Here is the probably-not-very-highly-anticipated preview for the story I've been working on! As always, I will not begin posting the actual story until every chapter has been completed, but I wanted to generate some responses to see if it's worth it to work on it. If I don't get good reviews on it, then I probably won't continue writing it. Please note that this is only a rough draft of the first chapter and it may not be the same in the final work. Also, when I do post the final work, it will be on a separate story from this one. I will update this story to let people know once the final story has been uploaded.

And if I have some sort of error in the terms, then please let me know. I've done some research and I think I have everything correct, but I'm not completely sure. And some things I've scratched off as just being "how it is" in these kingdoms.

"That is all. You may return to your bedchamber, Lucy."

"Yes, Father." The seventeen-year-old woman bowed out of the room. She put on a stoic face as she headed towards her bedroom, nodding to servants as she passed in recognition of their bows. She tried to walk normally, but all the servants who saw her couldn't help but notice that her steps were heavier than normal, her strides were hurried, and her nods were curt. They could tell that she hated whatever her father had said, but they would do nothing.

Lucy was finally to her quarters. She opened one of the huge double-doors and tried very hard not to slam it. "Virgo?" she called. "Please fetch my nightgown. I think I shall be retiring for the night." It was only seven, but Lucy was emotionally exhausted from trying to hide the anger she held for her father. Lucy lounged on a velvet loveseat within the first of her rooms and closed her eyes as she massaged her temples.

"Yes, Princess," the pink haired maid said as she appeared with her mistress' favorite hot chocolate drink to cheer her up. Virgo had not been immune to figuring out Lucy's anger. The girl was always angry after visits with her father. Lucy thanked her maid, took a drink of the sugary delicacy, then sighed.

"I am not a princess. I'm only a duchess, and I don't even want to be that."

"The Heartfilias are next in line for the throne after the Dreyars, so you're almost a princess," Virgo pointed out. Lucy shot her a glare. Giving Lucy her nightgown, Virgo sat down beside her. "What happened this time?" The girl asked bluntly. Lucy shook her head, not knowing where to start. "Would you like to take your anger out on me with punishment?" This time Lucy shook her head at the maid's ridiculous suggestion. "Shall I retrieve Lady Levy, Princess?" Lucy took another drink of her hot chocolate as she nodded. Virgo nodded back, then stood from the loveseat and bowed herself out to retrieve Lucy's close lady-in-waiting and friend.

As she waited, Lucy strode to her bathroom, changed into her night clothes, and brushed her medium-length, golden hair out of its ornate style so that it was straight. "Ow!" Lucy yelped. She frowned, then pulled the hidden pin out of her hair so that it wouldn't yank again. By the time she was setting her brush down on her exquisite vanity, her maid and lady-in-waiting had both arrived back. As usual, the bluenette that was Levy had a pile of books in her arms. She must've been in the library before Virgo fetched her, Lucy thought.

"What'd he say this time, Lu?" the blue-haired friend asked, getting right to the point.

Lucy sent Virgo away, then sighed. "The heir of the Prominence family will be arriving tomorrow, and I'm 'expected to show that I'll be a good wife', so that the 'Heartfilias can continue to prosper with the wealth your marriage will give'! I haven't even met Lord Prominence, and he expects us to get married! I know that's the custom to arrange marriages for nobility, but it's a stupid custom that most families have stopped following!"

"Wasn't Prominence supposed to marry the lady of the Titanose household?" Levy started. This was not really the time, but her curiosity could not be willed away.

Lucy understood her friends love for learning, so she didn't worry about not getting advice yet. "It was called off. I'm not sure why, I just heard something about 'bad behavior'."

"Oh. Alright," although Lucy could see that Levy was not quite sated and would certainly be delving through documents for more information. Luckily, the advice came next as Levy sighed and shook her head. "I've told you: if you hate it here, then you should run away! It would be just like this book I re-"

"That's just it, Lev! I'm not in a book! I wouldn't know the first thing about living outside the manor! For all my years, I've had everything I need, so what would I do when I couldn't get things at the snap of a finger!?" Levy grew quiet. She just didn't know what to say or what advice to give. "I think I'm just going to go to sleep. Good night." Lucy stood up from the loveseat and went into her main bedchamber, closing the door behind her. Levy sighed. Perhaps she could find more books for her friend. Those always helped her escape, if only for a short while. With that thought, she left, hoping that she could cheer her blonde friend up somehow.

Lucy slumped onto the foot of her bed. Sighed deeply, she climbed under her thick, woolen covers. She rested her head on the fluffy feather pillows billowing at the head of her bed and pulled the covers up to her neck, curling up into a ball under them. Trying not to think of her father, Lucy closed her eyes and drifted into dreamland, hoping for some adventure there.

The woman found herself in the clearing of a forest. Or, what she imagined a forest to be like. Oak trees surrounded her and a plethora and variety of plants spread across the ground. Vines crawled up the trunks of the oak trees, releasing a mystical feeling into the clearing. Being a noble, she hadn't spent much time traipsing in the wilderness, so it was all arranged from descriptions in stories. Lucy loved to read. Epic fairy tales were her favorites. The adventures in them were exciting, and she so desperately wanted to go on such epic quests. Just as she had told Levy earlier, though, she had no clue how to. One of her favorite stories, as well as her mother's, had had fairies in it. As a child, she had often dreamed of going to forests and searching for fairies. Her mother had promised they would do just that sometime. Unfortunately, such had never happened, and never could. Her mother had died when she had only been a little girl.

Lucy saddened a bit at the memory of her mother again. She scolded herself, though, because she wasn't allowed to be sad. It wasn't something that the heir of a family had the freedom to be. As her berating finished and she began to take in more of the scenery, she heard a crack behind her, followed closely by a crash. Turning around, Lucy saw that a tree trunk at least four times her width had fallen through the edge of the clearing to create a wall across it.

"Cool! I just knocked a tree over!" A voice called. Lucy watched the owner of the voice, a boy that seemed to be her age, jump onto the trunk and pump his fist in the air proudly. He had bright, spiky, pink hair covering his head, which made her smile a bit; pink was her favorite, after all. Although, when her eyes were drawn to the cheery grin on his face that seemed to exude excitement and happiness, Lucy noticed that her own mouth mirrored it. His grin was too contagious to not react in such a way.

Suddenly, the log lurched, causing the newcomer to slip and fall off, landing on his back with a dull thud and a groaned out 'ow'. Lucy was concerned for a bit, about to race over to him and see if he was okay, but then he darted up off the ground and started waving his fist at the log.

"You want a piece of me!?" he yelled. "I'll teach you to make me fal-" He was interrupted by a fit of giggles and turned around to see a blonde girl, holding her sides and bent over at the waist with laughter. The boy couldn't help but smile. The jovial and bell-like sound of her giggling was too contagious for him to avoid laughing along with her.

The two's laughing slowly rolled to a stop. Once it did, Lucy let out a shaky breath and wiped at her eyes. She winced a little at the pain in her sides, not used to laughing so much. Her father thought that laughter was such an obnoxious sound, so the most she was willing to do was giggle lightly when with a friend. "I'm sorry for laughing," she apologized with another shaky breath, "You just took me by surprise, and then the tree-" Lucy giggled again, causing her partner to also snicker once more.

"It's fine! It was pretty funny. I'm Natsu! Who're you?" The pink-haired boy, Natsu, asked. Lucy blushed a little at his forwardness. She knew this mysterious boy's first name right away, something she wasn't used to. Strangers were always referred to by their family name until she deemed them a friend. For example, Levy she had dubbed "Lady McGarden," until they had gotten to know one another. It was likewise with her own name. All the visitors outside the manor knew her as "Lady Heartfilia," and most of the servants were to keep formalities and called her "Lady Lucy." Such as with Levy, the servants she was especially close to referred to her with her first name or a nickname, and she theirs.

This Natsu person didn't seem to go by those customs. She hadn't met any nobles who didn't follow them, so that meant the man was most likely common. This was a dream, though, so he probably wasn't even real, merely a figment of her imagination. Whether he was real or not, though, she liked him. Natsu had a certain air around him that made her feel comfortable, as if she were speaking to her best friend. She felt she could trust him.

"Hello? Are you gonna talk anytime soon, Weirdo?" Natsu snapped his fingers in front of Lucy's face. Lucy jumped with a start as she realized that she had been staring into space and completely silent while she thought. Her cheeks puffed out in annoyance when she realized what he had called her.

"Weirdo!? Maybe I won't tell you my name!" Lucy suggested, with both an angry tone and a joking tone in the words.

"Well, I have to call you something! If you won't tell me your name, then I'll have to stick with 'Weirdo'!" Natsu grinned as he teased her, causing Lucy to not only roll her eyes, but also blush.

"Lucy!" She suddenly said.

"Huh?"

"My name! It's Lucy!"

Natsu stared at her for a bit with a blank look, then smiled to her once again. "Okay, Loony!"

Lucy's eyes bugged out. "Excuse me!? I'm over here, deciding that I can trust you enough to reveal my name, and you have the audacity to make fun of it!?"

Natsu, instead of being apologetic, as Lucy expected, just looked confused. "Odd Ass City? Where's that?"

"What!? No! Audac-" Lucy shook her head, not wanting to bother explaining, and decided to just yell, "You're an idiot!"

Lucy had expected him to get defensive, but the strange boy just chuckled and gave her his bright grin again. "I've been called that before!"

Lucy scoffed. "That's to be expected! You are one!"

"You seem nice," Natsu commented. "I like you." To Lucy's surprise, there wasn't a hint of sarcasm in his voice. It had been a genuine comment. Lucy's cheeks became tinged with pink.

"Well, I like you, too. You seem nice as well." Lucy could see him smile at the comment, and she couldn't help but smile back.

Very suddenly, Natsu felt the sensation of cold water washing over his face, and he disappeared from the forest and from Lucy's dream, putting an abrupt end to their conversation. "Natsu?" Lucy called. "Where'd you go?" She turned and checked all around her for the pink-haired man and came to the conclusion that she was alone in her forest of dreams. Then, the scenery around her began to fade, and she found herself in her bedroom, awake and in the dark.

"Natsu?" she quietly questioned the empty room. Lucy shrugged and decided to lay back down and go back to sleep, but she still had lingering thoughts of Natsu left on her mind. Is he real? And if he is, then who is he?

The rest of her night went dreamless.

Natsu jerked up out of his dream to wake up in a courtyard. Lush, green grass was speckled with brown patches of dirt. Who was she? Lucy had been her name, he could remember. She had yelled it at him pretty clearly. She was weird. At that thought, he smiled. He heard a snicker beside him and looked up to see a man with dark hair above him, holding an empty bucket.

"What's with the smile?" the man asked with a smirk.

Natsu scoffed and sent the image of Lucy away. "Nothing," he claimed, making the asker genuinely wonder what had happened. He hadn't really cared before, but this reaction was different than Natsu's usually were. Natsu scratched the back of his head and felt that his hair was cold and wet. Tch. So he did dump water on me, he thought, remembering the bucket and the feeling from the dream. "Why'd you wake me up, Gray? And when'd I fall asleep?"

Gray, the man with the dark hair, became straight-faced. "The king would like to see you. He has too much paperwork to do, or he would've gotten your ass himself." Then he smirked again. "And to answer your second question, about five minutes into our duel when I knocked you out. You've been out for about ten minutes." Natsu hated the cocky look on the speaker's face, so he punched him just there. "Hey!"

Natsu ignored the indignant call of his rival and stood up. Looking around, Natsu spotted his sword a little farther away and picked it up, putting it into the sheath attached to his belt. He loved his sword. It was a broadsword, although he didn't use the advantage of a one-handed sword to carry a shield; a shield would just weigh him down. If he was fast enough to dodge, then there was no need for a shield, which was part of why he chose a broadsword. It was lighter than some of the other options. Another reason he loved the sword so much was the hilt's design. The hilt was fashioned as a dragon, with the wings acting as a guard and the dragon's open mouth leading to the blade. He didn't know what the blade was made of, but he liked it. The metal was a slightly reddish color and was very shiny, giving it the illusion of fire when it glinted in light. All those features caused him to dub the sword "Fire Dragon".

Gray often made fun of Natsu's sword, but Natsu personally thought his was much cooler than Gray's. Gray's sword was a claymore, which he had called "Icecalibur". Besides being inspired by some legend that Natsu never cared to remember, the name had partially come from the light blue gems that sparkled along the guard, having the appearance of ice. The blade was of another bright, shiny metal that Natsu didn't know the name of, but it didn't have the reddish tinge of the Fire Dragon's blade. It was just a plain silver colored metal. The "ice" part of the name had also come from Gray's battle strategy. Before duels, the dark haired man would dunk his sword's blade in a bucket of icy water. Natsu never saw the point of it since it didn't stay cold for very long, that is, until the blade had once made contact with his skin during a duel with Gray. The cold blade brought quite a shock, and a very distracting one at the that. While trying to recover from the sudden cold on his arm, Gray had won the fight. Natsu had attempted to try that strategy, but with fire instead. All he did was end up melting another of his swords. He was glad he had not tried it on Fire Dragon right away.

What Natsu really didn't get about Gray's fighting was that he had a shield. Despite the difficulty in using both a shield and a two-handed sword in combat, though, Gray used both quite frequently. The shield was made of the same shiny metal as his Icecalibur, and had some more of the tiny ice-like stones on it. It was kind of shaped like a star, and if Natsu had to guess, then he would say it had fourteen or fifteen points on it. When he had first seen it, Natsu made fun of it, saying it looked like a flower. That had earned him an angry punch in the face. Apparently, Gray had made the shield with his old mentor or adoptive mother or something just before she had died. She had taught him the basics of swordplay and being a knight.

Natsu gave his friend another punch before heading into the castle from the courtyard. He would have to fight Gray again later, but make sure to knock him out in the first five minutes. After walking through some long, red-carpeted hallways and climbing up some tall, winding stairs, Natsu had arrived to his destination: the king's study. He opened one of the heavy wooden doors and went in. At the large, regal, wooden desk covered in paperwork sat a red-haired man. Natsu cleared his throat and called to him.

"Hey, you wanted me, Dad?"

I hope you enjoyed! Please please please PLEASE leave some reviews with your opinions. They'll give me motivation.