Alex has always been and forever will be my favourite GS character.


Once again, he found himself laying immobile atop Mount Aleph. Though this time, due to very different circumstances.

The Sun was in his eyes. It didn't matter that it was barely past noon and thus, being supine at the summit, sunlight was shining practically on direct line to his sight. It could have been the darkest hour of the night and still he would have seen it, because the Sun was in his eyes.

Under his body Arcanus felt damp, and knew that his once pristine robes were getting soaked in blood. It couldn't be seen at first glance, since there was no wound on him; rather, the small something he carried was tearing him apart from within. It was only a matter of (little) time until his muscles gave in and he bled out.

Such a pity he couldn't heal himself anymore.

Such a pity it wasn't only blood that was being ripped off him and flowing into the earth, where it rightfully belonged.

In the near distance, Arcanus heard someone approaching; several someones, in fact. They were running towards him, rushing up the mountain and wheezing like animals. How very inelegant! He never ran, always maintaining a calm and composed demeanour that added to his natural grace. But he accepted that this time it could be overlooked, considering that he didn't have much time left. If his persecutors didn't hurry, they might find no more than a corpse, and even if they didn't know it yet, they needed him alive. At least for a bit longer until he fulfilled his plan, the one Arcanus had climbed Mount Aleph a second time for.

"In the name of Boreas... they were telling the truth," a soft but breathy voice said, before turning as cold as ice. "You really returned here."

A thousand years could pass and still he would recognize instantly that gentle, yet prideful voice.

"Mia..." he thought, blinking, but didn't bother to call out her name. More people were about to arrive, and he wasn't in the mood to greet them all one by one.

"Geez, Mia. Couldn't you wait just a couple more minutes for the rest of us to catch up?" said the next one to reach him.

"Sorry, but I certainly didn't expect you to be so out of shape, Garet. You live in a mountain cabin after all."

"Walking the plateau every day doesn't compare to sprinting up a damn full peak!"

"Please, guys. Do you think this is the best time to engage in silly arguments?" and that had to be Ivan, usually the voice of reason even when out of breath.

"... Don't you think it's strange he hasn't moved at all?" finally Isaac was asking a clever question, always his perceptive self. "He hasn't even acknowledged our presence."

The other four had arrived too, it seemed. Finally a group of eight were with Arcanus atop the sacred mountain, and the Sun was still in his eyes.

"Is he... dead?" a warm, worrying voice spoke. "I thought he became immortal after receiving the Golden Sun."

"No, Jenna. I am still alive, though barely." His once suave and captivating voice came out rasply, but it was enough to be heard.

All at once, he heard them draw out their weapons, but didn't bother to turn his head to them. Why would he? Even if he looked, he wouldn't actually see.

"Then why are you not moving at all?" a cheeky female voice asked, one that could only belong to the Child of the Gods. "We have come to stop you once and for all, and here you lay, sunbathing. Or is this your way of surrendering?"

"My dear Sheba, sorry to disappoint you... but my defeat already happened a long time ago, and it certainly was not at your hands."

Then someone walked closer towards him in quiet, careful steps. Probably Felix, being his sacrificing usual self. If anything were to happen, the Venus adept would take the first strike... but no move was made against him. Not that Arcanus could deal one anyway.

For his part, Felix took a knee to the ground, close enough to him to be mildly dangerous. He examined his former ally up and down, as if trying to solve a mystery, until he finally noticed one very significant detail.

The warrior suddenly recoiled as if pushed by an unknown force, drawing attention from the rest of the people.

"Felix! Are you alright?" his Lemurian pal Piers immediately went to his aid, followed by the others.

But Felix shook his head and raised his hand, stopping them. Then he slowly and silently fluttered same hand in front of Arcanus' face, who didn't react at all.

"Whatever inane thing you are doing right now, please do stop. Time is of the essence."

But Arcanus' request was momentarily ignored. The group focused on the message Felix was trying to tell them. It wasn't difficult to understand: anyone who looked in his golden, pupilless eyes would get it.

The Sun was in his eyes. The Sun was everything he could see. The Sun was the only thing he would ever see again.

"For the love of Procne, what's that?" Ivan gasped, pointing at the wet stain underneath Arcanus' robes, which was getting bigger and more noticeable by the minute.

Out of instinct, not really thinking it, Mia kneeled beside him too and started healing him; or, well, she tried. With a harsh intake of breath, she let go of her Ply and abruptly fell on her butt, astonished.

"Mia, what's wrong?" Felix asked.

"I... I don't know," she whispered, a hand on her heart. "My psynergy was... it was, like... it slipped right through him instead of catching."

"Ehm, guys?" Jenna spoke, daring to lift the tip of Arcanus' cape, where for whatever reason it had looked fluffy.

Under it, wet and tainted with his blood, there was a patch of newly-sprouted flowers. And they were spreading unnaturally fast, soon to cover the entirety of the peak with green born from red.

"Do not waste your psynergy on me, Mia. I am already beyond help, and I can sense my time running thin. There is a reason I summoned you all here."

All of them looked at him dumbfounded. Summoned? What the heck was he talking about? They weren't summoned, they got wind of him being at Mount Aleph after talking with that little girl... oh.

"You tricked us again," Isaac sighed. "You wanted us to come here for you."

"Old habits die hard," he responded, allowing himself one last ounce of smugness.

"Why... why can't I heal you?" Mia inquired, attempting it again but with the same unpleasant result.

"My body is destroying itself, which is not something curable," Arcanus revealed. "Just like a vortex."

Unconsciously, the mere mention of the word made every single one of them to take a couple of steps back. Even Mia and Felix crawled back on their butts.

"You... you mean to tell us... that you have a vortex inside you?" Garet asked, incredulous.

"That's not possible. You would be dead," Jenna remarked.

"Anything is possible if you just know how to do it properly," Arcanus replied. "And I've had more than enough time to study the vortexes and learn how to replicate them, since the moment they started to pop up after the Golden Sun. But... you are not completely wrong, for I am indeed dying. I am holding out just for the pleasure of conversing with you all."

The sarcasm in his tone wasn't lost to them. And be as it was, for everyone was containing their impulses of strangling/burning/freezing him or any other way to kick his already half-dead ass... but they knew that the man known as Arcanus must have a reason to bring them here. And whatever it was, it had to be of utmost importance if it was related to the vortexes.

"Alright. What do you know about them?" Sheba sighed deeply before relenting. "How do we stop them?"

"The vortexes cannot be stopped. And it is a good thing too that they cannot, despite their terrible consequences, for they are a safety measure. But if you want me to explain, I'd suggest you to stop interrupting and actually allow me to tell you what you want to know."

Some grumbles were heard. Apparently, not even in his deathbed was the Mercury adept any less full of himself.

"The Golden Sun... that Golden Sun I attempted to seize that day, it failed. Or better said, not failed, but stolen from me. I obtained a significant part, but it was not complete." His voice trembled in anger, and for the first time Arcanus tried to move, slightly raising his fingers towards the bright noon sun. "But I guess it is not my place to complain; after all, I also stole it from Weyard. Because of that, after the faulty rise of the Golden Sun, the vortexes came to be. And, just so I am not the only one carrying the blame, you all have your own as well."

An offended and undignified yelp was heard, but no interruptions were made.

"The Lighthouses are adepts' constructions, they are not part of nature like the Elemental Rocks. Our ancestors intended to control the natural flow of Alchemy and redirect it wherever they wanted, but this still allowed Alchemy to run free; however, when the Lighthouses were extinguished, the paths of Alchemy were blocked. In a way, it would have been better to simply demolish them, but I surmise that by then the ancestors were already too afraid of the power of Alchemy to let it regain its natural flow."

"Kraden was of the same opinion," Isaac agreed. "And he certainly knew what he was talking about."

"When the Golden Sun rose, it was not that Alchemy returned as much as it was allowed to run free again, thus the sudden burst of concentrated psynergy. But that energy is meant for the balance of nature, not for humans," Arcanus sighed, somehow disappointed and somehow regretfully. "The portion I took, the portion you took... it might be minuscule, but that does not make it any less important. Me atop Mouth Aleph that day, and you at the Mars aerie... we all received something we were not meant to."

A collective wave of realization hit the adepts. Shaken heads, trembling lips, brows furrowed and hands swiping over faces... it was quite a shocking epiphany. Their hearts clenched painfully at what they had inadvertently caused.

"Probably the reason why our aging has slowed this much," Mia murmured.

"Yeah, and also why the Wise One and master Hama were so earnest about warning us of the danger," Piers added. "We weren't fast enough to prevent the beacon casting its light upon us."

"And that's not even the whole thing. Your dear friend here Isaac himself obtained a way bigger chunk than the rest of you. The Mars portion of the Golden Sun that escaped from me that day... it went to him instead." When only silence accompanied this declaration, Arcanus couldn't help a satisfied smirk. "Oh, do not tell me... you did not know, Isaac? My my, how rude of me. My apologies."

As if he was going to fool anyone with such an unfelt apology. But it couldn't be denied that the news had certainly perplexed the other adepts.

"You're lying," Garet accused him.

"How you dare!" Arcanus huffed, indignation overpowering his physical weakness even if just for an instant. "Lying would be unbecoming of me. And I'll let you know that this detail was revealed to me by the Wise One itself, seconds before Mount Aleph swallowed me with it. The Mars portion release of the Golden Sun was linked to the Star that Isaac was responsible of."

"By the way, how did you even survive?" Jenna asked, before catching herself. "Wait, no. That doesn't matter anymore. Weren't you going to tell us about the damn vortexes?"

"Yes, I was getting to it," Arcanus inhaled deeply, his blind eyes almost glittering in the sunlight. "Because a substantial amount of lifeforce had been taken from Weyard, the vortexes appeared wherever there was a significant amount of elemental power. Either Lighthouses, or djinn nests, or... specially strong adepts, like Kalay. Isn't that right, Ivan, Jenna? Or Mount Aleph itself, where if I remember correctly, Isaac and Garet live? The vortexes spurted there because you were around. They were attracted to your high levels of psynergy."

Like he wouldn't know. After all, that's what had happened when he... when her... Whatever, it didn't matter anymore, for it was too late. It had already been too late twenty years ago. There was no way he could have stayed, not with that sucking hole chasing after him.

"Now wait a second here," Garet grunted, unamused. "How do you know it's like that? Do you have proof?"

"You mean aside of pure logic, correlated evidence and twenty-five years of studying them non-stop? No, sorry."

The Mars adept was just this close to take away the few more minutes of life his enemy might have to live, if not for Ivan grabbing his collar and keeping him in place.

"Vortexes are linked to the core of Weyard," Arcanus continued in a haggard voice, prompting Mia to try to heal him for the third time and with the same result as before. "They are linked to 'the other side'. They are a safety measure for proper redistribution of elemental energy; once Weyard regains what it lost, the vortexes will disappear. However, if after the balance is restored new spouts of Alchemy are activated, then the vortexes surely would come back to re-balance again."

His more recent plans gained finally meaning to the other eight adepts.

"Is that why you were in cahoots with the Tuaparang, restarting any alchemic machine you found?" Sheba inquired curiously. "Because it was better to do it now than later?"

"Is it that difficult to believe?" Arcanus asked back. "What I wanted to possess, what I wanted to own, was a thriving Weyard on its way to a new golden age. Who would want to be the master of an inhospitable wasteland?"

The heroes looked at one another, but nobody had anything they could say to rebuff the fallen Mercury adept's asseverations.

"Alex..." Mia said his name for the first time, softly and yet full of grief. "How this did happen? In the past, you were such a caring and helpful boy... How could you change so much? When did you go astray?"

"Oh, Mia... Caring and helpful I might have been, but I could never stand ungrateful people," Arcanus hissed, for he had no more strength to actually laugh at her words. "In Imil, cold and sickness were our constant companions. People that fell ill came to us to cure them, and we did... time and time again, we cured them. Only for what? For them to die the next week or month. We tried so hard, worked our psynergy to exhaustion to heal them, and they just kept dying. They always ended dying..."

His voice was rapidly deteriorating, getting low and hoarse. His eyes were shining... probably due to the sunlight reflected on them.

"If only we had Mercury Lighthouse functioning like in the days of past, we could have done so much more... we would have been so much stronger. We would have healed them for good."

"Alex," his cousin spoke grievously, "that's not how things are. Health and sickness are part of life, and so is death. No matter how much we try, everyone will eventually die one way or another. That's the natural cycle. But you... you never liked to be confronted with your failures, you couldn't deal with the losses. And yet you caused so many casualties with that damned eclipse."

"It was necessary," Arcanus stated the fact, not really sounding as if trying to apologize, and the other adepts surmised it wasn't supposed to be one. "To activate another alchemic machine, and to bring birth to light adepts... Children of the sun, needed to take down that foul Empyror and his servants of the moon... Poor Luna, having its name soiled by those shadow adepts from 'the other side'... I only hope to have honoured thy name better than them."

The Sun in his eyes was losing its shine. The hourglass of his life was on its last grains.

"Isaac," he called out to him, surprising everyone, and with great effort raised a hand. "This is your chance to release what it does not belong to you. Give it to me, and it will flow back to the earth and sky, to the ocean and Weyard's very core."

Felix looked at his fellow Venus adept, and nodded slightly. He trusted Alex to be telling the truth. After all, manipulative bastard as he was, it was true that he had never lied to them. The Imilan's game was more omission of truth than actual lies, and at least this time, he had nothing else to gain or lose.

So Isaac did. He kneeled down next to his friend and took Alex's offered hand. Immediately, an intense heat washed over him, pulled from the innermost depths of his psynergy where he had never known it resided, hidden and protected even from himself.

"Oh... so this is how Mars feels. It is more unpleasant than what I expected," the water adept murmured.

All of them felt the change in the surrounding atmosphere. The cool air at the summit of Mount Aleph became slightly warmer, and the newborn grass and flowers around them stirred almost happily. A gentle breeze caressed Arcanus' hair.

Mia delicately placed a hand on his forehead, which he frowned in confusion at.

"Whatever happened at Mars' aerie…" she started to say. "I don't want to bury my own kids."

And he understood. The vortex inside him took her in stride, sucking off the residual fire that shouldn't be there.

Jenna kneeled next to her husband, placing her hand over his that linked with Alex's. She called out her psynergy too.

Felix touched Alex's shoulder. Sheba sat in the venusian's lap, putting her hand over his. Garet gripped Isaac's arm. Ivan patted Jenna's head. Piers rubbed Mia's back in a comforting gesture.

"Kraden… your parents…" Arcanus could barely talk anymore. "Go talk to the Wise One. He must know... what to do."

All around them, the very air filled out with renewed and balanced vitality.

But for the man laying atop Mount Aleph, the Sun abandoned his eyes at last.


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Also, I'm looking for GS forums still alive, please...