Hi. If you haven't read Bred-in-the-Bone, the prequel to this, now would be a good time :)


A hunk of bone fell from the sky and crashed to the ground outside of Natsu's cave. Natsu stared at it while his nose whiffed almost involuntarily. It smelled like imps and like Zeref. It smelled like Tobach. And...

He stood. The ground beneath his feet rumbled and Natsu had to promptly sit back down again. The stone in the center of his cave burgeoned to the point of comedy and then exploded, large chunks of brimstone hitting the ceiling and the surrounding walls. A wave of yellow and white bone spilled from the gouge in the earth. He watched it with an iron-hard jaw and tense muscles.

The bones scattered every which way and kept going and going like someone had taken a soda and shook it roughly before taking the cap off. Natsu wondered if they'd fill his cave entirely. Some hit his feet and he commanded himself not to step backwards. Any movement at all would be a show of weakness for the Queen of Bone.

The smell was so overwhelming he was dizzy. Dry rot and sweet decay. Wave after wave of it. He clenched his fists and arrested his breaths in a small attempt to manage it.

It still snuck down his throat somehow.

Finally, the clatter of bone began to quieten and the pile, four inches over Natsu's toes, stopped growing. Just the top was pushing upwards now, like the world's most grotesque mole was burrowing her way out.

Bones burst into the air and the Queen of Bone came free, hands first, nails pink and healthy, then her arms. The crown of her head came up next. Wheat-yellow hair glistened in red firefly light and Natsu felt dread. He didn't want to see her pretend to be Lucy. He didn't. And he did. And that terrified him.

Despite his rules, Natsu stood and took a step back. Maybe distance would help him think more rationally.

When the Queen's face emerged, her skin was healthy and bright. Her eyes showed themselves to be a warm brown. It was the right shade, and they even danced in the right way.

Natsu desperately searched for ways that they were different.

He got his wish a moment later when that Lucy fraud stood nude from her bone pile and walked gracefully over the shifting ground to his side. There was a gaping hole in her chest where her heart was and no matter what the queen did, she couldn't fill it completely for more than a moment. The flesh would rot and curl away again, black, as surely as a harvest would die. It was horrific. He kept staring at the naked flesh. It made him feel sick. Good. That was good. If he was feeling sick, he wasn't longing.

"It's been a long time, Natsu. Don't you have a kiss for you long lost lover?" She leaned in, the replica of Lucy's mouth pursed. Natsu staggered back and the queen laughed with Lucy's voice. Mean, though. She sounded like the monster she was.

Natsu found his tongue. "What are you doing here?"

"I heard you say if I should like to torment you, to come and do it myself. I couldn't resist the invitation."

Angry, he curled his hands into fists tight enough that they ached. I knew it. They didn't get second chances in Hell. They got blood and sadness and frustration. "Why do you play these games?"

"Because you'll play with me. Because when you wake your body is excited and your mind is revolted. Because your base and easily manipulated. Especially when your murderous brother isn't around to slap my wrists and tell me no."

Natsu looked around, looking for Zeref without meaning to.

The Queen laughed. "If I told you he was protecting her? Would you believe me? Would you think that sweet?"

Natsu scolded himself for giving her even that small win. "Enough with the games. Either kill me or leave me be."

The Queen only smiled. "She'll think you're a prince, you know? That's what the Gleaner told her lion and that's what he'll tell her. Little princeling End. As if your brother is king. Soon she'll know you're a prince of nothing."

"Enough is enough!" Fire whipped around him, scorching everything it touched. The fireflies zipped through it and drank it down, greedy. When they were through, they pulled at the Queen of Bone's hair and burned it from her head to make her look less like Lucy. They grabbed her cheeks and made them bubble and scab. They tore her flesh. Natsu watched it all, he made himself. Her skin melted and bone and coldness took its place. It was gruesome and terrible and by the end of it, he knew it wasn't at all what he thought he needed. He felt like screaming.

Uninjured, the Queen brushed the fireflies away. Some died right there, turning to bone and joining her pile, while others suffered much worse deaths, slow and painful as half of their skin rotted and the bones fell away. Torsos were exposed, femurs and ulnas. She was remorseless. She took a shiny piece of mirror from her pocket and handed it over.

"What is that?" Natsu tried not to listen to the dying fireflies.

"Think of who you want to see and you'll glimpse them," she told him.

Though he knew it was just another way of tormenting him, he took the mirror and thought of Lucy.

Its surface fogged, and then Natsu saw her face, plain as if she were in front of him. Her hair was whipped back over her shoulder and she clung to Loke's shoulder hard. They were moving quickly. Sliding. Coming down a tunnel Natsu recognized too well. His first few days in Hell, he, too, had stumbled upon those underground mazes.

"A gift befitting his highness," the Queen mocked. "May he watch until she's been snatched and her bones are cleaned. May he look on with horror, unable to turn away when her baby is taken from her womb, kept alive but gnawed on whenever I see fit.

"May he then suffer, wizened to his ignorance, so when I come to collect what is mine, your bones will be drenched in your misery." She was losing the remainder of Lucy's façade at an alarming rate. Her hair withered and turned from wheat gold to the grey-brown of rotting water lily leaves, her eyes got rheumy and white as the dead's did, though they never turned unseeing, she watched him, judging his reaction when her mouth got limp and sagged and her skin drooped, then sloughed off to reveal white-yellow bone beneath.

Not all of her teeth were left, some had fallen out centuries ago, molars and incisors. She never bothered to replace them, though she must have an army of them laying about. Natsu looked away from them.

"Well, Prince of Nothing, have you nothing to say?" she jeered.

Natsu kept his face stoic. Any sign of emotion was a sign of weakness.

It was an effort in vain. She knew anyway, she always did. She grinned as much as a woman with only a quarter of the skin on her face could and returned to the top of her bone mountain. "Great Prince." Her bow was mocking, too. Natsu didn't care. He watched until she had sunk into her bone pile completely, and then that pile retreated. Even Tobach's bone was gone when she was through; she always took her dues.

There was something happening on the mirror but Natsu didn't want to see. He dropped it and it broke into hunks of sharp glass. He turned away from them and summoned the injured fireflies to his side. There were three in total. He held them in his hands and called the most violent fire he could. They burned to ash in a blink, out of their misery.


Lucy's ears popped twice more before the tunnel started leveling out and she sensed an end to their fall. Holes opened in the ceiling where she could see upwards in short bursts. She was going too fast to make much sense of her surroundings. She changed her perspective and looked down and had her suspicions confirmed, she could see the end, a hole in the smooth tunnel, at the bottom of which was some kind of greasy grey stone. And it was fast approaching. If they hit at this speed, they could easily injure themselves. Or the baby. She didn't even want to think about that.

She tried to slow herself down and earned blisters on the tips of her fingers for her efforts.

Loke seemed to realize the same thing she did and sacrificed the skin on his hands and the leather on his boots so she didn't have to. "Hold onto me," he commanded, pushing against the tunnel with all of his strength. Lucy clutched his shoulder for dear life. He didn't gasp or yell when his skin started to peel but Lucy imagined that it was painful.

Despite his best efforts, they were still going too fast when the tunnel spat them out. Lucy closed her eyes turned her shoulder, so she fell on her side, and Loke curled around her so she fell on him and not on the ground. When they hit, they bounced, and though she prepared herself, she never felt any pain. At least, not the kind that was associated with falling on stone at thirty kilometers an hour. She sunk into something spongy and bounced back out again. That was fine, but then in place of that blunt-force pain, her skin stung. Like bees were poking her.

Lucy opened her eyes and tried to understand what was happening. Loke was finally yelling and pushing her up. She scrabbled to her feet. The ground was soft and her steps were messy and truncated. She'd go forward only to have the ground buckle under her and she'd have to go back, but backwards wasn't any better. She stepped onto a soft spot and fell. Her legs blazed. She yelled and hopped back to her feet. Loke was waiting. He took her hand and pulled her forward so fast, she couldn't keep up. She fell again; tears sprung to her eyes. Loke lifted her and carted her to his destination. Solid ground.

Lucy got her feet under her just as soon as she could and looked down. She had golden burs jammed into her skin. She picked one out and it was like pulling away a needle. Blood welled up and dried almost immediately. She felt better afterwards, but the bur wriggled in her hand. She screamed and dropped it. It hit the ground and cracked open and a maggot-like creature the size of a June bug larva and the colour of a rotting banana squirmed out. It wriggled away from her and towards the thing they'd landed on. Lucy could see now that it was the body of a great worm-like thing.

All at once, her skin crawled. She started batting off the burs madly. Her lungs were locked in a vice and all she could do was suck in short, hectic breaths. She stomped on one of the larvae. It popped like a snail underfoot, brown goo shooting out. Lucy did it again, though it made her squeamish.

They were all over her legs and her arms and her sides, in her hair and on her neck. Each time one fell, it burst open like it'd needed blood to germinate and crawl out, a legless horror for her to crush.

She was lifting her foot for what must have been the thirtieth casualty when a wet sliding noise came to her ears accompanied by a low growl.

"Lucy," Loke stopped batting off his own burs so he could warn. She looked up. And up. And realized that the thing that she thought was dead was nothing of the sort.

It was a worm in every sense of the word, complete with thick body segments and bristly chaetae. The only difference Lucy could spot was at the tips of its chaetae, it had thousands more of those bur-type things, and its eyes, which were large and black and intelligent by the flickering light Loke had summoned.

Lucy stepped back and it looked down under her feet, where she'd killed many of its young. Its gash of a mouth opened and she saw jagged sharp teeth. Its body coiled as if getting ready to strike. Loke took Lucy's hand and together they started to run.

The ground rumbled when the worm slithered after them too fast. It hit rocks and those rocks burst apart as if they were porcelain and not granite. Its body scored the ground.

Lucy's legs were still rubbery from her last run through Hell. She couldn't keep this pace up for very long at all.

"Just a little further," Loke said like he'd read her mind. "We're almost there."

She searched for the relief he'd spotted. There was the black shine of water ahead and in that water was a boat. A large River Queen style without any apparent oars. It had a wooden plank down on the stone as if it waited for passengers.

The worm snapped at her feet and Lucy lengthened her steps, uncaring whose boat that was or what she was going to do once she was on it. It looked like it could be salvation and so it was.

Loke pushed her onto the plank first. Her feet smacked the boards and the wood bowed under her. The worm screamed again and lunged for Lucy. She fell forward to avoid being its meal and landed on the deck on hands and knees. Loke came with her. The worm hit the side of the boat and the entire thing listed dangerously, water slapping at its sides and even coming in.

The worm reared up to attack again but the plank fell away into the water and the boat shot forward, out of range. The worm raged and Lucy watched it consider giving chase. It would not enter the water, though.

She kept her eye on it until the boat dipped around a stalagmite and she could see no more, then she deigned to survey her surroundings.

Silver lights hung off ornate bannisters to keep Hell's dark and cold at bay. The wooden deck beneath her back was worn by millions of shoes, and at the centre of the boat was a steering wheel that turned without the prompting of any being.

Scared, Lucy pushed herself to her feet and did a little spin to get a better idea of what she was dealing with. She stopped halfway, attention snagged by a wall of windows behind the steering wheel. When she peeked through, there were two tables set up, upon which was plate after plate of food, stacked high and steaming, a full-course meal. Glazed chicken and stuffed figs, roasted mushrooms and sweet peppers sprinkled with something that made Lucy's stomach grumble. Cucumber and avocado salad, baked spaghetti squash and turnip, fried cauliflower. And the desserts. Chocolate torts, and crème brûlée and grapes so ripe, they were sticky sweet.

Lucy pressed against the window. Loke grabbed her wrist. "No."

"But I'm hungry." There was a door. And a latch somewhere. Just a little left. She reached.

"Lucy."

"I'm hungry," she insisted and somehow managed to break his hold. She opened the door and smells assailed her. Sweet and savoury and spicy. God, she'd never been so hungry.

Loke put himself directly in her way when she reached for the chicken. "You can't eat this food."

Lucy stretched around him, grasping. "But—"

Loke plucked the chicken out of her hand and dropped it onto the floor. Lucy followed it down and tried to grab it. It slid through her fingers, slippery and wet. Loke stepped on it and it squelched. Abruptly, Lucy's mind cleared and she saw the food for what it was, though she couldn't identify it. It was a green mass of slime, most like algae, if she had to put a name to it. It smelled like a sewer and the slime coated her fingers.

Lucy whimpered and swiped her hands over the ground to try to clean them. She touched something warm and soft, like a living body. She was confused at first, there didn't seem to be anything beneath her, but then the floor moved and she yelled again, jolting upright and going right for her whip. Her fingers fumbled as she watched a creature unfold itself from the floor. It was wood-brown and creaked every time it moved, its limbs long and tree-like, its eyes as black and as emotionless as jet stones.

"Does our meal offend you?" Its voice snapped like tree limbs. "We're told this is what humans like to eat. And everyone eats it. Like pigs. Gorge and swallow and hiccup like nasty little swine. Eat, human."

Lucy didn't know what to do. She backpedaled and hit the buffet table. It rocked back and a few plates fell and shattered on the floor. More creatures unearthed from nooks she didn't know were nooks until they were empty and black eyes peeped at her from every direction. She had a ludicrous thought that went something like, is the entire boat living?

Loke stepped beside her and put his side against hers; she felt more stable after that. "Who are you?"

"The Queen's ferrymen," said a voice to Lucy's right. She whirled on her heel and found a creature disentangling himself from the boat. It was portly but otherwise, it looked identical to the first that appeared.

"The Queen of Bone?" Lucy squeaked.

"There is only one queen in Hell," the first replied.

She had to get off the boat. She lurched for the door. More ferrymen showed themselves, blocking her way. They were small, as tall as her last rib, but there was something deranged about them. Not that she could place it exactly. Their three long fingers? Their bottomless eyes? Their thin lips, like cracks in tree bark? Or the way they reached for Lucy, cold hunger in their eyes?

"You won't leave," said the first ferryman.

"There's no swimming in the River of Forgetting," whispered another from above.

"There is drowning—" said another.

"And there is howling—" added one from behind.

"And there is deadening," said one right below Lucy's foot.

"And there is forgetting." There was a pause of silence, and then,

"There is no escaping, though."

"You'll—"

"Die."

"It's best to submit. You'll see the queen. She's saved you," the first ferryman spoke again. "You owe her that much respect."

"And a boon."

"A bone to pick her tooth, maybe, even," said someone else to chortles of laughter. "This one." Someone grabbed Lucy's pinky finger and wrenched on it. She imagined her finger coming straight off, and the Queen of Bone cleaning it with long, jagged teeth meant for such things. She pulled her hand up to her chest with a squeak.

"Or the child. She loves children."

"Tasty. Tasty little feet. And eyeballs," glowed a ferryman on Lucy's left. One beside him nudged him hard.

"Those are the parts she feeds to us."

The first ferryman jostled the second. "The Queen loves the toes and the eyeballs. She told me herself. Succulent."

"She did not." More shoving. And more ferrymen were getting involved, until there was a small knot in front of Lucy pushing back and forth, back and forth, with little regard for their ship or their food. So many had left their posts, there was now a hole in the hull, and black sludgy water was slowly seeping in. It scared Lucy to look at it, it reminded her of the night sky, but not the sky that could be seen from a field, the kind that would surround you if you were alone in space, without a star in reach. It made her feel alone and empty.

"Don't touch it." Loke pulled her back from a puddle. The ferrymen didn't care, they rolled right through it, splashing black water everywhere. Anyone it touched either moaned with pain or pleasure. Lucy didn't know what was happening, what the water was doing to them, but it scared her. She stated the obvious,

"We have to get out of here."

Loke looked for an exit and pointed to where they'd come in. The floor beyond was patchy, holes opening up to the water below, but it was their best bet. Lucy went first, wading out through the now-raging war and racing to the railing. It was hard to see outside the circle of light but she thought she saw rocks on either side of the river. The only problem was that it was so far away.

They hit a rock underwater and jostled. A bit of that midnight water splashed up and touched Lucy's palm. She was thrown into a memory that wasn't hers, though she was in it.

She recognized it immediately, the scene had haunted her dreams. She looked wrathful, staring down Jackal. He was scared, she could feel it, even if she didn't know it at the time. Or if I didn't care, Lucy mused darkly. She would have done anything that day.

She watched with great fascination and horror as her magic lashed out and ended his life. For an instance not nearly long enough to call a second, she was Jackal. She was watching Urano Metria barrel down on her and she was drawing in a choking breath and she was burning from the outside in, turning charred, and then flaking to ash so small, only the wind could pick her up.

Terrified, Lucy gasped and brushed the water from her hand, thusly flinging away the memory. Another drop came for her, though, and she was pushed back down into a dream-like sequence.

She was under a bridge. She turned her head and watched a version of Lucy pick herself up out of the rubble. Real Lucy recognized this day, too. This was the day she killed Akio. This wasn't really the demon, though, not precisely. This was one of her clones.

Dream Lucy pulled back Sagittarius' arrow and loosed. It slammed through Akio as merciless as she'd ever seen. The regret hadn't come until after. When she had a moment to replay it all in her mind. She got over it, it was necessary, otherwise, Akio would have killed her. This memory, though, painted her as a monster. The demon, like Jackal, was frightened, Lucy could feel it, her heart hammered in the same tune. She felt the arrows hit her chest, full of magic and killing power, and she felt the demon wheezing and shuddering. Death throws. It was unnerving to die.

"Lucy!" Loke jarred her out of the memory and Lucy remembered that she was in Hell, not in Magnolia, and she was on a living ship. She was standing in the glow of lamps that were actually, likely, creatures if she looked, and Loke was with her. Everything else was the past. She focused on her spirit. His eyes were stretched wide and he wasn't gaping at her.

She was reticent to see what this new threat was because every one seemed worse than the last but she had to.

Lucy let her eyes focus beyond the bow of the boat. Everything was black, black, black and blacker, the farther out she looked, but her ears did solid by her. They were filled with the lap of water against the boat, and, more than that, the rush of water hitting ground, like that which fell over a waterfall.

"We need to get off this boat," Lucy reiterated and hunted for a way. The current was pulling them execrably forward. She didn't think they were strong enough to swim in it if they jumped. Besides, if they did, what other effects would the water have on her?

There was a ruckus behind her. Lucy had almost forgotten about the ferrymen, and they had almost forgotten about her. She'd caught their attention again, though, and they'd stopped fighting with each other. Some were missing limbs and eyes and hunks of their wood-like skin but they didn't bleed. They barely even showed signs of injury, for that matter. They trekked forward, looking more malicious than they had before, muttering amongst themselves the same word. Lucy strained to hear.

"Faster. Faster," they chanted, and when the boat jolted towards the waterfall, Lucy understood why.

"You'll kill us!"

"The Queen has no need for the living," said the nearest ferryman.

Lucy's mind whirled, her body, though, was already deciding what it wanted to do, pulling out her whip. She'd take her chance with the water if she had to.

The railing was smooth; she used it to boost herself up. Once she was precariously balanced, she got out her whip and hunted for the shadow of a stalagmite or something that she could wrap her whip around.

There was a lot of blank, open space, starless night. The waterfall rushed in her ears, they were so close. Loke was at her back; she felt him gather magic and prepared herself for the drain on her strength. His light ignited the night and Lucy saw the grim truth. They were close to the waterfall, within two hundred meters, and there was nothing to grab on to. No stalactites or stalagmites or outcroppings, there was just flat shore a hundred meters in either direction and turbid water.

Loke loosed his spell and Lucy's strength drained. She wavered on her feet and almost fell forward into the water. She'd be crushed by the boat if she fell now, sucked under and forgotten. She locked her knees but had to tell Loke, "No more magic."

He was already stopping, anyway, feeling the problem as surely as Lucy did. The ferrymen were approaching, though, with their hands outstretched and their little black eyes hard as diamonds. Lucy thought she could feel the Queen in their gaze. She was watching them, eager for their misstep.

Loke came right behind her, a barrier between her and the ferrymen. "Jump in!"

What other choice did she have? Lucy closed her eyes and gasped in a breath and leapt.

She never hit the water, black shadow reached out and grabbed her around the waist and the chest as if it was a solid thing, yanking her and Loke into shore, to their savior.