Reileen, that was quite impressive. Regretfully I was not able to fight my way through this before the tourney, but as soon as I started reading it I was riveted. Your characterization is exquisite, and I really feel the connection to this story. Also, you have a wealth of knowledge about legends, traditions, and myths, and add them to the Gs world well, creating a much fuller mythical background then the games provide. Very, very good!

Well, you win. This piece of fiction radiates with a power unlike any of the fics here on this site. I think you just made a Golden Sun masterpiece.

Interesting, though. You wrote nearly everything in the present tense. "Meli walks with a confident strut across the cobblestone road." "Lightning bursts the boils on Zagan's hide." "Grass ripples across the green plains as a tender breeze rolls by. " Not past tense. No excessive "had beens" or "had this or that". The story unfolds as the reader reads, which causes the reader to feel like he is truly in the world and is experiencing everything with her as each event occurs. And it was really quite exhilarating and didn't leave me bored in the least. At all, really. An exciting 2 hours of reading.

I was also amazed at the little details, for instance with the names of the days of the week. Ingenious (though I had to disagree with a few of them).

I was also a bit surprised at the summoning of Zagan. Zagan is supposed to be one of the lower ranked summon spirits from the game, so his appearance as an opponent for the climatic battle was a bit... well, not too much of a surprise, but a small one nonetheless. What made you choose Zagan?

I'm also impressed with the number of characters you made in this story. There was... Meli, Gregor, Florian, Thea, Minayo, Ramesh, and of the course the Wise One. A few other minor characters too that weren't out of place at all. All seemed to mesh together so perfectly, with such perfect conversations. And, maybe it's just me, but it looked like you introduced/focused on one new character per chapter. By doing this you focused on the individual relationships of each of the characters with Meli. Not until the end did you make any of them fraternize with each other-- which possibly could have used a little more emphasis, but no big deal at all. Simply put, the way you developed each of the characters in only about 20000 words was amazing.

Let's see... favorite character? For some reason, I like Minayo the most. If she's from Izumo, I automatically like her. Couple her with paper talisman psynergy casting and an amusing, "yeah" accent, and you've won me over. I sort of picture her as looking like Soma from RGVeda/Tsubasa Chronicle (Clamp).

And my favorite moment was probably when... well, actually, can't really say. Each chapter was really good in it's own way. They were like short anime episodes. XD

So, yes. I think you win this time, Reileen. Just one more minor complaint-- story could have used a more creative, eye-catching title that pertains to the actual story in some way. I don't see how you could have come up with chapter titles, but not an overall fic title.

Unlike fire_guardian_flame, I think this fic should not have a sequel. Fics like this are not destined to have any. It's like making a crummy sequel to "Casablanca" or "Romeo and Juliet". Forgive me for making the comparison.

The only negative effect this fic could have on me is make me not want to write anymore. After reading this, and feeling unable to think and type smoothly, I cannot possibly write anything that comes close to the brilliancy that is Amaranth.

Author's Response: Just one more minor complaint-- story could have used a more creative, eye-catching title that pertains to the actual story in some way. I don't see how you could have come up with chapter titles, but not an overall fic title.

I have to argue that even if "Amaranth" as a title has nothing to do with the fic (although you COULD Wiki the flower and/or the Nightwish song, look at the associations, and decide for yourself...), it at least stands out for the sheer fact that "amaranth" isn't an every day word. But that's just me.

I was also a bit surprised at the summoning of Zagan. Zagan is supposed to be one of the lower ranked summon spirits from the game, so his appearance as an opponent for the climatic battle was a bit... well, not too much of a surprise, but a small one nonetheless. What made you choose Zagan?

I needed someone that would be a reasonable opponent for Meli and her pals, but nothing too overwhelming. Originally I wanted to go with a Jupiter-aligned summon, but then I randomly got the idea for Ramesh to steal and then amplify the Mars and Venus Psynergy of Meli, Thea, and Minayo, so. I know Zagan was one of the lower-powered summons, but the next one up that involved Venus and Mars was Haures, and I thought that it might be too out of league for everyone involved. I didn't want to make Ramesh too superpowered that he could do such a thing without Djinn, and I didn't want to overwhelm Meli either.

...although come to think of it, I guess I COULD have just had Ramesh amplify his Jupiter Psynergy and summon, like, Procne or Thor. But then, considering that Thea and Minayo are both Venus Adepts, they'd be able to own the spirit relatively easily, I suppose, so summoning someone like Zagan would ensure that any elemental advantages would be rendered nearly obsolete.

Thanks for the review! (Though I feel bad about discouraging other writers. XD)

A++++++++++++

Enough said. Best fic I've read so far. No complaint's. No suggestions. Your creativity prevails.

Draco, Draco, Draco... What to say first? ...........It's GREAT! Another nonsense plotline, made completely nonsensically wonderful. I love the line "she strode vaingloriously out the...". It's been stuck in my head after I read this. And Alchemique is a very.......Unique character. She's so overconfident, and fearless. I wonder, what would it be like if Kim turned out the hero?

I think it would be wonderful if you experimented with plot twists like that. I'd love to see a sequel, and I can't find too many real problems with this. Your lighthouse was extremely creative as well. I think you must love writing these crazy things, because it's most of what I see from you.

About your writing in general, I would like to see how you would do with a serious, maybe dark and twisted fic. I think you have one or two, but it would be nice seeing a few more. Either way, this is a wonderful fic, and well executed. Good job!

(If I seem undetailed or my typing and whatever is wierd, it's cuz I'm at school right now and people are distracting me. Sorry.)

Heh, I kinda like this fic. Your writing style is a little choppy/undeveloped - for example, one of the things you should work on is comma placement. This:
' "Well let's help them out" grinned Ed '
Should become this:
' "Well, let's help them out," grinned Ed '
Notice that there's a comma between the last word of the person speaking and the quote marks, in this case, the 'out' and the ' " '. Generally, you use that when you have a lower-case next word "grinned", otherwise, if their sentence/thing stopped, you'd use a period instead. ^_^; It's pretty complicated, and god knows it took me about a year to get right. You'll pick up on it eventually, and it'd make your writing easier to read and more professional.
Also, again the Sol/Luna concept has been done before, but I love your idea here of Weyard dying - of all the elements withering away and failing. Kinda reminds me of that scene in... Final Fantasy V?
Nonetheless, you did a good job with that, the whole world turning dark. ^_^ I like how even the strongest warriors couldn't survive out in the darkness for long, but Kaitlin and Ed could - I wonder what that means for their families back home, though?
Anyway, you did a fairly decent explanation for it, but I'm still a little confused as to how the Stones of Sages guy affects Weyard by darkening it like that. o_O I might be able to get it if I reread it a few times... but all the same, that part was a little confusing.
Also, you could do a little work on crafting your characters into solid personalities - it really helps bring them alive in your writing, and you'd get more inspiration from them that way - I used to do the same thing, just use them as dialogue fillers to help move the plot along, instead of thinking of every thing they say in terms of "given their personality, what would this person say in this situation"? it's a lot more work, but it really pays off in the end. ^_^;;
Anyway, good story, and keep on writing! I want to see what happens in the end. =)
I'll be reading!

Author's Response: thx im glad you like it. I have made it so much better recently so if you could read it again plz. lol you dont hav to but i think this time it'll make a bit more sense. I also took your advice on the comma/full stop after speech thing. Thxs a lot for that, i want this to be a gd story and spelling and grammer are just as important as ideas. I love final fantasy but i only just started playing recently, i've got the chocobo tales and the 3rd one but i havnt looked at the 5 one, although i do want to play it. No the idea just seemed gd. 'What woud happened if the elements were taken away from the world?' and them i thought dead grey lifeless (im not an emo honest lol) i think this is better and i hope the people that read it (no matter how few) like it. thanks for reviewing again :)

C'mon c'mon c'mon when is the next one coming?!! ^_^_^_^_^ XD

Really nice work, Blazing Aura. Really nice. Spelling and grammar is nearly perfect. It looked (LOOKED) like you made it the way you intended it. And the way you led up to the climactic battle at the end... well, the climactic battle at the end was good.

What I didn't like and what I thought really took away from this fic for me was the excessive and seemingly pointless conversation that populated 60% of the fic or so. In a sense, it would have been better as a script for a screenplay because there were more quotations in this than actual descriptions of what was going on. In order to understand what the setting was, what exactly was happening, and what kind of people each of the characters were, (which were many) I had to actively decipher the conversations.
The end is really good, Blazing, but I definitely feel the beginning could have been used to describe more, because the beginning made me feel the way I feel when I read redundant fics that I don't want to bother with. So it wasn't until the end when it wasn't a real chore for me.

Let's see... favorite character? I like both Maria and Jonah equally. Two loyal guardsmen who are main characters= win. Even so, I'm still not quite sure how to describe their personalities. The conversations didn't hint much. :/ Too many characters, too.

In any case, after reading through it, I want to see what happens next. You gonna continue or not?

Author's Response: I hate this damn website! Got a reply typed out (a long one too), and the damn site kicked me out! I'm getting a little tired of it randomly logging me out like that, especially as clicking on logout don't work. Anyway, moving on... It makes a pleasent change for the spelling and grammar to be good, so at least one thing seemes to have improved. As for the rest, I'm gonna be honest here. All the conversation parts (or most of them anyway) were the only parts I thought were really any good in the whole fic. I'm rather surprised that you liked the end part, becasue I've never been happy with it. I'll take your comments on board though, and work on them. I do think I need some help with my descriptive skills though, especially where people are concerned. That's one of the weakest parts of anything I write. As for the personalities of Maria and Jonas, that was something else that didn't work how I wanted it to, but I was so irritated by the end I never really tried to fix it in the major edit. There were a number of things I wanted to put across, and I didn't manage any of them, but anyway. I also hand't thought I'd done too badly with character numbers, so I'll work on that as well. My original intention was to carry this on after the contest. Numerous problems have arisen since then (not least of which dredging up enough ideas to pull it off), but I'll give it a shot. I just hope I can keep it going this time, yet another of my writing flaws... Anyway, thanks for the review, it gives me something to work with.

Well, very different fire_guardian_flame!

First of all, it's very eloquent. Very different from most of the other fics in that I didn't really notice any spelling or grammatical errors-- and that's really refreshing and nice to see. Good job on that.
As for the story itself... hmm... well, of course it's just me but I really didn't feel drawn into the story like I probably should have. I couldn't connect to Aphaelleka. So, to have to read through the whole thing was a bit of a chore-- and you and I both know that the story is always better understood when one finds it enjoyable.
Something interesting I noticed-- when you describe people, it's really out of place. In other words, I feel like the descriptions of what people look like or wear aren't transitioned into smoothly, like you're just telling us what they look like for the sake of letting us know, and what they look like has no bearing on who they are, or on the story at all. Sometimes when I'm reading the descriptions of what people wear or look like, I think in my head, "Why should I care about what he's wearing?" You can tell a lot about what a person is like by looking at their clothing. So, when you describe attire, it really helps to make it matter to a person or to the story.
I'll give an A-plus for effort, though. I'm sure someone else was able to enjoy it.

Let's see... usually I like to include in my reviews my favorite part of the story. I would have to say when Aph...Appaleka...? (I'll call her Aphy) When Aphy had to cast douse in the inn. I wasn't too thrilled with the following events, but it did keep my interest because I wanted to know what would happen. I'm guessing the innkeeper was angry because guests from all over the world come to the inn, and to show psynergy publically would be bad for appearances? I got that. But I don't consider getting caught under a sudden riot/barfight as being... plausible enough? It was just way too "savage" (for lack of a better word) for me. Especially since Vale (and Aphy is a girl!) is supposed to be full of nice people. 0_0 Guess I was wrong.

Another thing is the "can't I just be ME for once" theme that I see a lot in teenager fics. I inherently don't like it. ^_^; Especially in feudal/medieval stories, because, to me, that way of thinking just doesn't seem to fit in that era.

I hope I didn't make you burst into tears. x_x Well, criticism makes people stronger! ^_^

Author's Response: Of course it does, Suicune! Thank you so much for being the first, and for the wonderful advice. Yeah, the fic would've been a lot stronger if I'd gotten her counterpart out, Kavannah. But I had too many characters anyway. And yeah, the descriptions... I never really realised it, but I've never read this fic over like the others. With a week to go before the deadline, I'd changed the fic and taken out 6 characters. And the "me" part, I honestly can't remember that even BEING in there, which is a really bad thing, because, well, it is my fic... Aphaelleka is pronounced, Ah - fay - luh - kah. Emphasis on the second syllable. I know it's an odd name, I love making names. Bit of an odd hobby of mine. Thank you for the A plus on effort, Suicune. I appreciate you taking the time out to review this. The fight was a spur of the moment idea. Actually, I only thought it out up to her getting a room at the inn, otherwise it was basically general plot. If I get a good idea, I stick it in. That's my problem, that a lot of it doesn't flow. You see that when I talk too. AND I talk too much, like now. So, thank you so much again. And I quite agree about the review part! Not crying at all, see? See? SEE?

Interesting inspiration there, Dant. Personally, I love the storyline, and the almost political things going on. I like the scriptlike descriptions, the way you do the time skips. You give the state of things, without sounding as if the whole time didn't matter. You don't go, "Ten years later, and they are all older." Because that's just obvious. Ten years later, of course you're older! I love how you describe the things that really matter, the things we as readers need to know.

Very minor spelling or grammar mistakes every once in a while, but for something as long as this, it's to be expected. Besides, I didn't notice them 'till I reread the whole fic. It was a little confusing in the beginning - I didn't understand that Gazimonus and Argyros were from different clans at first.

The fighting as well was a bit chaotic to read, sometimes I didn't know what was happening. Still, your descriptions are amazing. Wonderful, intricate detail. No problems there. Myr is a nice character, but I like Vlad best. Tanya and Gremian confuse me a bit... I'm not completely sure how they are. Can't really imagine them. But maybe it's because I haven't read your fic in so much detail that I should've. Either way, this was very good. I probably will read it better later. So sorry, but I'm short on time. Keep writing and all, I hope you know how good you are! Didn't mean to offend you with that by the way.

Author's Response: Thanks, Flame. ^_^ Ah, I see. ^_^; See, that was my bad - when I had Gazi refer to Argyros as "Argentum", I knew that was talking about his surname, but it's true that the common reader wouldn't known that. ^_^; Vlad is cute. XD He was fun to write - they all were, actually. And yeah, Tanya and Gremian were mostly explained through the latter's thought process and stuff about the former, like lying on the mountainside and being two hundred feet tall. Basically, Tanya was a giant from the Great Forest, where present-day Lalivero is, and Gremian is a knight sworn to protect/guide her as she goes through the world. ^_^ It's part of a tradition between their two families, and Gremian takes his duty very seriously. Haha, you needn't worry about offending me - that's pretty hard. Thanks for the review, Flame!

First of all, I've never read Eragon so the nature of this review is not going to be the same as the others.
What an interesting story! Very, very different from the ones I've read so far. The beginning was eyecatching and caught my interest after a few paragraphs through. Though, for some reason, I feel the whole beginning where a woman is trying to escape and is ambushed is rather cliche. But it's still good, because it caught my interest.
The main character, the narrator, feels a bit too... teenage to me. This is a dream. this ain't real, so I can do anything I want. Now I know that's what a typical, modern teenager might think-- but I think an even better main character would be a non-typical teenager. Fics where the main character comes from the future are usually cliche in that the main characters are all so similar. I would've enjoyed the beginning of this fic much more if I didn't know what to expect of her.
My favorite character is probably Edin (Edinmtor) I'm not quite sure, but Ari might be a foil for him. Though, they're actually alike in some ways, so I could be wrong.

I want to see you continue this. But if you could... maybe make it less unpredictable and more exciting?

(oh, and you made a number of careless of mistakes. Read over your fic next time to make sure everything is how you want it)

Author's Response: I’m glad you liked it SS. Yes, Ari is a bit naïve- That’s what I actually wanted her to be, cause all teenagers are naïve (At least that’s what my mom says to me -.-; ) Hummm… I’ll try to take your advice and not make this fic so… predictable, but that will be a bit hard, but I guess I can manage something ;P YES! Edin is the best character I’ve created so far, I’m happy you liked him too =D I’ve actually read so many times each chapter before posting… I though there wouldn’t be any mistakes but I guess I needed to re-read it one more time. Thanks for the review SS, I’ll keep updating after the announcement of the winner.

...I'll give you a ten for having the most unique entry. XP