So, I wasn't going to post this...but then I wound up writing nearly sixteen chapters and I can't seem to stop. And now I hope not to until I finish and, true to form, I have no idea when that will be. n_n; But it should be fun getting there. Gihi!
A few disclaimers before the good stuff: the only Fairy Tail I own is the manga editions I got at Barnes & Noble (and the wait for the next one is killing me! Dx) And I got the first inspiration to write this when I saw an amazing drawing on pintrest. I'll tell you which one later to avoid any spoilers though. ;) Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the first chapter! And to any of my Transformers readers that may have wandered over, I haven't forgotten my robots! It's just, well, fairies are distracting and have no concept of time...
Hoarded
One: All the Old Stories...are Wrong
All the old stories agreed that dragons kept their hoards on the tallest peaks of the most isolated mountains, and that to be worthy of seeing the fabled treasure, knights and hunters had to pass the most rigorous tests, endure the most brutal conditions, only to find themselves facing the fiercely protective dragons themselves. All the old stories said so, which meant everybody knew the difficulties despite the fact the dragons had all died four hundred years ago during the War of the Races.
And yet, somehow, Levy hadn't expected the rain.
The wind howled with all the fury of the dragon's ghost, driving the freezing rain into her eyes and lashing at her face like stinging pellets. Half-blind and mostly numb despite her layers of thick clothes, heavy and sodden from the torrent, Levy clung to the cliff face with a tenacity that would have astounded the courtiers of her life before if they could have seen her. She wasn't a knight – wasn't even a princess now that she'd abandoned her life in the tiny kingdom of Fable – she had no armor, no sword. Just enough upper body strength to slowly pull herself up the steep incline of the mountain and an innate ability to surprise.
Books! she kept reminding herself as she surged upwards another inch. Ancient books, falling apart books, books so large they can't be anything but tomes! Paper and ink and leather so old it creaks when you open the cover. Stacks and stacks of them. Hundreds- thousands! Taller than me. Books only a dragon would have!
Levy grit her teeth as she summoned all her remaining strength and heaved her small body up onto a narrow shelf, no more than two feet wide. She almost hit the crown of her head on the rock, it was so close.
She squeezed onto the ledge and lay there, curled up on her side as she gasped in cold air. It stabbed t her lungs as the rain continued to soak her through, freezing her in the high mountain air.
"Books," she mumbled as she panted, "no one alive has ever read. But me."
It felt good to just lie there, and she had to remember why remaining still at this altitude was a bad thing. The cold could be lethal this high up, and the rain wasn't helping anything.
Levy forced herself up with a groan that was drowned out by a thunderclap loud enough to set her teeth vibrating in her jaw. She was too exhausted to jump, but looked up wearily as another fork of lightning split the sky open like a curtain parting and revealing daylight on the other side.
In the near-blinding flash of light, she surveyed how much farther she would have to go to reach the top. The craggy peak rose straight up over her head, its tip iced over and sharp. It didn't look like much, but she knew it was farther than it appeared. Hanging her head just long enough to sigh, Levy hoped she had the strength left to make it.
Books, she reminded herself. Do it for the books, Lev!
She searched the narrow ledge for a better way up than the straight cliff next to her, and found the little crags and nooks she'd used to get up this far a foot away from the end of her ledge. She spared a look down, swallowing hard when she saw there would be nothing below her but a good half-mile fall, before she breathed in fresh courage and swung herself out.
The storm grew wilder, fiercer, as if it was frantic to keep her from reaching the top, but there's nothing like a human obsession when it comes to overcoming the elements, and Levy's was life-long and deeply ingrained. The storm didn't have a chance at stopping her.
Still, when she heaved herself up that last foot and fell gracelessly against the unexpected flat ground, she was surprised she'd made it.
The howl of the wind immediately dimmed, as if it suddenly didn't see the point, and Levy lay there on her stomach, panting for air with her fingers gripping the dirt instinctively, having done nothing but cling for the last day and a half. She felt strange, but was so exhausted that it took her a handful of moments to realize why.
The rain... The thought finally trickled into her mind like the water running down the bridge of her nose. It's stopped.
She forced her eyes half-open and managed to lift her head enough to see that wasn't true. If anything the downpour was heavier, the storm shaking its fist at her escape into what looked like a cave. At least she wasn't being beaten senseless by the storm anymore, she thought as she folded her knees under her and sat up. And the air was...well, not warm, but some of the bite hadn't made it past the shelter of the rocks. She was still drenched though, the water already gathering into a puddle beneath her as it ran out of her hair and clothes in rivulets, and her breath left little white clouds hanging in the air as she panted.
Lightning speared through the sky again, three successive sheets that illuminated the cave mouth behind her and painted the walls white. The cave reached deeper than she'd first thought, going straight back at least forty feet before-
Levy gasped a split second before thunder boomed down the side of the mountain like a war trumpet. The rear of the cave was mostly flat, hard to distinguish in the brief glimpse she'd gotten, but Levy knew what she'd seen.
She'd seen a door.
A door hidden at the top of the tallest mountain.
"I found it."
Her whispered words skittered over the rocky floor like small mice, noses raised and twitching in curiosity. Dangerous or exciting? Dangerous or exciting?
Both, Levy hoped.
She pushed herself to her battered feet and darted forward, her legs nearly collapsing under her twice. She caught herself on the door itself the second time, and marveled at its smooth exterior. It was well-crafted, not a chisel mark marring its cold, clean surface. In fact, the only crack she felt past the thin material of her gloves was the central seam running straight down the middle.
Levy lifted one hand away long enough to drag her quill pen out of her thin supply pack, the other pressed against the door as if she was afraid it would vanish if she let go. Then again, maybe it would. Dragons were fiercely protective of their hoards, whether it was books or gold or even people. Levy wouldn't put it past one to enchant the door to disappear in the presence of treasure hunters, even centuries after its own death. But she was no stranger to magic and the majority of its tricks.
The small, blue-haired wizard grabbed her pen with her left hand and wrote somewhat awkwardly in the air LIGHT. The letters solidified, became tangible in the air near her head, and soft, steady light glowed into existence.
"Much better," she mumbled as she stuck her quill behind one ear, slid her spelled glasses up her nose, and then placed both hands on the door again, leaning all her slight weight against it. Even if she hadn't used all her physical strength just to get up here, she never would have had a prayer of forcing it open on her own.
She craned her neck back, taking in every facet in the better light. "It's all metal!" she cried, louder than she'd meant to. The storm grumbled outside behind her. "But...it's got to be hundreds of years old if the stories I heard in Oak Town are true. How'd they make it so flawlessly...?" The metalsmiths in Magnolia, capital of Fable and seat of the royal family, had only started producing such fine works of steel in the last ten years, and even then she had seen nothing larger than the swan in midflight decorating the palace fountain.
"I always thought she was perfect, but compared to you..." Levy murmured as she stared up at the door guarding the old keep. "Your craftsman must have spent years shaping you, even if you are rather plain." She tilted her head to the side. "How did a dragon get a hold of you?"
She couldn't fathom a believable reason and decided not to waste anymore time wondering. It wasn't all that important anyway. What was important was getting inside and thawing her frozen bones by a fire.
Peering past what she saw to the magic enscrolled into the door itself, Levy set to work. There were several spells keeping her out, and obviously the one who worked them hadn't done it in any modern language. Given it was a dragon's keep, Levy had expected the key spells to be in Draconik or one of its derivatives, so she had made sure to brush up on all the variants she could find before starting up the mountain. And there were several spells with their root structure grounded in it, all in the high standard, which were easy enough to decipher, so at least she hadn't wasted her time. But the oldest, central locking spell had been cast in an ancient, human tongue. The root language of Levy's own native Mythian actually, which was fortunate or she never could have sorted it out.
"Probably thought it was being clever," Levy grumbled under her breath as she slogged her way through bad syntax and an indifferent attempt at grammar. "Using a human language to keep humans out because what self-respecting dragon would do that even if it didn't want to eat us and send us all screaming in fear of it? Though if that was its plan then it should have done a better job." She all but growled as she pulled at a poorly constructed glyph structure and accidentally strengthened the spell.
She hung her head, bumping her forehead against the floor where she'd scrunched herself up as she worked, scratching her own glyphs in the dirt to test their effectiveness against the sealing magic. Levy sat there, huddled under her cloak and its new layer of ice. "This is taking forever..."she groaned.
She lifted her head and continued her work.
The storm had dwindled to a petulant murmur by the time she deciphered the last of the spells. Heart thumping excitedly in her chest, Levy dug the last glyph into the loose dirt that had gathered against the bottom of the metal door. Levy froze, her dirt-caked gloved fingers hovering in the air as she waited for the repercussions of a wrong answer.
Nothing happened.
"Yes!" she squealed, throwing her arms in the air. She would have danced a jig across all her hard work if her legs hadn't fallen asleep half an hour ago.
Painfully, she worked her sluggish blood back into them, flinching as the frosty limbs were pinched and pricked back awake. Levy gathered her things, cramming her equipment back into her pack except for her quill. Finally, all that was left was to enact the spell.
"Right." She breathed deep, too focused on the magic to hear the ice covering her clothes snap and crackle. "Here goes everything."
Pouring her magic into her pen like golden ink, Levy carefully traced over her hastily scratched glyphs, forcing them to her will and sending them into the cracks of the ancient spells like keys into their matching locks.
There was a thump of finality that made her bones tingle when she finished the last one...
...and then the door swung open.
Levy backed up out of the way as the keep opened up before her. The door didn't make a sound. No light appeared on the far side to welcome her inside. Even the wind outside held its breath, leaving the mountain dark and silent.
A warm gust of air billowed out, and Levy closed her eyes, relaxing against it. "That feels good." She sighed. Almost as good as knowing she'd just decrypted spells specifically designed to ward off nosy little humans like her.
Not taking her eyes from the warm darkness inside, Levy flicked the nib of her quill at her solid script light spell and directed it inside ahead of her. Its glow had dwindled the longer it fed off her magic energy, but it looked unbearably bright against the blackness of the mountain.
Levy followed it inside, watchful for traps the dragon might have set before it died. She was so tired, despite the thrill pounding through her with each beat of her heart, and a jaw-cracking yawn escaped before she knew it was there.
The small woman stopped for a moment, not wanting to run into anything as her eyes were forced shut. When was the last time she'd slept? Before the storm certainly, and that felt like it had gone on for days. She knew she needed to sleep, but she wanted to find the library first.
"I'll set up camp there," Levy told herself, a smile stretching across her face so wide it hurt her cheeks. "That'll be best, I think. It's what I came for after all."
Levy made her way slowly through the long corridor of stone, occasionally directing her light through the air to get her bearings. The space was tall enough she couldn't see the roof even with her light, and as broad as two Magnolia thoroughfares, shops and all. "Definitely large enough to accommodate a full grown dragon," she murmured.
She had the general impression she was going down, although there was no obvious incline. The walls began to curve shortly, leading her in a counterclockwise spiral. Levy followed, frown deepening between her dark eyes the longer she went without seeing anything but rock. Where was the library? The legendary treasure that Oak Town's original settlers had come searching for? And if it was all a story, something made of an excessive imagination and too much ale, then why the door? Why close it with all those spells if there was nothing worth protecting on the other side?
"There has to be something," Levy told herself as she followed the gradual downward curve. "It wouldn't make sense otherwise."
At least, not to a human like her, but maybe to a dragon...?
Levy kept walking, ignoring the fear gnawing at the pit of her stomach. Or maybe that was hunger. She pulled one of her remaining oat cakes from her pack and nibbled at it, eyes on her surroundings.
She dropped the remaining half when she turned the next corner, her mouth falling open with a gasp that echoed in the newly open space. Now this is more like it!
The inside wall had fallen away, replaced by a row of squat columns holding floor from ceiling at wide intervals. She could make out dark holes in the wall opposite her, and more on what little she could see of the lower levels. Rooms, or smaller caves used as rooms was her guess. She looked forward to finding out.
The center of the mountain looked like it had been drilled out, cored like an apple. Levy walked to the edge, one hand resting on the nearest column – it had none of the metal door's smooth finery, and was hewn directly from the mountain rock – and peered down into the empty space. It didn't stretch all the way down to the base of the mountain, only a few hundred feet. Certain death to her, but not terribly high to the original occupant, Levy figured.
Her light was much too feeble to see all this, but there was something down at the bottom, a burnt red kind of glow, like from a massive fire banked for the night, and it was enough to see between the shadows that still lived in the dragon's keep.
Wow... Levy thought, the silence too oppressive for her to break. The books must be in one of those rooms. She huffed, counting at least fifteen and those were only the ones she could see. Oh, it'll take forever to search them all!
But she couldn't think of a better way, so she started down, head hanging lower than before.
The light grew stronger as she went, changed color from sleeping embers to yellow torchlight. That didn't surprise her, considering she was getting closer to whatever was glowing at the bottom of the keep.
What did was coming around another curve and finding a tiny, black-furred creature hovering off the floor on white wings, lighting torches.
Levy stopped cold. For the briefest of moments, she was convinced she was seeing things, but then the two-foot-tall...bear – it looked like a small bear with its round ears and stubby limbs – turned and saw her standing there. It jerked backward, punk dropping to the ground and shedding sparks. It saw her too!
Levy's mouth dropped open.
They stood there, staring at each other, long enough that the punk went out. Levy wasn't sure what to make of this. Was the little creature living down here? Were there more of them? And what was it? She'd certainly never seen anything like it. It looked like an animal, but it was wearing pants and there was the hilt of some kind of dagger peeking over its right shoulder. And the way it watched her, taking in her wet clothes and sagging pack, the ink staining her cheek and the dirt coating her gloves and knees, made her think it was sizing her up as well.
She opened her mouth to ask it if it could talk, if it lived in the mountain and knew where the dragon might have left all its books because she'd come such a long way just to see them, when something begun to shake down deep in the mountain.
Levy shook along with it, unable to escape the rumble that was quickly growing to a violent tremor. She lurched sideways, catching herself on a heavy column. Even that jittered beneath her throbbing shoulder and she looked up, eyes wild as she searched for signs of a cave-in.
Something soft but strong latched onto her wrist and Levy looked down to find the creature scowling at her with small dark eyes.
"You need to leave," he – the voice was undeniably male and far too deep for someone so small – told her firmly. "Now."
"But I-" Levy tried as the tremor began to slow.
The bear ignored her, dragging her back the way she'd come. He was strong for someone so small too.
"N-now wait just a minute!" Levy found her voice, dragging her heels and getting a quick jerk in response. "I didn't come all this way to get half frozen, half starved, and completely worn out for nothing! I came for the books and I'm not leaving until I-"
Another tremor cut her off, but this one was different. A sound like steel sliding over steel carried over the thundering rumble of earthen bones shaking. Metal plates slid against each other in a cascade, a whole army's worth of armor clashing together. A fist gripped Levy's heart and refused to let go. "Wha-what is that?!" She had to scream and even then could barely hear her own voice.
The bear's wings abruptly evaporated with a magic-laden poof and he dropped to the ground, dragging Levy down to a crouch. He narrowed his wide eyes at her. "Unless you plan on staying here for the rest of your life you will leave the way you came and forget everything you've seen."
Levy finally freed her wrist from his small paw. "And why would I do that, huh? It took me forever just to open the door!"
She was shouting at the top of her lungs...because there was no other way to be heard. The tremor wasn't dying out like the one before. It was getting stronger, louder, closer. It sounded like an army of metal machimas marching on them, climbing up the wall, drowning out her thoughts-
A blast of air blew upward and poured between the columns, hitting Levy in the chest with all the tender force of a war hammer. She fell backwards, somehow managing not to hit her head on the hard stone. Levy lay very still, gasping, arms held over her head as something...impossible rose up the central shaft of the mountain.
She couldn't see all of it at once it was so large, but what she could see, Levy couldn't believe. A bulk she couldn't comprehend, covered in a gleaming steely hide. Forearms as thick as century-old trees, scarred despite their heavy armor, and ending in claws that put the tallest men to shame.
And red. The red of a furnace burning, seeping out between the scales of its chest, its neck, raising fire in its eyes.
It saw her.
Levy couldn't understand – wouldn't understand what was happening. Because it was impossible.
This isn't- her brain stuttered. This can't be!
But the heat, the sound, the smell of the furnace building to a roar-
The dragon's still alive!