Hello everyone! Welcome to my first multi-chap story. I have been working on this story for a while so I hope you like it. The story was inspired by Final Fantasy X and will be very Lucy-centric and slow-paced at first. The first chapter is just an introduction and the next chapter will be up as soon as I read through again. Please bear with me and any comments and advice will be much appreciated!

Chapter 1

Sunlight shone dappled on the forest floor, birds chirped overhead and the buzz of myriad insects filled the humid air.

Lucy sighed to herself as she continued heading East, hoping to reach the village by nightfall. She wasn't looking forward to being mosquito food for another night.

Through the canopy of the trees, she could make out the Olympa range, said to be home of the Celestial Gods back in the times when their presence was more widespread. The village was supposed to be near the base of the mountain according to the request sheet.

"Sure is lonely by myself…" Lucy muttered to no one in particular. She reached for her keys to summon Plue but decided against at as he would probably wilt in this heat.

"Ahh… Its sooooo hot" Lucy yelled at the trees angrily. The trees didn't reply but a few monkeys squawked back at her.

"Chh… Must be going insane, yelling at monkeys" She muttered to herself. With another sigh, she continued eastwards.

After a couple hours of walking in the oppressive heat, the sky abruptly broke in a heavy downpour. "Seriously?! First it's so hot and how it's raining!? What kind of crazy weather is this?!" Lucy scrambled to find some shelter, rushing blindly through the foliage.

The canopy of the trees provided some shelter from the torrent but Lucy was still completely soaked. She cursed as a fresh wave of water poured down on her as the giant leaf above her head gave out under the weight of all the water it had collected. Lucy crashed around blindly, tripping over roots and walking into low hanging branches. Dark clouds obscured the sun and hardly any of the weak sunlight made it through the dense canopy.

Lucy stopped and tried to take in her surroundings. Her head and limbs ached from banging into so many things, and the freezing rain continued to pour down on her relentlessly. Hugging herself, she looked around, seeing nothing but the silhouettes of trees and leaves all around. In her blind rush she seemed to have wandered into a denser part of the forest.

"Open! The Gate of the Clock, Horologium!" Lucy took temporary refuge from the freezing downpour in Horologium, feeling a twinge of guilt for making her spirit stand in the rain.

'What should I do now?' Lucy wondered within the wooden confines of Horologium. There was no way she could tell which way was east with the much denser foliage obscuring her view and it was much too dark to see anyway.

"Ahh I'll summon Pyxis later" Lucy muttered to herself, glad she got the new silver key at the last town she stopped by, "Guess there is nothing to do but wait this rain out… Sorry Horologium"

Luckily with her improved magical abilities, she could keep Horologium out for a longer period of time now. It has been almost a year since she had left Fairy Tail and him. In that year she had travelled around Fiore, doing requests here and there to earn money and train herself. Working alone had forced her to hone her abilities and improve her magical power since she couldn't rely on Natsu to bail her out anymore.

Lucy smiled sadly at the thought of Fairy Tail, she really missed them, her nakama, but she couldn't and wouldn't regret leaving. She had become so much stronger in the past year and seen so much more of the world. She had even learned to re-quip her keys from a fellow wandering mage, whom she shared a few campfires and job requests with, so she couldn't lose them during a fight.

Travelling around the world, Lucy also managed to acquire five new keys, all silver but she still loved them nonetheless. Two of the keys she got were purchased from shops in towns far, far away from Magnolia.

The first was Caelum, the chisel that Angel had used in their battle. The purchase made a serious dent in her pocket since she had just started going solo but the attacking capabilities of the chisel was just too useful to pass up. Lucy took some time to train with the chisel between all her traveling and jobs. She couldn't lift the chisel with both hands, much less one hand like Gemini did, so Lucy usually either left the chisel to fire on its own or as a supplementary weapon for one of her spirits.

The second was her most recent addition, Pyxis, the mariner's compass. The fluffy bird was particularly useful to her since she was traveling so much and she tended to get lost a lot, like she was now.

The third key was a gift from someone special, a fellow guild member she had just parted ways from. The key was Scutum the shield. The large golden shield had defensive capabilities on par with Erza's Adamantite Armor but it consumed magical energy proportionate to the amount of damage it took. Regardless the new key had saved her life on a few occasions; the spirit, like Horologium, had a habit of appearing when her life was in danger.

The other two silver keys were all job rewards. The first key she got was Plue's bigger brother, the Canis Major, Sirius. The wolf dog creature was white as well but a lot stronger and more menacing that its lesser counterpart. The wolf dog creature was loyal as it was protective of its master and it doted on its younger brother adorably. Lucy loved summoning the both of them to keep her company but Sirius took up a somewhat more magical energy that Plue.

The final key was Sagitta, the arrow. The spirit allowed her unlimited arrows of various qualities such as fire or lightning arrows, but she found out, after wasting good jewel on a redwood bow, that Sagitta could not be fired from a regular bow. After gaining permission from the Celestial King, Sagittarius had a bow commissioned for her from the Spirit World.

The bow was made of a light, unbreakable silver wood from some tree that grew in the spirit world and could only be drawn by her. Strangely, unlike normal bows however, there was no string to draw. It could only fire Sagitta and only by her. Unfortunately though, despite the magical or rather spiritual properties of the bow, it did not magically endow its user with skill in using a bow, so Lucy had to train with the bow as well. She was no where near as good as Sagittarius, who had given her some pointers, but she could hit a human sized target from about 50 paces away. Hopefully, she would get better with more practice.

With all the new keys, she had a lot more attacking power now, making it easier to handle the solo quests requiring force. She even took on a request to take out a small group of bandits. Granted, they were all non-mages but Lucy felt proud nonetheless of what she had managed to accomplish in the past year.

Pulling herself out of her stupor, Lucy realized the rain had lessened to a drizzle now. She dismissed Horologium and stood up stretching her stiff limbs. The clouds had dissipated but during the storm the sun had sunk low on the horizon and the sky had taken on the orange hue of sunset.

"Looks like I'm camping out tonight again." Lucy sighed to herself. Looking around, she headed off in a random direction, hoping to find a clearing to camp for the night.

It was becoming increasingly dark and Lucy cursed as she stumbled over what felt like the billionth root. It felt like all the bloody trees were out to trip her with their damned roots. Whipping her hair out of her face, Lucy got up only to trip yet again.

"Damn it!" she swore violently, somehow this fall hurt more than the previous ones. Lucy placed her palms on the group to push herself up but froze when her hands met the ground. It wasn't wet and squishy with occasional bug crawling underhand, it was hard and cool to the touch. It was rock, somehow in the middle of the forest, there was a rock floor.

Pushing herself up, Lucy cautiously inched forward, not wanting to trip again. 'What it this place?' she thought to herself as she discovered that the rock floor was part of an entrance to a tunnel that seemed to lead downwards and she had tripped over a piece of rock that had broken off from the structure. It was too dark for Lucy to tell much so she decided to start a fire and set up camp here. She would explore more tomorrow when the sun was up.

Shouldering her backpack and picking up a couple of torches she made last night, Lucy made one last check around her campsite before starting off towards the mysterious entrance. In the daylight, she could see more clearly the peculiar structure she had stumbled upon last night. It was derelict, or rather, really, really old. Vines covered the entire structure, breaking up the grey granite in some areas. It seemed like there used to be carvings on the faces of the rocks that formed the entrance, but the forces of nature had long worn them smooth.

Lucy gave the structure a few good kicks, besides some dust falling, nothing else collapsed. "Open! The Gate of the Canis Major, Canis Minor, Nike, Nikora!" Lucy summoned the 2 white creatures to keep her company and also, defend her if necessary.

"Pun pun~" Plue appeared riding on his elder brother's back who made no sound but moved to his master's side.

Together the three of them made their way in to the mysterious tunnel, Lucy lighting the way with her torch. The entrance had steps leading down to a tunnel, Sirius sniffed the air and made happy sound. Plue, too seemed particularly happy and excited for some odd reason.

Lucy relaxed seeing that both her spirits sensed no danger and began looking around. The walls of the tunnel was made of the same grey granite and did not seem particularly menacing like those she had read about in her novels. There empty torch brackets here and there and the ground underfoot was smooth, indicating that many people had walked these tunnels before.

The trio continued down the tunnel which led to a large open area with several tunnels leading off in different directions.

"Wow, this place is huge. So guys, which way should we go?" Lucy asked her 2 furry companions. Plue pointed at a seemingly random tunnel and Sirius bounded off in that direction. Lucy moved to catch up with them, her footsteps echoing in the large chamber.

"Guys wait up!" Lucy called out to them, running into yet another tunnel but this one was shorter though, she could see the end of the tunnel opening up into another large chamber.

Abruptly her torch went out, leaving her in complete darkness. "Plue! Sirius! To me." She called out to her 2 spirits. She could hear an answering "Pun~" in the distance. Lucy slowly made her way towards where she heard Plue, fumbling around to light a new torch.

"Huh? That's odd." Lucy looked down to find that her keys were emanating a strange glow.

"Pun!"

Lucy's head shot up, forgetting all about her strange glowy keys for the moment, worried that something might have happened to her 2 spirits. She rushed blindly towards the direction of Plue's voice and felt the air pressure around her change as she exited the tunnel.

"Plue! Sirius!" Lucy cried out, while her hands fumbled to light another torch.

"Pun~!" came a reply somewhere towards her left, sounding a lot closer than before. Not bothering with the torch, Lucy headed towards that direction and crashed into what felt like a statue.

"Ahh!" Lucy cried out as the "statue" crashed with a resounding boom and she fell along with it. Holding out her arms to break her fall, Lucy felt the skin on her palms tear from the impact with the ground. Coughing a little from all the dust, she groaned as she fell back on her bottom.

In the commotion, Sirius had found her again and made his presence know with a soft headbutt. She hugged the spirit close to her, breathing in the wolf dog's unique scent, relieved that they weren't hurt.

"Pun~ pun~"

"It's okay Plue, I'm fine" Lucy reassured the tiny spirit reaching out in the dark to pat the adorable spirit before proceeding to finally light her torch.

"What is this place?" Lucy muttered to herself as the torch guttered to life, lighting up the cavernous underground chamber she was in. She looked down to check what she had crashed into and cried out in alarm.

"HIEEEEE!"

Looking back at her was the face of Loke, the spirit Leo.

"Open! The gate of the Lion. Leo!"

The tawny haired spirit appeared in a flash of light, with an equally brilliant smile "You called, Princess?"

Lucy stared at him wide eyed and pointed mutely at the cracked statue.

"Oh my," Loke commented softly when he saw what had gotten Lucy so worked up.

"Care to explain why you're a freaking statue!?" Lucy all but yelled at him.

"Calm down Princess, as you can see it's a statue of me, I'm still very much flesh and blood. Feel free to feel for yourself." Loke flashed his trademark grin at her and Lucy rolled her eyes in reponse.

"Quite the place you have found Princess. This is Doram Vita, home to the priest and priestesses of the Celestial Gods about a thousand years ago or so. It was a time when the Spirit King ruled over all mankind and Spirits were revered as Gods which explains why there is a statue of yours truly in this ancient temple."

Lucy gapped at him for a while, wondering for a moment if he was messing with her but logic kicked in and wonderment took over as she proceeded to look around with new found curiosity.

"Doram Vita…" The name rolled of her tongue easily. She had read of this place but had always only half believed in it, it felt surreal to be in a place she had thought of as a fairy tale.

Lucy swung her torch in a wide arc slowly, trying to see more of the chamber but the weak glow barely penetrated the darkness.

"Put away the torch Princess" Loke said and proceeded to glow, lighting up the room far better than Lucy's torches did.

Lucy's jaw dropped in the most unflattering way and her torch clattered to the floor forgotten. The chamber was dome shaped and was enormous. She could see more statues of the Golden keys, her friends; Aries, Virgo, Gemini, they were all there, their stony facades looking regal and solemn. The statues were slightly larger than life sized and some of them had crumbled like Leo's, but the statues of the Spirit King and Queen dwarfed them all, reaching well over 20 feet and carved of solid white marble.

"You see all those tunnels, they lead to the shrines for each of the Gold key and the King and Queen. We all had our own posse of priests and priestesses to worship and attend to our every need" Loke said. "I had only the most beautiful and nubile young women serve as my priestesses." He added with a smirk.

Lucy rolled her eyes at him and continued her examination of the chamber. "Haha! You were wearing a dress!" Lucy laughed when she noticed the Loke statue's weird raiment. In fact, all of the statues were garbed strangely.

"It's a toga," Loke clarified, "and that's what people wore back then. We spirits keep up with the latest fashion trends too you know."

"Riiiight, a tux is soo current" Lucy replied. But then again, thinking of her other spirits' fashion choices, namely a cow in a speedo and a certain archer in a horse suit, dressed in what? Breeches I think, a suit isn't that bad actually.

"Come Princess, I'll show you around." Loke beckoned and headed off in a random direction, Sirius and Plue bounding off after him.

End of Chapter 1

Thank you very much for reading, I apologise if it was boring, the story starts out slow. Please review, thank you!