NOTE: I wrote this on a whim shortly after discovering Fairy Tail back in October. I haven't touched this in a while and I'll just throw this up here. I might edit this later or something. I was putting this on hold because I was waiting for feedback from SeleneArchelle but screw it. She'll see this sooner or later.
I will be twisting the personas here to see how it would play out. Let me know what you think.
Erza Scarlet woke up with a splitting migraine and several aching joints. Everything was a blur. The last thing she remembered was taking on a job investigating something...anomalous in...where exactly was that again? It was only when she tried to move her arms that she realized she wasn't in the guild hall anymore.
Rather, she was...somewhere. She sat up halfway only to feel a sudden burst of pain rip into her side. Erza grimaced as she struggled to adjust herself on this makeshift bed of cow hide and hay. A handheld lamp lit up the cellar she was in. Large wine barrels lined the wall all the way up to a wide staircase.
"Natsu! Lucy!" she yelled. "Gray! Happy!"
Nothing. Weren't we going on a job together? I...I don't recall. Erza raised her hands, feeling the weight of the chains on her cuffed wrists. She tried to draw on her reserves only to end up feeling dry. Very dry.
"That's not right," she muttered. She was an S-class mage with immense magical reserves. How on earth was she not able to muster up so much as a spark? "What's...what's happened..."
It was most likely the wound. She felt around until her fingers found the serrated gash in her cuirass. Dried blood caked her side. Sure enough, she found the wound: a wide cut below her ribs going down to the top of her hip. Strangely, they were crudely stitched up. By who?
"No, no," she muttered. "There's no time to waste." I need to get out of here. Find out what happened, what's going on.
Erza staggered to her feet, cringing at the burning agony of her injury. Slowly but surely, she made her way to the end of the cellar, up the staircase, and into...
"Oh no..."
The whole village was razed. The sky had been completely reddened by the embers rising from the surrounding rubble. The inn she had emerged out of had been reduced to nothing but stone blocks and charcoal beams. Ash blew in the wind alongside bits and pieces of burnt posts from the few half-standing homes. The smell of burnt remains was...nostalgic.
Erza tripped over a table. No, it's a body! The poor man was charred beyond recognition but his arms had been clawing at the floorboards, trying to get to the cellar. She tumbled further towards the street, seeing more of the dead. Men, women, children, elderly...
"No one...was no one spared...?"
Step by step, she maundered down the road, passing rubble after rubble, corpse after corpse, buried under falling ash. Every blackened face brought back pieces of a suppressed past. She shook her head as she bounced from wall to wall, post to post. Just keep going, Erza. Just keep going. Look forward. Don't look down.
She couldn't help herself. The more she saw of the bodies, the more she noticed a pattern. The positions they died in...all of them were running away from something. The road led up to a hill where most of the victims had funneled through to escape. Erza could feel the stinging in her side grow more and more unbearable and she stopped just short of the top to catch her breath.
Natsu, Grey, Lucy...where are you?
She a lance speared into the ground; a dead soldier's hand still held its vice grip on the shaft. Erza gripped the pole and with both her chained arms hefted herself to stand so she could see...
...a massive dragon devouring cadavers heaped beside a dry cracked fountain.
Erza let loose a loud gasp and landed on her rear. The dragon heard her and angled its body towards her, its heavy footfalls resonating against the cobblestone on the plaza. As it shifted, the figure of a man came into view, busying himself with a book as he stood next to the dead. A sword was strapped firmly to the left of his waist while a mace hung slightly from his right. The rest of him was covered in some type of jagged armor. Nothing she had ever seen before.
Then they spoke. Not to her. But to each other. And in a language that she did not understand.
"She has woken early," Odahviing remarked.
"I'm impressed. Even after all the trouble she put me through, she can still stand," Ysmir replied, tucking away his journal.
"She tested your strength, Dovahkiin. She is for certain a skilled and powerful warrior."
"Aye but I'm still standing. And she's still holding onto her chains, I see."
The ancient dragon stretched his wings against the sky, his claws bared and ready to fly off at a moment's notice. "Shall we entertain her?"
"Maybe get some damned answers," his liege answered as he began his march up the ash-covered hill.
The man was coming up the hill as the rest of the village—no, it's a small town—continued to burn unabated around them. Erza tried to stand again but only ended up sitting down on the stones. She was very, very drained.
Not a single word of what was spoken made sense to her. Her body was in pain and her mind was addled by the destruction around her that she could barely meet this stranger face to face. By then, he was towering over her. He yanked the lance to the side, snagging her arms with it and causing her to roll down the slope towards the base of the fountain.
Erza's body collided with the bricks that had been knocked free off the fountain's basin. The stench of rotting human flesh was slightly masked by the ashy scent of burnt skin and bones. All the while she tried to push away images that suddenly started popping up in her mind.
"Have a nice nap?" the man crowed. He had a thick accent, one that she did not recognize. There was an air of power around him and Erza could sense the alien magic coming off him. It was the sort of magic that reminded her of Edolas—from a completely different world (dimension?) yet somehow related to theirs. Magic that was...not from Earth Land.
"Who are you?" she growled.
The dragon behind her hissed while the man only chuckled. He kneeled in front of her, as if to study her features as much as she tried to study his. His armor was archaic in design—a sturdy breastplate with a strange dragon relief rising from the center in a manner similar to the Heart Kreuz on her cuirass—but it appeared as though the jagged edges jutting out of his joints were teeth and bone? Is his armor made of bones?
"You don't remember, don't you," he began.
"Remember what?"
"Hm. You really don't." He sighed and shrugged towards the tree line off in the distance. "You gave me some good solid hits, you know. I was very impressed," he said, unclasping his helmet to reveal a chiseled face sporting a thick beard and marred by a long scar reaching up from his lip to his right eye. A small red bulge edged out of the side of his chin. "Being thrown around by a smaller woman. Hah. I haven't had a fight like that in years."
"What are you blabbering about? Are you responsible for this?" Erza snapped.
"I was just flexing my muscle, dear Erza."
She felt her heart skip a beat. "How do you who I am!?"
The man stood. "Your reputation precedes you, Miss Scarlet. 'Titania', 'Queen of the Fairies'... My, my, you and your guild of fairies or tales or some other. Everyone seems to know who you are."
Erza leaned up against the fountain's blocks until she found proper footing to at least meet him eye to eye. If he was responsible for all this carnage, then perhaps he was also the reason for her injuries. "What did you do to me?"
"A special concoction I've been working on. It's quite potent; it denies magic-users their most valuable asset."
"A nullifying poison. You sly bastard." Whatever venom he jabbed into her somehow prevented her from tapping into her reserves, let alone raise her fists against chains that she should have very easily overcome. "Who are you and what is it that you want?"
"So now you're willing to negotiate. Should have asked nicely first. You can call me Ysmir. And that is Odahviing." In response to his gesture, the dragon exhaled against her back, blowing warm air through her hair to remind her of its might. "Yes, it's an interesting partnership. We've been traipsing around your lands for about, say, a few months or so. Enough time to adjust to your technologies, your culture, blending in, watching your world burn and heal."
"You...you're a dragon slayer?"
The man cupped her chin. He could see that she wanted to swing the chains up to smash them into his face but frustratingly was too weak to do so. He continued to angle her face sideways until he saw enough of her face. "Technically, I am. The degree of my capabilities, however, are distinctly...unique from those of your dragon slayers."
"Your dragon...O-dah-viing..." Erza gawked at the beast behind her—it was unlike any other dragon she had laid her eyes on.
"I know what you're thinking. It's the other way around." He released his grip. "Odahviing may predate me by millennia but he has submitted to me."
"I find that hard to believe."
"For this world, yes. But from where I come from..." He smiled as he stood up to revel in the ash raining from the smoke-choked sky. "Dragons bend when you humble them."
"You..." Erza seethed, finally remembering Kagura and Simon, hiding the former from the cult that burned down the village she was raised in. "You...you did all this?"
"This was a town of criminals, harboring fugitives, members of your so-called 'dark guilds'."
"Not even sparing the innocent—"
"Odahviing was hungry. And I needed to practice. You should understand that extermination is key to keeping a plague from spreading. The members of these dark guilds are like a plague. So how do you stop a plague? You root out the source, burn the infected, and scatter the ashes to the wind."
"You...murderer... You're...you're mad."
Ysmir shrugged. "Perhaps. Sanity is subjective. Results are what matter."
Erza felt ash and dirt fly against her back and she turned to see the dragon launch into the sky, letting loose a mighty roar as it soared through the smoke. The beast continued to circle above them, its silhouette sticking through the bright fiery sky. "You and your dragon...you both are unlike anything..."
He raised his hand. "Do you know why I'm here, Miss Scarlet?"
She did not respond.
"Very well. I am searching for a certain black dragon. Large, powerful, and capable of devouring worlds."
Erza studied him. He could not be possibly referring to what she had in mind.
Ysmir read her, somehow, and continued, "Of course. You don't know. Or you're not going to tell me. I can understand that. You can't be too careful now with too many enemies and too few friends." Again, he was met with silence. "This dragon has an insatiable hunger and he will not stop until he devours the world. He needs power to survive and this power he gets by feeding on all that exists. I don't just erase plagues, I also destroy his food source."
Erza hastened towards him, dragging her boots against the ground and raising up clouds of ash and dust. "Such a strategy is no justification for this senseless slaughter. You are no worse than the dark guilds!"
He sighed as he wiped a stray strand of hair from her face. "Ah, noble, noble Erza. I have met so many of you in my lifetime. Alas, the end result of putting down the black dragon far outweighs the cost. I have hunted him before. And I thought I killed him. But you cannot kill those whose fates have been sealed by the gods, no?"
Erza furrowed her brow. "So you're hunting him again?"
"To be honest, it was not my intention to come here looking for him. As long as he busies himself with this world and its peculiarities, my world is free from his hunger."
She yanked herself away. "World? What world?"
At this point, the scarred bearded face morphed into one of thinly-veiled frustration. "Why don't you ask your celestial friends or your scribes? They could explain it all to you better than I can."
"You did all this just to interrogate me?" Erza hollered when he began walking down the road to the highway.
Ysmir stooped to pick up something. Then he tossed it towards her: a dirty, handmade doll with a single button for its eye. "Not really. I came here to erase the plague in this place. You just happened to be here at the right time. You and your...friends."
Natsu? Lucy? They were here?
Erza scrambled to her feet, even as the chains weighed her down and the poison continued to wreak havoc in her system. Weakened as she was, she was not going to be left hanging. She needed to know.
"Where is Natsu!? Where is Lucy!?" she screamed.
"The fire dragon and his lady friend?" Ysmir turned towards her, his helmet now completing his insidious shape. "Oh, they're fine. They won't remember a thing. Unless you tell them, of course."
"Where are they!?"
Erza caught something metallic fly towards her. He tossed her the keys to her cuffs. Then he said, "The poison should wear off in a few hours. You could wait until then or you could start picking the lock. Either way, you would have nothing to worry about. Nothing life-threatening. I made sure to stab you where it would not outright kill you. Your friends are asleep in the woods west of here, where we first met. Completely unharmed."
"What is it that you want?" Erza demanded amid the roar of Odahviing soaring towards the dipping sun.
Ysmir glanced at her for the last time. Erza could have sworn his eyes flashed a bright blue fire. "To see what this world has to offer."
By the time Erza had freed herself of her bonds, she was completely alone amid the rubble. That did not stop her from calling out for her subordinates. Over and over again, she yelled their names until she reached the edge of the surrounding forest. Just passed the first few trees and over a mound, she found them.
All asleep, as he said. And not a single scratch on them.
Erza slumped against a tree, sliding down to the grass, finally relieved. Whatever magic he used to put them to a deep sleep while he did what he did to the town, she would never know. She heard yawning. Natsu started to stretch his arms and sat up.
"Hey...what's...wha..."
"Have a nice nap?" Erza greeted with a weak smile.
"Erza?" The fire that flashed in his eyes was enough to startle everyone else out of their waking stupor. "Erza!"
"The realm of that Daedric Prince holds more knowledge than all of Nirn," Odahviing remarked.
Ysmir rose his head from the creek and wiped his face with a towel he had hung on a low branch. "Impress Hermaeous Mora enough times and he will grant you access to wondrous bits of information. Even the useless ones."
"Not every detail is useless."
"Aye. That is true. A flick of the page and the language and customs of this place is made known." He tossed the towel over his shoulder and stood to survey the landscape peeking beyond the edge of the near cliff. "Every strength and weakness of each member of almost every guild in this nice little world. I doubt I could remember it all."
The dragon eased its head over fallen timbre to better see the view down the valley. It was another city, much bigger than the last. "Even knowledge of who is innocent and who is guilty."
"Now there is no need to bother with such statistics. Why worry about the collateral when we could trim down the population. Lesser mouths to feed, lesser people to worry about," he remarked, resting his leg atop a large log. Erza's blows had served to crack even tempered dragon ivory. His body still ached from the pounding she had given him, the deep cuts and stabs still healing despite his best efforts. She was indeed a fine opponent.
"Lesser threats and more to sate my hunger."
Ysmir crossed the creek, reaching the vantage point marked on his map of Fiore. From this jagged rock formation, he could see the whole city and the surrounding countryside all the way to the distant mountains. Such were the envy of the Tamrielic capitals. Only the Imperial City could outmatch the vastness of these metropoles. "You will feed again, don't worry. Sit back on Mount Hakobe and await my call."
"Yes, dovah," Odahviing amusedly replied before edging to a glen and flying off to the highest peak in Fiore.
ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: October 8, 2017
LAST EDITED: November 21, 2017
INITIALLY UPLOADED: December 29, 2017
NOTE: So there you have it: a sinister Dragonborn. It's a persona I'm experimenting with and one that I'm sure others have read about. Anyway, leave a review. Let me know if it works because I have another different persona that I've drafted this time with Gildarts.
Have a good rest, folks.