Here is a more complete summary than the one displayed so prominently on the story description. Basically, Celestia was abandoned in the desert by Akenadin, hers and Seth's father because he considered twins to be bad luck. He also wanted Seth to be Pharaoh in the future and thought that Celestia would drag Seth's potential down and make it hard for him to become Pharaoh. Celestia survived a week in the desert as a baby and was sent to a temple by a woman who found her. When she turned eight, Mas-Ne-Ra (crazy name, I know) made her a priestess. When she turned ten, Seth was sent to the temple to train and Celestia had to show him around. When she turned twelve, Seth left and Celestia did too. However, a jealous and more than slightly ambitious student, Malik, threatened her with a potion he found that allowed him to absorb her powers if he drank a mouthful of her blood.

That's the entire summary that I can give you for now. You'll have to read the rest of the story if you're interested. And if you're not, well, I can't blame you. I just hope that the majority of you are interested and submit reviews. Isn't that the goal of all writers?

Disclaimer: Don't own a thing and if anyone tells you otherwise, they're crazy.


Angel of Light

Chapter One

Why Me?

Celestia POV

I sighed and stood up from the floor that I was currently cleaning. Somehow, cleaning floors wasn't my idea of a grand and wild adventure that I had promised myself in the past. It's hard to imagine any other fate for myself because I have no other future at the present. Cleaning and cooking and doing general temple keeping seemed to be the only thing I could ever be good at.

Why?

I was told that someone found me while traveling to Giza. That someone decided to bring me to the Golden Sun Training Temple. Now that I think about it, why couldn't she drop me off at some other building?

I'm getting off track.

She brought me to this stupid snake's nest of deceit and estrangement with apparently no trouble at all. Weather was lovely and her caravan couldn't be more comfortable with the idea of snatching up a crying baby and delivering her like a bundle of papyrus to the most prestigious-and most isolated-training temple in Egypt.

If I was happy with the idea, I'd say, "Oh, how nice. Kindness is still prevalent in our fair land and if I could meet the woman who saved me, I'd wish that she had a thousand blessings." Huh, more like curses. What I'd really say is, "This reeks of divine intervention, but why do I not believe it? The woman's obviously lying and now I think that I'd rather be in the tomb robbing service than here."

Just so I'm understood.

From the time that I was five, I started training for a god. Complete disaster. The god's statue disintegrated and the teacher forgot how to write hieroglyphics. Since I was the newest student, the cause was pinpointed to me. That training ended rather quickly.

The next goddess that I trained for made her message even clearer. In fact, she caused a plague to strike in the temple. That ended the next day.

Next god's wrath? Sandstorms sprung up upon supply routes and the temple experienced near starvation until I was removed from his service.

On and on it went until I thought that I had tried to train for service to every single god in the pantheon. Finally, a temple elder had the oh-so- bright idea to make me a servant and now here I am.

Did they ask me how I felt? Did they ask me whether I wanted to be a servant? No. instead they give me the lowest, most loathsome job in the entire building. Could I sink any lower? And to top it all off, the students aren't the most welcoming. Apparently, they don't think that I should even be breathing in this temple because I'm "an ugly, snotty orphan who doesn't know her place and always tries to upstage the students who really deserve it," to quote the words of one student, who I punched very soon after. Pity, he only suffered a broken nose.

So, I'm stuck in a temple in the middle of nowhere with servant duty with stuck-up students and negligent elders. Not exactly the wild and grand adventure that I imagined, as I said before, but I have to admit that there are a lot of worse positions that I could be in.

Regular POV

"Hurry up; I'll need this floor soon. Why can't you work faster?" A student snapped at the eight year old girl.

"Getting to it," Celestia said wearily and dropped to her knees with scrub brush in hand.

"You better finish it quickly. After all, real students always turn out better than scullery maids," he looked scornfully down at the girl with a smudged face and dirty clothes. "I would treat my betters with the respect that I reserve for the gods."

"You do realize that the gods might exact retribution for that blasphemy you just spoke?" Celestia pointed out. "And you have to have authorization from the high priest to reserve the main hall in writing, so this wouldn't be the best idea. Oh, and by the way," she narrowed her eyes, "I'm sure that your teacher would be very interested to know that you're shirking class-which your parents paid in blood to send you to." The student froze and then said the first thing that came to his mind.

"At least I have parents. You wouldn't know about that now, would you?" Celestia reddened with anger and her fists clenched. He saw that he had struck a tender spot and continued, "I bet that they weren't even good parents, to leave you in the middle of nowhere." He laughed in derision. Celestia gritted her teeth. She drew her fist back and let him have it.

WHAM!

He stumbled back blindly, clutching at his bruised eye and glaring hatefully at her through his good eye. She grinned happily.

"That felt good enough to do it again," she said calmly. He quickly stumbled out of the hall and left Celestia in the hall to do her cleaning- and fuming-in peace.

"What would he know about having no parents?" she said, spilling all the water in her bucket over the floor.

Let them clean their own floors! She thought and stormed out the main entrance angrily, pushing past anybody in her path. Stupid Temple. Stupid children. Stupid life.

Celestia broke into a run, not caring whether she ran out into the bloody desert or into a caravan bound for the capital.

"Where am I?" she wondered aloud. The place she found herself in was deserted and dry with remnants of once thriving flowers scattered here and there.

"Wow, this place is more decrepit than the cook! Maybe I can save some of it somehow..." She knelt down and brushed some foliage aside gently. Surprisingly, the plant didn't crumble in her hand. "Looks like it still has some life in it to me." Celestia spotted a well nearby and filled a rotting bucket with some grimy water. She looked around and finally decided to spill it everywhere because the entire garden was in the same state of disrepair.

Immediately, the garden began turning greener. The plants began growing taller and budding and flowering with the most delightful blossoms. The air soon became perfumed and no inch of the once cracked, thirsty ground was left uncovered except for a little path spanning the entire space, which was quite large.

Celestia looked back at the well in awe. "Wow, that's some powerful water," she muttered to herself.

"Or maybe it's because the garden needs a powerful girl to water it," a voice spoke from behind her. The girl whirled around quickly with arms in a defensive position. The woman behind her wasn't fazed and just looked at her critically.

"What do you mean by powerful? Are you a seer or something? Hey! What are you doing-"The woman wrinkled her forehead and made a slashing movement with her slim hand. Celestia's mouth snapped close. Frantic, she clawed at it and, not succeeding, glared furiously-and perhaps curiously-at the person who closed off her mouth. She took no notice of the glare directed at her and started walking around the silenced girl.

"Hmm...eyes are too large, complexion tanned, entirely too talkative for your own good," she informed Celestia. "Hands callused, used to work are you? Good, good. You could be pretty if you didn't wear that scowl all the time and actually cleaned yourself." She ended up back where she started and shook her head mournfully. "Ra knows that the temple can afford to make sure its trainees are presentable now, doesn't he?" She restored the power of speech back to Celestia with a flick of her finger.

"I'm not a trainee." Celestia said bluntly. "I'm a temple servant and a generally disliked one, to go further into details. So you can stop thinking that you should be kind to me by deigning to converse with a lowly servant." She turned around and stalked off. Or rather, tried to.

The woman sighed and locked Celestia's legs in place, turning her back around in the process. "We'll never get down to business if I have to continue taking away your free will to use your body parts," she informed her.

"It is also polite to present your name before presuming to deal in business with someone," Celestia retorted. "And I wouldn't be denied the use of my legs and mouth if you hadn't appeared in the first place!"

"Of course, how silly of me. I'm Mas-Ne-Ra, creator of the Shadow Realm," the goddess said. The girl's jaw dropped. All this time, she had been arguing with a deity who could blast her without a second thought where she stood. "But let's skip the formalities, shall we? I want you to become one of my priestesses."

Celestia blinked once and then it dawned on her that a goddess was offering her a chance to finally belong somewhere. Maybe even a chance to have a wild and crazy adventure. There was just one problem.

"Why me?" she asked suspiciously. This all seemed too wonderful to be true. It was terrible for the other children to play pranks on her, but it would be abominable for a goddess to play a prank on her.

"For starters, no one can come into this garden unless they have an aptitude for magic. Second, this garden can only be watered by a priestess or one who is destined to be one. And third," she smiled ironically, "I suppose you could say that I've gone to considerable trouble to obtain your services so if you'd refused, you'd end up doing my will anyway."

"I tried to train for more than half the gods in the Egyptian pantheon and all of them ended in disaster," Celestia stalled.

"Of course it ended in disaster! A goddess, namely me, does not like having one of her pre-destined trainees serving another. I made the other gods show displeasure."

"I'm just an orphan! The daughters of nobles should be serving you, not a girl with no worth or importance in the world!" she exclaimed. Something in Mas-Ne-Ra's eyes flickered but faded quickly.

"Believe me, you will have adventures as a priestess and noble girls always pause at the amount of work that needs doing. You're used to it and besides, it's in your blood." A ball of red fire appeared in the goddess's outstretched hand. "Do we have an agreement?"

Celestia thought for some time while Mas-Ne-Ra waited patiently. She wasn't sure what to say. On one hand, it would be great to finally belong somewhere, and if Mas-Ne-Ra didn't dislike her because she was an orphan and a servant, maybe there was even a chance that she could get out of the hellhole that was her home.

On the other hand, she had heard rumors that any girl who wasn't fit for the training had her soul fed to Ammit, devourer of unworthy souls. Celestia wasn't sure if that was such a good idea, but resolved that she would be such a good trainee that Ammit wouldn't be able to touch her while she was living. She made up her mind.

"I'd be honored to be your priestess, Mas-Ne-Ra," she said and took the ball of flame offered to her. It dissipated in her hand and didn't burn her.

"Wonderful. I'll show you to the place where you'll receive your general lessons now." She turned and walked off. When she realized that the girl wasn't following her, she looked back irritably.

"You still have the spell in effect," Celestia explained. A second later she could move and followed her goddess into the temple.


You might know that the story wasn't like this at first. The previous version was more serious and not the most fun to read. I've made this chapter more uplifting and made it possible for you to read her past from her viewpoint, which is easier to relate to. This chapter can be continued in the next, but I must warn you that it isn't redone so it won't be quite like this one. Eventually, I'll do every chapter over so please keep up with it.

Review!!