Hello to everyone who has been reading. I truly apologize for not being able to upload as often as I'd like. The copy-and-paste still doesn't work on my computer, the internet is iffy at best, and finals are coming up. School makes it hard for my friend and I to work together to proof-read, but we try anyway. I hope you enjoy the chapter even after so much time in between.
The iron fairy did not scream, but definitely had an expression of shock on her face as her body moved over the bright pit of lava. One of the small fairies who was close to her tried to grab her hand, but to no avail. When she was nearly at the other side of the basin, Ferrum attempted to fly with her wings. The thin blades scraped against the rock behind her and became useless as they bent at painful-looking angles. Realizing that her wings would be ripped out of her back if she allowed them to become stuck in the rock, the fairy kicked off the wall and continued to move downward. She landed heavily on a slab that had been floating in the magma, causing it to dip down where she placed her foot. Though it wasn't much, the lava rose enough to reach Ferrum's heel, burning through her boot almost instantly and searing flesh. The iron fairy bit her bottom lip so hard that scarlet blood dripped out of her mouth in her attempt to not scream. When she wrenched her foot free, she nearly fell down, barely keeping herself up by balancing with her tail. She winced as she tried to place her burned foot down on the rock.
"Ferrum-dono! Are you alright?!" One of the small fairies asked before it flew down to look its leader in the face. The larger fairy did not respond verbally, but instead nodded, putting on as brave a face as she could. Trying several times unsuccessfully, the little fairy attempted to lift Ferrum out of the lava pit by the back of her jacket.
"You should go before you get too tired to fly yourself out." The iron fairy told her subordinate. Unclear if it was a suggestion or an order, the petite fairy followed it anyway, flying up toward the group who had gathered around the pit, looking in. Ferrum glanced around, searching for a way to escape. Drip, drip. Her dark eyes slid downward toward the slab she was standing on. A few droplets of a silver colored liquid were behind her. 'Shit, it's too hot down here. My wings are starting to melt.' It would only be a matter of time before they disappeared completely. And as if things couldn't get any worse, the platform she was standing on was beginning to crumble around the edges. A sly smile brought itself to her lips, revealing her pointed teeth. 'Perfect.'
"Hey, Brat!" Her voice echoed through the previously silent cavern. Gajeel dropped to his knees and leaned over the edge to get a better view of the large iron fairy. "This'll be your first lesson. Get me out of here. Better get creative, iron melts at these temperatures!" She was grinning like an idiot as the dragon slayer stared at her with a look of disbelief on his face.
'Well, that confirms it. Ferr is officially crazy.' He thought to himself grimly. 'Now how am I gonna get her out of there?' Gajeel wasn't one who regularly made plans, but he figured he had to at least try. He turned to face a fairy who was kneeling next to him. "Hey, what's your name?"
The mythical creature flinched at the dragon slayer's voice. He was one of the larger fairies in human form, but was still small, skinny enough to show bones poking out from beneath his ghost-white skin. The pale rags he was wearing only made it that much more obvious. His wings and tail were similar to Ferr's in style, but were slightly shinier in the red light. He also had the same black hair, but his was flecked with tiny strands of silvery wisps. There were bands of a heavy metal bound to his wrists. Wide eyes whiter than milk housed pupils that were like endless caverns without light.
"M-me?" He let out, barely more than a whisper.
"Yes, you. What's your name?" Impatience began to creep into the slayer's voice.
If he was a human, the fairy would have been no older than 14 or 15 years old. "Wolfram." He whispered. His eyes flickered down into the pit at the sound of crumbling rock beneath the female fairy.
'Hm, I'm sure I've heard that somewhere before...' The dragon slayer shrugged off his feelings of suspicion. "How hot is the lava in the pit?" He asked, trying to keep his voice steady to not scare the weak-looking fairy.
"Well," Wolfram was staring intensely downward at his bony fingers. "N-normal lava is usually between 700 to 1,200 degrees Celsius, but here it's northward 1,600 because we use it to the heat the iron ore." A sudden flood of panic crashed over the fairy's sharp features. "Ferrum-dono's wings are made of iron! If they melt completely, she won't be able to get out of there!" The emaciated fairy would have jumped off the edge if the slayer hadn't grabbed his twig-like arm and pulled him back.
"That's why I need your help!" Gajeel didn't like admitting when he needed help, but he knew exactly when he needed to. "I can only make iron. Are there any other metals here that we can use?" The fairy looked shocked and almost angry that the dragon slayer had stopped him from leaping over the cliff. It quickly turned to annoyance, surprising Gajeel.
"Take your hand off of me, human!" The fairy didn't look like he could win against the mage in a thousand years, but his sharp tone caused the other to flinch. "Let's get one thing straight; This isn't your world. It's ours and you have to follow our rules." Though most of Wolfram was unusually white, his pointed fangs seemed to stand out even more against the scarlet glow of the magma. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before reopening them toward the slayer. They were no longer timid, but full of ferocity. "Now I get why you need training. You don't think too much before you act, do you?" Wolfram continued in his acidic voice without waiting for a reply. "You at least started on the right track. You clearly can't use iron when you're near temperatures where it's going to melt. So what are you going to use?" A certain sarcastic tone that had been added to his questions just made the dragon slayer annoyed. The fairy crossed his legs and rested one of his elbows on a knee, his chin in his hand and a smile on his face.
'This asshole's playing with me. What the hell was with the personality swap?' Gajeel growled to himself. He didn't really use any metal besides iron, so he didn't really know any of the others' stats about melting points and such. Then he remembered something he had noticed earlier. "Your name is Wolfram, right? I swear I've heard that somewhere before. What does it mean?" The dragon slayer didn't want to play the fairy's game, but he didn't have many options. Even from high up, he could see that Ferrum had less than half of her original wings.
"Ooh, I would have thought that it would have taken you longer to figure out." His smile turned sly as it broadened on one side. "Wolfram's another name for Tungsten, just like Ferrum's another name for Iron. The difference? Tungsten's melting point is close to 3,500 degrees Celsius, well beyond the temperature of the lava in that pit." The fairy was now leaning back, propping himself up with his hands that stretched out behind him.
"Then why haven't you done anything?!" Gajeel hated dealing with people who could have saved someone, but didn't. "Do you just like being an asshole?"
Wolfram's laugh sound like it came from a small child. "It's one of my favorite pastimes. However, that not the problem," He pointed one of his bony fingers toward the large man. "You're the one who stopped me from going over the edge to go help her." He interlocked his hands behind his head, but continued to sit up straight. "So now that you've got a metal that won't melt, what are you going to do?"
The great iron dragon slayer had been silenced. 'How on earth has no one murdered this kid yet? He's possibly the biggest jackass I have ever met.' Despite the fact that he currently wanted to strangle the fairy sitting in front of him, Gajeel knew that he would need his help to save Ferrum. "A ladder." He grumbled.
"Yeah, that sounds good." Wolfram smirked at the irritated look on the iron dragon slayer's face. "Was it really that hard?" His voice carried a mocking tone that only made Gajeel angrier, but the slayer held his tongue.
The fairy unclasped his hands from around the back of his head and brought them together in front of him in a prayer formation. A silvery light glowed from between them as he separated his hands, revealing what looked like a mass of skinny threads going back and forth between them. With a forceful heave, the fairy threw the majority of the mass down towards the stranded fairy, landing on one side of the crumbling rock. A mesmerizing spiderweb of shimmering, tungsten silk stretched from Wolfram's hands over the pit of lava. He stood up quickly and removed one of the clumped endings from his hands before placing it down on a rock near Gajeel. "Here, hold this down so that it doesn't slip." Without a word of retaliation, the slayer did as he was asked. Wolfram himself tightened the strands by wrapping them around his hand before bracing himself against another rock. "Ferrum-dono! Please start to climb, I don't know how long the bridge will be able to stay up!" The meekness that was in his voice earlier returned for the split second it took to shout his instructions to the other fairy.
'That sounds like Wolfram. Maybe Gajeel is a little smarter than I thought.' The iron fairy thought as a nearly invisible smile crept to her face. "Alright, I'm coming!" She yelled back before limping over to the base of the netted web. Tiny barbs on the threads made them sticky as the fairy attempted to climb, using her winding tail in place of her burned foot. She almost looked like a monkey as she slowly ascended toward the top of the cliff. Only halfway there, the remainder of the rock that the fairy was previously standing on sunk below the surface, pulling down the end of the thin web. 'Shit!' Ferrum thought as she saw the two at the top struggling to not be pulled over the edge. "Don't move! I'm going to cut off the end of the net!" She shouted up to them before whipping her spiked tail through the threads so fast the it created a nice clean cut just below her boots. Now, thanks to gravity and physics, since Ferrum's ladder was no longer anchored, it began to drop, swinging toward the dark red face of the pit, and eventually slamming her into the rock. Scarlet blood trickled down the side of the fairy's face as she remained, unmoving, against the wall. Wolfram and Gajeel thought that she had been knocked out, but she was simply dizzy, unable to focus even on her own hands in front of her.
But since she was already against the wall anyway, they just pulled her up the rest of the way by the net. Once they dragged her over the edge, they saw that the only thing left of her wings were the torn holes in the back of her jeans jacket. Gajeel gently turned her face-up, making sure that her burned foot didn't hit anything. He wasn't sure if it was caused by the glow of the lava, but the blood on the side of her head seemed far too dark for normal blood. It took only moments for her sapphire eyes to flutter open. "Ugh, I have a headache." Despite the fact that she knew she shouldn't have, she immediately tried to sit up straight, gaining support from the other fairy to stop her from falling backwards. Her eyes snapped to his before he instantly dropped them to the floor. "It's alright, Wolfram." Her voice softened as if she thought talking to him any louder would scare him.
"Th-thank you, Ferrum-dono." He raised his head with a tiny smile on his face before Ferrum turned to face the iron dragon slayer.
"I guess your real training gets to start now. I think you'll have to work with Wolfram until my foot heals and my wings grow back. Is that alright?" The way that she said it, it didn't really sound like a question, which just made Gajeel more annoyed.
'I have to work with that personality-changing brat! No way!' Just before he voiced his opposition, a certain metal fairy gave him a glare, daring him to say it. "Fine." He mumbled, defeated.
'Looks like I have a new human to play with… ' Wolfram's fangs glinted in the darkness as he smiled cruelly.
Well, that's the end. Tell me what you think of Wolfram, and whether fire or air comes next, cause I kinda forgot :) 'Til next time.
