A/N: I don't own Death Note.

Fantasy AU, alright this is another very cracky idea that wouldn't leave me alone. It's another fusion but I can't say with what yet without giving everything away. So... I own nothing. Oh, and this will be LxLightxL eventually.

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Prelude

It began as just another night for Naomi Penber as she rode around the outskirts of her village on her black stallion, Cha-cha, keeping watch, making sure nothing was amiss... and freezing her ass off. Naomi drew her coat around her against the frigid winter winds that scattered the flurries of snow, staining both her and her horse white. She was nearing the end of the patrol when it happened. As she gently tugged at Cha-cha's reins, steering him through the nearby forest when her horse suddenly stopped, gave a spooked whinny, and refused to go any further. Naomi spied a speck of color against the snow and went to investigate. It turned out that it was a mop of red-brown hair and it was attached to a young man. He sat huddled in the snow, his back against a tree, his knees drawn up to his chest. He seemed to be off in his own little world—oblivious to the fact he was freezing to death. He must be—he was curled up in the snow wearing nothing but a girl's pink ribbon tied around his forearm. He was indeed shivering but not from the cold. The young man didn't even notice her approach as his eyes were squeezed shut in anguish.

Sayu...

"Hey! You there! Where are your clothes boy?" Naomi demanded.

The boy's eyes snapped open and he gaped at the night guardswoman clad in leather and steel armor for several minutes as if trying to decide if she was real.

"Are you an idiot or some kind of pervert?" She demanded.

"Thieves..." he spoke brokenly when he finally found his voice. "They... they took everything from me!"

Well that much was true. But it was misleading... a lie. Papa said lies were bad...

But then so was killing people.

The boy knew he'd been very bad but there was no way to take it back. Not that he felt the least bit sorry—they deserved it! He was sure that even Papa would agree, wouldn't he? He did it for him, after all...

The strange woman frowned, concerned but cautious as she drew closer.

He put his head down again. Why didn't she just go away? The boy looked flustered as Naomi wrapped her leather coat around his overly-sensitive skin.

"What's your name?" the woman demanded.

"Light... Light Yagami of Estville."

Another lie.

That name, that life, was stripped from him tonight and any remnants of it—he threw them away himself when he chose to...

"Your name is Kira." The Dark Mother had whispered when he first entered the world. "My favored child, you are destined for greatness. Do not disappoint me."

Light stared at his own hands and shivered as he the events again replayed in his mind: the fire, the screaming, the rip of flesh torn asunder, the crunch of bone...

Killing humans—it was like swatting pests.

"I know it's in your nature... to do evil," Papa's words returned to him unbidden and unwanted. "But you can change your fate..."

The reality of the last few hours came crashing down.

I killed a whole village!

No, papa would never condone what I did! Even to the thieves that murdered him! I—

Estville? A survivor? Naomi thought, stunned. Their village had received word that Estville had been ransacked by thieves... it was horrific. What was done to them.

Naomi's husband was among the guards that had gone off to exact retribution for the sake of their neighboring village that very afternoon only to discover someone else had got to it first. The bandit village was now scorched earth. Raye said he had never seen anything like it, that it was even worse than what happened to Estville. Indeed he was so unsettled by what he had seen for the first time in years Raye Penber reached for the bottle.

Up until now none of them would have ever even guessed their might be any survivors. But this boy-he seemed miraculously unscathed. Could he really be from Estville?

Yagami... that name seems familiar... Right, the Captain of the Guard of Estville. He was a good man. I knew he had a daughter but I didn't know he had a son...

"Light Yagami, huh? Come along then," Naomi ordered.

Light looked at her blankly.

Perhaps he's soft in the head? "You want to freeze death?" Naomi huffed and before Light could think about protesting pulled him roughly along towards where she had tethered her horse. The horse reared up in terror as they drew near.

Light sighed. Well that was predictable... "It's alright, I can walk."

Naomi continued to express concern as the boy walked barefoot in the snow but Light insisted he was alright. He was already numbed to the cold. Besides as he had rediscovered earlier tonight he ran rather hot.

"What can you do?" The woman asked as they entered the village.

"Do?"

"There's no free lunch. Everyone is expected to earn their keep."

Light knew he had to be careful with what he told this stranger. It was as Papa said, "Never let a stranger know what you really are. They'll want to hurt you—even kill you."

But wasn't that a lie?

"I-I'm good with numbers, gold counting, and... and Papa, he trained me to use a sword but..."

This human body—so flimsy, so weak!

"I'm not very good at it..."

He hadn't realized just how much he had limited himself until earlier tonight—when he took his true form for the first time in years and realized what he was capable of, he was truly a God among insects.

"Where's your Papa?"

Though right now he didn't feel like a God...

"Dead... the thieves..." as he said it something wet and alien rolled down his face.

...He felt like a monster.

All this power and he couldn't even save Papa and Sayu!

Light wasn't expecting it when the stranger drew him into a hug.