Rief before writing this chapter. I am 100% serious. I went back and added "Called it" after I checked and found that the comment matched the situation right down to the fucking timespan. I both love and hate eerie coincidences like that.
I hate using original characters like Maddie because I'm always worried that they'll overshadow the canon characters, or end up all Mary Sue-ish. As it is, she's basically a Golden Sun fangirl who meets the characters in real life. I'm male (as I've mentioned) but I still worry that people will see her and go "Wow, self-insert much?" (No, she's not a self-insert. She was originally a flat character designed as a love interest for Rief and nothing more, but flat characters are boring so she stopped being flat. There's more to her than "excitable comic-relief fangirl who is completely bonkers".)
What are your thoughts on the use of original characters? Do you prefer stories with 100% canon characters? If I wrote a story that revolves entirely around original characters set in Weyard, would you read it?