Author's Note: Here is part two! I hope you all enjoy. Warning: slight cursing.

This will be the only time I mention this, but I published a new story on Fanfiction. I want to try another crack pairing, and I thought I could be a little more daring with working on a third story. It is called Summer Love, and is another high school story. Unlike my other one that was about Gajeel Redfox and Lucy Heartfilia (Fairy Tail High School Romance; I deleted it a while back), this one is about Lyon Vastia and Lucy Heartfilia. If anyone is interested, feel free to read it. There is more on my profile about it.

I will only mention this once, but I am working on chapter four for my Lucy Heartfilia and Gray Fullbuster story The Pirates of Fairy Tail: Book One. Be on the lookout for that coming up soon.

Fairy Tail belongs to the amazing Hiro Mashima.

Chapter Nine:

Cobra's Endeavor - Part Two

Darkness.

That is all Cobra sees around him as he feels himself falling through a dark void, but in reality, it is a hole leading to the underground tunnels beneath the castle. He didn't bother to flair his arms around since he knows his hands will hit the stone around him. He knows it is better keeping them at his side as he continues to fall.

He feels like the fall is taking forever as he feels the air brush against him, and he smells the underground as he got closer to the bottom.

Then a dim light appears beneath him, and he fixes his one eye towards it. It grows wide as the light gets bigger and brighter, and he clenches his jaw as he starts to sense the ground coming closer. He can hear the wind rushing around him. He can hear the moans caused by the air through the tunnels, yet he cannot hear a single soul.

He made a groaning sound as he his body hit the bottom, for the fall happened to quickly for him to comprehend. He rolled over onto his back when it dawns on him that his stomach is what hit the ground, and he lets out a breath as he stared more into the darkness around him.

Cobra reaches his hands out before him, feeling the strange texture of the ground beneath. It feels new despite it not being used for hundreds of years, but as his hands took in whatever it is, he then realizes it is sand he landed on. He stuck his hand in it, wanting to know if the sand is resting upon any hard surface, but he could not find one. He thinks that is odd, but he nods to himself when he remembers the age. He knows sand must have built up over time.

He finds the will to stand even though his body is starting to ache with him gripping the side of his torso.

"Damn…" mumbles Cobra as he lets out a breath, annoyed. "That fall felt like forever."

Despite his low mumble, he can hear himself echo throughout the many halls of the underground, allowing him to know that this place is completely empty.

He stretches his arms around as he slowly walks trying to find a wall. He knows that this is pathetic, but his enhanced sight can only do so much in the dark. He keeps moving around until he feels the smoothness of stone, most likely sandstone from what he has gathered about this place. He gently glides both of his hands on the wall, feeling every crevice in the stone until his hands went over something smooth, but filled with ancient cobwebs.

His eye grows wide as he figured out what he is holding. A torch! He exclaims to himself as he then picks it up with force.

His senses went on overdrive, and the smell of the area hit him like a ton of bricks. It is old and murky; iron and copper is filling his nose. He flinches as he then smells old decay, as if something has been left in the tunnels for ages. He figures it might be rodents that died wandering around the tunnels and got lost, and soon ended up dying from dehydration and starvation. That is what he is hoping that he smells, but who is he to care if something is rotting? He just arrived, and he knows that it is not his fault if idiots died.

He grunts in annoyance as he starts to swipe the torch across the stone to get it to light up, wondering why he didn't think about that in the first place when he first found it. If there is going to be something down here to attack him, he wants a little more than just hearing and smelling to help him win.

The torch sparked for a second before the top burst into flames, and the tunnel area around him started to light up. Cobra can now see ten feet around him with no trouble, and with his dragon senses, he can see in the dark a little easier.

His eye caught something light up not far from his left, and he turned his head to look at another torch light up. Soon, on both sides of the tunnel, all the lights lit up one by one, creating the perfect light for him to see all around him. He can see a door at the end of the hallway, and he knows he is going to have to use that door to exit the room.

The walls are made of sandstone just as he predicted, and the ground is covered with sand. His eyebrows rose a little as he found the sand suspicious, but easily brushes it off as he then takes in the area around him some more.

Between the walls are giant gaps, most likely leading to a chamber, but what is making him suspicious is the iron bars blocking the chambers. He glares and lets out a low sigh as he inspects the area a little more before looking above him. He sees the hole he landed out of, and sees that it is pitch black; no light is coming from the top. Dan must have put the chair above the entrance like I asked. He thought to himself. Good. That means no one can disturb my search. He grins at the thought of being in peace and quiet in the tunnels, which means no guards are going to annoy him while he does his job.

Cobra than walks forward with his head held high and shoulders back, but his head is turning from side-to-side as he looks around. He walks until he reaches one of the gaps in the wall, and turns to see what is hidden behind the iron bars.

His eye widens as he nose flares. He feels his muscles tightening as he his gaze fixed upon what is in front of him. He knows Dan told him about what he will most likely find in the tunnels, but he still can't believe it himself. It is like the time when Nirvana was unearthed with him and Brain standing on the tower at the way top, and the world of light started to slowly crash down until the Light Alliance stopped them. It is that same feeling of surprise and wonder, but now he feels a little anxious as well. He is not nervous or terrified - he has never felt those emotions outside the Tower of Heaven and with Setekh and Kek around, but even anxious is an overstatement.

He feels concerned.

Behind the iron bars are the skeletons of the enemy soldiers from the war that took place two hundred years ago. They jaws are hanging open as some of the arms are draped over the area where their stomachs were once located. Some of the skeletons still have the helmets over their heads, and their swords are still sheathed. There uniforms are mostly gone besides the iron breastplate on their ribcages. They are all bunched together, with some lying on top of another skeleton, and some a little further away from the bunch located at the back. Cobra sees a couple sprawled out on the sand with swords going through their ribcages. He then takes in the scene a little more as he realizes what must have happened here.

They all fought each other while some were crushed under the body weight of others. Their own comrades easily killed the ones who tried to get away. From the looks of it, this fight didn't last long since they were all slaughtered.

Cobra lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding as he thought about what the prisoners went through. Being a former prisoner himself, he knows how they feel, but to fight each other… that is something he could never bring himself to do with his guild mates. He doesn't like to admit things to himself or out loud, but he does care about his guild mates. He has cared since they were in the Oracion Seis to now when they are part of Crime Sorciere. He wonders if these prisoners were deranged or bored when the fight broke out, but it is clear that none made it.

He then looks at a skeleton that is still resting against the iron bars with his hand poking out one of the holes. His head is hanging down, as if he was looking down during his last moments, but then Cobra sees a throwing knife handle sticking out the back of the skull. He shakes his head as he looked towards the cell across from him, and sees that these skeletons are just resting in the back against each other. He figures those warriors must have died from starvation and dehydration. Every cell holds a different story for how these people died. Cobra concludes.

He then looks towards the first cell he laid eyes upon, and sees something that sparkled for a second. It came from the hand poking out of the cell, and Cobra slowly walks over to it with a gaze filled with interest. He slowly moves the fingers apart before something falls onto the sand near his feet. He looks at it as he bends down to pick it up, and once he has it in his hands, he sees that it is a small iron key.

Cobra stares at the key for a little while longer before something in the back of his mind starts to tell him to keep it. It is like he knows that this key will come in handy at some point in the future, like it can and will help him out of a situation. He knows that he cannot ignore this feeling with his life on the line, and he can't forget the Celestial Spirit wizard that is his partner on this quest. This key will help save her life when the times calls for it. He grips the small key in his one hand as he thinks about Lucy, and wonders what Kek needs to speak with her about. Part of him wants to be there with her when the two speak, but he knows that completing this little task will have to be the priority before going to her.

He stuffs the key in one of his pockets, and then looks at the soldier who died next to the gate. It is then when Cobra feels a pang of guilt go through his body as he pieced together this man's final moments. It is something he has seen while at the Tower of Heaven, so it is something he is able to identify.

The man took the key from the guards that watched these halls, and he waited for the right time to break out. Then the fight broke out, something he must not have seen coming, and started to make his way to the lock located at the far left side of the prison cell's gate. He was just making his final moments to make it out, but then one of his so-called comrades must have seen him trying to reach for something. That is when his comrade threw the throwing knife into the back of his head, and he died right before he could get out. Before he could become a free man once more. It was easy to piece this together, but for all he knew, this man could have had a family once and he never got to see them again.

Cobra closed his one eye as he did something he hasn't done in ages: pray. He let out a single prayer for the deceased man, and then he walked away from the cell, not bothering to look back at the scene behind him. He didn't bother looking in the other cells as he passed them by, for he has already seen enough in this one area to know what happened to these people.

He then approached the door at the end of the hallway, and to his surprise, the door opened up without him having to unlock it. He looks at it surprised, but then that surprise turned into caution.

The door unlocked means one thing to Cobra, and that is someone was here before him.

Cobra continues to walk the tunnels beneath the castle, and sighs as he has found nothing to help him and Lucy. He starts to feel annoyed, questioning why he chose to help her in the first place, but he knows that she made him do this for a reason. It would be a waste if he just sat around and did nothing.

He shakes his head as he comes to another standstill. In front of him are three doors that will lead him to different tunnels. He sighs as he feels himself become more annoyed, for he feels like he is just getting himself lost in the underground. This frustrates him; he can't smell his way through the tunnels since the air is starting to smell the same to him.

He sighs as he then starts to think logically about which tunnel will lead to where. He closes his one eye as he starts to take in the area around him, using his senses to see if he can notice anything. His eye widened as a certain scent appeared. Its smells like soot and sulfur, but it mainly smells like death.

His eye grows wide as he recognizes the scent, and a growl forms deep in his throat. The scent is coming from the middle door, and with his canine teeth showing, he moves towards the door with the force of a bull.

Part of him is glad he has found a scent that can lead him out of the tunnels, but another part of him is angry that it has to be them. As he went through the door, he figures he will have to follow the scent for more than just getting out of the underground. It will be a lead to figure out what those two idiots are doing behind the scenes as they act nice around Dan. Cobra figures it is a good thing he found Setekh's and Kek's scent.

Again, he is surrounded by darkness as he entered the area around him. There is a sound of a constant air breeze going through this place in all different directions. The ground beneath isn't sand, too, for it feels like there is sandstone beneath his feet. This comforts the Poison Dragon slayer; there will be nothing there to make him fall through the floor.

He cleared his throat as he took in the smells of everything around him. This place, as he expects, smells very old. There are little hints of iron and copper, but nothing too strong like the place he arrived in. What he does pick up is the scent of plaster and hardened mud, which means this place is being held together by those substances. He then starts wonder where he is.

He then uses the torch in his left hand to rub it against the wall, and feels that it isn't a smooth surface. It is bumpy with many crevices, holes, and weird shaped stones, yet every stone was different. It is almost as if whoever put everything together purposefully did that, and Cobra does not like it at all.

His senses are going wild as he once again picked up the scent he is following, but he knows he must see before continuing. He then moved his torch away from the wall, and with a stroke of luck, he found another torch, lighting it up with his. The torches on both sides of the wall lit up simultaneously, creating a lighten path all the way down the hallway.

It is a single hallway, too, but this isn't what is making the mage feel uneasy as he grits his teeth. His muscles start to tense as he took in what is in front of him. He knows that this is the other thing Dan told him about before he took this little venture into the underground tunnels.

"I have heard rumors of a catacomb, too. The rumors say it was built out of my world's soldiers that died in battle."

He has stumbled upon the rumored catacombs Dan told him about, and he knows for sure that those rumors are true. The walls are lined with hundreds, maybe thousands, of skulls from the warriors who perished in battle. The eye sockets are filled with dirt and mud, and the bottom half of their jaw is missing. Not one skull looks alike; they are all shaped different. Some skulls are a little cleaner than others, while some still have the dents and scrapes from the battle. There are femurs in the wall as well, and the humorous bone is placed in random places. The architect also did the skull and crossbones pattern, and this makes Cobra think that whoever built this got a little bored.

His eye landed on random holes in the wall that are parallel to each other, and are separated teen feet from the other on the same wall. There are also two on each wall, giving the appearance of bunk beds. They are resting places for soldiers who are higher ranked than the ones put in the wall. Cobra walks closer to the resting area, peering inside to see what the skeletons look like, but also to sense if there is a chance of them coming to life.

These skeletons still have the same clothes they wore when they went into battle; the breastplate and everything is still attached to them. Their linen cloths are a little torn and rotted, but Cobra knows that is expected since these deceased warriors are a little over two hundred years old. They don't have their helmets, yet they still have their axes, swords and throwing knives. What concerns him the most is that the weapons still look new, like they were never used to kill another person. If the weapon wasn't used to slay someone, they should look worn down from age. Yet they don't.

Cobra straightened his posture as he looks around the area once more, having an uneasy feeling enter the pit of his stomach. He is no fool; he knows the weapons have been tampered with, and the ground beneath him as been taken care of unlike the other tunnels he went down. There are no cobwebs, no dust - nothing.

He knows people have been using this hallway more than once a day, and he has a good feeling he knows who is using them. His eye turned into a slit as he walks forward, making sure to keep his senses clear and ready for even the slightest bit of noise.

He continues to walk down the tunnel with his feet slightly echoing, and he keeps looking all around him at the catacombs, trying to see if something comes to life.

He stops in front of a well-kept wooden door, and breaths in the air coming from the door. The smell of Setekh and Kek are strong here, and he knows that he has found the room they reside in. He gently sets his torch down on the ground, not caring if it will be discovered by anyone, and puts out the fire by stomping on it. He enters through the door, closing it silently behind him.

The room he entered in is not made of sandstone, but is in fact, made of regular dark grey stone. There are a few torches lit in the room, but Cobra sees a window on the right side of the room, bringing in natural light. I'm finally out of the tunnels. He thinks to himself with a slight grin.

He sees all the pillars in the room creating a C-like path that is laid out with red carpet. Where he is standing, he sees an iron fence connecting two pillars. On the pillars are pictures he hasn't seen before. They appear to be generals since they are wearing a uniform with their weapons by their side. He knows this is the generals' headquarters, but with the smell he is picking up, it doesn't belong to them anymore.

"My Lord, it seems as though Dan's guests are getting too nosy," a high-pitched and croaky voice said in the room, drawing Cobra away from his observations.

It is Kek.

He quietly and stealthily moved around the floor, and moved his back against a cold pillar, and looks over his shoulders at the area where the voice is coming from. It angers Cobra that he cannot hear their souls, but he is just going to have to deal with that until he leaves the castle. His one eye sees Kek standing there, but what throws him off is how different Kek looks.

Kek now appears taller than what he originally looks like. He has tanner skin, his hair looks more groomed, and his back is straight instead of being hunched over. His nose is still as big as ever, but everything else about him looks stronger. He isn't wearing the same garments Cobra saw him in early as well, for they look like something royalty would wear.

Next to him is Setekh, but he also looks different. His clothing is now red and black and form fitting; he can see every nook and cranny of the man's body, much to Cobra's displeasure. He wants that sight out of him memory permanently, but as his eye landed right on his face, he sees fangs coming out of Setekh's mouth. The fangs look snake-like, long and sharp, and what pops into Cobra mind is the creature him and Lucy saw at the feast. It was either him or something he sent. Setekh's eyes are now a dark red that resembles a pool of blood, and his tongue is now shaped like a snake's. His hair is thicker, but other than that, everything appears the same.

Yet coming from both of them is a dark and powerful magic that resembles what Cobra felt coming out of the room that is blocked off. This concerns the mage greatly, but for now, he has to focus on what the two are talking about. He missed the conversation they were having before he arrived, but he knows that whatever he hears now is just as important.

"It appears they are, Kek," Setekh agreed. "Lucy seems to never leave that study while Cobra just aimlessly wanders around the castle. I no idea what that wizard girl is researching, but I clearly know what that ex-criminal is up to."

Cobra grits his teeth as he heard this. He knows he made it obvious, but hearing it coming out of Setekh's mouth made anger stir inside of him. He knows he should have been more careful, and he knows that he should have just ignored Kek this morning, but he gave himself away. Damn it! Cobra screams in his head.

"Oh really, Sir?" asks Kek. "What is it? I just thought the man is lost. He does seem like a blockhead."

Cobra wants to rip Kek's throat out at the insult he just received, but it will cost him his cover. Staying put seems like his best option. Why that little shit… He hissed in his mind.

Setekh chuckles at Kek's false observation. "No, Cobra is more than a blockhead. He is an intelligent man, but he stays quiet for many reasons. He is observing us, trying to get information to give back to someone," His expression turns grim and dark as he fully turns to look at Kek. "Have you talked to Lucy today?"

Cobra's eyebrows scrunched together. What is with their sudden interest in Heartfilia?

"No, Set, but I will soon. Cobra told me where I could find her," answers Kek. "I will ask her soon enough for you."

Set? What kind of name is that? Cobra questions as he starts to think about what Lucy has told him about the different Gods and Goddesses. She hasn't mentioned that God's name to him before.

"She will make a fine addition to the new world I am creating… So intelligent and beautiful… she will be perfect." Set hissed like a snake as a grin broke out on his black lips. "We just have to find a way to take over the castle, and from our base point in Uruk, we will be able to get this whole land under our control."

Setekh - who is apparently Set - and Kek started to laugh together, creating an evil-like symphony that made Cobra's blood boil.

"Now we must get back to work, Kek. Duty calls." laughs Set as he turns towards the door on the other side of the room. "Go and talk to the Heartfilia girl. One way or another, she will be part of our plans."

"Yes, my Lord." Kek laughs as the two exit the room, closing the door behind them.

Cobra than stands up from his hiding spot, and walks on the carpet leading to the door. He is looking at the ground as all the information sinks in, and he felt his hands bunch up into fists and his teeth grinding against each other. He feels anger go through his veins.

He has to get out of this room to go find Lucy before Kek or Set does, for she is in the greatest danger out of the two of them. He knows that he didn't get a lot of information while hearing the two speak, but it is just enough to let him know what the two are planning to do. Yet his mind kept going back to what they want with Lucy. He has an idea of what they want, and he is hoping he is wrong, but he knows he is going to have to watch her more closely.

Cobra started to jog in the room, exited through the door, and started to run in another tunnel that leads to the castle; he can smell the food and the different scents of the people working there.

He has to get to Lucy before Kek or Set does. He has to make sure she is safe, or else he would never forgive himself if something were to happen to her.

Well, here we are. I know this one isn't the greatest of chapters, but it is my longest one. I'm sorry if this bored you, but I am getting to the more exciting parts of the story. Everything will be revealed in time, so stayed tuned to see what is coming up.

I want to apologize for any spelling and grammar mistakes. They escaped my eyes while I was editing and reading it over.

Coming soon to The Cursed World:

Chapter Ten: Kek's Proposal