Look! It's my first pure GS story! Yes, I know I still have to finish FotS, but this kept popping into my head and I couldn't get it out. So here it is, for your enjoyment. This takes place after the end of the game, and Isaac and company have found land.

Disclaimer: I don't own Golden Sun. It's nice to only have to disclaim one thing for a change…

CHAPTER 1- It was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times

For Isaac, life was good. True, he was on a quest to save the world, and if he failed the entire planet would be controlled by a pair of evil Mars adepts, but overall, things were not too bad. He had his two best friends, Garet and Ivan, and most of all, he had Mia. Mia, the beautiful Mercury Adept from Imil. Isaac fell in love with the healer the first moment he laid eyes on her, when he had barged into her grandmother's house without knocking. He still had a mark on his head where she had hit him with her staff. Ever since that first meeting, however, he had just been waiting for the right time to tell her his feelings. He finally summoned up the courage just last week, after being prompted by a near death experience with some nasty monsters. Now he and Mia were so inseparable, Garet had dubbed them the 'Siamese Twins'.

The morning began like any other morning. As the four friends journeyed along a road they had discovered, hoping that it would lead to a village soon, all the usual events were taking place. Garet and Ivan were fighting, Isaac and Mia were spending some quality time together, and generally, things were going well. Until, that is, an accident occurred.

Garet, who had been bickering with Ivan for most of the morning, decided to do something about the very (in his opinion) annoying Jupiter Adept. With a slightly evil grin, he turned to Isaac and said,

"I'm going to scout ahead, OK?"

Isaac, who was too busy gazing at Mia to comprehend what the Mars Adept was saying, merely nodded his head. Garet quickly bounded up the road and around a bend, disappearing from view.

"Hey, where's Garet going?" asked Ivan suspiciously.

"Scouting..." Isaac muttered vaguely, before Mia pulled him into a kiss.

"You two are hopeless." Ivan sighed, a nagging feeling that something was wrong in the back of his mind. The Jupiter Adept had been edgy all morning- there was something in the atmosphere that just didn't seem quite right. Perhaps it was this uneasiness that had driven him to tease Garet mercilessly this morning, perhaps not. Whatever the cause, Ivan knew Garet was looking for a way to get back at him. The Mars Adept must have had something up his sleeve when he ran off. He decided to be extra alert in case the Mars Adept tried to pull a prank on him.

The three Adepts rounded the corner that Garet had just vanished around, with Ivan in the lead and Isaac and Mia, with arms wrapped around each other, slightly behind. There was no sign of the Mars Adept anywhere.

"Garet?" Ivan said, warily. Probably he would jump out of a nearby bush or something. It was a very Garet-like thing to do. But, as they walked farther and farther down the road, there was still no sight or sound of their friend.

Maybe he really was scouting ahead. Ivan thought. Nah, Garet never volunteers for anything without a reason. He must be around here somewhere...

As if on cue, a branch came springing out from the side of the path and whipped towards Ivan. The branch previously had been held back by Garet, who was hiding behind the tree waiting for the Jupiter Adept to appear. Fortunately for Ivan, Garet had misjudged the height and the limb whistled harmlessly over the boy's head. Isaac, however, was not so fortunate. The branch smacked the lovestruck Venus Adept squarely across the forehead, poleaxing him.

"Isaac!" Mia cried, as his eyes rolled up into his head and he crumpled to the forest floor. Garet emerged from behind the tree, shamefaced.

"Oops." he said.

"'Oops'?" said Ivan, angrily. "That's all you can say?"

"It was an accident! I didn't mean to hit Isaac!"

"So it wouldn't have been an accident if you had hit me, right?"

"Stop it!" said Mia, a no-nonsense tone in her voice. "I'm trying to concentrate!" Both boys immediately stopped talking while Mia checked Isaac's vital signs.

"He's all right, just unconscious." she pronounced after a minute.

"So what do we do now?" Garet asked, hesitantly.

"Well, there's nothing we can do, really, except wait for him to awaken." she said, with a worried look on her face.

"Nice going, Garet." grumbled Ivan. "There goes any chance of finding a town today."

"I'm sorry, all right! It was an accident!"

"SHUT UP!" Mia shouted, putting an end to further conversation.

Isaac felt the vague sensation of something hitting his head, hard, before the darkness consumed him. He seemed to be falling, though all he was aware of was blackness so it was impossible to be sure. The world was only like this for a second, however, before his eyes snapped open and he found himself lying in a bramble bush in the middle of a very unfamiliar landscape.

Isaac got to his feet gingerly. His forehead throbbed, although when he touched it there was no bruise or cut or any other obvious sign of injury. After picking brambles from various articles of his clothing, he was able to look around. A horrifying sight met his eyes. As far as the eye could see lay nothing but burnt, blackened fields, with dead grass and withered trees popping up here and there. Turning to his left, he saw a mountain with a dark and gloomy castle perched upon it. Something about the mountain seemed familiar to Isaac, but he couldn't seem to place his finger on it...

Then, he saw that there was another human-made object on the landscape. Several human-made objects, to be precise. A small huddle of wooden dwellings, which seemed to have been built out of the fire-blackened remains of previous houses, stood sticking up like a sore thumb from the otherwise desolate landscape. Deciding that the houses were the closest thing to civilization in the area, he headed towards them, hoping to find someone who could tell him what had happened.

As he approached the hovels, he could see wooden pens holding a small number of bedraggled sheep. He could also see a garden, which contained the only green plants visible for miles around. Even these plants looked half dead, drooping as if they had not seen rainfall in weeks. However, these signs encouraged Isaac, because livestock and gardens must mean people still lived in the makeshift village.

Isaac continued walking towards the houses, still not able to see any human inhabitants. Then, he noticed a figure bent over by one of the sheep pens, presumably feeding the animals. When it straightened up, he could see it had a head of spiky red hair.

"Garet?" Isaac said incredulously, hardly daring to believe. "Is that you?"

The man turned, and it was indeed Garet standing there. But yet, it was not the Garet Isaac remembered. He seemed more weather-beaten, almost older than before. All the laughter was gone from his face. His eyes were dark and burning, and his clothes were the ragged garments of a shepherd.

The man-who-was-Garet stared at Isaac for a moment before taking two enormous strides forward.

"Garet?" Isaac asked. "What's goin-"

Before the Venus Adept could finish his sentence, he felt his feet leave the ground as Garet grabbed him around the neck with both hands and lifted him into the air.

"You shouldn't have come back." he snarled, while slowly cutting off Isaac's airflow.

"Garet?" Isaac said, gasping for air. "Garet, what are you doing? Put me down!"

"Come to laugh at our misery, have you? That wasn't smart." The Mars Adept tightened his grip further.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Isaac choked out. "Garet it's me, Isaac, your friend!"

"You're not my friend anymore. Not after what you did to Mia." Isaac's vision was becoming dim as his oxygen was cut off.

"I never did anything to Mia! Stop it, Garet!"

"Liar." came the cold reply. Then Garet's face, the farm, the desolate landscape all became a fuzzy haze. Isaac was dimly aware of a voice saying , "Garet! What are you doing?" before the darkness took him for the second time that day.

So, what'cha think? Good, bad, evil? Please review, and tell me your opinion!