Dragon Boy and Princess

Chapter 1

At 5 am, Lucy swung herself over her bedroom balcony with ease, and started her descent of the castle wall. She had done it so many times already that she was now able to scale the 25 foot wall from her balcony to the ground in under two minutes, which she was pretty proud of. She silently dropped to the floor, and started the half hour trek through the woods to her secret spot.

Yes she lived in a castle, and yes, as you're probably thinking, she is a princess, princess Lucy Heartfilia of Fiore. She hated being a princess because contrary to what people might think, life as a princess was horrible. She wasn't allowed to go anywhere by herself, always having to be accompanied by her three, personal guards. Don't get her wrong, she loved her guards dearly, they were some of her only true friends in the castle, but sometimes she'd like to be able to go places by herself. She also wasn't allowed to do anything by herself, always having to be assisted by maids and servants. Heck! She wasn't even allowed to dress herself! Then, there were all the royal duties she had, for example: lessons everyday in sowing, embroidery, etiquette, languages, math, history... She loved learning about languages and history since she was a curious person by nature, but she really wished she had some sort of combat lessons. Of course her father wouldn't hear of it. That was another part of the problem, her father, the king of Fiore. After Lucy's mother died, correction, was murdered in front of her, her father became cold and uncaring, always working. He would yell at her a lot if she said but a word against his decisions, and sometimes even went so far as to beat her. She had tried to run away from her miserable life several times, but every time she tried, she was caught and brought back into her misery. That's why she settled on just leaving every morning before her lady in waiting came to wake her up, and every night for a couple of hours when she was supposed to be asleep.

The first time she came to this decision, she had searched around for a suitable place to spend her alone time, and found her secret spot a half hour walk from the castle. Her secret spot was actually a big clearing surrounded by trees with a waterfall cascading down into a rather large lake that split off into two rivers on either side of it that disappeared into the forest. That was where she liked to spend her alone time. And when she went there, to be even more rebellious, she wore pants. You might think, wait how is that rebellious? Well, as a princess, she was forced to wear intricate, uncomfortable gowns ALL THE TIME! It was so damn annoying!! So, on her secret little outings, she wore what was most comfortable and suitable for her trek. Today, she was wearing black pants topped with a red blouse that showed a generous amount of cleavage, and black boots with the tiniest heel. Man, if her father knew she was wearing pants, or alone owned pants, she would surely get it. From her belt swung a coiled black whip and a sword, and hidden in her boot was a small dagger. She wasn't permitted by her father to have combat lessons, but she defied him, and had begged Erza, a scarlet-haired, scary, crazy strong beauty who also happened to be one of her bodyguards, teach her. Erza had agreed because she too hated her father and she thought that it was important to learn self-defense, and Lucy couldn't agree with her more. She couldn't beat Erza just yet in a duel, but who was she kidding, no one beats Erza with a sword, NO ONE. So the fact that she could hold her own against Erza for a long time was proof enough that she was pretty proficient with a sword. She was also pretty good at using a bow, but she couldn't bring all her weapons with her, that would just be too much of a hassle.

Anyway, back to the story! As Lucy neared the clearing, she saw something flaming shoot across the sky into the forest in the direction of the clearing. She heard a bunch of crashing sounds, probably because whatever it was smashed through a bunch of trees, and then a big BOOM sound as it hit the ground, and judging by the direction the sound was coming from, whatever it was had probably crashed in her clearing.

She ran the rest of the way towards the clearing, one hand on the hilt of her sword. She probably shouldn't be running towards it, but she was a curious girl, and wanted to know what it was, plus, as she said previously, she had a sword, she could defend herself.