Alex has always been my favorite GS character, and since he plays a relatively large role at the end of TLA, this 'fic will center around him for the most part. Isaac will also be a pretty main character. Which isn't to say that Felix and the other adepts will be forgotten; they'll be in here a great deal also. So... Enjoy.

Warnings: Rated T for mild language, graphic violence (in later chapters) and dark themes. Contains some implied Isaac/Mia, Felix/Sheba, and possible Garet/Jenna, all in later chapters. Contains spoilers for the entirety of Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Apply standard disclaimers here.

--------- DEUS EX MACHINA (by Raven Minamino a.k.a. Kuroya) ((Written: 6/19/05 Published: 5/07/06)) ----------

Part One

Chapter One: Aftermath (Prelude)

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"...And after an age of darkness, the Golden Sun will rise..."

She is restless. She has been sleeping for a very, very long time. She is tired of waiting; she is tired of watching. She wants to be doing something; she wants to end it by her own hands. She is patient, but she has her limits. She is not this patient.

And she is happy at last, because her apocalypse has begun. She is happy, because she alone will get to see the curtain close, and darkness fall. She has waited for a very long time, and now the stage is hers at last. She is ready.

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He is tired, but he won't give up... He isn't ready to die. Not yet.

His hands still scramble for handholds that refuse to be found, and his feet search desperately for small fissures, tiny cliffs... Something, anything, to break his fall.

He has been falling for a very long time. Surely he must be miles beneath Weyard by now, surrounded by nothing but choking stone and heat and darkness and dry sand. He is afraid to open his eyes, despite the darkness, for fear that seeing his own plight will make him realize its reality. He doesn't want to know, he doesn't want to see, he doesn't want to feel the stone move past his fingers like he is nothing but a small breeze making its way towards the center of the world...

He breathes out of habit, in and out, in and out, even though there's probably no oxygen down here anyway. He stays alive out of habit, still searching for some kind of handhold, still searching for a way out...

Because he can't give up. He won't give up. He has the power of the Golden Sun, and he is invincible. He will live, he will move on to become something great. He can't die, not yet, when his life is just beginning. He won't die. He won't ever let go.

And he is not afraid. Uneasy, perhaps; desperate, yes; but not afraid. Because he knows he will survive.

And he isn't even surprised when he lands, with a force great enough to splinter his bones, upon a smooth stone surface. He isn't even surprised when an ethereal light sinks through his eyelids to poison his irises with a silvery glow. And without hesitation, he opens his eyes.

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Slowly, carefully, as if afraid of what he would see, Alex cracked his eyes open just enough to ascertain that the light he saw was, indeed, silver. Wait... A silver light miles under the Earth? That couldn't be right... He must have been dead, encased in stone far below Mt. Aleph, forever preserved by the lack of air and water...

Then the pain struck, biting horribly into his flesh like a living thing, reminding him that he probably wasn't dead; just hallucinating, or dreaming, or going insane. He definitely couldn't rule out the last option, at least. He hastily cast Pure Ply, which must have done something, as he could feel his bones knitting back together; the pain, however, continued. Uncertainly, he attempted to sit up; his limbs protested loudly at first, then relented to his requests and twitched to life, pulling him up so he sat with his back to a stone wall, his battered legs stretched out before him. He winced as he saw the unsightly bloodstains that marred the fabric of his tunic, though they were made almost unrecognizable by the thick coating of dust that covered every inch of his person.

Alex allowed himself a brief, wry smile at his predicament; he had wanted to be the strongest in all of Weyard, and look at him now. He was very disheveled, so dirty that he would need several hundred baths if-- when-- he got out of here, bruised, bleeding, and altogether unfit for "strongest in Weyard" status.

Sighing softly, he forced a thoroughly marred hand into moving and cast Douse above his head, hoping that the water might help his wounds, if not begin to wash away all the dirt and blood. The streams of cold water ran across his face in rivulets of pure bliss, and he opened his mouth for just a taste of the long-forgotten liquid; it tasted exactly the same as he remembered it, if even better after his long fall.

Feeling slightly more human, if not yet presentable, he opened his eyes again and blinked around the chamber in which he had landed. It looked much the same as did the rest of the scenery below Weyard: rocky, brown, dry, and very boring. He could not find the source of the silvery light; hard as he looked, it seemed to be coming from the very rocks themselves. And that just wasn't possible.

The most extraordinary thing about the chamber, though, was what sat in the middle: a strange charcoal-grey orb, so large that he could not have put his arms around it and been able to join his left and right index fingers. It was about half the size of the Golden Sun, he thought with a flicker of regret; though other than that, the gray orb and the Sun had nothing else in common. It had been so very bright and beautiful, filling his entire vision with a pulsing light that had been both wonderful and blinding... He could reach out and touch it, even now, as it had burned brightly enough to remain in his memory forever...

He laughed out loud; a rasping, unhealthy-sounding laugh that quickly transformed into a cough. So he coughed into the palm of his left hand, trying to remember that he was laughing; yes, laughing... Laughing at how pointless it had been to try, how foolish he had been to even think that he could be invincible. Laughing, yes... Because he couldn't quite remember how he had gone so far only to be right back where he started. No... He was back even further than that. He was stuck in the centre of the Earth, damn it, and he couldn't do a thing...

He tried to silence himself, only to find that he could not; the coughs tore through his lungs and throat with a strange ferocity, and fresh blood trickled across his lips. He was insane, definitely insane; pure desperation could do that to a person, he knew. And he was just laughing at it all, because there was nothing else to do... He was just laughing, despite the tears on his cheeks. Funny, how far he could come, how many trials he could pass, only to end up buried beneath the very mountain he had tried to climb to reach his goal.

Life had a strange, cruel way of waving everything you could ever want in your face, then snatching it away at the last moment and laughing at you. To say that Alex felt slighted would be a massive understatement. It went deeper than that; he felt betrayed, horrified, vitiated. And even more... He was disappointed. Not the kind of disappointed where you say "oh well, better luck next time", brush yourself off, and get to your feet. It was the kind of disappointed where you sit in the same place for hours, just staring at the wall, because you no longer know what to do with yourself now that everything you ever hoped to dream of is gone. It was this kind of disappointment that he could not stand, and after a certain amount of time, he grew angry.

How could that filthy rock just take everything away? What gave him the right? Alex had worked hard to gain power, and it should belong to him now-- certainly not Isaac, who had done little, if anything, to deserve it. Isaac would not even know what to do with such power-- he was a pacifist, after all, and not used to such radical ideas as reshaping (or ruling) the new world. Just a taste of immortality would be too much for a boy like that; surely he would never be able to properly utilize his talents, or his longevity, as Alex could.

And more than anything, more than everything, it just wasn't fair. He had been told from a young age that if you work very hard, you would be rewarded. Well, he had worked; God knew, he had travelled the world, fought his share of monsters, gone without food or sleep or shelter-- all so he could gain what his heart truly desired. He did not want love, or companionship, or endless riches, like all those inferior, magic-less, ignorant villagers. He wanted immortality, and even more, he wanted power. Pure, limitless, awe-inspiring, power. Nothing less. That power had been accessible, had been within his grasp-- for a few wonderful, blissful moments it had been all his, coursing within him, filling him, becoming him-- then gone. Well, not completely gone; he could tell that much of the power was still there, but the frustrating thing was that he didn't know what it was for or how to use it. He could feel the power within him-- not limitless, but nearly so-- and try as he might, he could not use it.

His normal spells, like Ply and Douse, seemed to work with no effort on his part, but he could not find any new, more interesting powers to use. Nothing, certainly, that would allow him to claw his way to the surface. The surface... He had been down here for some time already. What if he never saw the sun again? What if, instead of being the guiding force that led Weyard into a New Age, he became an almost forgotten, archaic name in a musty old textbook somewhere, years and years from now? He would not be remembered as a God, as a hero, as a revolutionary... He would be remembered as an evil man, a friendless, backstabbing man who sought to rule the world.

And he was not an evil man, but would the world care? Of course not. Would they care to note that, in his quest to achieve his dreams, he had killed no one intentionally? Saturos, Menardi, Karst, and Agatio had killed many who got in their way-- whether intentionally or unintentionally, he'd never know for sure-- but since the lighting they would be remembered as heroes, as martyrs who died so that Weyard could live. But Alex would be forgotten, only mentioned in passing as a psychopath with delusions of grandeur.

He was not an evil man. But it didn't matter-- not really.

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Isaac heaved a weary sigh as he put down his shovel; rebuilding Vale was turning out to be an even more daunting task than he and his fellow villagers had initially thought. They had enlisted the help of others from Vault, Lunpa, Bilibin, and even Kalay; but after Mt. Aleph had collapsed upon itself, it had left a great deal of rubble, which covered the former town of Vale and its surrounding for miles around. There was little that could be salvaged; the best they could hope for was that the psynergy stone and sanctum were somewhat intact beneath the layers of rock.

The first order of business was to clear away the layers of rubble, as the stubborn village elders had insisted that Vale could only be rebuilt upon the same land it had stood before. Plus, they hoped to unearth whatever they could, which probably wouldn't be much, but they could try.

Isaac and every able-bodied villager had been working nonstop for four full days, and still they could see that what they had done was only chipping at the edges. It would take many more days, maybe even months, just to clear away enough of the rock to rebuild a few houses. By then they'd be too exhausted to build, but that didn't seem to daunt them. All of the villagers, even some of those not from Vale, were enthusiastic and determined. They wanted to prove, perhaps, that they could do the impossible: build a new town despite the ruins of a large mountain that blocked their path.

Isaac tried to remain just as motivated as his father, but after returning from a journey of many months, he couldn't help but feel very tired, as if the very marrow was being drained from his bones. He worked just as hard as the others, using as much psynergy as he could without exhausting himself; but by now, he just wanted a good few days of rest with his family and friends.

He smiled at this thought, and glanced over to his companions, who were taking a break several yards away; Jenna was talking animatedly about Felix's childhood, while Felix sweatdropped and mumbled under his breath. Ivan, Sheba, Mia, and Picard had all decided to stay for the rebuilding-- they had no doubt that they would be needed, and however much they missed their families and friends back at their own homes, they were reluctant to part from each other.

Isaac, too, would miss them... Miss their adventures and misadventures, however tiring and difficult they had been at the time. He even missed fighting monsters with them; how he could trust any one of them to watch his back in those fights, and how he wouldn't hesitate to watch theirs... He missed sunsets on their flying ship, the mists of Lemuria, the warm beaches of the Apojii Islands, even the ice-covered glaciers of Tundaria... And all the lighthouses, solemn and strong in their perfection, rising into an azure sky as if they stood watch over all of Weyard...

Things had been different since the lighting, but not quite as much as he had expected. Imil and the other northern areas were warmer, the weather was less severe, there were far less renegade monsters, and people were generally more upbeat than they had been before. Perhaps it was too early, but Isaac had not noticed other people gaining strange psynergetic powers, nor did he notice any great difference in his own. Well, he could use much more psynergy without exhausting himself, and his small cuts and bruises from digging through rubble seemed to heal uncannily fast. He wondered if he should ask his friends about this, to see whether they had noticed the same things, but he didn't think they had. At the end of every day, each one of them seemed a geat deal more tired, drained, and battered than he did.

Life on Weyard, however, remained much the same. The continents had probably stopped shrinking, but it was far too early to tell; and it was also far too early for great civilizations like Lemuria to arise. He didn't know all that much about the Golden Sun or the relighting of the lighthouses, though; nor did anyone else on Weyard, as far as he knew. Perhaps nothing began to change until several weeks or months after the relighting...

"Hey! Isaac!" Jenna's holler broke through his thoughts, and he lifted his head to blink at the orange-and-pink sun, which was now setting, casting a bronze pallor across the rocks spread out across the horizon. "We're going back to Vault now! Are you coming or not?"

Those taking part in Vale's excavation were all staying in Vault during the night; it was a good temporary solution to the problem of housing, though Vault's citizens found that they didn't quite know what to do with so many extra people. Accommodations had been made; the inn was stuffed full, and those villagers who were willing to do so had taken in those who wouldn't fit. Food wasn't a problem, as both Bilibin and Kalay had agreed to send free shipments of food for as long as they were needed.

Isaac picked up his shovel and turned towards Jenna, covering the space between them in a few long strides. "Sorry... I was just thinking."

Jenna rolled her eyes. "You think too much, Isaac. C'mon, let's go."

He glanced back at the setting sun, suddenly unnerved by its crimson glow, then turned around. He had already done his share in saving the world... And somehow it still felt as if his journey had only just begun.

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Alex didn't realize until he regained consciousness that he had lost it in the first place. His first reflex was to reach out and grab something- anything- because he was falling, falling, falling into the centre of the Earth--

--and then he realized that the thing he was clutching was a quite solid-- and smooth-- wall, and he was lying on firm ground. Panic surged within him as he remembered where he was, but he fought it down with a few deep breaths. There had to be some kind of purpose to this chamber, as it obviously hadn't been formed naturally, and he was damn well going to find out what that purpose was-- and hopefully escape in the process. If such a thing was even possible.

Slowly, he sat up, disgusted with himself for his own rising panic and desperation. It wasn't like him to even consider giving up, when there was the slightest hope- however indecimial- that he could make it. Weakness was not a character trait that he appreciated in anyone, least of all himself. He wasn't going to sit here and think about his predicament, damn it all-- he was going to get up and do something. He had nearly limitless power now, after all, and what good was it if it couldn't get him out of this mess? He had survived the fall, and now he was going to find his way to the surface so he could make something of his life in the New Age.

Once on his feet, he used the wall to steady himself, pleased to find that all his wounds-- even the most severe of them-- had somehow healed themselves during his period of unconsciousness. He felt his psynergy coursing through him, and had an almost unquenchable desire to let it overflow, spilling out through his fingers, filling the entire chamber with water until the walls buckled, a spout of water carrying him all the way to Weyard's surface--

He fought this desire down, telling himself that even if he had gained psynergy that powerful, it wouldn't be wise to test it right away. It would be better to inspect the cavern first, to see what it had to offer. Later, he could reach out with his psynergy and sense exactly what lay above, so he could formulate a plan that would set him free. Gingerly, he moved himself towards the centre of the underground cavern, and the dead-looking orb. As he got closer, he found that the large orb was not perfectly round and smooth, but riddled with pits and craters, as if it had survived some kind of wide scale psynergetic explosion. He examined it closely from all angles without touching it, but there did not seem to be any kind of pattern to the marks and indentations. They appeared to be completely random- there were just as many on the right side as there were on the left side. That was strange... Had it really survived an explosion, there should have been more damage done to one side than to the other...

Shrugging, he placed both hands on the orb, bracing himself for some kind of eruption, or perhaps an ethereal voice, or...

Nothing happened.

Smiling slightly, so that one side of his mouth curled up more than the other, he removed his gloves, cast them aside, and tried again.

Still nothing.

He waited, holding his breath, which didn't seem to matter because it was as if he didn't even need to breathe anymore. He let a tiny taste of psynergy seep from his fingers and into the orb, and continued to wait.

Nothing.

And then, very slowly, the orb opened one large eye, blinking around until it's pupil settled upon Alex. "Who are you and what do you want?" It asked in a voice that echoed both everywhere and nowhere, a voice that was neither male nor female.

Alex stumbled backwards as it spoke, his eyes widening as the rock's irritated words shook the entire chamber. He gulped nervously, then did his best to look as if he had completely gained his composure, which was a difficult feat, considering who it was that had stripped the Golden Sun's full power from him.

"Ah, Alex..." It said, and closed its one eye, which somehow seemed to be a threatening gesture, at least under the circumstances. "Imagine meeting you here..."

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A group of eight adepts rounded the hill that curled around the northern side of Vault, shielding it from the view of its neighbors, Vale and Lunpa. The hill was not steep, but smoothed gently down into a shallow valley, which held a small village at its heart. The teens dragged their feet as they walked, not from any reluctance to reach their destination, but from sheer exhaustion after a whole day's work of hard physical labor. After the fifth day of such work, most of them were nursing multiple blisters on their hands, bruises on their legs from trudging through rubble, and dark circles under their eyes. After all, they were magic users, not construction workers, and though they did use their psynergy when they could, it had its limits.

Or at least Isaac thought it did. He had not said anything about it to his friends, but for the past few days, he had been able to use his psynergy without ever depleting it. True, he did grow tired, just like the rest-- both mentally and physically. But somehow, he had yet to find the limit of just how far his power could stretch. Just today, he had Moved seven large boulders in succession without feeling even slightly taxed. He felt both empowered and slightly afraid. Where was this power coming from? And why did he have it when the others did not?

To make things worse (or perhaps better; he hadn't quite decided yet), his wounds-- multiple scrapes, liaisons, bruises, and blisters from his work-- seemed to heal much faster than normal. He hardly even needed to use a simple Cure at the end of each day anymore, whereas the others spent a good while every evening just healing themselves and nursing the nastiest of their blisters and bruises. So far, the others hadn't really noticed, but it was only a matter of time. Even Piers was starting to show some exhaustion, and he and Garet were probably the strongest of them all.

With these things and more on his mind, Isaac found that he barely even noticed where he was going. He just followed the seven others towards a horizon that was quickly changing color from blue to orange and red. The sun was slowly descending, hanging uncertainly above a distant hill, as if unsure of its ability to slide further west without falling forever off the edge of the earth. For a moment, Isaac sympathized with it; it knew what it had to do, but it was still afraid of making a wrong step somewhere, of screwing things up and being lost forever...

At last, the ground beneath his feet began to level off, and he looked up in mild surprise to find that he and his companions had already entered the town of Vault. He stifled a yawn and followed Felix into the inn, greeting his parents in a distracted sort of way and immediately ascending the stairs. He was not particularly tired, thanks to his newfound stamina, but nonetheless he wanted some time to think, and pretending to go to bed early would give him a good excuse to do so. Of course, some of the others would probably take his example. If he was tired, they must be at least doubly so, and he didn't blame them. It had been a very long five days.

When Isaac reached the room he shared with Felix, Garet, Ivan, and Piers (the inn was understandably rather short on rooms and beds, so Isaac had volunteered to take the floor while letting the others decide amongst themselves who would get the one available bed), he washed the layers of rock dust from his face and hands, changed into more comfortable clothes, and bid good night to his roommates.

"You're not coming to dinner?" Garet asked, somewhat surprised. Being an avid eater, he probably had trouble imagining how his companion could skip a meal after a day of hard labor. "But it's steak and potato salad tonight, and I know how much you love--"

Isaac waved his friend's objections aside with a wan smile. "No thanks, Garet, I'm just tired tonight. I'll have extra servings of breakfast tomorrow to make up for it."

Garet accepted this excuse with a shrug, and left the room after a quick good night. Felix and Piers followed suit, though Piers glanced back at Isaac, giving him a searching frown that was part suspicion, part concern. It left Isaac feeling vaguely uneasy for a moment, but then it passed, and the door closed behind his friends. He extinguished a few of the lamps on the walls, watching the smoke curl into the semi-darkness that wrapped around him like a warm blanket. The weather had been much fairer since the lighting, and every day was like summer, so he did not even bother with a blanket, but lay straight on the wood floor.

Isaac pressed one ear against the floorboards, letting the steady hum of voices downstairs fill his head with static. Though he had reserved this time specifically to think, he found that he did not really even want to anymore. Thinking took far too much effort, and lately it had been almost painful. Besides, what would thinking really accomplish? It wasn't like it would change anything, and he was beyond hoping for a sudden, poignant insight that would help him deal with everything. What will be, will be, he thought sleepily, and rolled over onto his back. The lull of voices decreased in volume, and he stared up at the ceiling, its rafters concealed in darkness. A single lamp remained lit on the other side of the room, and it created shadows that danced across the floors and walls. Isaac's shadow was diminutive one moment, then gigantic the next, distorted into something that no longer looked even vaguely human.

The shadows hissed and laughed, and Isaac smiled into them. It was funny, really... It was really very funny...

And he slid off into sleep before he could remember what it was that he was supposed to find amusing. The sweet, soft sound of a woman's laughter slipped into the room from beneath the floorboards, and wrapped around him, squeezing him so tight that he could not breathe. And he was laughing, somewhere far away... He was only laughing, and it hurt, but he couldn't stop.

Outside the cozy little town of Vault, smoke rose from chimneys, dancing and soaring into the sky, which was now a velvety blue. Into the west, the sun had fallen off the edge of the earth, leaving Gaia falls tinged with red. The horizon flared crimson, and then there was darkness.

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