AN: Okay so here we are again, pardon the delay, I haven't had access to the internet over the weekend. Anyway, here it is; the next "exciting" installment. You know, I was actually thinking of ending it here, but while writing this I ended up carrying on, so there will be another chapter or three to follow. Also, there are going to be more character deaths, brace yourselves, mkay?

BTW, I don't own Fairy Tail or any of it's characters, I just use them for funzies.

Chapter Four: Ice-Make: Ranpādo

Wind whips the leaden wave tops on a vast rainy lake. The travellers are rowing across in an open longboat, aided by a tattered lateen sail. Juvia mans the steering oar at the stern while Gray broods in the bow. He feels like an imposter in their eyes. The boat pulls into a long narrow waterway with granite cliffs on either side. Moving through swirls of fog, they beach the boat and step out onto a craggy shore. Wakaba leans over and kisses a rock.

"Galuna Island!" he exclaims excitedly.

The travellers descend a mountain pass and emerge through a fog of cloud into a grey and cheerless region. Fire- blackened trees dot the barren landscape. As they reach the flatlands, the Galuna Islanders instinctively pick up the pace. Gray slows to inspect the weird surroundings. Juvia trots past him.

"Come on. Don't dawdle here, Gray."

"Is the whole kingdom like this?" Gray asks as he falls into step with Juvia.

"No. This is just close to the lair. Keep moving."

"Where?" Gray looks around with new interest

"Over there. Doesn't matter. We're in no danger if we just pass through quickly." Whispers Juvia hurriedly.

Gray stops. High on the slope beside them is a gaping fissure, "I see it. Let's have a look."

"No!" shouts Juvia quietly but Gray is already toiling up the incline.

"Wakaba! Makarov! Help!" The travellers turn to see what the matter is.

Gray approaches the lair, pausing beside a wooden post with iron manacles dangling from it. He fingers them thoughtfully. Makarov, Wakaba and Juvia rush up behind him, their faces drawn with worry.

"Look, you don't have to do this. We know you're a fine young magician. None better. There's no need to prove it to us," stammers Wakaba over his pipe.

"Are there other entrances?" Enquires Gray, brows furrowed in thought.

"No. One's enough," replies Juvia

"Come on. The road's this way. We'll tell everybody how close you got," exhaling a lungful of smoke through his clenched teeth.

"No smoke. How do you know it's in there?" smirks Gray as he asks in his typical cool manner.

"Don't be a fool. Come away now and live to tell about it," says the Old Man. Instead, Gray starts into the crack. Wakaba and Makarov hasten away, but Juvia lingers, staring after Gray in mounting frustration as Gray probes further and further into the lair. She picks up a fistful of stones and throws them at him.

"Don't! You're going to die! You mustn't die!" Juvia shouts after him but Gray is lost in the gloom. She flees, with one backward glance of uneasiness. Gray puts his hand on the rugged wall: the rocks are hot to the touch. Something glinting on the floor catches Gray's eye: a black ivory disk, a demon scale. It flashes the colours of the rainbow as Gray examines it. All at once the ground shudders; chunks of rock fall from the ceiling. A hue of green light glows in the depths. Gray staggers out of the fissure coughing and gagging in a swirl of smoke. There is no sign of the Galuna Islanders. He throws down his pack, climbs onto a huge boulder and surveys the massive cliffs rising behind the lair. He grasps the pendant and closes his eyes.

"Now, I'll show you my power! Ice-Make: Ranpādo!" He shouts at the top his lungs. Suddenly, shooting up from his feet, a massive wall of ice forms, blocking the crevice and at the same time, slamming into the other side of the cliff, with a thunderous splitting sound, the entire top of the cliff pitches forward and topples onto the lower half of the mountain, sweeping tons of debris into the air. Boulders the size of houses bound down the mountain toward the magician. Eyes wide with awe, he turns and runs for his life. Even as he careens down the slope, chunks of rock rumble past. One catches him at the knee and sends him flying. He covers his head and joins the landslide.

Finally the dust lifts and he finds himself in a gully face to face with the cowering Galuna Islanders. They look with real fear at the man who just conjured up an icy apocalypse. Tattered and torn, covered with dirt, Gray climbs up out of the shelter for a look at his handiwork. The territory has been drastically transformed: the demon's lair is now buried beneath hundreds of tons of rock-solid ice and broken granite. The Galuna Islanders look upon the new landscape with stupefaction. Gray closes his eyes and grins a triumphant split-lip grin that fails to win them over. Presently they back away and run off down the trail, Juvia in their midst. Gray's grin fades.

The Galuna Village is little more than a rough and ready collection of thatched huts and mud-daubed outbuildings surrounded by cultivated fields. Dogs sleep in open door- ways; chickens peck around the communal well - but there are no people in evidence as Juvia and her company troop into town. Juvia trots across the square and enters a deserted blacksmith shop.

"Juvia is home! Father? Hello?" She goes over to the forge. Hot coals are burning. She becomes aware of a sound - voices - chanting. She walks across the square toward the voices. She is joined by Wakaba, Makarov and the other travellers, all of them puzzled by the desolation. As they approach the farmhouse hall the voices grow louder. They seem to be singing. The main doors open briefly and three villagers scamper out, dripping wet and wrapped in white muslin. Juvia and her companions look at each other in astonishment.

In a wooden cistern in the middle of the hall a woman is being held under water. After a few moments she is pulled to the surface by a large and imposing man whose appearance is peculiar in the fact that he looks quite feminine: Hoteye, a monk. His outfit consists of a loose black shirt, with light sleeves adorned by a series of dark merged rhombuses, a large, white collar closed on the front going down to cover his shoulders and a sash tied around his waist, visible under it, and simple light pants tucked inside light boots, with the parts circling his calves being reminiscent of leg warmers. Gathered around him are the missing villagers, every man woman and child, here to be baptised in praise of love.

"Now are you cleansed of your sin! Now are you born again, purified in spirit, into Love!" Shouts Hoteye. The travellers enter and mingle with the congregation. Juvia scans the crowd until she locates her father, Byro Cracy, a tall and muscular man that sports white hair with most of it slicked back and having numerous spiky strands pointing backwards, and some strands over his forehead. He has grey eyes and prominent cheekbones. He's overjoyed at her return and gives her a hearty embrace.

"Welcome back, my son!" He looks around suspiciously at the word 'son.'

"Father, what are you doing? Have you all lost your minds?" asks Juvia.

"Some have." He points to the monk, who is dunking a screaming infant and carrying on about the Saint of Love. "It's this monk. He can read and write, and talk too, I'm afraid."

"And they listen?"

"Shh! They think this a holy place."

"This is the storeroom. What kind of welcome is this? I've got news of the demon-slayer and news of the demon," says Juvia in growing frustration.

"You were brave to go, you and your friends. But nobody cares. Listen - he knows what they want to hear," shrugs Byro. Hoteye strides back and forth before the assembly in an inspired state.

"The man who walks with love is not a man to fear a demon: You say you are preyed upon by a foul beast. Yes, but what is the nature of this beast? It comes to you black scales and horned head, does it not? It brings destruction, does it not? And it lives under ground. This is no demon. This is hatred!

"Whoever it is, he's dead," shouts Gray as he steps into the hall, tattered, bedraggled and triumphant.

"Nay, brother! It is not as easy as that. Walking with Love, to be sure, but also prayer and confession. These are the arms by which hatred may be put down," says Hoteye dismissively.

"You're talking about emotions, friend. None of that has anything to do with what I, Gray Fullbuster, have already achieved." He marches to the centre of the gathering.

"You brought this stranger?" murmurs Byro to Juvia.

"Silver's apprentice and heir. He's a braggart and a hot-head, but it doesn't matter."

Gray continues, "People of Galuna Island! Send a messenger to the king. Deliora is dead. Crushed by the power of the ice and magic! Laid low by ancient wisdom. Dropped into the Abyss by mystical practice."

"Spoken like a deluded fool. Every word as ne'er-do-well as it is false!" Shouts Hoteye, holding his palm outward, "Rikiddo Guraundo!"

"Ice-Make: Furoa! He gestures boldly and simply freezes the floor. The holy man stumbles and slips as he scurries back. A hush falls upon the congregation as Gray basks coolly in the ambience.

A procession of curious villagers winds its way into the Bad Lands. They gather on a cliff overlooking the demon's lair. They stand there for a long time, a cold wind whipping their garments, trying to understand what's happened. The monk is mightily displeased.

"Praise the God of Love!" warbles Hoteye.

"Your god had nothing to do with it." Snaps Juvia, more proudly than intended. Indeed, Gray's act is already the stuff of legend.

"We saw it with our own eyes. He flew to the mountain top. Giant wings of ice! He brought forth a raging avalanche of justice. I saw it!" says Makarov boastfully.

Some of the younger villagers scamper forward to the spot where the cave had its opening. With yells and whoops they beat the ground with clubs. In the crowd Byro begins to smile, then to laugh. Soon he leads the villagers in a tumultuous cheer. Hoteye and some of his converts drop to their knees and pray.

The inhabitants of Galuna Village have decked out the town square and are making a night of it. By torchlight they dance merrily to jigs and reels provided by the local fiddlers. Ale flows freely from oak casks. Juvia is kneeling before a trunk full of women's clothing in her house. She pulls out a long pretty blue dress, goes to a crude mirror, and holds it up against her body to gauge the effect. Her father comes up behind her. He is angry and frightened.

"Put that away. What if you were seen?"

"Juvia is going to be seen. Juvia wants to be seen… by Gray," she adds quietly to herself, "Tonight the world finds out that you never had a son."

"No, you mustn't do that. It's too soon. We've got to think about this, we've got to make a plan."

"Father: the danger is over." She says stubbornly.

Byro sits on the bed and puts his head in his hands, "I know. What am I going to say to my friends who still mourn for their lost girls?"

"You'll say you did what you had to. This is a time for celebration - and forgiveness." She adds in her reassuring tone. He looks up at her, trying to imagine what it's going to be like having a daughter.

Gray is surrounded by a crowd of wide-eyed kids and not a few adults, in his usual cool and aloof manner, entertaining them by ice sculptures and freezing their drinks. Presently he feels the attention of his audience shift away to someone standing behind him. He turns to find a shy but determined Juvia, now in her true form; a slender, young woman with blue hair, dark blue eyes, pale skin and a curvaceous figure, letting her hair fall in thick waves past her shoulders. She is sweetly decked out in her blue frock. A buzz goes through the crowd. Juvia blushes and wavers: she seems ready to bolt for home. But Gray takes her by the hand, and with conspicuous decorum leads her to the dance, causing Juvia to blush even harder. It's forward, back and around sixth-century style: the young demon-slayer can't take his eyes off his partner. But she's too shy to return his gaze.

"Looks like you've been up to a little sorcery yourself," he chuckles quietly. Juvia doesn't know what to say. "Or is it witchcraft?" She still doesn't reply. It's all she can do to keep on dancing.

"Is something wrong?" he asks sincerely.

"I think it was much easier being a boy," she says, blushing again, but looking him directly in the eye.

Byro and Wakaba stand on the side-lines, watching the young couple step to the music.

"The mind-boggling thing is, she was twice the man of anyone else in the village. Now she's twice the woman," says Byro in disbelief.

"Would that I had been as clever as her father," Wakaba adds grimly.

"Come now, Wakaba. Don't begrudge a life spared."

"I begrudge nothing. But I wonder at what we have seen and how it was done."

"You were there."

"I saw what I saw. But this child was barely ready to carry his father's chamber pot. Isn't it strange that at the very moment the beast is put down we should have a holy man here in the village?"

"You don't believe that emotion and love rot, do you?"

"Love is mysterious!" snaps Wakaba defensively.