Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail.


Chapter 3

Bottom of the Well

Flying was so much easier when all he had to focus on was the speed aspect.

Happy was huffing and puffing by the time Erigor was in sight - or, at least, he hoped it was Erigor - his little arms and legs were shaking in exhaustion.

"Hey, Happy?"

"Aye, sir?"

"When I say, I want you to let me go, alright?"

"Aye, sir!"

Natsu grinned. What a good little partner his cat was - he didn't even question Natsu's desire to be dropped from a couple thousand feet in the air. Happy probably knew that he had a plan, anyway. Well, a kind-of plan. It was more like whim, really.

"Now!"

Happy released the hold he had on Natsu's arm, and the rose-haired mage dropped like a rock.

Until, of course, he redirected all of the magical energy he could spare at the moment to his hands and feet.

He was like a meteor, rocketing through the air faster than Erigor could hope to float. The maneuver was a serious drain on his magical energy, but hell, it was working, so Natsu was just going to ignore that little factoid. "Hey! Erigor!" Natsu roared. The man with the white hair that made him look like a grumpy puppy in the middle of a bath whirled around in mid air. Well, if Natsu hadn't known if that guy was Erigor, he was pretty damn sure now. "Heads up!" He increased the flames ejecting from one of his hands, and turned his kamikaze flight into a tight flip.

And as he flipped over Erigor, he chomped right down on Erigor's shoulder.

The bastard sure hadn't been expecting that.

He wailed like an infant that had had its bottle taken away, a look of abject horror taking over his face.

Natsu continued to flip, pulling Erigor right with him into a type of awkward body-slam right into the massive bridge beneath them. He released his grip on Erigor a split second before they smacked into the railroad, leaning into the fall with his shoulder. All of Erigor's breath whooshed right out of his chest when they collided, making a nice sandwich, with Erigor as the lunch meat, and Natsu and the bridge as the bread.

Natsu flipped off of the wheezing Eisenwald mage, a grin on his lips as he wiped a trail of blood from his mouth and chin. "I didn't know it was possible to wind a wind mage," he commented, snickering lightly.

Erigor rocked to his feet, still wheezing as he glared at Natsu.

"Who...are you?" he gasped out.

"Natsu Dragneel, of Fairy Tail," Natsu responded with a massive grin. "The guy who's gonna kick your ass." And then steal the damn flute, and snap it over his knee. He was going to take great pleasure in that.

"Natsu Dragneel?" Erigor repeated. A malicious smirk crossed his face, his eyes alight with a strange emotion. "The fire mage. Fire magic can't stand up to my wind magic!"

"Oh yeah? We'll see about that," the rose-haired mage snorted. As if he wasn't already aware that wind magic usually trumped fire magic. Of course he knew that - but ordinary wind magic couldn't even come within ten feet of the fire magic that Natsu wielded.

:Flashback:

"Igneel," Natsu whined, dropping to the ground in exhaustion. "This is stupid!"

"Stupid?!" the gigantic red dragon bellowed. He stomped right over to his adopted son, though really, considering his size, Natsu couldn't tell if he was stomping or just walking. "This is by no means stupid, runt!"

"Yes it is!" Natsu gestured towards the edge of the cliff, where he had been standing, bracing against the strong updraft of wind while sustaining the largest flame that he could. "I've been standing there for hours!"

"It's to make you stronger against the wind."

"Igneel, it's wind. It's not going to do anything."

"And what of wind mages?" the dragon asked, and Natsu fell silent. "Fire magic is powerful, but it's not all-powerful. There are elements that can weaken it, or negate it completely. Water, for example..." Igneel huffed a flame out of his nostrils, setting a small bush ablaze. With a nonchalant movement, he swiped his tail through the nearby river, a wave of water washing over the fire and snuffing it out in an instant. "Water and earth can smother fire. And wind can either fuel it, or weaken it, even put it out if the wind is strong enough."

"Okay," Natsu relented, "but this is just wind. There's no magic behind it. This isn't making me any stronger!"

"Oh?" The fin on the right side of Igneel's face flicked, like a horse's ear. A shrill screech filled the air, and a white thing dropped out of the sky. It was small, maybe half of the size of Igneel, covered in thick, skin-like scales with an elongated, furry face, bird-like feet, and feathered wings.

Its feet barely touched the dirt before a torrent of wind burst from its mouth, and on instinct, Natsu threw his hands up, conjuring a thick wall of flame between him and the attack.

The wind collided with the fire, and for a moment, it looked as if it was going to hold up. And then the wind shredded right through the flames, tearing through as if the fire was wet paper.

The wind was like a rabid shark when hitting the fire, and a hammer when it collided with Natsu. He flew right over the ledge of the cliff with a wild shriek, nothing but open air beneath him as he plummeted towards the forest below.

Igneel hummed along to an unknown tune, the white ball of fur and wind magic looking only slightly concerned when Igneel did nothing to catch the mage-in-training.

A little ball of fire shot up over the edge of the cliff, and flew at the white creature. It squawked in surprise, leaping out of the way with a flare of wings to avoid the flame.

The fire reformed into a more physical shape, a panting Natsu collapsing to his knees.

"See, he is fine," Igneel said, waving towards Natsu. "Boy, this is Tempesra. I do believe she is the first Sky Dragon you have met."

Natsu glared at the white she-dragon. She definitely looked odd for a dragon, more fur and feathers than scales and spines. But even so, he stood and bowed to her in greeting, albeit begrudgingly.

"That, Natsu, is what wind magic feels like," Igneel said. "Many Fire Dragons make the mistake of not training themselves to withstand the magics that can defeat their own. That is not a mistake I am going to make with you."

"But she beat me," Natsu whined. "I should be training with her to make myself stronger against wind, not with a cliff!"

"Stop arguing and do as you are told," Igneel growled. He glared right back at Natsu until the much smaller boy finally hissed in relent, and turned back to the cliff. He conjured a flame to hover over his head, increasing it in size until the brisk wind blowing up the cliff face wouldn't allow it to grow any more.

:A few days later...:

Natsu swallowed thickly, his palms sweating as he faced off against the much larger creature. Tempesra's wings were flared at her sides, her ears pressed back against her skull. Over the past few days, he had become accustomed to her presence, even fond of it. Her odd, bird-like features that hadn't reminded him of a dragon at all had become more natural, and he no longer made an odd face when her ears twisted this way and that in a way that Igneel's fins never could.

But now, he was really wishing Tempesra wasn't there.

The she-dragon lunged forward, a screech of challenge issued from her throat. Natsu leapt out of the way, narrowly dodging a swiping talon. He rolled as she landed and spun, a torrent of wind tearing from her maw.

On instinct, Natsu's arms came up, and he launched his own tornado of fire from his palms. The two elements slammed into one another, twisting around each other like a raging inferno.

And then the wind started to die down, and the fire slammed into Tempesra's chest. She collapsed backwards with a thud, squawking indignantly.

Natsu froze. That hadn't been what had happened earlier. "...were you going easy on me, you overgrown chicken?!" he barked.

Tempesra rolled to her feet, and swung her head around to face the rose-haired mage.

"What was that, you furless ape?" she growled in reply.

"I'M NOT AN APE!"

"WELL I'M NOT A CHICKEN!"

Igneel pressed his face into the dirt with a heavy sigh. Tempesra was young, barely older than Natsu himself was. It wasn't much of surprise that she would argue like a petulant child.

But lord, it was annoying.

At least Natsu had learned his lesson. Over the days, Natsu's flame that he held aloft had grown larger and stronger, to the point where the wind barely tugged at it anymore. Even if he hadn't realized it, he had grown to the point where even Sky Dragon magic was something that couldn't touch him. Normal wind magic would be no match for him.

At least from wind, his son was now safe.

:Flashback End:

Tempesra was a better fighter than Erigor could ever hope to be, and her magic was much more powerful. True, the last wind mage that he had fought had been Temepsra, and it had been a while, but he hadn't stopped practicing his magic since then.

Erigor threw a blade of wind right at Natsu, who sidestepped it with little more than a lift of a foot. He grinned.

This was going to be way easier than he thought.

:::With the others:::

Whoever had built the railroad hadn't had much forethought. A speeding train, rocketing over an extensive canyon, shouldn't be doing so on a railroad that curved more than the silhouette of a mountain. Erza had been forced to slow down so that the magic mobile didn't go flying right off of the tracks, the rubber wheels bouncing off of the tracks themselves already making controlling the car difficult enough.

"That idiot," Gray growled. "Why didn't he wait for us? He doesn't even know what Erigor is capable of!"

"Natsu is powerful," Erza reminded the ice mage, her eyes narrowed at the road in concentration. "Don't count him out so easily."

"Normally, I wouldn't," Gray responded. "But Erigor controls wind, and Natsu controls fire. Anybody worth even a lick of salt knows that fire can't stand up to wind for long." Well, anybody with any sort of schooling would know that, but knowing Natsu, the idiot probably thought that turning up the heat would solve the problem.

Suddenly, far off in the distance, a massive pillar of flame burst to life, twisting like a serpent and lashing at the sky. And just as fast as it formed, it dove back towards the ground, and vanished on the horizon. The tracks shook with a mighty boom, dust rising to blot out the sun. Erza grinned.

"Like I said, don't count him out just yet."

:::With Natsu:::

Natsu stood over a groaning Erigor, his body covered in burns, bruises, and scrapes. Natsu was bent over at the waist, bracing himself with his hands on his knees as he greedily sucked air into his lungs.

"Damn," he breathed, forcing himself to stand straight even as his lungs burned. "That last one sucked."

"You beat him!" Happy cheered, wrapping his furry paws around Natsu's neck in a hug. "I was so worried!"

"What the hell you stupid cat you didn't think I could beat this prick?" Natsu demanded heatedly. Even so, he brought a hand up to the blue cat's head and scratched at his forehead affectionately.

Natsu turned his attention to the skull-faced flute that lay abandoned on the tracks, blank eyes staring at nothing. He poked at it with his foot, making sure that only his sandal touched it, and not his foot itself.

"That's the flute?" Happy asked, fluttering down next to it with a suspicious glare. Natsu nodded with a hum, and the blue cat gingerly plucked it up from the ground. It didn't burn him like Natsu had described earlier, but it did carry with it an eerie feeling that set his fur on end. He didn't like it. "I'll hold on to this, okay?" Natsu smiled.

"Thanks, buddy."

"Dragon...Slayer..."

Natsu's spine went rigid at the wheezing mutter. He twisted around to face the one that had spoken. "What was that?" he growled out through gritted teeth.

"You...are...Slayer..." Erigor wheezed out through what could quite possibly be a half-crushed windpipe. "Dragon Slayer."

Happy's ears pressed flat against his skull, his tail puffed up to twice its normal size, and he backed away from Natsu, the rose-haired mage suddenly surrounded by an thick aura of malice and ill intent.

Natsu lifted his foot and pressed it against Erigor's bruised chest, right against his sternum. He pressed down hard, leaning most of his weight into the action. Erigor choked. "Don't you ever," Natsu snarled, grinding his foot harder into Erigor's chest. The man tried to cry out, tried to wail, but all that came out was a whistle of air and a bubble of blood, "compare me to those murderers." Something cracked beneath his foot, Erigor squeaked, and Natsu bared a feral grin. He loved the scent of human fear, especially since the human it came from was where all humans belonged - crushed beneath his foot.

And Erigor, looking up into the face with eyes a wicked, glowing chartreuse, eyes that had been juniper green or black, knew that he was looking into the eyes of a demon, of the devil himself. He knew that he was looking into the eyes of the End of All Things.

And as Erigor slipped from consciousness, air unable to filter into his lungs, a loud, blaring horn broke the tense atmosphere like a sledgehammer taken to the fine china.

Speeding down the tracks was the magic mobile, Erza at the head, and Gray leaning out one of the windows.

Natsu blinked, his irises slipping back into a more acceptable shade. He looked down to the unconscious man beneath his foot, a massive bruise blossoming around the edges of his sandal, and his chest dented slightly inward in a way that it probably shouldn't be. He removed his foot with another blink.

"Whoops," he chuckled, running his fingers through his dusty hair.

"You sure do go overboard," Happy laughed, approaching Natsu now that the frightening aura had dispersed.

The magic mobile slammed to a halt right next to Natsu and the fallen Erigor, and all of the occupants - except Pineapple Head, who was there with them. Weird - piled out.

"Natsu!" Erza barked, smacking the rose-haired mage upside the back of his head. "What did you do?!"

"Uh, stopped a terrorist?" Natsu responded, rubbing at the smarting area on the back of his head. Did Erza forget that she was wearing armored gloves at the moment, or did she just really not care? Because it hurt, dammit! "Y'know, my job? What Gray's pansy-ass magic couldn't do?"

"YOU WANNA GO, FLAME-BRAIN."

"BRING IT, ICICLE-DI-"

"You two aren't fighting, are you?"

"No way, Erza! We're the best of friends, the best you ever did see!"

"Aye!"

Pineapple Head was leaning out the open door of the magic mobile, a look of absolute shock spread across his face as he stared, slack-jawed, at his fallen leader. The leader that had left him to a very foul fate to complete a mission he didn't completely back anymore.

And then his eyes were drawn from Erigor and the arguing Fairies - seriously, with how they argued and acted, how had they managed to defeat them so utterly? - to a wooden stick topped with a three-eyed skull, the three eyes of said skull filled with an eerie violet light.

He was moving before he even realized that he had, and at a speed that his injuries shouldn't have allowed and definitely didn't like. His nimble fingers snatched the flute right out of the little blue cat's grip, and he was off like a bolt of lightning, his already depleted magic screaming as it was ripped from his body by the magic mobile, torn from his arm to power the damned car.

"Too slow, Fairies!" he cackled, though the words that left his lips were not said on his own accord. It was like he had taken a back seat in his own body, the movements he made largely uncoordinated and too large.

But he was off all the same, flute clutched in his hand, and a grin stretched wide across his face.

"What the hell?!" Natsu barked as the magic mobile vanished off down the track. "Why'd you bring that bastard with you?!"

"We couldn't just leave him at the train station. He was too injured, and with the amount of people there, he wouldn't receive aid until much later, possibly when it would be too late," Erza explained. "So we took him with us to treat his injuries."

"Well, look how that worked out for you!" Natsu turned to the blue cat. "Happy!"

"Aye, sir!" Happy closed his eyes, his face scrunching up in concentration. White light unfolded from his back, struggling to take the form of feathered wings. Happy's eyes snapped open with a gasp, sucking in the air that holding his breath had deprived him of. The white light fizzled out to nothing. "Sorry, Natsu. My magic's too low for another transformation so soon."

Natsu glanced to the edge of the railroad, debating if he should just throw himself off of it. But no, the others were here, now, and something told him that they wouldn't approve of his actions - or what followed afterwards.

Natsu threw his arms in the air.

Walking it was, then.

At least he didn't have to ride in the damnable contraption of death anymore.

It turned out they were closer to where the Guild Masters were meeting up than Natsu had thought. It hadn't taken too long to catch up to Pineapple Head...who was preparing to play a song on that damnable flute for Makarov.

Crap.

And then those two Guild Masters - the one that smelled like a dog, and the bald one that wore a pair of fake wings - had popped up and "convinced" them to stay put. Natsu had nearly charged right through them when they had insisted that they don't interfere - did they not realize that the situation Makarov in was really suspicious? Some half-naked kid, covered in bruises and bandages, just happens to stumble across a Guild Master in the middle of the woods, and asks if he can play him a song on a flute that looked like it came straight from hell? How were the Guild Masters not even a bit worried?

Sometimes Natsu forgot that humans couldn't smell danger. What stupid human had decided that a sense of smell wasn't important for survival?

Natsu frowned, narrowing his eyes. Something wasn't right, aside from the obvious, of course. There was something...odd...about Pineapple Head. He didn't look right, nor smell right. His scent was largely the same, but there was another overtone that was cloaking his base scent, and his eyes had an odd light to them. One that was almost violet.

"I...I can't..." Pineapple Head whispered, words that only Natsu and Makarov managed to hear, before he threw down the flute, and sat down heavily on a fallen log. His head dropped into his hands, and just like that, his scent returned to the annoying Pineapple Headed smell Natsu had become familiar with.

Natsu blinked. "Really?" he griped. "We went through all of this, and nothing?" The guy wasn't even going to do anything? "Don't tell me I rode a train for nothing." His eyes were forcefully dragged back to the flute that gave off such an odd feeling. He wasn't entirely sure why he had felt the need to look back at it, until he realized that those damnable eye sockets were glowing a sickly purple again. He didn't even had time to snarl in distaste before the flute began shrieking.

"I grow tired of your incessant babbling!" the flute roared, voices of many overlapping one another to form one demonic cry. "Chattering away...useless apes!"

The flute shot into the air and practically exploded. The little stick shouldn't have been able to produce such a large radius of damage, but trees shredded beneath the blast, entire boulders thrown clear over the mountains.

And taking the place of those shredded trees and thrown boulders, stood a gargantuan monster made of wood and rock, with three holes for eyes, and a bare-toothed grin stretching the wooden face.

'Holy...that's bigger than Igneel,' Natsu thought, his jaw dropping. Hell, if a Water Dragon stood on the end of its tail, it still wouldn't be able to look the thing in the eye.

"Holy shit!" Gray barked out, speaking what was on just about everybody's minds. While Erza smacked Gray on the back of the head out of reflex, Lucy spun around on her heels.

"Oh, look at that, I've lost my keys," she said casually, and then fainted straight away - Happy leapt on her head with a cry of "coward!" but she did not stir.

"How are we supposed to take on something that big?!" Gray continued to scream, completely ignoring the growing goose egg on the back of his head. Something caught his attention, just on the edge of his peripheral vision. He turned his attention to Natsu, whose teeth were bared in a silent snarl, his hands clenched into fists, and his entire body shaking as if thrown into the northern ocean. "...Natsu?"

'This thing...this thing was the flute...it has the same feeling, the same sickening stench...'

There was no way the flame-brain was scared, was there?

"Natsu?"

The rose-haired mage threw his arms up in the air, took a deep breath...

"THAT BITCH IS FLAMMABLE!" he roared.

Gray tripped over absolutely nothing - quite a feat, considering he had been standing still - and Erza sputtered.

"N-Natsu!"

"What?" he demanded, turning his attention briefly back to her. "It's made out of wood." As if that was the only problem at the moment. He turned back to the demon, his own grin feeling his lips away from glistening fangs. "And I'm gonna beat it up."

"That is a demon," Pineapple Head hissed, his voice quaking. "One of Zeref's!"

"Your point?" Natsu asked. Silly Pineapple Head. In pretty much all circles, he himself was considered a demon. It wasn't such a big deal - Natsu just wanted to beat it up, and save his Guild.

And if killing the demon also protected his own secret, the secret that the wooden demon seemed to be privy to, well...that was just a bonus, really. Totally not Natsu's main motivation. Nope.

Lullaby, unaffected by the squabbling of the humans near his feet, was taking great joy in pummeling the crap out of the forest around him. He could sense a human army not far off, ready to fight but unaware on what they could do against a behemoth such as himself.

Mere humans would never be able to even lay a hand on him.

"Yo!" a squeaky little voice, like that of a mouse, cried out from somewhere near him. Lullaby felt like snorting, but instead just increased his output of magical energy, enough to crush whatever chipmunk was chittering at him. Ha. Squishy, squishy humans. "BOOYAH, BITCH!"

A fist that was, to him, like the head of a toothpick, slammed into his cheek - if that toothpick had had the force of a missile behind it, and was on fire, that is. His head snapped around on his thick neck, splinters the size of logs breaking free from his face as he wailing in surprise.

Apparently, the annoying chipmunk had not been reduced to a pancake.

"Natsu, what the hell!" Gray barked when Natsu finally landed again, rolling off of his shoulder to absorb some of the impact. His hand was aching from the hit, the dark magic that clung to Lullaby's wooden skin like soap scum to a wall having burnt his knuckles. He frowned, and flexed his fingers, magic rushing to his hand in order to force the burns to fade.

The ice mage rushed up to join him, his own hand clenched in a fist and his shirt missing once again. He looked like he wanted to hit Natsu upside the head, but was refraining. Erza followed at a much more sedated pace.

"You both were taking too long to man up," Natsu responded simply, before grinning. "But now that you're here...who wants to help me with the coolest bonfire ever?"

Natsu spun around to face the wooden demon, who had recovered from the blow and set his enraged sights on the little pyro far below. Said pyro barely noted when he felt Gray's and Erza's magic fluctuate behind him, his subconscious registering that Gray was building up his energy, and that Erza had probably switched her armors. Nifty.

Natsu leapt right into action, not waiting for the two behind him as he made a beeline straight for Lullaby's face and throat. If he decapitated the thing, would it work the same as...well, anything else that lost its head?

Lullaby swiped at Natsu as he used flames to propel himself higher. He didn't even try to dodge, instead latching onto the massive arm as it swung past. Subtly adjusting the air temperature - and therefore pressure- around him to create a sort of vacuum that kept him latched to Lullaby's arm no matter how he swung it around, he darter right up the appendage as if it was a road. His arms coated themselves with flames, and right at Lullaby's shoulder, he leapt into the air, and swung his arms forward with a shout. "Fire Dragon's Wing Attack!" he barked out.

Lullaby leaned away from the attack, avoiding the decapitating maneuver only to step right into a barrage of ice arrows larger than Natsu. Even so, the Wing Attack sliced right through Lullaby's left shoulder, the arm dropping away like a dead branch from a tree.

"Ha!" Natsu cried triumphantly, flames holding him aloft as best as they could.

Lullaby reacted beyond nothing more than a squeak, his ever-grinning face turning to his dismembered arm. That grin didn't vanish, even then, and especially not when he turned to glare at Natsu.

"Do not celebrate so quickly!" the demon snarled, wooden vines and branches shooting from the socket, twisting around one another to form a new arm, while the first melted away into the earth.

Natsu blinked.

"Oh," he stated. "That...that is so cliché. I really should have expected that."

Lullaby wound up to swat at him once again, and Natsu quickly created a pit of pressure in his chest and throat. "Fire Dragon's Roar!" He released the blast of flames, focusing them into a high-powered stream that both scorched Lullaby's incoming arm, and shot him out of the way of the swipe.

Erza came riding through on a torrent of wind and ebony, membraneous wings, arms twirling to slice off the scorched arm at the forearm. Natsu squinted his eyes at the partially-burnt wood, before a grin overtook his face. Another Fire Dragon's Roar leapt up his throat, and with careful aiming, hungry licked at the stump of Lullaby's arm.

This time, Lullaby did wail, free arm coming up to clasp at the stump that burned like a sun. While he was preoccupied swatting out the flames, Natsu concerned himself with not hitting the ground head first.

"What?" Gray was asking, giant ballistas of ice set up around him, but paused in their assault. "Why did that work?"

"He's made of wood, Ice Brain," Natsu deadpanned. "There's a layer of magic protecting him. I can't burn the outside."

Erza hit the ground with a heavy thud, wings folding town at her back and sides one hand coming up to swipe a bead of sweat from her brow. "So, what you're saying..." she panted, "is that we just need to cut it open..."

Natsu blinked. "Well, no, that wasn't what I was saying, but that works, yeah." Actually, it was a better plan than he had at the moment - which was, to say, no real plan at all. He hadn't really gotten much further than realizing that the layer of tainted magic was shielding Lullaby from the full brunt of his attacks.

"So we just rip the thing open, and Natsu burns it apart from the inside out?" Gray asked.

"That's the plan," the scarlet-haired mage responded, spreading her wings and taking to the air. Gray clenched his fists with a grin, frigid air swirling around his knuckles.

"That, I can do." He, too, leapt away, back towards the ballistas, spear-sized arrows forming and readying themselves to be fired.

There wasn't much Natsu could do at the moment, other than put on a light show in an effort to distract the demon - and that was just what he did. He conjured a massive flame above his head, one that held no real power, and was only a threat to perhaps a drought-stricken field.

He hurled it at Lullaby with the most ridiculous screech he could muster, drawing Lullaby's attention from where he had been trying to swat Erza out of the sky, as if she was nothing but a gnat.

Lullaby recoiled with a wail of apprehension, bring his own arm up to block the ball of flame. It slammed into the wooden arm, fizzling out in an instant. It took a split second for the demon to realize that the ball of flame had been nothing more than a ruse, but that split second was all Erza needed - she sliced the other arm clean off. Lullaby screeched in distaste, swiveling away to protect the stump from the nearby pyro, vines twisting out of the socket in an attempt to reform the limb.

"Damn you!" Lullaby snapped, lunging forward at Erza as she made a pass by his face. Without any arms, Erza had mistaken Lullaby for less of a threat - a mistake she regretted instantly, when Lullaby head-butted her right of the sky. He lifted a foot and brought it heavily down on the ballistas.

"Shit!" Gray barked, right before Lullaby punted him into the nearby trees with the force of a rocket.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me..." Natsu grumbled.

"I grow tired of you humans!" Lullaby roared. He inhaled deeply, drawing more and more air into wooden lungs - that didn't even make sense. How did an overgrown tree have lungs? - beyond the point that should have been possible. The air around Natsu grew thinner, sucked up so quickly by Lullaby's inhale that more oxygen didn't have enough time to replaced that which was lost. How did that even work?

If Natsu didn't know any better, he'd say that Lullaby was gearing up for some type of Dragon's Roar. Hell, maybe he was - a Demon Roar, or Devil Roar, or something. Did demons have their own type of roars? If so, that was definitely what Lullaby looked like he was winding up for.

Natsu frowned, his magic twisting and roiling in his gut, nausea rising up his throat. Something definitely wasn't right, and his magic and instincts were practically screaming.

No, Lullaby wasn't preparing to Roar. No, not a Roar.

A Song.

He was a damn flute.

With a song that slaughtered those that heard it.

"Son of a..."

Natsu's fists burst into flames, a memory from long ago floating around his thoughts - a memory that had made an appearance earlier in the day, when he had been going toe-to-toe with that windbag earlier.

'Singing is kinda like wind, right?' Well, not really, but Natsu was willing to make the leap between the two.

And he had just the thing for that.

After all, it had been what he had developed during that training, besides an impressive resistance to wind techniques.

Natsu leapt into the air, the coiled muscles in his legs cracking the earth from sheer force. He clasped his hands together, a massive ball of flame roaring to life, though unlike before, this one packed one hell of a punch.

'If I let him sing that damned song...' Natsu thought. He pumped more and more magic into the ball of flame, the fire growing from a flickering red and orange, to an electric blue. He grit his teeth, his fangs lengthening, his eyes burning chartreuse. 'If he sings, everybody will die.'

Lullaby's newly-regrow arm clawed at him, slashing at the air as Lullaby's chest expanded, a thin wail beginning to released from his throat. 'My friends, my Guild...my family...all of them.' He reached the end of his magic, but it wasn't enough. He knew it wasn't. He could feel it, his instincts told him so. But there was a barrier at the end of his impressive well of magic, a stone bottom that held just a few more shallow puddles of magic. Not enough for even an Iron Fist. The thought of the barrier was...annoying.

So he punched right through it.

The well of his magic had been comparable to a pond. A sizable pond, one on the verge of being considered a lake. And beneath the barrier...

Was an ocean.

For the first time in his life, he feared drowning.

'They'll die.'

Just a pinch of the magic twisted up into his hands, just a cupful. He forced into the ball of flame, the flame that had been flickering dangerous as his magic ran low. But it burned white at that instant, looking as if Natsu's fists were encased in a star, rather than a few flames.

Lullaby screeched out the first note, sounding like nails on a chalkboard, turning to face Natsu with a smirk of triumph. He squinted at the light that greeted him in the dark sky, and for the first time in Lullaby's life, the grin was wiped from his face. 'Qravoq-ter? No...not a Qravoq-ter...' "A Qravoq?!"

'LIKE HELL I'LL LET YOU HURT THEM.' "FIRE DRAGON'S BRILLIANT FLAME!"

Natsu hurled the ball of white flame at the demon, a roar more befitting his adoptive father flying from his lips.

The ball of flame smacked right into Lullaby's face, carrying with it the concussive force of a nuclear bomb. The trees behind Lullaby were scorched away in the blast, the earth torn asunder from the incredible force. And Lullaby? He was vaporized in an instant, a horrified wail all that he managed before the demon was gone.

Natsu managed to tuck into a roll before he hit the ground, flopping on his back with a heavy gasp for air. His hands were burnt a startling red, steam rising from the super-heated skin. The flames had been so hot, hotter than anything Natsu had produced before, and he melted iron on a regular basis. It had been as if the fire in his hands really had been a star, a churning ball of plasma that he had plucked from the sky to play a hellish game of catch with.

That ocean of magic...he couldn't even sense the bottom. It seemed to extend forever, just going and going...Natsu feared that, if he fell into it, he would sink and become lost.

He was never known for being too terribly wise in his decisions, though, and sunk his arm into that magic, up to the shoulder. It latched onto him, like one million tiny hands, grasping at his skin and clothes.

An immense pain blossomed in his belly at that moment, right at his navel. He gasped sharply, turning on his side to cradle his stomach - it was as if he was on a boat in the middle of an ocean during a hurricane, but one thousand times worse. He felt like an ice pick was being driven into his brain, and he felt every agonizing beat of his heart in his chest. Everything hurt, from his nails, to his teeth, to his spine.

He pulled his mental arm from the ocean at the bottom of the well, the magic doing its best to cling to him. For a second, the magic resisted his retreat, and tried to pull him deeper, tried to suck him right into the ocean. But he managed, he won, and he was free. For the moment, anyway.

The ocean surged upwards in small swells, pushing itself towards the hole in the barrier, searching with tiny fingers. He picked up the nearest bit of destroyed barrier, and slammed it down on the hole. There wasn't enough to completely plug it, but it was enough - only a few small gaps remained, where little bits of the magic squeezed through. Not enough to pull him through. But the ocean beneath bucked against the feeble barrier, the stone twitching and jerking with each concussive hit.

The barrier wouldn't hold.

'He said "Qravoq,"' Natsu thought, focusing on breathing through the pain that was slowly beginning to fade now that he was largely cut off from the ocean. 'Not "Qravoq-ter." He wouldn't make that mistake, unless...' Unless he was no longer a Qravoq-ter. Which meant...well.

Which meant he had finally reached Manifest.

Crap.

The ocean kicked at the barrier.

'So little time,' Natsu thought. 'I have so little time, until...' He didn't want to leave his Guild, his family. He really didn't. He had, honestly, thought that this point would never come. It had been so long, and he had always thought he would feel when he was close to reaching this point. He also had never expected to become so attached to a bunch of humans of all things. But here he was, loving a bunch of intelligent apes, and in one hell of a bind. 'There is no time.'

"Yo, Natsu!" a voice called, right before Happy dropped down on his shoulder, tears in his eyes and a wail escaping him. He had worried, worried more than ever before for Natsu, while the pyro had fought a demon, and the cat had been able to do nothing. "Natsu, man, that was awesome!" Gray called as he and the others ran up to him. Gray, the icicle-idiot, offered a hand, and pulled the still-sore mage to his feet.

Everybody was ecstatic, gushing over the power of the Brilliant Flame, congratulating the three fighters on the defeat of one of Zeref's creations. But Natsu hardly heard them.

'I'll make time,' Natsu thought, a small smile forming when Erza affectionately hit him upside the back of the head. 'They're family, after all.'

But soon, he would have to leave. He had reached Manifest, sure, but he was all-too willing to ignore that. For now. It wouldn't last forever, he knew.

The ocean slammed against the barrier, the heavy stones jumping. A few shook loose.

Until that point, though, he would make his own time.


Are y'all confused yet? GOOD. That's the point. I'm sure many of you have already guessed what's going on, but still, I want it to remain a confusing mystery for the rest.

However, I am willing to explain this: The Manifest thing is the reason behind the difference between "Qravoq-ter" and "Qravoq." Qravoq-ter is like a child of what Natsu is, and Qravoq is the word for the actual creature. The "-ter" comes from the word "Terda," which translates to "manifest." So, an easy way to understand it is

Qravoq-ter = Child/Newborn/Growing Power

Terda = Puberty/Maturity/Reach Full Power

Qravoq = Adult/True Power

There'll be more explain eventually, of course.

Question: Do you guys like having the different, strange language in here? It's never going to become a big focus - like there won't be entire conversations in it or anything - but there will be words used here and there, because it's an entirely different culture - it's to be expected that they will have a different language. I'll eventually get to the point where I'll include full translations of whatever word is used at the end of chapters, probably, and I'll probably keep it for the rest of the story, but I just wanted to know what y'all thought about it.

Boom chapter done yo.