Welcome people! I decided to something different for once. I am a HUGE fan of the novelist, Nora Roberts. She is an absolute legend. My first trilogy that I read was my favorite so I decided to write a story based on that world, but with Attack on Titan. I will try not to write it word for word, but in any case, I don't own anything, this is just all fun and games. So, please enjoy this fantastic trilogy of demon goddesses, magic, love and so much more.
Prologue
Once, in a time long ago, in a world beyond our own, three goddesses stood together to celebrate the dawn of their new queen. Many who'd traveled across the worlds had brought gifts of riches and luxury.
But those three goddesses wished for more unique gifts.
They thought maybe a winged horse, but word was a traveler flew in on one, making it a gift for the queen.
They thought about giving her beauty beyond compare, with wisdom or uncommon grace.
They couldn't make her immortal, and knew that for those who had this gift, that is was both a blessing and curse.
But they could give her an immortal gift.
"A gift that will burn like her name, for all time." Maria stood with her sisters on the sand, white as diamonds, on the verge of the black sea, lifted her face to the night sky, to the illuminating moon.
"The moon is ours," Rose reminded. "We cannot give what we are pledged to protect and honor."
"Stars." Sina lifted her palm up. She closed her eyes and her fingers. She smiled when she opened them again. Now in her palm a jewel of ice glowed. "Stars for Ymir, the radiant."
"Stars." Now Maria held out her hand, opened it. She held a jewel of fire. "Stars for Ymir, who will shine like her name."
Rose joined them, created a jewel of water. "Stars for Ymir, the brilliant."
"There should be more." Maria turned the burning star in her hand.
"A wish." Rose stepped closer to the ocean, let the water lay cool kisses upon her feet. "A wish from each for the queen, and into our stars. For mine, a strong and hopeful heart."
"A strong and questing mind." Maria held the star aloft.
"And a strong and adventurous spirit." Sina raised both of her hands, one holding the star, the other lifted towards the moon and sky. "These stars will burn while worlds turn."
"They shed their light in the queen's name for all to see." The Fire Star began to rise to the sky, and the stars of water and ice joined it. They spun as they rose, showering magic and light in their wake, as they flew towards the moon, white and powerful.
A shadow passed under them, a silent snake.
Marley glided across the beach towards the water- a shadow smearing the light. "You meet without me, my sisters."
"You aren't one of us." Sina turned towards her, with Rose and Maria flanking her. "We are the light, and you, the dark."
"There is no light without the dark." Marley's lip curved, but fury was burning in her eyes, and with it, early blossoms of a madness yet to flower. "When the moon wanes, the darkness eats it. Bit by bit."
"The light prevails." Rose gestured as the stars flew now, trails of magic in their wake. "And now there is more."
"You, like simpletons, bring gifts for the queen. She is no more then a weak, simpering girl when it is we who could rule, who SHOULD rule."
"We are guardians," Maria reminded her. "We are the watchers, not rulers."
"We are gods! This world and all the others belong to us! Only think, about what we can make from our powers combined. All will bow to us, and we could live young and beautiful forever."
"We have no desire for power over the mortals and all in between. Such thoughts bring blood and war and death." Sina dismissed the notion. "To crave forever is to dismiss the beauty and wonder of the cycle." She lifted her head again as the stars spilled their light.
"Death comes. We will watch this new queen live and die like we did the last."
"She will live a hundred years times seven. This I have seen. And while she lives," Maria continued, "there will be peace."
"Peace." The word hissed out of Marley's sneering lips. "Peace is nothing but a tedious lull between the world of the dark."
"Go back to the shadows, Marley." Rose dismissed her with a careless wave of her hand. "Tonight is for joy, light, for celebrations- not your ambitions and thirsts."
"The night is mine." She lashed out a hand, and lightning, as black as her eyes, sliced through the white sand, the dark sea, and arrowed straight towards the flying stars. It cut through the streams of light moments before the stars reached their rightful place in the gentle curve of the moon.
For a second, the stars trembled there, and the worlds around them shook.
"What have you done?" Maria whirled towards her.
"Only added to your precious gifts. They will fall one day, the stars of fire, water and ice will tumble from the sky in all their power, their wishes, the light and the dark combined."
Laughing now, Marley lifted her arms as if to take the stars from the sky. "And once they fall into my hands, the moon dies and forever, the dark wins."
"They are not for you." Sina stepped forward, but Marley carved black lightning through the ground, left a smoldering chasm between them. Smoke streamed up and fouled the air.
"When I have them, this world dies with your moon, as you will. And as I eat your powers, I will open doors long sealed. The precious peace you fight so hard to protect will be your raging torment, all agony, fear and death will be bestowed upon you." Through the smoke, she lifted her hands, glowing in her own desire. "Your own stars have sealed your fates, and given me mine."
"You are banished." Sina lashed out, and hot blue lightning, that cut like a whip, wrapped around Marley's ankle. The scream ripped the air, shuddered into the ground. Before Sina could drag her into the dark of her own creation, Marley spread thin black wings, and snapped the whip of light as she flew up. Blood from her ankle burned and smoked when it touched the white sand.
"I make my fate," she shouted. "I will return, take the stars and worlds that I wish. And you will know death and pain and the end of everything you love!"
The wings folded around her, and she was gone.
"She can do nothing to us or ours," Rose insisted.
"Do not doubt her thirsts or her powers." Maria stared into the chasm. "There will be death here now, and blood, and pain and sorrow. She has left it behind like a stain."
"She must never have the stars, we'll bring them back," Sina said. "Destroy them."
"Too much risk while her power still stings the air," Maria replied.
"So, we wait, and guard and risk all?" Sina argued. "We allow her to twist light into something dark and deadly?"
"We cannot, we will not. They will fall?" Rose asked Maria.
"I can see that they will, in a bright flash, but I cannot see when."
"Then we will make the when, and the where. This we can do." Rose took both their hands.
"In another place, another time, but not together." Nodding, Sina looked up at the stars, so bright and beautiful over the land she'd loved and guarded since her time began.
"If even one falls into her hands, or something like her..." Maria closed her eyes, opened herself. "Many will seek the stars, the power, the fortune, which is all the same. And the fate. It is all one. And we, the light, must send of us on this quest."
"Of us?" Rose repeated. "We do not go and find them?"
"No, that is not for us. I know we must bide here and it will be done as it is done."
"We'll choose the time and place, in silence," Sina added. "Even in our own minds. She is not to know when and where they will fall."
The joined minds, with no words spoken, each understood what must now rest in the hands and hearts of others.
"Now, we must believe." Rose tightened her grip on Sina's hand tightened when her sister said nothing. "We must. If we do not, how will those who come of us?"
"I believe we have done all we must. That is enough to believe."
Maria sighed. "Even gods must bow to Fate."
"Or fight what tries to destroy it."
"You will fight," Maria said, smiling now. "Rose will trust. And I will do all I can to see. Now, we wait."
Together they looked up at the moon that lived in the sky, and the three bright stars that curved to it.