Where there's light...
Disclaimer: I do not own Golden Sun or any of the characters, I just like the games.
This is the second-to-last chapter, the Ending Eve, so to speak. Before the interesting reading begins, however, review response...or I would, but the stuff I see in my log-in area scares me...I think it's against the rules to do that now, so I just say thank you to Spirit Seer and ES1, and I'm sorry for my laziness in updates, but school is hard! I had this chapter sitting for two weeks in my floppy disk but never uploaded it...
Now, chapter commence!
Chapter Fourteen: The Final Union
Felix and Ivan stared into the sunrise, letting the light shine on their bodies in an attempt to wash away the memories they shared. So engrossed were they that they missed Jenna's increasingly frustrated cries.
"Oi! Brother, Ivan, listen!" she cried as she smacked both of them over the head to get their attention. "The Gungnir! We found it!"
Throbbing scalps aside, Felix and Ivan dashed after Jenna, who ran around the tree to the north-facing side of the trunk. The other members stood looking up, an expression of consternation evident on their faces.
Picard noticed the hurrying three and gave a wry smile. "Well, we found it. Trouble is it's about 120 feet up on the trunk, and psynergy won't pull it out."
Felix and Ivan looked up where he pointed and gasped in amazement. The spear was at least ten feet long, made with a gold shaft eight feet long and a head two feet, made of an unknown metal that seemed to be of many colors, all at once. It was buried into the tree almost all the way past the head, the small sliver of metal visible making an ethereal dividing line between the tree and the spear.
However, the party needed it on the ground, not suspended in a tree.
"Why don't we try fire, burn the wood around the spear until it falls out?" asked Garet.
"Burn a sacred tree? Bad idea, it would probably retaliate somehow." Sheba muttered.
"We could try something like what we did with the giant lake at Jupiter Lighthouse, make a giant pillar to the top and pull it out." Mia suggested.
"There would be no way to make it back down safely, assuming we could make a tower strong enough to hold at least Sheba. Ditto for a whirlwind; we'd have the same 'down' problem." said Isaac.
They thought more, eventually relaxing on the tree, then sitting around the base. No one could think of anything; safe, effective or even possible.
Ivan lay back against the ground, looking up at the tree with the spear right above him. He thought and thought, then sighed with irritation. 'Why can't the damn thing just fall out, right here?' he wondered. He suddenly went stiff. The spear wriggled. 'It can't be that, it's too simple, too stupid to even consider. Yet...there's the chance, and what else can I do?' He concentrated on the spear. 'Move, spear'. Nothing. 'Fall out, spear.' A little wiggle. 'Fall out, Gungnir!' It budged a little, the head becoming more visible. 'I command you to fall, Gungnir, Spear of Judgment!'
The Gungnir jolted out, then fell straight down, less than an inch from Ivan's head.
There was only stunned silence as the group stared at the spear, then Ivan, who lay bug-eyed and breathing heavily at the shock he'd just been delivered.
"Did...did you...you make it...fall?" Garet asked, stumbling over his words.
Ivan nodded, still looking right where the spear had fallen.
There was a moment of silence as the group looked at the spear, then it quickly broke into cheers as the whole party rushed to Ivan. Garet got there first, bringing Ivan into a crushing bear hug. Ivan waved his arms feebly to show his lack of air, but only Felix noticed and cared enough to force Garet to release his bone-crusher. The party huddled around the spear as Isaac removed it from the dirt. The spear ended in a simple point, although it appeared to have multiple edges, yet only two, yet none at all. After marveling over the spear, they turned to working out how to use it, which proved to be as futile as their initial attempts to get it out of Yggdrasil.
"This is crazy! The people who made these items must have been mad! First you remove the spear, then you figure out how to use the spear, and next we'll probably have to find a way to attack with it!" Sheba yelled out to no one in particular.
Suddenly Picard gasped. "Here! There's writing near the head! It's very faint..."
Holding the spear by the shaft, Picard pointed out the near-invisible runes on the spear.
"It's not Lemurian, or any type of writing I know of. It's very ancient."
They looked at the runes carefully, but they appeared to be nothing more than incomprehensible engravings. Ivan thought as hard as the rest, but was distracted somewhat. The carvings looked familiar to him; he'd seen ones like them before. He brought his hand back to his staff, strapped onto his back. Or tried, but it was no longer there.
'I remember now. I used it to destroy Thanatos...wait.' He struggled to remember. 'There were runes on the staff. I could read them! They said 'Yggdrasil', and I could read them! So why not...'
He gasped in surprise. The runes now made perfect sense. "To the user..." he muttered.
"What's that, Ivan?" Isaac asked.
"I can read them...I think." Ivan replied, bewildered.
They all started in surprise before Garet thumped him on the back. "Well, aren't you just doing everything now? Go on, read them!" he coaxed.
"All...all right." Ivan said nervously. He looked at the runes, then read:
"To the user, listen well. The spear called Gungnir destroys nothing, but unites all. When Light and Dark come to battle, pierce both hearts with Gungnir to unite their souls once more. A thousand years shall pass, and they will free themselves to do battle once again. Chosen warriors will fight then, and continue the cycle which Darkness created and Time maintains. So commands Chronos, everlasting."
He looked up. "That's all it says." Ivan said.
They mulled over the information before Mia spoke. "Seems rather hopeless, doesn't it?"
"It's a constant cycle, the God of Darkness just keeps coming back..." Picard said slowly.
"So what's the point? It seems pretty useless to me." Jenna said angrily.
"The peace is fleeting, but at least it's there, right? I don't think its useless." Mia answered.
They stood around for a little while longer before Isaac spoke. "Well...it won't do us any good just to stand here. We should go end this, at least for now. We might find a way to break the cycle, and if we don't..." he sighed. "We still bought Weyard a thousand years."
"That's not good enough!" Jenna said, unexpectedly forcefully. "We can't just shrug this onto some people in the future, just because it's the easy way! We can't just go to face the Dark Lord with an attitude like 'Oh heck, if some way to seal him forever pops up we'll try our best'! We don't know if the people a thousand years from now will have the power to fight back, or even know Weyard is in peril!" She looked at everyone sternly, then spoke in a quieter voice. "We must finish this now, and break the cycle today. Weyard will never face this danger again."
Felix looked up from his spot under Yggdrasil. "I agree. We should go now, and stop screwing around."
Ivan nodded curtly, and held the spear in front of him, point down. He concentrated on the spear, as hard as he could. 'Take us there, to the world of Light and Dark, take us there...'
Without even thinking about what he was doing he swung the spear up, slicing into the holy bark of Yggdrasil. Instead of sap oozing out, the base of the tree simply split vertically, like a pair of giant doors. What lay beyond was nothing but a black void, in which a single pin-point of light shone.
"This...is the inside of Yggdrasil?" Garet asked, awed and somewhat fearful of the darkness that lay beyond.
"Or maybe it's the other world. Either way, we won't know until we go in, right?" Picard said.
Without another word they entered the void.
They walked for what seemed like days, stepping through the darkness blacker than the night of the new moon. The light of the doorway in Yggdrasil had disappeared almost as soon as they crossed the threshold, but that tiny point remained, unwavering and steady. Not once did anyone utter a sound, or even think very much. They just walked, on and on.
As soon as it seemed like they'd just been walking like this, their whole lives, the darkness began to ebb a little. It was subtle, and they really only noticed the brightening when they saw their hands for the first time since entering the pathway. The light grew steadily, until it reached a twilight, but never got brighter than that. They could now see they were walking on a celestial path of many colors, every color on the light spectrum could be seen. Around them was only empty space, that same darkness they had walked in for so long.
"So, that whore's warriors have finally appeared."
They all jumped at the voice. It was omnipresent, all around them and yet within their minds, their very souls. It had a cold, patronizing voice, like one who was very old and wise but held nothing but contempt for those who didn't share his knowledge.
"Ah. You're the ones who brought the elements back to Weyard. I thank you for that. Soon I will conquer that world, then all the other ones. I must say, you haven't been very quick about getting here. The last ones got here before I'd even started pouring my essence into the world."
"Where are you, demon? Show yourself!" Isaac yelled to the darkness.
"Demon? Feh, I am well beyond a mere demon. I am the God of Darkness! He Who Snuffs Hope, they once called me. All the God's feared me! I would've ruled them! If not for that bitch, Freya."
The darkness seemed to thicken, and appeared to flow together like an ocean of ink. The pathway became blotted out by the darkness, plunging the group into darkness again.
Then came the moans.
The wailing of countless tortured souls.
In an instant, the eight heroes found themselves on a hill of dead, rotting corpses. The smell was overwhelming, far worse than anything they had smelled before. Atop this morbid hill they looked down and saw a river of blood, oozing just below them and carrying on into the distance. The wind was heavy and putrid, lightning flashed across the sky. Flames burned everywhere, consuming what long-dead shrubbery was left along with other mounds of corpses. The stench, combined with the hissing and popping of rotten flesh made their gorge rise. Jenna vomited and looked about ready to faint, and Isaac supported her in fear.
"This is your fate." said the voice of the Dark One.
"Fail to seal me now, and this is your world. A land ravaged by the Rotting Earth, the Dead Wind, the Blood Sea, the Cursed Flame, the Darkness of Despair and the Oblivion of Death. Everything will perish, and I will use the agony of those who die to feed my power. I will rise again, greater than I could ever hope to have been all those eons ago. Even if you do succeed, I'll try again. People lose hope, lose courage with time. When the time comes when the light within people is too weak to shine, that will be my time. The only question, I suppose, is if you can delay me for a little while longer."
Ivan looked to the black, swirling sky and roared "Never! This will never happen! We have come not only to seal you, but to destroy you! WE SHALL BREAK THE CYCLE!"
"Break the Cycle of Time? Destroy Chrono's Web? It is foolish to think you can. He is the All-Father, the creator of everything, and the destroyer of everything. It pains me to say it, but his power far surpasses mine. No God has even seen him. If your hope is to see him, let alone beat him, you stand a better chance of splitting the world with one of the hairs on your head. No, you journey ends here, victorious or not."
Out of the tortured sky came a terrible roar, a cry never heard in this world. Like a lightning bolt a pair of great black wings enfolding a huge body flew down and knocked the party off the macabre hill. The landed fifteen feet down on the dusty, lifeless plains, but quickly scrambled up and readied their weapons. The shape unfolded its wings as it stood upon the hill of corpses.
It looked vaguely like a human, but was obviously not. The wings were torn and bleeding, and where the blood dropped it burned holes through the bodies the God of Darkness stood on. It's feet shaped like a bird's talons, but were pitch-dark and soaked in human blood and entrails. One arm held a huge morningstar, which whirled viciously through the air. The other arm held a cruelly serrated sword, which seemed so sharp that it appeared to gouge the very air. The head was long, with a pointed chin and two sweeping horns like antlers standing tall atop its head. The eyes were red slits, and seemed to burn as fiercely as the flames all around them.
"I am Argadon, the God of Darkness! You mortals have dared to oppose me, and so I will destroy you, and add your power to mine!"
Lightning flashed, and the God of Darkness lunged from the hill, crashing to the ground and scattering the party. He turned to Ivan and the eyes seemed almost to grin.
"Give yourself to God!"
Ah! That'll do. One chapter left, then it'll all be over. Last chapter should be a little longer than usual, but no guarantees about the update time. Bye!