Hope you enjoy this and I'll make myself brief. I know most people don't read these footnotes anyway.

This was an idea I've had for about a month or so and typed while I was at Germany with my dad's computer and finally figured out the complete plot line for it.

So if you like mysterious fantasy stuff, I think you'll like this... if you like nonfiction this is obviously not nonfiction and you probably pressed some wrong buttons getting here. But please read!

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The Hands of Fate

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Chapter One: Where the Darkness Falls

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It was the darkness that we felt that corrupted us.

It told us we were alone.

Alone in a world that did not care for ones that were lost within it.

We tried and we tried, fighting to regain some sense of direction.

But we failed miserably, losing the sight of any light at all.

Talons dug into the palm of my hand, small dark ruby colored droplets dropping to the damp grass. I still could sense the morning dampness around me, providing a sense of deep dread and fear of the future.

It was if waiting for the death that was to come.

Waiting with a terrifying clarity on the truth of your existence.

The talons retracted from my clenched hand, and blood poured out again in a flow, caused by my own hands. My own hands.

It's amazing what those droplets do. They sustain life; keep us alive when it may not be deserved. I suppose they control life in a way. Just a single thought. Gives us options on what to do, choices to be made. But it makes you wonder when all the ideas and notions, a mere thought possibly, are taken away, what will happen to us? Would we become mere shells that could not act on our own accord?

Imagine. The sun. We can't imagine our lives without it. It is essential for us to live and thrive. It gives us light and day, time for live, time for death. The endless cycle of life and death.

No one believed that we could live without the help of our creators. They cursed us by letting us be created. To let us work till we became part of their masterpiece.

No one even knew we were part of it.

Until now…

While the immortals were young, while we were young, we weren't treated like the other children. Gradually it struck us that we were different. They'd laugh at us, leer at us. Not bothering to keep it from us.

When one of us, the youngest, had gotten a curse, an unbreakable killing curse from one of the young witches, they had taken away his immortality and let him die. They had not even cared. They just tossed him away like a used tool.

So we are the immortals, people say. They whisper it behind our backs, careful not to speak too loudly as if we have the same hearing as them, as if we cannot hear them. But we were created different, and that we are. We can hear as if the world was magnified, smell like wolves, see like eagles, move like the wind, strong like the swiftest river. We were created as tools. And gradually we became outcasts, feared but kept alive for they could not kill us.

Though we could bring upon the end of their lives, draw their last breath, they are not worth the suffering pushed upon us. We do not live to kill, but to watch. To slip by them like ghosts, vanish into silence.

We're the people on the streets that walk in silence with a strong sense of darkness, something that keeps them away, the kind of person that just passes mortals in the street or someone they accidentally ram into as they walk through town. The immortals are a type of person that mortals see once and forget, but for that second time they may have seen us, walking like shadows among the mortals, all that occurs to them is a spark of fear and they watch for a moment, trying to think where they have seen such eerie people before. But then the thought slips from their mind and becomes a forgotten memory.

Now please, don't mistake what I'm telling you. We don't clad ourselves in chains, in black outfits and dark makeup. We don't hate the world, or our lives. We aren't dyeing our hair for the hell of it, or piercing our ears because it's the latest gothic fashion.

No that way we're normal.

As normal as someone like us can be.

We're just forced to be alone. Forced into the tracks that the mortals make. Forced to act as their shadow, finishing what events they started.

We, alone, are the immortals.

We, alone, suffer for what foolish things the mortals have done.

We, alone, must rise above ourselves and become something more than shadows and ghosts.

We, though, will forever be the immortals. But within that there is weakness. There are six of us and a nation of them.

We live in the woods of Cannon where the mortals had banished us. Fate sees us for who we are, and it planning to help us rise or help us fall. It all depends on us.

We are the immortals.

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I was shaken awake, a familiar smell filling the air around our camp. It smelled of the woods, an ancient musty smell that made you really wonder how old these trees were, and some of the faint smell of the ashes of the dead fire.

My twin brother looked at me. For a minute I wondered about him. Did he ever think that we could be more than this?

I knew him as well as I knew myself, but sometimes I asked myself that, and never found the answer. I wondered, but never asked.

He smiled apologetically, another thing I don't understand about him, his everlasting calmness anyway, and sat down in the small, mildly chilly shelter made by stones and trees. His blue leather jacket was wet from the frost that had set in overnight.

"So our place is still up eh?" He murmured lightly.

Yes we shared the small little shelter. If we didn't then I'd have to sleep outside with the bugs or have to share with another of the immortals… and I'm not to comfortable doing that being the only female.

"Yes apparently," I replied, trying to mimic his calmness, and at this hour it was easier than it usually was.

It sometimes was a bit lonely being the only female of the group. But everyone else took care of each other, making sure we survive.

When we were younger and the scientists had still kept us under study, I had remembered them saying that something had went wrong with the genetics. That it would be rare to ever get another female immortal.

They tried to correct the genetic problem but they did not succeed. So I was a guinea pig.

The only female.

We were war machines. The war they were fighting, though, ended years before we would have become of any use.

The scientists were proud of their work.

We were perfect, except they said for that I would be the only female. We were always fit, strong to the point were no fifty men could pull the same weight. We looked faultless, just like any other mortal teen with the gift of beauty, except that our eyes were graced with different tints and tones, from golds to violets. We were slightly taller than most of the mortals, but looked the same, so on the battlefield, no enemy knew they would be fighting a weapon.

The scientist never told anyone that we were immortal… That was their greatest secret.

We kept it to ourselves, but we knew something never left us alone.

We learned they had created us through the powers of the 10 ancient crystals. The ten ancient spirits. They were always apart, as said in legends, so a power of the mind developed. Developing so powerful that they could talk to each other through thoughts. We were given all the same skill, among many others, but we swore to never tell the scientists about our powers.

I suppose our powers then are dark. Yes I suppose they are.

Dark.

I look at my twin now and see only scarce flashes of the lab rat he had been through his childhood years. His eyes were a deep blue, flashing with a serene peacefulness and a tiredness for he had kept the watch all night.

I placed a hand on the side of his face. "Get some rest. It's my watch now."

I walked out of our shelter and settled on the watch stone, a tall stone that overlooked the entire area.

For about an hour I watched carefully, keeping an eye out for danger. I gradually loosened my guard and looked to the camps. I could tell my twin was asleep because now his spirit seemed to have calmed. The other four immortals had no reason to wake and thus were peacefully asleep.

I looked to mountain where we were forced to live layered with dense forest and vines, now also accompanied by a impenetrable fog that standing would come up to my waist at least.

I watched until something drew my attention. Steadily a form began to get darker. Something was coming.

No one knew where we lived so it must have been a random wanderer.

The figure had apparently spotted me through the mist for the mortal made his way through the vines toward me. I was amused by how easily he traveled over the terrain. Any regular mortal would have issues with this.

The figure stopped a meter from me, his eyes a brilliantly clear auburn red. "Hello," he stated blankly.

I smiled at him. "Hello mortal. What brings you to Cannon valley?"

The male smiled, though in the dark he was hard to distinguish. "I ran away from where I lived before. And you talk as if you're not a mortal?"

I grinned at him. "I'm not. I'm unknown to your world. Do you know who I am now?" I asked.

Gradually the bewilderment on his handsome face cleared. "So I have stumbled upon the legendary immortal camp?"

"You have, mortal."

He stepped closer, the light finally falling upon him. He was tall and muscular, explaining how easily he traveled here, and he had black hair with an odd streak of red hair falling over his auburn eyes. Plainly I realized who he was within seconds. No one else in the entire kingdom had an extended reputation as him. He was well known just by his hair style, but also for his angry opposition with the king. Even we, the immortals, had heard it here from wanderers we randomly met across the trails in the mountains.

"So prince, why have you fled from your fabulous life?"

The prince for a second seemed puzzled then nodded. "So you even you know of me. Do you have a moment?"

I shrugged. "As long as my life permits."

"Well not long after the king banished you, which I did not support if it helps," I did not care truthfully, "my mother died and my father began to demand that I wed. He finally, after four years announced that I have till the point were the moon shines its brightest to chose a woman to be my fiancée. All for the sake of power. I was fed up with random women on the street throwing themselves at me, married or not," he said his lip pulling up in distaste.

I looked to the moon. "You have a week prince."

"But if I don't chose, I will have to marry my stepsister, whom I despise more than anyone, who was from my father's second marriage, though that queen died from a disease not to long ago."

"I sympathize but I am not magical as some legends say. I cannot change that," I told him looking back to my watch on the mountain.

"But you do have powers from the 10 crystals, the spirits," he said with a smirk.

I looked at him surprised. "We do. And how do you know that?"

"Let's say the scientists died from an experiment to create a hybrid of wolf and man and the creature got fed up. I looked through the files they had kept on the immortals. You really were remarkable."

I cocked my head in thought. A clear voice familiar to me broke my thoughts. I looked to my brother who approached with a relaxed appearance.

"Can you hunt?"

The prince looked to him. "I came into this forest with just a dagger and an empty stomach and survived for the last five days."

Derek smiled at the witty response. "Then you can stay here till you wish to return to your kingdom."

I looked from one to the other.

Suddenly one of the other immortals yelled out, "What is going on out there?"

I grinned at my brother, shouting back at the shelters we had built. "Go back to sleep, you moron."

A yawn. "Sounds good."

I looked to my twin brother. "Um... what now brother?"

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So what do you think?

If you liked this I suggest you read stuff by EmoAssassin and Miss-Nina (both on fiction-press) and Truble and Armith-Greenleaf (both on please review!

-Phoenix (TAD)