Arumadura Fairy armour was one of Erza's strongest. She donned it without going through the rigmarole of wondering if Eileen was going to make her fight, there was a gleam to the woman's eye that was as unsettling as it was unmistakable.

When the last gauntlet fell into place and the light of her magic faded, Erza said, "Put the world back as it was and call off your assassin."

Eileen raised two inhuman hands. "I cannot."

"Liar!" Erza spat. "Do it now and spare yourself some pain."

Eileen's smile was cold and hard. "No."

Wearing the Arumadura was draining; Erza had done a lot of training over the last year, though, and it was easier now, feeding it bits of magic here and there to keep it on her body and at its strongest. She summoned magic, forcing it into her twin swords, and lunged.

Eileen was caught off guard by her sudden attack but far from helpless. Quick as a snake, she dodged.

Sidestepping didn't thwart Erza, she adjusted her course. Eileen's staff put a damper on things. It hit Erza's swinging swords with enough force that the shockwave travelled up Erza's arms and into her shoulders. Everything ached for a solid five seconds. She was paralyzed. In that time, Eileen brought her staff around again and cracked Erza across the temple.

Stars exploded behind Erza's suddenly closed eyes. Her legs felt weak.

Don't pass out. Don't.

She forced her eyes open, forced her legs to lock, and forced her lungs to draw air in. Finally, she forced her swords up and met Eileen's next swing. There was so much magic between them, the ground rumbled and fractured, gravel pulverized, and a building five hundred meters away slid off one corner of its foundation. Someone inside screamed. The door opened and a man, his son and their dog raced out. Erza only gave them half of her attention. It was enough that Eileen got another hit in, this one in her ribs. The armour protected her from the worst of it, however the steel exploded in micro fractures.

Erza gasped like a fish out of water, momentarily in shock. It passed, and when it did, she was angry all over again. "You'll regret that."

"The only thing I regret is letting you live those years ago when I should have just drowned you," Eileen spat.

Despite herself, Erza faltered. Don't ask. Keep going, you're wasting precious time. Her mouth moved, a traitor. "What?"

The woman's teeth revealed themselves in a smile. "Fight, Erza."

Suddenly the truth seemed very important. "We will, after you tell me what you mean. You said earlier that we knew each other. How?"

A thin brow went up. "Very well."

Beneath Erza's feet the ground rumbled, gravel pushed aside for a rapidly growing thorn bush. Growing wasn't the right word, for it didn't look alive. Maybe 'expanding' would do better. Erza stepped back, light on her feet. Not light enough. Faster than a whip, a bramble snaked around her body. A thorn found her neck and pierced her skin. Erza hissed and scrabbled to get it out. She succeeded, however, Eileen's magic was cocooning her and her vision was blurring.


In a castle she didn't recognize, Erza looked through a fringe of scarlet hair that was so like her own and studied a dragon. The massive lizard cousin smelled like scales and musk and a little like blood and rot, his dinner, and last night's, still stuck in his teeth. It wasn't human he ate, not like his brothers, but livestock bred to satiate his appetite and wild animals.

"We are losing our war." His voice boomed throughout the antechamber.

Erza felt her body moving on its own accord, bringing her into the larger room, closer to the dragon. Her heart thundered; she didn't want to be near it. It didn't matter what Natsu said, dragons had a long and colourful history of violence towards humans, and this one, with scored scales, bloody claws and hunks of meat in his teeth wasn't exactly fortifying his claim. Her limbs wouldn't stop. Her mouth opened and a voice that wasn't hers snuck from between her lips.

"My lord Belserion, I believe I can change the tide of the battle. I've done some research; it may be possible to augment humans with your magic, to aid you in slaying the dragons. If you'll allow me to experiment…"

His response was immediate. "While your efforts are appreciated, I don't want anyone harmed, my lady."

Erza felt her head tip so she was looking at the flagstone down low. It needed to be swept and maybe washed, too, filthy with dried clay, dead leaves and other bits of outside brought in. "I will be the first to try. Please."

"We don't know the effect it will have on your body. Dragon's magic isn't like human's."

"I and many others would do anything to protect our home. Please. This could be the advantage you need."

Dragon's didn't have expressive faces, yet Erza knew the beast was buckling without too much fight; they must have been very desperate indeed. "Very well."

The scene melted; events flew by so quickly that Erza felt nauseous. In a lavatory, Eileen tried the spell on herself. It hurt; she was sick for days. It passed, leaving her the same as she ever was. She tried again. And again. Finally, after what felt like many failed attempts, she made a break through and a whole new kind of magic was available to her.

On a different day, this one snow-smothered and cold, in the courtyard, men an women lined up to receive her blessing. They walked away more powerful than before. Fighting ensued, human and dragon, dragon and dragon; blood and death ruled. It was all she could smell. Her hands felt perpetually wet. A face that Erza recognized appeared amongst all of the destruction.

Achnologia. Once a man, then a dragon. Erza recognized him from Eileen's perspective, too, he was a general in her army before he changed. He wasn't the first to have his human skin bow to dragon's scales, but he was the only one that survived the transformation.

He decimated everything without discrimination, dragons fell to him, humans, too. Cities and mountains and valleys. Everything he wished into ruin waltzed gladly into that fate. Every resistance mounted upon him failed. No one ever got close enough.

Just when the world had given up hope, it was over. Undefeated and unchallenged, Achnologia disappeared. Tentative peace took the land.

Time slowed. A man with dark hair appeared and took Erza's hand. "My queen. Lord Belserion is ailing."

"Thank you. I'll tend him."

"It would be my pleasure to stay by your side and help."

She allowed for it.

Time skipped like a stone touching on a pond's calm surface. Erza saw the dragon's death, she felt Eileen's suffering, and then she felt the newcomer's mouth on hers. She knew him more intimately in months that passed in seconds. They were wed, and then they were pregnant.

It took several long seconds, but Erza swallowed what Eileen was trying to show her. The realization was a cold slap in the face. She would have taken some time to digest the new—and ludicrous—development, but the vision trekked onward.

The next time the world came into focus, Erza was leaning against a stone basin, the light of candles illuminating her face. Her skin was cracked, and beneath it was the darkest scales she'd ever seen. Touching them, she knew that they were a dragon's. Achnologia's image invaded her memory.

"I'm falling ill as well." Like the many men and women that had been overtaken by this peculiar illness.

Erza felt panic in her chest. She didn't succumb to it because the last time she'd seen Achnologia, he walked off the battlefield as a man and not a dragon. He had healed.

Her husband entered the room. He went white as soon as he saw her. And then his eyes narrowed. "You're one of them."

Erza in Eileen's body touched her face. "It's only temporary, a side-effect of the dragon slaying magic."

He almost looked like he wanted to believe her. Eileen reached for him, hoping to calm his nerves. He saw her left hand the same time she did and that was that. Claws and scales didn't belong on a human's body.

"Guards!"

"What are you doing?" Erza had never felt such panic. It was debilitating and somehow motivating.

He stood strong. "You are under arrest, Eileen."

"Arrest? For what?"

His handsome face contorted into one she didn't know. "For being a devil. You'll spend your time in the jails until your execution date is decided."

"My execution?" Men with swords filled the small chamber.

"Put chains on her and take her to the dungeon."

"Yes, Sir," said a man in leather armour. He acted without any hesitation, wrapping Eileen and subsequently Erza in chains that were both heavy and magic-dampening. She didn't even have a fraction of her power as soon as the metal touched her skin. She was suddenly a human woman, not the sorceress her country respected and cherished.

"Please!" Erza begged with Eileen's mouth again. "I carry your child. Don't do this."

The man was cold. "Any child you carry is a devil, too. You'll both be sentenced to death."

Time skipped. The jail cell they gave her was small and stone. It stank like piss. She got a bucket to do her business in, though sometimes it wasn't changed for two weeks and she had to go on the floor. She was given bread and water once a day and rarely did she have visitors. When she did, it was someone to clean her cell, and then it was her husband. Almost used to the new way of viewing the world, Erza searched for his actual name in Eileen's memories, but either time had made her forget or she forced herself to.

A second later, Erza realized why. He came in and picked her up with gentle hands. He said he was sorry. He kissed her chin and her nose and her lips. And then he stripped her down and had her there in the cell. She let it happen because she wanted to believe. Because she wanted to go free. He came inside of her and then left her there for another three weeks. The next time he showed, she was less compliant.

The beatings began, and then the public humiliation. Strung up nude for the world to see, he burned her with heated metal, whipped her, and called her a devil's cunnus. Slut had never sounded so filthy. It happened again and again. The torture changed, but not the pain. She never cried, not in front of anyone.

Everything slowed and came into focus again. Erza in Eileen's body knelt on the cold floor in her cell. The door opened and her husband entered.

"Your execution day has been set. You'll be beheaded for all the world to see."

Erza knew Eileen was cynical, however her next words surprised her. "If I'm gone, who else will you lie to and fuck?"

He looked down his nose at her. "I've taken a new wife."

"Another cunnus for you to force yourself upon?"

"She gives herself to me willingly unlike the last devil I mistakenly took to bed."

The rage was pure; Erza realized that it was her own, too. She was thankful when Eileen lunged. The man slapped her down, an easy feat when she was so weak and malnourished. She fell to the stone floor and lay there, hair twisted over her face, blood filling her mouth and the smell of piss burning her nose.

Then another wave of rage came. "I carry your child!" Erza's own throat felt raw with the furious scream.

"It's been three years! There is no child!" the man screamed back.

Eileen determination was a marvel to behold. She pushed herself upright with arms that shook and informed him, "I spelled it into stasis, never wanting to give birth in this horrid place."

His sword came out before she ever stopped talking. "Fine, you claim there's a baby inside, we'll cut it out then and prove it!"

Erza was just as shocked as her guide when the man, enraged to senselessness and pushed on by fear, approached with his sword brandished. She was still in shock, right up until the moment he laid the cold metal against her skin and started slicing, just as he promised. The scales protected her some, but they weren't as tough as they could have been. Blood came. And pain.

And anger.

Screaming stopped nothing, grabbing the sword only sliced through her palms. The man was stronger, had a better vantage point standing above like some kind of vengeful devil.

Helpless and out of her mind with fear, Erza felt the back that wasn't truly hers explode in pain. Her skin flared and got dry, her teeth changed, her eye sight, too. Everything came into sharper focus.

The blade came for her again. It shucked off her skin like she herself was made of steel.

Opening her mouth, the most peculiar sound came out. A roar. The man stumbled back and hit the cell's metal bars. Powerful and vengeful herself, Eileen came on. Erza could taste the blood filling her mouth. She could smell the man's guts spilling across the floor.

She wanted to vomit. And she wanted to watch to make sure he got what he deserved.

The vision was replaced by a clear blue sky. Herself once more, Erza panted, still tasting blood, and dug her fingers into the gravel below her body.

"I was a dragon for a very, very long time after that." Eileen's voice was unmistakable now, Erza thought she'd recognize the woman anywhere, even out of a crowd of five hundred. She felt she knew her better than she knew herself.

"I almost forgot what it was to be human, but you were still in my womb, my last connection to humanity. Whenever I was feeling particularly beast-like, I would think of you, Erza, and the dragon would fade. I tried to make myself human again, using every spell I knew. That failed so I searched for Achnologia, knowing that he'd made the transformation himself. He was elusive.

"And then his Majesty found me. He saw through me in seconds. Mere moments later, he made me a woman once more. Indebted, I swore to serve him."

Eileen began to pace. Erza followed her movements from her place on the ground, listening to the woman's boots crunch over pulverized gravel. "It wasn't long before I realized that something was very wrong. I looked human on the outside but my heart was still a dragon's. I couldn't taste when I ate, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't feel, not the way I used to. I was detached, less human than I was even when I was locked in that jail cell being treated like an animal. I couldn't stand it. The only thing I wanted was to be the person I once was.

"A thought occurred to me—if I had my child, it might make me feel like me again. His majesty warned me from the path, but I was stubborn. I gave birth with a nursemaid tending me. Months passed. I cared for you as any mother might, but I felt nothing. Not even a little bit of love. I realized that what I felt for all those years while you were trapped inside was nothing but hope. I was reaching for what I thought I should feel, not reality.

"You, on the other hand, felt everything. You loved, you cried, and you silenced when someone would give you a soother dipped in strawberry jam. You had everything I wanted and you were too young and too dumb to realize it. I began to resent you. And then I had a thought. I wanted to tie us together. I wanted to enchant myself into your body and live out the life I had stolen away from me."

Erza found her words in the silence that came. "You wanted to kill me and take my body in order to live like you used to." You believe her? Yes, yes she did. It was insane, but everything she experienced… it was too real to be anything but truth.

Eileen wasn't apologetic. "It was my right. I carried you for four hundred years, Erza. I protected you from those that would destroy you. I deserved another chance, and that was to be my reward." Her pacing stopped. She fixed Erza with hate-filled eyes.

"You must not have done it," Erza said, looking for a woman with a shred of decency. "I am still me and you are still you."

"No, I tried," Eileen replied. "It never worked. I took you into the cold winter night and dropped you in a dingy alley and never looked back."

"I wish I could say your circumstances have made you a monster but I think you were always that way, you just needed the right environment in which to grow," Erza spat as soon as she was able.

Eileen laid her inhuman hand against her chest and pouted. "Does it hurt you to know that you were cast aside, useless gutter trash?"

Erza clenched her fist, fingers digging through gravel, and summoned another armour, this one more powerful than the last. "No. I'm glad. In fact, I think I should be thanking you." Getting up was clumsy, nothing felt quite right. Her neck throbbed, sore, her joints hurt from the abuse she'd given them. She was determined, though, so all of that fell to the wayside. "I'll repay you the best way I know how, by putting you out of your misery. You won't have to long for something you can never have again."

The swords she summoned were the unforgiving kind.


Wendy opened her eyes and processed what was happening just in time to avoid a sword strike, falling to the earth (cobblestone and limestone now, not the concrete of the school's front yard) and rolling away just as Erza taught her. The sword dug into the earth inches from her head. She was up again in seconds, bumping into the body at her side.

"Wendy!" Cheria's voice stopped her from tearing away from her body.

The sword came again. Wendy acted on instinct, summoning wind enough to blow her attacker away. Able to think for a moment without being swung at, she did all she could to take in her surroundings and digest her situation.

She was out of the school's perimeter. In fact, she could see the building kilometers away. How? But how wasn't important. The bodies around her were. Most were on the ground, bleeding from one place or another. Some moaned, some's clothes and skin smoked, burned, some did neither, killed or unconscious. Blasts and screams and the smell of smouldering skin came to her nose. Her eyes scoured the area. Most people held swords, some spears, some wielded magic, some a combination of the three.

Wendy picked a familiar face from the crowd: the white haired Mirajane. She donned a soul that was entirely new and ferociously attacked a group of sword-wielding men. Next to her, Freed pulled his sword from his scabbard and blocked one man at his front. Not the woman at his back, though. She came in with a spear and stabbed at him. It would have sunk into his back and killed him instantly except Evergreen was there to knock it wild. The blade dug into his leg instead. It was still a fatal wound, his carotid artery hit, but he'd bleed to death in minutes rather than be gutted and die instantly. He fell.

Wendy's mouth went dry and filled with the tangy taste of fear. Her mind put the happening events in a neat line so she could draw her conclusion. It's a battle. And people were getting hurt. She moved without thinking, hurrying over fallen soldiers to Freed's side, hoping to heal him before he bled out.

Her path was littered with dangers, swords and battling mages. Wendy dodged them all except for a bearded and armoured man that stepped in front of her and lifted his hands. Obeying the call of his magic, the ground gave up its minerals. Quartz as clear as glass condensed and moved as it was never meant to, more like a snake than a stone. It jabbed for Wendy's middle. There was no time to react. A millisecond before it gutted her, it fell short. Wendy looked up to see why: Cheria had hit him with a wind strong enough that his neck bent weirdly on his broad shoulders, broken. He fell to the ground.

The god slayer panted, pale. "Are you okay, Wendy?"

She nodded, too shocked to form words. After that, Cheria did what she could to hold off the enemy while Wendy did her best to heal.


Even with Riley's body several rooms behind her now, it was all Lucy could see. She felt trapped in one of Midnight's illusions, chased down and haunted by what Riley was after Natsu…

Get out. get out. get out of my head. She clutched her shoulder and stumbled down the hall as fast as her feet would take her. She thought of Natsu instead of Riley, desperate to clear her mind of the gore. All she could see was the coldness in his eyes when he looked back over his shoulder that one final time.

'He's END, Lucy.' Gray's memory wouldn't shut the fuck up. 'Did you not hear me?'

END. Natsu Dragneel. END.

No.

She kept rejecting the idea. It wouldn't let her be.

Please.

Swinging around a corner, she caught sight of her quarry. Sort of. Just a glimpse of the coat she'd given to him. He disappeared again around another hallway, a ghost in flame that left smoke in his wake, clouds of it, choking and rotting her lungs.

"Natsu!" His name came out far quieter than Lucy planned. "Natsu!"

He didn't slow. And she couldn't catch up. He's too fast. He wasn't, though—how could he when he left behind huge puddles of blood from a bullet wound that had been meant for her?—it was just that she was moving too slowly. Her shoulder bled generously every time her heart hammered. Her vision swam, lungs rejecting the smoke-filled air as quickly as they drew it in.

The hallway seemed impossibly long. At the junction, Lucy rested and panted, looking down the other corridor. She didn't stay stationary for long. Squinting, she saw a figure crumpled against the wall and recognized his dark blue hair.

"Jellal."

He didn't stir.

Maybe he's dead.

It seemed like nothing could live in the hell that the school had become. It was too hot, there was too little air, and the hallways felt way, way too small.

Golden light filled the space before her. At first, Lucy thought it was Loke or another one of her spirits come to drag her through the smoke. Then she realized it was the light of scalding flame. Heat travelling through the concrete made it impossible to stay leaning against the wall.

Maybe we're all going to die.

Lucy took in another stabilizing breath and got moving again.


It was far too hot, yet Gray was incapable of closing his dry eyes as Natsu bypassed him and went straight for the demon. She looked up at him and called him master, she uttered his name, END, and stood there as still as a statue as he tore out her throat and burned her to less than ash.

Gray's mark hungered for her soul. It hungered for END. The need made him blind, and yet, he was incapable of moving, a slave to Meredy's pain and Juvia's and his own. Three was, in fact, a crowd.

In the seconds that followed Akio's death, the only noise was the crackling of flames, and then Gray heard her voice.

"Natsu!"

Following the sound, he found Lucy leaning against the doorframe, white-faced. She clutched her shoulder, drenched in blood again.

"Natsu!"

Gray knew she didn't see he and Juvia, she didn't see the creature Natsu reduced to a pile of ash with hardly a thought. She only saw Natsu. And maybe, finally, she saw END, too.

Or maybe not, Gray thought as she pushed away from the wall and came into the room. "Natsu—Natsu please, look at me."

Gray lifted his gaze and saw Natsu's shoulders tense. The fire around his body flared out, whether on purpose or an automatic reaction, Gray didn't know. Lucy didn't stop, too focused to sense the coming danger.

In the seconds to come, the devil slayer realized that he was wrong, he could move, if it meant stopping Lucy from joining Akio. She wouldn't look quite so good as a pile of ash. His methods were crude. Reaching out as she passed, he grabbed her ankle and tugged with his remaining strength. Uncoordinated and hurt, Lucy lost her balance quicker than she could prepare for. She went down hard, twisting her arm beneath her body. She cried.

Natsu burned a hole through the building and left without looking back.

Lucy gathered breath again and strength to rise. "Natsu!"

Gray squeezed her ankle and rasped, "Stop it, Lucy."

"Let go of me." She tried to dislodge him by jerking her leg out of his grasp. "I have to get to him. I have to bring him back."

He wasn't gentle as he said, "He's gone."

"He's not gone! I can still see him." He was a bright torch even by the daylight. "I need to—"

Gray growled, "He's not Natsu anymore, Lucy. He's Zeref's dog. If you go after him, he'll kill you."

Lucy jerked her leg again, this time breaking Gray's hold. She was up and on her feet despite her injuries and hobbling after him. Gray called her back, seeing only heartache in her future. Lucy didn't listen; soon, she was out of range. In the end, the devil slayer quieted and willed Meredy to rise. It wasn't a call she could rightly ignore, connected as they were.


Laxus didn't bother ducking swords or dodging magical attacks to get to his target. He annihilated everyone that dared to come near him, pushing his dragon slaying lacrima to the very brink of its integrity in the interest of asking his questions. The blonde woman had her eye on him. She swiped at Bickslow and Evergreen, and then at Elfman. She left the second eldest Strauss with a gouge in his chest that would scar if he lived through the rest of today. Elfman didn't go down, too dumb, too stubborn. He picked her up and threw her like the monster he could be. She ragdolled against the ground, bouncing, bouncing ever closer. Laxus lost sight of her for an instant. When he found her again, she was on her feet and looking furious.

It looked like she went for Elfman again, her body angling toward him. Laxus blinked. She was there and then she was not. Elfman was standing, and then he was not. Lisanna's strained voice penetrated the clang of steel on steel, screaming her brothers name.

I don't want to know, Laxus thought. Knowing was a distraction. There wasn't anything he could do for Elfman other than find his attacker anyway. He was no healer, better a breaking things than mending, always.

A woman stepped before him to block his way. Her sword searched for his heart; Laxus used the steel as a conductor, sending so much energy through her body that her heart stopped. She fell to the ground without much fight and twitched.

"That wasn't very fair."

Laxus looked up from the fallen enemy and found his quarry closer than he expected, her gaze settled on his. Blonde and brown eyed, a wry smile on her face and soaked to the elbow in blood, her unsettling appearance and the peculiar magic coming from her skin more than made up for her small stature and thin frame. Looks could be deceiving, he knew that more than well enough.

"You were there the other night."

"There?"

Laxus let the sound of the battle drift into the background, though he was aware of the soldiers fighting both at their location and marching over the hill. They would converge on Fairy Tail's location soon, but there was time for answers, he hoped.

"At the guild hall the other night, when Fairy Tail's master was set on fire." Saying it aloud made him feel sick. He didn't want to think about it. And yet, he needed answers.

The woman's wry smile widened. "Here I told Eileen you wouldn't remember us. Guess I was wrong."

Laxus' vision narrowed. Someone was thrust into his side. He rocked, temporarily thrown off balance. He only adjusted his footing, not in any state to defend himself from an attack. Thankfully, none came. "Did you do that to him?"

"Set him on fire?" She rolled her sword in her wrist, working out some kink. "No. I gave him a new smile, though. What did you think of it? He looks better now, right?"

Laxus' lungs were too small to draw breath. He expelled it instead and charged heedlessly, magic in his hands. He got in exactly one hit. The woman's face burned and blistered immediately, her clothes charred, the ground beneath her feet where the charge grounded turned black, the grass burning immediately, and then everything froze.


In a time where Natsu didn't feel much of anything except the need to get to the church and be his brother's deliverance, he felt time snag and try to hold him in place. It was a spell; even half blind and driven, he knew that.

It didn't take much of a course change to find the source of the problem. On the edge of town where the guild hall was not supposed to be, Natsu found a most peculiar sight. The majority of Fairy Tail's returned force was locked in combat with soldiers that bore a strange mark. He knew without any sort of clarification that these people belonged to Zeref.

He ran, though it felt like walking, over rubble, between bodies, moving through a suspended world. The only thing that bunged up his need to get to Zeref was the sick feeling in his chest.

'Do you know how many lives have been lost because of you?'

He was seeing first hand. Elfman lay on the ground, a glazed look in his eye. He was cut bellybutton to sternum. Evergreen knelt over him, coaxing his body to stone. Natsu processed that: she was trying to put Elfman in some sort of stasis so he didn't bleed out. It wasn't clear if he was alive or not to benefit from her efforts.

Beside them, Lisanna was trapped trying to defend them from a coming attack, a much larger man wielding a sword. The arc he was coming in on would bypass her weak defense, leaving her much like her brother with a hole in her stomach.

Though he wasn't sure why he could move around while the others were stuck, Natsu went to Lisanna first and burned her attacker from the earth. He was turning, focusing on Happy lifting a scared looking Wendy from a crowd of soldiers when he heard the shink of a sword coming free of its scabbard. He followed the noise and found the culprit, a woman with hair almost as golden as Lucy's. Her face was burned on one side and her hands shook.

She found Natsu almost at the same time. Shock kept her arcing blade from cutting Laxus' throat deep enough to kill him; instead, the stationary man received a deep cut from ear to chin. He would scar.

The woman's shaking hands wouldn't hold her blade anymore, not with Laxus' magic still wreaking havoc on her nervous system. It fell to the ground, just like she almost did. "Master END."

Like the demon, this woman's words sounded reverent.

Natsu didn't take time to ask questions. He saw what needed to be done and acted, attacking the woman with a ferocity he'd never felt quite so intensely before. Unlike the demon, she defended herself, lifting her sword's scabbard to ward off his attack.

"You shouldn't be able to move," she protested between blows. "I've—"

Natsu swung for her face with fire that was hotter than ever. She fell on contact, her already burned skin blistering some more. Her scream was pleasing. She should suffer, shouldn't she? Not that he knew anything about her, but if she was his brother's, she was as perverted as Zeref, misled and lost. Desperately, she searched for her dropped sword and found it.

Natsu wasn't afraid. Standing over her, he reached for power he didn't know was his. It obeyed him, flames coming to his hand. The ground beneath the blonde's body smouldered, her boots and her clothing melted to her body, she screamed and screamed; her sword went next, the very tip melting into a useless puddle.

'Natsu.'

Natsu felt Zeref on his periphery, calling, waiting. The need to get to him was overwhelming once more. He looked away from the blonde. She wouldn't live for much longer anyway.

In turning, he saw Lucy very briefly. It was only then he realized she was following him, though ineffectually. Several hundred meters back, she'd been hobbling along until she too got snagged in time's clutch. She held her shoulder, her now-pale lips open. He imagined she'd been calling his name. What does it sound like coming from her mouth?

He couldn't say.

While it made him sad to forget, it was a price he was willing to pay.

Zeref's voice was loud and clear.

Natsu followed it, leaving behind Lucy and Laxus and the woman whose name he'd never know.

Maybe you'll forget them all.

Death took without discrimination.


"I can't," Meredy sobbed.

Gray wanted to shake her. He wanted to scream. Instead he said, "Focus. This is your magic."

"I know!" she cried, "But you did something."

It didn't take much to think of what. That goddamn stone. The anger he felt, Juvia experienced as well. Even laying exhaustedly on the floor, she sniffled. Gray felt his own eyes wet with tears. "This is so goddamn fucking frustrating!" He couldn't escape her, she couldn't escape him, and Meredy was the vehicle.

"Calm down," Meredy begged. "I can't focus with you screaming."

She couldn't focus anyway; they all knew it.

Then just…

"Gray," Meredy warned, translating his thoughts before he had himself.

"I have to."

"If things don't work out…"

She was scared. Her fear was almost debilitating. Juvia fed off of it and Gray almost succumbed to it, too. "Stop. Stop it."

"You stop. It's not just your life, it's all of ours!" Meredy replied.

"It's everyone if he keeps going!" Gray raged back.

"Please. Think about what you're doing."

Everyone knew he had. This would be the greatest and worst thing he'd ever do. It was the only thing he felt like he was born to do. It was the only thing he felt like he was capable of doing.

I can't. Killing Natsu made him feel sick.

I have to. Not doing it made him feel worse.

He got to his feet, taking strength from his connection with Juvia. She was uncertain; it was unclear how much of that emotion belonged to her and how much was Meredy's.

"I know you'll do the right thing when it comes time," Juvia said, though she hardly needed to speak aloud.

Gray interpreted her words the only way he could; she thought he'd choke when the time came.

Gray didn't know what he thought.

Meredy did, however. "You'll kill us all!"

It felt like it, too.

"Wait and let me figure out the link. With time I can—"

Walking in segmented steps, Gray told her, "Time is one thing we don't have."

He followed Lucy who followed Natsu, thinking of how he'd kill the demon END. They're not two separate beings, he thought. It was easier to think of them that way. That's why he refused.

His resolution shouldn't come easy.

His back felt bowed beneath the decision's weight.