A/N: Aaand another one! My brain is filled with Fairy Tail - ah! Anyway, I might not have mentioned it but I am on my very brief (3-week) summer break right now, which is why I am pumping out chapters in comparison to the whistling tumbleweed desert of updates that has been the last 8 months. Before school starts again, I want to try to get through my alternative telling of the Tenrou Island arc. (Just so you know, only a few key things change, so it will be a brief retelling.) Everyone, please say a prayer that my muse will not return to hiding when classes begin again! Read and review - your praise is my lifeblood!
By the time they reached the northwestern edge of Caelum's mainland, Lucy decided that it was a beautiful country, even with the thought that witnessing the edges of the waterlogged country as she did made it seem like one big beach. But water was always beautiful and the winds had been favorable. Because of that, the passenger ship had managed to reach their destination in a little less than a day, even with the three stops it had been required to make along the way.
If the sea had been still, Lucy mused, the time it had taken would likely only have been a little longer.
By the time they disembarked on one of Caelum's many ports, it was early morning, the sun barely cresting the horizon, and the blond mage could see the telltale signs of the port town's market beginning to open.
"I would rather fly Draco than go through that again," Erebus groaned, his gray skin seeming somehow sickly in the morning light. Even though it was quite clear that the former demon apparently had some issues with motion sickness, which serves to make Lucy feel more at home in his presence rather than annoyed by the inconvenience, he was still strong enough to stress the need to carry her bags and make himself be of use.
"I'm afraid this will not be your last time aboard a boat," Lucy warned him in a soft voice, never one to pour salt into the wound of someone's discomfort. At that remark, she pointed to a large island clustered by two smaller islets. "Our destination is there, on the island."
Erebus groaned again, the sound pitiful, but didn't move to complain. Instead, surprising Lucy at his maturity, he moved the conversation in a more productive fashion. "What will I be doing, exactly?"
Lucy arched an eyebrow at him and then began to lead him up to the market. She was craving something non-seafood for breakfast and she had noted over the past few months that movement often tended to shake Natsu loose of his trademark nausea. "Draco didn't say?"
"He basically said 'guard duty'," the chaos spirit replied, deepening his voice even further to mimic the dragon. His lips quirked into a half-smile when Lucy laughed at the imitation. "I think he might have been... upset."
At that, the blonde stopped and looked at Erebus, brown eyes searching through starlit orbs. Her intense gaze stopped the celestial spirit dead in his tracks, as if she had ordered him wordlessly to stop and be still. After a moment, Lucy smiled again. "Throwing a tantrum because I chose you?" she wondered at a guess.
"Yes, actually. How did you know?" Erebus narrowed his golden eyes at her, trying to search her gaze as she did his but falling short. "How could you possibly know?"
She turned away from him instantly. "You won't like it," she told him in a promising tone.
"Probably not," he agreed, finding it hard to believe that there would be any explanation for her eerily accurate statement that he would find pleasant.
"If I focus, I can see what you're thinking about," she admitted, still holding her back to him. "I'm not sure if it's because I'm the one that essentially turned you into a spirit or if it's because you used to be a living creature."
Erebus had to admit to himself that he wasn't overly pleased about this fact but it was also something he couldn't do anything about. The mage in front of him had abilities, some of which far beyond his comprehension still, and they were hers alone and hers to use however she felt necessary. "You're right. But the fact still remains – what am I supposed to do, guard you from the unsuspecting masses?"
"I'm not a strong person," Lucy stated, bludgeoning the spirit with an obvious fact.
"I've noticed," he retorted.
The blonde scoffed immediately, the laughing tone roughened somewhat by the irritation that the remark likely caused. "Cheeky," she accused immediately. Stopping for a moment, she scanned the street before noticing an open bakery, her stomach grumbling audibly for a buttered roll and possibly some cheese. "Being a mage, I'm not particularly suited to combat, unlike the rest of my guild." She sneered at the memory of some of her more exhausting missions with Natsu, Gray, and Erza. "So, you're mostly there as a deterrent to any normal people who might get it into their heads to attack me."
Erebus sighed audibly at that news. "So, I'm a bodyguard? That's what you're telling me?"
Ignoring his petulant question, Lucy leaned over the bakery counter, leveraging herself to a height that left her feet dangling above the ground, and waved at the baker through the rear window. The plump woman grinned brightly at her and moved at a swift clip to greet her. Looking back at Erebus and his still irritated expression, she tried to ask a question with her own open expression, hoping she didn't have to word it aloud.
"What?" he asked after a moment, agitation making the gravelly roughness of his voice that much more distinct.
Lucy rolled her eyes at the large spirit. "Are you hungry?" she asked, her inflection making it clear that she thought the question was obvious.
"I've never eaten," the chaos spirit admitted, the tone of his voice making his thoughts unclear to the mage. If she didn't know better, she would think he was surprised by either the question itself or by the fact that she'd even though to inquire.
"Oh," she replied, her brown eyes wide at the implication. "Right." At that, she turned back to the baker. "Two buttered rolls and a block of cheese."
"What kind, dear?" the woman asked, gesturing to a line of cheeses in the glass display between them. Even though she was the epitome of kind and gracious, Lucy could clearly tell that the baker was eyeing Erebus with some trepidation.
Narrowing her eyes at the placecards underneath the cheeses, the blonde cursed herself for not researching the Caelum dialect a little more closely. Even though the spoken language was very similar to that used in Fiore, she now discovered that the written characters made her eyes want to cross. "Um, whatever's local is fine. We're Fiorese, so..." At that, the mage trailed off, not wanting to admit that she couldn't always read every language under the sun.
"Ah, right." The baker nodded, deft movements making quick work of Lucy's order. "I suppose you're here with the guild, investigating Hoshizora no Umi?" she inquired politely.
"Starlit Waters?" Lucy echoed uncertainly. "I thought it was Mizuko Isle."
"The island is," she concurred, delivering the order to the girl and accepting the exact change that Lucy offered in Jewel. "I referred to the celestial temple. It's the only thing of importance on that whole island."
"Celestial temple?" Lucy echoed, suddenly feeling like a broken record player, repeating everything that was said to her. She idly broke the cheese in half and offered that half as well as a buttered roll to her spirit companion. She didn't notice when Erebus eyed the food with some curiosity and then began to nibble on it cautiously. "I was told that it was merely a ruin."
The baker chuckled softly, leaning on her forearms across the counter. "It is that," she conceded. "Rumor has it that a powerful mage sealed a trinket inside and only another mage would ever be able to discover it." She laughed again, this time a loud guffaw. "You might be able to guess that most of that expedition hold little counsel with rumors."
"Why do you say that?" Lucy asked.
"Well, sweetie, you're the first mage I've ever seen ask about the isle."
Erebus stared at Lucy, surrounded by the items that the expedition had already gathered over the last six months, as she patiently separated the inventory into nonmagical, magically harmless, and magically powerful/useful. As of yet, the female mage had yet to come across anything magically dangerous, which was the fourth category of her personal inventory system. For hours, he had been watching her comb patiently through the pile of discovered items, seemingly at ease despite the fact that he could only see tedium there.
Over the past six hours, reminding the chaos spirit that it was now roughly high noon, given the angle of the sun in the sky, he had alternated between eyeing the humans that traversed the ruin with some trepidation, seeing a potential attacker in every shifty-eyed treasure hunter, and listening to Lucy's idle explanations of what she was doing. It was because of that, when he had begun to get anxious about the fact that she was essentially doing nothing, he now understood that this was part of her job as Love & Lucky's magical advisor. Without her there, they had to be far more careful than strictly necessary in order to keep from sustaining magical backlash from items they may want to sell.
Lucy was to serve as the magical buffer between the guild and those magical items that could harm them or their clients. This was also why she was given a 100,000 Jewel allowance from the guild every month.
Without really having to try, Erebus could tell that this was the highlight of Lucy's employment with the merchant guild. He wasn't entirely sure why – maybe she had monthly expenditures that amount would cover? - but he did know that he couldn't complain too much if the mage herself didn't. As such, throughout the day, he had said little, merely keeping himself alert by constantly surveying their surroundings so that Lucy didn't have to and keeping himself calm by listening to the soft sound of his mistress's voice.
"Lucy-san!" a voice called suddenly, catching the former demon's attention immediately. "Heartfilia-sama!" This time, the unknown voice called a different name, one that caused an entirely different effect on the blond mage.
"I'll kill him," the girl in question muttered darkly before standing up and pasting a bright smile on her face. Within moments, they were face-to-face with the small boy that Erebus had noticed had been darting in and around the temple all morning. "What is it?"
The boy, obviously an errand boy hired by the expedition, jumped up and down on the balls of his feet in excitement. "They think they found it."
"Found what?"
"The door!" The errand boy, a weed of a child that only managed to reach Lucy's shoulder in height, tugged on the mage's wrist and pulled her forcibly toward the inner chambers of the temple. "The secret door! That goes to the secret room!"
Smiling indulgently, Lucy allowed the boy to drag her to the "secret door", only pausing to throw a significant glance at the chaos spirit. Obediently, barely managing to keep from smiling himself, Erebus followed the two of them at a more sedate pace. "Does anyone know what's in the secret room?" she asked playfully, as if she wasn't already fully aware that this was where the platinum gate key should be.
"Oh, you know," the boy murmured, only the excitement in his voice making the words audible. "Hordes of treasure, mountains of gold. But that's not what the legend says."
"And what does the legend say?" Erebus smirked to himself, knowing this was the real question that Lucy wanted answered. None of the Fiorese knew the legend, as it was Caelan in origin, but the baker that morning had been far from knowledgeable about things beyond her ken.
"It's a key," the boy whispered, the conspiratorial sound marred somewhat by the excited giggle that erupted from his mouth. "It shines white like the brightest light and is fit only for the hands of a mage. The legend says that a dark man sealed it here, building the celestial temple around it, hundreds of years ago and that only a mage of light can unseal it."
At that, Erebus nearly groaned, knowing that Lucy would be the one to unearth the key in the so-called secret room. Because of the legend, would she become some sort of legendary hero to the people of Caelum? With an innate understanding that he could not identify, he knew that the mage in question would probably dislike that very much.
Within moments, they found themselves in what served as the inner sanctum of the celestial temple. Or rather, Erebus amended to himself, what the humans on this expedition thought was the inner sanctum. The "secret room" was actually the inner sanctum, the magic sealing it causing most humans to misunderstand the dimensions of the temple. Even so, there was a crowd of spectators peering at the door in confusion.
The door was a thing of beauty, clearly carved stone that had at some point been white but time had eroded to the stone's natural beige coloring. There were no knobs or secret mechanisms of any kind that Erebus could see. There was nothing but a riddle fire-branded into the stone above the door in Fiorese letters. "In the deepest darkness of night, how do we light our path?"
As the chaos spirit said the words, the door lit up briefly with silver light and the crowd around the door gasped. "There! Did you see it?" One of the men sighed. "I can't... Where did it go?"
Erebus frowned deeply at the crowd of people before turning to look at Lucy. "Can they not see the door?"
The blonde grinned up at him approvingly and he almost beamed back at her, so strong was the feeling of warmth bursting through his chest. "Score one for Erebus," she murmured gently. "It's a magical door, probably sealed to hide itself away. But mages," here, she pointed at herself, "and magical creatures," there, she pointed to him, "would be able to see it clearly."
"How did they even find it, to begin with?" Erebus asked, incredulity echoing clearly through his tone.
"Me," the errand boy said, raising a shaking hand. "I tripped and fell into the door."
"Human contact," Lucy answered, grinning with chagrin to herself, likely for not having thought of that on her own. "Even the best invisibility magicks aren't impervious to human clumsiness." She stared at the door hard then, as if she was waiting for it to do something. "Maybe he activated the magic circle."
Erebus shrugged, allowing for the realistic explanation. "That still begs the question: how do we open the door?"
"The riddle," Lucy answered immediately, as if the answer was simple. When Erebus merely looked at her as if she'd grown a second head, she sighed, sounded deeply aggravated. "You're not stupid, Erebus. I know you're not." Taking a deep breath, she continued, sounding as if she was trying to teach him something he should have already known. "On moonless nights, how do we see?"
Erebus knew the answer suddenly and clearly, as if it had jumped up and stabbed him in the eye. Being the demon that he was, he had spent much more time in the darkness than in the light but even his night vision was not perfect. "The light of the stars," he answered, immense embarrassment flooding his senses at being so dense.
Lucy grinned impishly, raising a hand that suddenly held an orb filled with starlight. "That's how we open the door."