Disclaimer: Fairy Tail and all associated characters, locations, ect. are owned by Hiro Mashima.
Chapter 13 - Flames and Ashes
Focus on Natsu
Natsu worked fevered, but without any success on unlocking Lisanna's shackles, when suddenly the entire place began to shake. As he was bouncing around the cell, he wondered if the floating cube-island was hit by a storm or something. Gradually the shaking faded into vibrations and then died down completely.
"Natsu, look!" Lisanna shouted excited. Wondering what could get her so worked up he looked over at her. She immediately pulled her makeshift cloak tighter around herself and gestured with her leg, shouting angrily at him. "Not at me, idiot! Over there!" Then why didn't you just say 'look over there' from the start...
Feeling slightly annoyed about being yelled at and called an idiot despite not having done anything wrong, he looked over in the direction she had indicated. "A sword!" Natsu exclaimed now equally excited. "I bet we can get rid of these shackles with it!"
Natsu quickly went over to the metal-bars and reached through to grab the sword. It was really odd-looking, with a very wide, ornamented, jet-black blade that seemed to be made out of crystal rather than metal and only brightened close to the single edge. Despite its thickness, it was only a little longer than Natsu's forearm and ended with a sharp curve and a spike on the back. It might be odd-looking, but it should do.
"This smell... it smells a bit like Silver and..." Lisanna froze when Natsu's suddenly began sniffing at her shoulder. "Yep... like the cloth. It smells like Silver carried this sword inside that cloth you have around you, but why would he do something like that? For that matter, why give you the cloth in the first place?"
"Do you think that maybe... maybe he's not really on their side and that he's trying to help us escape, without letting the other Demons notice?" Lisanna wondered.
After thinking for a moment Natsu replied: "It was him who convinced that Harpy to send the guards away from the dungeon and he gave us the sword, so maybe. But I don't understand why! He was the one to capture me in the first place. Why would he want to help me break out now? I just can't make any sense out of it... but right now it's not important. Even if we figure it out, it won't do us any good unless we can get out of here. Hold out your hands."
Just as the two were hoping, the sword really was able to cut through the shackles. After Natsu had cut them from Lisanna's arms, he passed the sword over to her. The moment he let go of the hilt, the blade suddenly began to glow a deep red. Lisanna was so startled that she dropped the sword and the glow disappeared. With some apprehension she picked it back up and the glow returned.
"A magical sword eh? But why didn't it glow when I was holding it?" Natsu wondered out loud.
"Maybe it uses the magic power of the wielder. With your magic being suppressed by the shackles, it had nothing to power itself. Do you think it's still safe to use it?" Lisanna asked, holding the sword as far from her body, as she could.
"It's not like we have much of a choice." Natsu replied and held out his hands. Two cuts later, both mages had been freed from the shackles.
"Ah, now I can Take-Over into something with a pelt or some clothing." Lisanna was relieved and immediately transformed into something that looked halfway between a Human and a cat. She sprouted cat-ears, her hands and feet were replaced with paws, she had a tail and she wore a bikini in a leopard-stripe pattern. Since she no longer needed it, she handed the cloth they had gotten from Silver over to Natsu, who tied it around his waist. Great, now that she's got something to wear, she'll finally be able to concentrate on the task at hand, instead of worrying about being seen naked. Natsu thought happily, but refrained from saying so out loud. Not that this skimpy bikini is hiding much anyway... Too bad I'm looking like I'm wearing a skirt, but it's better than nothing.
"Should we take the sword along?" Lisanna asked.
"I think so. Against enemies like those Demons, we might need any advantage we can get. And if we have to do a lot of fighting and run out of magic power, at least we'll have something more than our bare hands and feet to fight with." Natsu replied.
"Your right," Lisanna said. "I'm relying on speed for fighting and this thing is so heavy it'd slow me down too much. Besides I've never used a weapon before, so it'd be better if you took it."
When she handed the sword to Natsu, the glow intensified and flames licked across the blade. Natsu began to panic that it might burn Lisanna. But if he just dropped it, the chance of hurting her would be even greater, so he kept the sword gripped tightly in his hands. After a moment he noticed something like a tugging... when he paid closer attention to it, he could feel how a trickle of magic power was sucked through his hands and into the sword. After a few tries, Natsu figured out how to regulate and even completely cut this power-flow.
"What was that just now?" Lisanna asked him, still a little scared.
"This is so cool!" the Fire Dragon Slayer replied delighted. "After it flared up like that, it took me a few tries, but I figured out how I can give it more or less magic power. The more I pump into it, the bigger the flames become." He closed off the magic flow completely, so he could cut a small stripe off of the cloth he was wearing without setting it ablaze and used it as a make-shift belt. When he noticed the odd look Lisanna was giving him, he explained that he wanted something to tug the sword into, rather than having to carry it in his hands the whole time.
"With the way it cut so well without even any magic running through it, I wonder what it can do now."
Natsu adjusted the power-drain to a level where the flames encased the blade tightly, without licking out and made a light, one-handed strike at the metal bars of their cell. To his delight it cut through the first two bars it met and was only stopped by the third one, even though he put barely any strength behind the attack. With his new favourite toy, Natsu made quick work of their enclosure. With a satisfied smirk he put the sword into his make-shift belt.
"Now to find Erza, Mira, Happy and Elfman. Come on Lisanna!" Natsu shouted excited and dashed down the dark corridor.
Focus on Lucy
"No time!" the Card Mage shouted. In the middle of the room a bright light flared up, accompanied by a deep humming sound, both growing more intense by the moment.
And then Lucy's vision flashed bright white.
When her sight returned, Lucy was surrounded by a black void. Only in front of her, there was anything to see. It looked like a screen depicting the room in which she just had been. She couldn't make sense of it.
Then a massive thumb showed up on the screen and the perspective shifted. After a moment it showed Cana's head, though it took up almost the entire screen. What the hell is going on here?
At the corner of the screen Lucy could see Cana's left hand hold a card with a picture of Elfman on it. When Lucy studied the card, wondering how it could look so realistic, the Elfman picture began to move and it finally dawned on Lucy what had happened.
I'm in a card! That's just like the spell Shô used back in that casino. I had no idea Cana could do that. Back then those people caught in the cards could still speak with me, so she should be able to hear me now.
"Cana! What's going on? Why did you put me into a card and what is that light?"
From this perspective it was hard to tell, but it seemed as if Cana was running up the stairs. "Sorry Lucy, but I can't talk right now. I need to save them."
Save them? Save who and from what? "Alright... I trust you."
Lucy was glad when Cana arrived at the top of the stairs. While she couldn't feel any momentum, the violent swinging of the window through which she could look out of the card made her dizzy and nauseous. But as unsettling as the sight was, it was the only connection she had to the world and thus she couldn't bring herself to close her eyes or turn away.
When Cana ran into the main hall, bruised and out of breath, all eyes turn to her. Lucy's perspective shifted and the lower half of her vision window went dark. When the people looked at Cana, they looked above Lucy so she concluded that Cana must have tucked the card into her top, probably to free her hands.
A moment later Lucy's suspicions were confirmed, when Cana's hands entered Lucy's field of vision and performed a short gesture. A bright light flashed around everyone Lucy could see and when it faded, cards were left behind, where her baffled friends had stood or sat a moment before.
As soon as this was done, Cana ran as fast as she could to the door and at another short hand-gesture, the cards came floating into her hands, forming a neat stack. After leaving the guild, Cana kept running down the main street and told everyone she saw to run too.
Suddenly there was a loud noise. Inside the card, every noise seemed to only come from the front, through the screen, so Lucy couldn't tell the direction from which it had come until Cana turned around.
Where once their guild-hall had been, only a massive yellow and orange inferno could be seen. To Lucy's surprise the flames didn't expand to the sides and up, but were contained in a spherical area around the guild. When the intensity of the flames died down enough to no longer be blinding, Lucy could see something purple flickering at the edges of the inferno, though the light was still too intense to make out any details. Over the next few seconds the purple something flashed faster and faster, until it went out and it looked as if tiny specks of purple light were shot outwards in every direction. Now freed from whatever kept holding them in, the flames finally billowed up into the sky and to the sides, but they had already lost too much force to reach the surrounding buildings.
"Who'd have thought that the barrier would keep the damage in, rather than out..." Cana whispered. Nothing seemed to be left of their guild that was bigger than a hand's width. Everything had been pulverized down to the basement's walls, which still rose a few centimetres out of the crater.
Cana quickly turned away from the devastation and ran into a tiny side-street, sobbing softly.
Lucy could hear the confused shouting of the others coming out of the stack, but with their cards being stacked upon each other and currently facing down to the street, not to mention everyone shouting over the other, it was impossible to make out what they said.
Cana tipped the big stack with her index and ring finger and the babble of voices stopped... or at least the babble of voices from the cards. Lucy still had to raise her voice to be heard over the ruckus that was happening all over the city in response to the massive explosion. "Cana, please, tell me what happened. Why did the guild explode and why did the flames stay around it like that?" the Celestial Spirit asked in a monotone voice, too shocked to even register what she was feeling at the moment.
The Card Mage picked Lucy's card out of her cleavage and turned it to face her. A moment later Lucy's card began to hover in front of Cana. "Elfman brought something into the guild and planted it in the storage room. It was some kind of Lacrima, but before I could get a good look at it, he pounced on me. I knew that something was wrong with him, but I never expected him to go so far as to attack me, so I was caught completely by surprise. Before I really knew what was happening, he had my hands pinned down with one his and tried to choke me with the other... if you hadn't come in..." Cana trailed off for a moment and gave an involuntary shudder. "Anyway, the thing he brought in, was building up so much energy so quickly, it was clear that it would blow up any moment. If everyone would have tried to get out the door, even in a well ordered procession, it would never have been fast enough, so I carded everyone and ran."
While she was talking to Lucy, Cana began to sort through the card-stack, picking out a few to make two new stacks. Her hands were shaking, slowing her down considerably. Lucy was curious what her friend was doing, but decided to keep listening for now, as the Card Mage continued her explanation. "While you were in the hospital after your mission, Master, Freed and Levy put up a barrier around the guild to keep Yajima and us safe. Did you notice the purple runes and lines around the flames?" Lucy just nodded. "That was the barrier. Looking at how long those flames stayed inside it, we'd never have survived that blast without it. We'd all be dead and at least half of Magnolia would be gone with us."
"Why are you sorting the cards into three stacks? No wait... why are you even keeping us in the cards?" Lucy asked. Her voice was getting unsteady, as the initial shock began to fade and it began to sink in just how close their brush with death had been. Again... I almost died twice...no... almost died once and really did die, in the span of just one week the Celestial Spirit Mage thought despondently.
"If whoever did that, kept an eye on the guild, they would have seen only me running out and probably assume now that I'm the only survivor." Cana continued. Lucy tried to concentrate all her mind on the words of her friend, so she could distract herself from her gloomy thoughts. "By not letting you out of the cards yet, we can take them by surprise. In this stack are the wounded and the non-combatants and these four are Happy, Carla, 'Lily and Jet. They are our fastest messengers, so Master might want them to do something once I find his card and can ask him what to do."
Lucy noticed something at the upper edge of her vision window. "Cana, look there behind and above you!" There a massive cube floated over the mountain ridge, less than a kilometre north of Magnolia.
The Demons were here.
After words: In the Manga Sayla said that the bomb-lacrima had 500 times the power of Jupiter. While there are plenty of possible ways to explain why the explosion "only" affected the guild and not the surrounding town, I prefer for Tartaros not to care about "minor annoyances" like blowing up half a city just to get Fairy Tail. Apart from reducing the chance of even a single FT member escaping alive, what would Demons care about collateral damage in a city full of Humans, who they consider playthings, animals or vermin, depending on which one you ask.
So I made the explosion much stronger, but still didn't want it to cause too much damage to Magnolia (and kill Cana along with all the present FT mages - mostly this one actually), so I came up with Makarov & Co setting up a defensive barrier, since they were harbouring Yajima, who as far as they knew was still hunted by the Demons. It was a collaborative effort with Levy and Makarov reinforcing Freeds rune barrier, since Freed alone is unlikely the have the necessary power to create such an immensely strong barrier by himself.
And that barrier did exactly what it was designed to do: Keep hostile magic from getting through, only that surprisingly the energy came from within, rather than without. As to why it didn't prevent the lacrima from being brought into the guild... to be honest I didn't think about that until I wrote these after words ;-) Maybe it's because Elfman was keeping it on his body and inside his clothing or because it was still inactive when Elfman passed through the barrier and Elf only "switched it on" when he planted it.
27.08.2017: Spelling.