DESTINY

Chapter one

*The dream*

By Googlepuss

A/N: I (Anita) have decided to write a new story. Wow. I gave up on my other one (The Path of Hope) It died of plot cancer. Hopefully this one will be a bit better so R&R!

It is set before Alanna, a couple of hundred years I think. I'm going to ignore some of the dates that the books refers to (but I won't say which ones) so that it fits into my plot better. This is actually how some of the things they talk about happened. I'll just let you read the story and figure it out for yourselves.

Disclaimer: I actually own most of this story. It is set before Alanna so most of the characters are mine. I don't own the gods/goddesses or the immortals and I'll probably refer to or create the things they talk about in the books. But 'the girl' is mine (she'll get a name later) and I'll make up more characters as I need them.

Many years before the time of King Jonathan and Thayet, his queen, before King Roald, even before the time when women were //aloud// to become knights. Many years before, there was a goddess, a goddess who laid upon a chosen three a special gift. A gift that could save the realm of Tortall and protect it for generations to come………

//The king was pale, and gleamed with perspiration. Marielle and Onua also began to sweat as fear – Stormwing war-terror – billowed ahead of the incoming immortals. No one moved. It affected Daine as it did the others, but all of them had fought under the pressure of that fear before: the choice was fight or die.//

The sweat soaked girl awoke with a start.

"It was only a dream," she told herself as she breathed a sigh of relief. But of course it was a dream she scolded herself. A lady in armour? A girl who could change into birds? It had to be a dream. Girls could NEVER learn the fighting arts.

 And they had actually seamed //afraid// of the creatures they fought, men with the heads of bulls, flying horses, birds of steel, what was that about? The immortals were friendly, not blood thirsty, as they had seamed in her dream. Well, the stormwings feasted on battlegrounds, but they could hardly help their natures.

            "What does it //mean//?" she asked herself. It was the same dream she'd had for the past week, only each time she had seen more of the battle that was taking place. Although each time she saw more, it made less sense. //Why// were they fighting? What was wrong with the immortals? Was it some vision of what was to come? And tonight, a new element had been added, but separate from the battle. A boy of the slums, no doubt a dirty thief, asleep among some rags in an alley, and a girl, on a shabby bed, staring out the window into the night.

She called up a strand of the inner fire that was her gift. She had always had magic although not much, she could summon light and fire but that was about all. The light gathered in her palm to light the dark room.

"By the Goddess," she breathed. For instead of the usual dull green her gift had always been, her hand glowed with a brilliant purple light, the colour of amethysts.

A/N: And that's the first instalment. I'll try to put the next bit up soon, but my exams start on Monday (Nooooooooooooooooooooooo) so it could take ages. Unlike my other story I know where this one will go so hopefully it won't get cancer too.

Till next chapter

~Googlepuss

P.S. Don't forget to review!