There was a potent sense of disbelief and shock in the guild come morning, as members started trickling in only to be greeted with the news. It was Lily who found the grocery bag sitting idly on the pathway during the night. Erza and the Exceed were out late, patrolling. In the darkness, the cooled blood was easy to miss, but the lone bag stood out like a sore thumb on the bare street.

They searched the area but despite a few pints of it splashing the road, there was no body to be found. Though, with the volume lost they doubted the person would have lived long enough to make it to a doctor or a healer.

Erza picked up the paper bag and checked inside. Without any body, identification would be next to impossible. Bread, milk, a bottle of wine, chocolate and a jar of pickled beets. Indiscriminate.

Lily bent and put his fingers to the road checking the blood. His nose wasn't quite as sensitive as the Dragon Slayers, or maybe he simply didn't have enough experience tracking with it, but he was skilled enough to recognise the blood.

He stood sharply. Abrupt enough to startle Erza who dropped the bag, the glass bottles smashing, adding milk and wine to the blood flowing toward the drain. Lily looked to her nervously.

"You know who it was?" She asked and he nodded, there were tears prickling her eyes at the expression on his face. It was clearly someone they both knew.

"Juvia..." Lily whispered, the air leaving him in a slow hiss.

Erza blanched. She'd come to know the woman quite well. Enough to know that she hadn't deserved this.

"Do you... do you think...?" He opened his mouth to breathe life to the question they were both thinking of and Erza cut him off sharply.

"I don't know..." She grit her teeth. Fists trembling. "But I will personally see it meet oblivion if it has!" She snarled and Lily didn't doubt a single word of that. If it had killed her, Erza would see it hunted to the edges of the earth.

"That's if Gajeel or Gray don't get to it first," Lily muttered under his breath. Gajeel didn't handle grief well. Didn't handle rejection or abandonment well, either. Gray on the other hand had a dark streak a mile wide lurking under the surface, and despite his public shows to the contrary, he had feelings for the woman. Maybe not the romantic ones she'd have hoped for, but she was important to him.

Lily shook himself of those kinds of thoughts.

"She's alive. I won't believe otherwise unless I see a body to the contrary and all I see is evidence that Juvia fought back. It tried catching her off-guard and failed," He looked to the grocery bag so carefully set down and the cracked brickwork and glass of the neighbouring buildings. The signs of struggle.

"Juvia is rather resourceful!" Erza's face fell however as she took note of the blood again. "But if this is all her blood... she's gravely injured."

"The Dragon Slayers will be able to track her. Her body isn't here, so it must be somewhere. I have faith that she's still alive," Lily breathed.

He didn't have to say it, but there were few reasons to take a corpse... so if took her, it stood to reason she may have still been alive.

At that time, anyway.


Gray was always relatively reserved. If Natsu weren't generally there to wind him up or goad him into a fight, you wouldn't usually hear too much from the ice make mage beyond the odd snarky comment, often uttered on the fringes of conversation.

However, if they thought he was quiet before, it was nothing compared to now. After they broke the news about Juvia, Gray sat down and stopped responding to much beyond the occasional cold stare in reply. Natsu was entirely unwilling to worsen his mood over it and wisely people chose not to mention his attitude.

He watched with sharp, calculating eyes as Makarov organised the search parties. His increasingly somewhat menacing stare matched only by Gajeel's fury. The Dragon Slayer was practically humming with rage. If he clamped his jaw down any harder it looked like he'd break his teeth.

They'd visited the site of the attack but the trail went cold there. No track to follow for their monster. No trace of Juvia beyond the obvious blood. They checked sewers. They checked the buildings. They did everything but tear the road up. And Gajeel was fully intent on doing that before Lily stopped him.

The Exceed had never seen the man so distraught. But Gajeel didn't weep or cry. Didn't tremble. He dealt with the pain of losing his oldest friend in the only way he could.

A fist hit the table so hard Makarov's desk quite literally cracked at its center, Gajeel left snarling, like something not too far removed from a wild animal. His hair seemed to bristle like some beasts.

"Of course I'm gonna kill it if we find it, what kinda stupid fuckin' question is that?" Gajeel looked around at the faces in the room, like their guildmaster had genuinely lost his mind. "Am I goin' crazy here or somethin'? The only way this is gonna end is with me rolling it's head from its shoulders," He bit out. No one was arguing with him. No one but Makarov.

"Gajeel, if I've learned anything in my old age it's that monsters don't always have to remain so. If we can help him, we need to try," Makarov knew that there would be resistance to the idea, the creature had killed, murdered, it was unlikely that it could come back from that. His own personal feelings called for swift and violent retribution; he well knew they may end up having no choice but to kill him, but they wouldn't be the guild they were if they didn't at least attempt to find another way.

"And what the fuck gave yah the idea that it could be saved?" Gajeel growled, rage almost boiling over. Behind him, Gray stood, quietly making his exit. Makarov opened his mouth to speak but the debate was interrupted.

"These are the books I'll need," The voice was small, hushed.

Levy slipped in through the door and passed Gray to deposit a list on Makarov's desk, and in an instant, Gajeel knew that the quiet voice of mercy and bleeding hearted sympathy in Makarov's ear, was her.

The soft, concerned look on her face died when it met his accusing stare. He didn't know why he felt like he'd been betrayed, but he did. Could he even blame her for anything? It was who she was, wasn't it? To her very core she was light and mercy and forgiveness. She'd forgiven him, after all. So of course she would be preaching compassion for the thing that gutted him, murdered Juvia. And Gajeel had seen the volume of blood. She wouldn't have survived a wound like that. Gajeel would know all about what was lethal and what wasn't.

He couldn't even bring himself to look at the script mage right then, something in his chest aching. Squeezing him. A rage he hadn't felt in years washing over him. When he noticed Lily's hand on his shoulder he shrugged it off aggressively and made his exit wordlessly following in Gray's unnoticed footsteps.

Gajeel made sure to avoid the look of hurt and confusion he knew would be on Levy's face.

She covered her anguish well while the debate continued in her absence and hurried out after Gajeel. No one seemed to notice her at all as she rushed through the guild after the Dragon Slayer. Too many hurt, angry faces amid the sea of tears to pay attention to two more.

She was half way up the empty street outside when she finally caught up to him.

"Wait!" She called out. She knew he'd heard her from the hesitation in his step but he didn't stop walking. Choosing instead to ignore her.

Levy picked up speed and her brisk jog turned into a run. She managed to catch a hold of his jacket but he didn't stop then either, and she found herself pulled off her feet with the momentum. Her nose came within an inch of concrete, air leaving her lungs in fright as she found herself suspended, her dress pulled tight around her chest. Caught on something strong enough to keep her weight from the ground.

She was still panting from a mixture of shock and exertion when Gajeel lifted and deposited her to her feet.

Levy didn't speak, lost in the pain on his face; the mask of anger barely able to hold the grief back. He wiped at his eyes roughly enough to leave them red and irritated.

"That thing murdered Juvia!" He bit out. His voice wasn't as steady as he was expecting. "And what, you want me to give it a hug and chicken fuckin' soup and hope it feels better?"

"We don't know Juvia's even dead..."

"Believe me... when I say I've sent enough people packin' through the pearly gates to know how much blood it takes to do it," Gajeel spat. His, were not clean hands.

"We don't know for sure. And Juvia is..." She didn't want to say that Juvia was just as dangerous as Gajeel. Or as tough. He'd come fairly close to those pearly gates himself and she wasn't sure saying it would have the intended effect.

".. well, you know her better than anyone. She's capable of anything," She said, full of hope.

A few days ago Gajeel would have agreed with Levy's sentiment but he hadn't been almost killed at that point. This thing was no joking matter and while he wanted to believe Juvia was okay, his worst fears carried a lot of weight given present circumstances.

"I wanna believe that... I do," He found himself whispering.

"Whoever is doing this.. they're sick, Gajeel, and with something we know nothing about.. something that turns Dragon Slayers into murderous monsters," She looked up into his face with eyes so big they could have swallowed him, and Gajeel felt his anger melt at the hurt, the fear, the uncertainty in them. "Who's to say that whatever happened to him couldn't happen to Natsu, or Wendy...happen to you... and we learn nothing if we just kill him," Levy took his hand in hers, now limply hanging by his side.

"I didn't give up on you," She hoped he'd see reason but his expression hardened at those words; the man she was gradually coming to know, pushed aside in an instant. The guy that teased her while he bled to death, and asked her out for coffee after; there was little left of the man who saved her from a collapsing stage and blushed at a brief flash of skin.

"Well, maybe you should've," Gajeel bit out coldly. Quietly. His words aimed at her like a blade.

If he'd been expecting her to cry or shrink away from him she did the opposite, stepping closer.

"Never..." She poked him in the chest for emphasis. Her voice was steady but her hand wavered. "... going...to happen!" She enunciated.

Gajeel wanted to hate her so badly, but couldn't. He wanted to scream at her for being naive and to stop wasting her breath but he didn't. All he could summon the will to do, was turn and walk away.

A part of him honestly crumbled when she didn't follow. He could hear her labored breathing, her erratically beating heart, smell her tears. For a second he wished he was the old Gajeel, because what would he have cared?

But he'd had a taste of real living. Laughter, trust. A peaceful night's sleep free of the demons in his own head. It wasn't war he'd been craving in his youth, it had been purpose. Belonging. At the time he'd been taught to believe that Dragon Slayers were creatures of violence and destruction, and in Phantom he'd stopped caring about everyone else, because what had they ever cared about him. But Levy cared. Fairy Tail cared, too. Saw all those horrid little black marks, a lifetime of sin and still believed in his capacity to change.

He made it about a hundred yards before another voice halted him.

"Metal breath!" It annoyed Gajeel a little to know he actually answered to that, turning to meet Gray as the man leaned against the side wall, mostly out of sight. Typically shirtless.

Gajeel heaved a sigh of exasperation but didn't speak, noting a familiar look in Gray's eyes. He saw his own anger, willingness to kill reflected in them, and they chilled his furor in only the way a true mirror could, when monsters found themselves faced with their own image.

"I need your nose... and I already know that Natsu and Laxus are gonna side with the old man," Gray spoke, something dark slithering beneath the surface of his composed expression. "I'm going on a little hunt. You in?"


When Gray had suggested that they start their search, not in the city, but in the hilltops over it, Gajeel knew that he was aware of more than he was saying. It was one of the problems that came with having to work with the ice mage on occasion. Gray kept too much to himself. Often to the detriment of those working with him.

It was a short trek out of the town where he led the Dragon Slayer as far as the boulder fields and stopped, looking round cautiously ensuring they weren't being followed. He took the time to wash his hands and face in the river, try to remove some of the smell of sweat, Gajeel didn't want to tell him how ineffective that was; the man still stank of it, but there was something else on the wind now. Strong enough to follow. Juvia's blood. Others, as well.

"You fucker! You found it's lair?" Gajeel spared a raspy, appreciative laugh. He honestly couldn't believe it.

"More like a general location," The ice mage remarked. "That earthquake originated in these hills. That's no coincidence. The first victims were also from a little hamlet just the other side of that ridge," He pointed off to the side.

It struck Gajeel that Levy had mentioned this two days ago and it had completely slipped his mind in the chaos that followed; the possible connection between the two seemingly unrelated events. She was smart. Far smarter than anyone else he'd met, smarter than him, for sure.

The Dragon Slayer picked up Juvia's scent strongest on an enormous boulder of granite. At its centre a large patch of dried blood.

"The dance hall where Juvia was attacked.. what's that outer wall made of?"

"Granite..." Gray looked like he was considering it. The idea sinking in. This field was full of granite boulders. "... fairly sure anyway," He'd probably passed the same building a thousand times and never really taken much notice.

"The other murders were near the town hall... that's got fucking granite on the outer walls, too," Gajeel knew he'd hit the mark. They'd just discovered the Dragon Slayer's element. And possibly how he was moving in and out of Magnolia without being seen.

Gajeel examined the blood on the rock but he didn't see much around it. It looked like it just appeared on it, dropped from on high. He knew there was a distinct likelihood that the creature might have been able to move between its native stone. Use it as a door from one place to another.

Gray barely spared the bloody mess a second glance, his eyes drawn toward the rock face nearby, a large opening sitting there, ripping into the stone and disappearing into darkness.

"I'm willing to wager that's were that thing's been hiding out," Gray pointed at it. "You hear anything?"

"Nothing," Gajeel shook his head. "But there's a serious stink in there. I can tell from here."

"Then how about we take a look?"

Gajeel was never going to refuse and he followed closely as they approached. The stench inside was overwhelming. Blood and faeces, fear, anxiety, pure misery.

If Juvia's body wasn't in the city, then it was going to be here but there were too many overwhelming odours to tell by smell alone.

The entrance in the rock opened up into an large expanse, not that much bigger than the guild hall. Sunlight glittered in from an opening in the ceiling where the roof had collapsed, the vegetation growing down the walls from above indicated that that was some number of years ago by this point. The rock lay scattered about, enormous pieces jutting out of the pond at the center of the cave. The liquid was stagnant and dirty. Tainted with blood.

A few feet in and Gajeel's feet started slipping in muck, his weight sinking him and making an awfully loud squelching sound as he walked. If they were hoping to be sneaky, they failed, Natsu could probably hear Gajeel stumble and stagger about back at the guild.

Gray stopped at the waters edge. Touching his fingers against its murky surface and drawing back as though it burned him.

"This isn't water!" He gasped.

Gajeel fixed him with a strange look.

"Looks and smells exactly like water to me, princess," He retorted, but Gray had paled significantly. Quite a feat for a man with his complexion. Gajeel rarely saw him look so shaken and that was enough for him to take the comment seriously. "If it's not water... then what the fuck is it?"

"Ice Shell... This is the remnants of ice shell magic" He whispered so low even Gajeel had to strain to hear it.

The magic ice make mages used as a last resort in a fight. Using their own life force to permanently seal something away. Though, they'd discovered from experience that with moonlight it was possible to eventually dissolve it.

Gray looked up at the opening in the roof and Gajeel followed him. If they assumed the center of the pool had been their Dragon Slayer, it would have been perfectly positioned to catch the moonlight.

It was clear. The blood moon had broken the ice shell holding it and a deranged Dragon Slayer, from who knew when, had come tearing out.

Gajeel scanned the cavern carefully, walking its perimeter but there was no evidence that Juvia had been taken there. The area was littered with stains of blood and pieces of torn clothing, rotting flesh, but none of it hers. Her scent was strongest on the rock outside, but in here it was faint.

"Juvia was never here," Gajeel finally admitted outloud.

Gray punched the nearest rock face.

"Well, then where the hell is she?"


Notes

Hope you're still hanging in there! Huge thank you to everyone reading, and commenting or secretly following. Your reviews and messages literally make my day.

Where's Juvia, you might ask? Next chapter is going to cover that. And you'll be happy to know, it's almost ready to go. I'm terrible for the cliffhangers, but I don't post without the followup being 90% done.