Hello!
Sorry about taking so long to update guys. Lots of circumstances came up, and I wasn't able to get this story published until now. So sorry.
Funny how a writing style can change so fast…I look at this story and it looks like it was written by a caveman.
Well, I don't own Golden Sun.
Next chapter coming…soon! Hopefully tomorrow!
Alex groaned. Every muscle in his body ached.
He looked around. Leaves, trees, bushes, and various other foliage looked back at him from every angle. He looked down, and saw Mia. She was lying prone beside a tree choked with vines, which seemed to be moving and even attacking the tree like something alive.
Then, with a surge of utter panic, he found himself bound and gagged by the same vines. He could have sworn a second ago, he wasn't.
Alex twisted his body, trying to writhe free, but the vines held tight. In fact, they seemed to be getting tighter as he struggled. Suddenly, there was a powerful tug and pulling feeling. The vines were dragging him! His eyes widened and he began to thrash around. Suddenly, his head struck something hard and he swirled into darkness.
A flash of darkness, heat, and pain swept through his body. Everything faded to black.
The unconscious man tumbled down the cliffs of Mt. Aleph, amid the waves of golden light. The Golden Sun shone brilliantly, above the plummeting body. Unbeknownst to the falling man, his body was inclined so that he was falling headfirst, onto a patch of solid rock.
A flash of sudden light, outshining the Golden Sun, if only for a moment.
The goddess Coatlicue appeared, and caught him in mid-fall, saving him from a certain and very bloody death.
Coatlicue sighed, and whispered softly to the bundle she now carried. I'm going to do you a favor, she told him sternly, and don't you forget it
She carried Alex gently over Vale, hovering invisibly over the town. Everyone was gathered at the waterfall in some kind of celebration, possibly a reunion. Whispering so softly that it was barely audible, she called a soft mist over the people of Vale.
"Alex has great potential…but his ambitions have gotten the better of him. Perhaps now, we will see his heart…heart…heart…"
The word echoed. Everyone froze. Nobody twitched, or sneezed, or even appeared to breathe. She flew down, hovered by the base of Mt. Aleph, and gently set him down.
"Alex!"
His eyes suddenly flickered open. "Wha-…what happened?"
Mia stood over him, her eyes brimming with tears. She wiped them away with the hem of her shirt. "I thought…"
"I'm all right. You?"
She nodded.
Then she explained what happened. After being tossed into the hole, they had fallen here. Strange plants that seemed to be rather bloodthirsty inhabited the place. She'd frozen the vine that attacked them, but his head struck the block of ice and he passed out.
"Where are we, do you know?" He asked when the explanation finished."
She shook her head. "Maybe we shouldn't stay here, in case anymore vines try to chomp us down like sushi."
They laughed, got up, and started walking deeper into the Assassin's Jungle. Of course, they didn't know that, nor did they know they were walking toward the Iliad Key.
Piers was in a state of shock. He couldn't quite believe what he had just found.
He and Neliana, his companion, were combing the Lemurian records in order to find anything to help his friends. Neliana had quite a naughty streak, primary including playing practical jokes on him.
Right now she was asleep. He hated to wake her up, but he really had no choice.
He shook her gently. Her brown curls shook, and a whimper escaped her lips. He shook her again, and this time her eyes fluttered open, eyelashes batting like butterfly wings.
She blinked. Piers's expression was somewhere between excited, furious, and desolate. A strange mix, to be sure. Like mixing a squirrel, a lion, and a possum. Curious.
She bolted up, almost knocking him into a rack of weaponry. "What's wrong?"
He picked himself off the floor. "You've got to see this." With that, he strode down the hall to the library, and she followed, after quickly donning on a cloak. It got very cold in the library at night, because the cracks in the wall. The mist surrounding the island made the stone damp, and loosened the mortar, allowing the wall to slide around. Then, during the day, when everything dried, new cracks appeared. That was the problem with living in mist – building never stayed up for long.
The scurried across the floor, following Piers's fleeting figure. Statues along the way cast shadows across their path, and their scowls were magnified.
Finally they reached the library. Piers ran over to a lighted candle, around which there was a stack of papers. As they walked toward it, Piers explained the situation.
"The situation has become more than complicated – it has become deadly. A letter came from Alhafra today. That idiotic, y mayor somehow managed to get word of the Keys. And you know what? He wants them. He says he doesn't care what the quest for, says he knows the gang and that we'll probably squander it. What does he want to do with it? Use them to make money. While the world disintegrates, he wants to make money."
She sighed. "Man, that is some stupid guy."
His face brightened for a second. "Well, there is good news. I found where Alex and Mia have gotten to: The Assassin's Forest."
Neli was not impressed. "I'm not impressed." She said. "That's bad news, isn't it?"
He grinned. "Not necessarily. You see, I think I found a way to trace the Keys."
Her ears perked.
He strode over to a messy complex of various things that ran on Psynergy – orbs, strands, diamonds, and such. They were all connected to something resembling a spyglass, and the entire thing extruded an aura of Psynergy.
"This, Neli, is a Psynergy locator. As long as something is within your range of sight from that telescoping spyglass, you can see Psynergy flares." Before she could ask what Psynergy flares were, he answered that question.
"When someone uses Psynergy, it leaves a faint aura in the air. Usually, it doesn't stay for longer than a few hours, and it's invisible to the naked eye, but in the case of strong Psynergy…"
He pointed the telescope at something, then stepped away, allowing Neliana to take a peek. She did, accidentally stepping on his toe.
She wasn't sure what she was looking for, until she saw a golden haze surrounding something…
"Mt. Aleph," Piers intoned. "from the Golden Sun."
"But that was almost three months ago!" She protested.
He shrugged. "That's how it works. I expect that to last a few years."
A brain wave hit her. Like a light bulb lighting up. "So, that means any large amount of…" She didn't finish her sentence, and instead swung the spyglass around until she spotted the Assassin's Forest.
The Assassin's Forest – not a pleasant place, to see the least. It was located on a small, hidden island in the Western Sea. A century ago, the Guild of Assassins, located in the forest now named for them, had disbanded. Nobody knows exactly how, but it is widely suspected that Geneva, their leader, had betrayed them by selling them out. What resulted was a bloody civil war. According to the stories, it had taken Iris coming down and splicing their essence with the landscape, giving it (the landscape) a life of it's own. People avoided it like the plague.
And it was there that a flare of blue mist rose like an angry dragon over the landscape.
She put the scope down. "That's it. That's got to be it."
He sighed. "You and I both know it, but the council won't admit it. Heck, they wouldn't even admit that the continents were shrinking. You know, I think they want the keys for themselves too-" He froze in mid-sentence. "Oh my god."
Her mind was tumbling. "So if Alhafra is going to do whatever it takes to get the keys, the elders might know about it already. If they join forces…"
"Their supporters…people that don't like us, maybe? People like the Shaman Village…"
"Don't forget Lonpa. They broke in, and their leader isn't exactly on the right side of the law."
Their hearts knew what about to happened already, even if their brains hadn't registered. "And there are people who believe in what we're doing…like Kalay, for example."
"The rest of Lemuria, with the exception of people who will follow the council." She said. "Which, come to think of it, is just about everyone. Except the Elder, and a few others."
"Vale, of course, and probably Imil. They owe Mia."
Unconsciously, Neliana had marked down the cities on the map. When she looked down, she blanched.
"You do realize what this means?" She said, hardly audible.
Piers's eyes widened. "War." He whispered. "We're going to go to war.
How's that? Good? Maybe I actually have a plot now.
Ciao.