Oak, ash, and thorn are known to be sacred to the fairy folk of old...but what if Lucy's attempt to solve a puzzle involving these three sacred trees coincides with a vengeful old enemy seeking to rear his ugly head once more? And how will Erza react when an important part of the puzzle requires Lucy to make a deal with a devil?
Disclaimer: I own my interpretations of newly-introduced Celestial Spirits, as well as occasional minor characters, when they apply. Otherwise, Hiro Mashima owns Fairy Tail.
Prologue
May 29, X784, Phantom Lord guild hall in Oak Town
"And just what do you think you're doing, Miss Blodwen?" Jose Porla demanded, lips curled into a sneer, as he stared down the young pale-blue-haired woman dressed in a coral-colored duster over a coral, green, and purple-patterned sundress, who was busy packing the few belongings of hers that were at the guild hall into a green duffel bag. "You do know you're at your limit on allowed job-reward value for this month, and need to wait three days from now before you can be allowed to take any more jobs."
But far from intimidating the woman, as Jose had intended, his sneer caused fury to light her violet eyes. "What I should have done when you started making my life hell for no reason," she spat, fixing her Guild Master with a glare to rival his. "First you demanded I break my contract with Monoceros or you'd throw me out—and you took away my S-Class status even though I'd done exactly as you told me, just for making you threaten me with excommunication. Then you turned a deaf ear when I reported Totomaru for incinerating the maple tree in front of my house, and tortured me for taking matters into my own hands to protect my house and yard afterward..."
"Because you hired a mage of Fairy Tail to write your security runes!" Jose interrupted, as if appalled that any underling of his could call him out on his act of punishing her. "Phantom Lord mages are forbidden to have any form of friendly dealings with Fairy Tail mages—Miss Blodwen, you know that! Everyone knows that!"
"I'm done with being your dartboard, Jose Porla!" the woman called Miss Blodwen finally shouted. "As of today, I'm not a mage of Phantom Lord anymore!" As she made her declaration, her purple Phantom Lord guild mark vanished from its place just below where her collar bones met.
The woman didn't even have time to grab her bag before the Guild Master gave a howl of rage—one that turned into a cry of pain when another woman appeared in a flash of golden light. The second woman was one with silver eyes and a willowy frame, wearing a costume of dark leather and golden ornamental chains, her strawberry-blonde hair fancily pinned up and adorned with a golden tiara. Andromeda the Chained Princess had shoved her gate open to defend her mistress against the vengeful Guild Master's wrath—as the princess threw some glowing substance at Jose Porla, the man shouted in pain as he was burned, for the Chained Princess had struck him with a lash-like measure of hot slag.
Unfortunately for both Celestial Spirit and keyholder, however, Jose Porla was quick to recover, and wasted no time in sending forth two deadly pulses of explosively powerful Darkness Magic. The first struck Andromeda squarely in the chest, forcing the Chained Princess back to the Celestial Spirit realm. The second blast struck the retreating blue-haired woman in the back, knocking her forward several yards and sending her sprawling to the floor as dead.
"Helena!" came the frightened cry of a younger woman with curled hair in a darker shade of blue, this one dressed in a fur-trimmed dark-blue coat, as she rushed to the body of her freshly-slain friend. "How could you do this—how could anyone do this?" the coat-clad girl burst out as she looked up at her Guild Master with tear-filled blue eyes.
"Cease your sniveling at once, Juvia Lockser, unless you'd like to suffer the same fate as your dear friend here," Jose threatened before motioning with one hand to a healer, and with the other to a long-haired brute with many piercings covering his face and arms. To the long-haired brute he ordered, "Take Miss Blodwen's corpse out to someplace where carrion-eaters can make a feast of her, and put her keys on my desk when you come back." Just before following the healer into another room once the brute carried out his order, Jose turned to the one he had addressed as Juvia Lockser. "Just be grateful that I killed the disobedient little bitch with my own magic instead of handing her over to Totomaru—his plans for her would make her death look like a blessing, to be sure."
Little did Jose know that one of the keys would be missing from the key ring: the Celestial Spirit King had permitted Andromeda to yank her key into the Spirit Realm as soon as the second blast of Darkness Magic had struck Helena Blodwen down.
Sunset of the following day, in a clearing south of Oak Town
An exhausted and sweaty Andromeda had finally finished creating a bronze coffin for her fallen mistress, Helena Blodwen, and shoveling the freshly-dug soil to form a burial mound over the casket. Now she set about using her metalworking powers to fashion a grave marker.
The Chained Princess looked up from her work to see a tall and broad-statured man with a distinctive earthy appearance approaching, dressed in a simple black polo shirt and olive-drab trousers and carrying a branch covered in white blooms that he had cut from a hawthorn tree. "I'm nearly finished here," she reported in a hollow voice as she resumed her bronze-sculpting work, not wanting to look up long enough to see the sadness and anger that marred his rugged angular features, or the teardrops that might linger in the rough chin-strap beard that matched his wild-looking dark-brown hair.
The tanned and earthy-looking man staked his blooming branch in the ground that covered Helena's grave, and then he knelt in front of the already-kneeling Andromeda, taking both of her narrow shoulders in his large hands. "I cannot answer for the fate of your fellow Spirits, Andromeda," he began, sadly but with conviction, "but I swear to you, only when I have met another Celestial mage, one who is as worthy to hold your key as my beloved wife, will you be bound to a contract once more."
No sooner had the man made his promise than the Spirit gave a tearful nod and vanished with a murmur, barely heard on the spring wind, of "Thank you...Azuma..." Andromeda left only her key behind, which the man gently laid before the staked hawthorn branch. Then he channeled his magic into the earth surrounding the hawthorn branch, causing the branch to grow into a massive tree covered in beautiful tiny white blooms. A simple hand-gesture and further channeling caused a pair of the great hawthorn tree's roots to wrap around Andromeda's jeweled silver key, pulling it deep down into the earth below.
Only then did the earthy man, whom the Celestial Spirit addressed as Azuma, allow his grief to give way to chilling fury. "Mark my words, Jose Porla," he vowed, "no matter that it takes me an eternity of fighting to get stronger before I'm able to face a Wizard Saint on the field of battle, you will know the true meaning of a devil's revenge."