Juvia watched Levy closely. Watched the way she still limped and stumbled - still fought to clamber over the hot, blackened debris littering their path. And the woman wondered if Levy knew that her legs and hands were bleeding. Shredded from a thousand soot covered scratches. Skin torn on broken stone and splintered wood. Juvia wondered if she could feel any of that at all as she watched a shard of glass graze Levy's neck while shimmied through the broken window in a great ornate door close to the main study. She never once so much as looked down at the blood that soaked the front of her shirt. Or gave any indication of having felt that sting of that split skin.

There was something wrong. Something that made every nerve, every sense she had shout at her to stop. Things had been tense in the guild. Emotions had run high and the normal structure of order had broken down... but they'd been wrong to place so much on Levy's shoulders. She wasn't thinking straight. Juvia saw that now.

Time slowed as they wound between fallen beams, through battered, broken doorways and tripped over stinging embers all the while fighting for every polluted breath. Their blue hair was already matted and dirty from the ash that rained down on them, obscuring most discernable features. Levy was muttering to herself. A trait Juvia had brushed off before but now saw with terrible clarity was far from normal behaviour. The ceiling above them cracked in warning, groaning ominously, and Juvia spared a glance up, her features tight.

Through the noxious haze she could see that it gave way to the floor above in a number of spots - the ornate plaster of the old upper rooms peering down at them through ragged holes. She could survive if the building fell down on her. Levy wouldn't.

"Stop! Levy, stop," Her dry throat burned with the words, hoarse from the fumes. "We need to slow down and think for a second," Juvia rasped, reaching out and catching Levy by the wrist when she looked about to ignore her and continue on. "Gajeel wouldn't want..."

"We don't have time to stop," Levy interrupted her, pulling free. Using the moments pause to wipe the ash out of her eyes. The look of hurt on Juvia's face made her chest ache. Guilt dragging its claws across the bones of her ribcage - brushing something exposed and raw underneath. Levy softened her tone, gesturing down the long hall. "We're close. I know we are," There was a sudden almost inhuman sounding roar that made Levy's teeth rattle as if the Universe itself were confirming her statement, but Juvia didn't move.

"What I know ...is that if we continue on this route, the only thing that we'll find, is ourselves, buried under half this house."

There was a flicker in Levy's eyes that made Juvia's heart pound. Maybe she didn't care? Maybe the woman was passed worrying about such things. But the Levy McGarden Juvia knew always listened to reason.

"Please..." Juvia pleaded. "There has to be another path."

The smoke was too thick to see the words Levy scrawled in the air but the stone and wooden beams that appeared either side of them, propping up what remained of the ceiling, told Juvia all she needed to know about Levy's willingness to consider any alternatives.

"And if it was Gray and not Gajeel?" Levy's voice cracked.

"Then..." Juvia swallowed thickly. The words she wanted to say suddenly refusing to come out. She could understand. There was no doubt she could understand. She would walk through burning hell barefoot for him. But she also knew that if it were Gray, and their roles were reversed, he might not want her risking her life for him.

And Gajeel would hate her for every second she let Levy risk her life in this crumbling ruin. She knew that, too.

But Levy wasn't going to stop or heed her advice, either.

"Another beam," Juvia pointed ahead, her decision made. "The ceiling has sagged there." Levy obliged and raised another pillar. "And there!"

The pace picked up as the shouts and hollers intensified. Juvia periodically pointing to sections of wall and floor and ceiling, Levy's magic filing the gaps and securing their route as they went. She saw Levy stumble a step and slowed long enough to see the thing that had tripped her. The body that had tripped her. The eyes were empty smoking sockets staring up at them The lips had burned away leaving the face in a perpetual and terrifying grin of black, cracked teeth. The clothes were nothing more than ashen scraps of fabric.

It was impossible to tell if the corpse had been one of the guards... or one of the prisoners that they'd released. Juvia wasn't entirely sure what she felt at the knowledge this might have been her doing. That responsibility for all this mayhem fell squarely on her shoulders. It was not an easy death. She wasn't sure anyone deserved to spend their last minutes like that, regardless of what they'd done in life.

But Levy barely looked at him. Sparing just a quick glance to be sure it wasn't someone she recognized and she was moving again. Possessed by some compelling force that terrified Juvia all the same. There was love. Blinding, aching, selfless, burning love. And then there was this. Something almost unhinged. Something feral and cruel and unrelenting. Something mad.

The woman she knew was a twisted image of herself. Reckless. Wild.

Levy muttered again and Juvia blinked.

"Who were you talking to?" She asked, her voice small and quiet and utterly fearful of whatever response might come back. Levy made sure not to turn and face her.

"No one..." The reply came all too softly

And Juvia knew, that whether they found Gajeel or not, their troubles were likely nowhere near over.


Just a little further. I'm not far now.

His voice was a beacon for her, spurring her on and directing her left and right through the smoke. Pushing her through the pain in her leg, the ache of those new muscles screaming for her to stop. To fall. The image of the smoking corpse surfaced in her mind and he was suddenly there to wipe it away.

They deserved it and worse. They separated us.

Levy blew out a harsh burning breath and grit her teeth.

And then he was gone and Juvia was crying in alarm beside her.

They'd arrived.

The path ahead was lit with dying fire and lightning - a haze of wind, steel and hot blood. The daylight streaming in was thin through the thick smoke and the carnage - thin despite the pure dawn rising outside. A hand on Levy's shoulder ripped her backwards and Juvia covered her body with her own as a piece of stone hurtled passed, breaking on the marble pillars beside them and exploding - showering them both in shards as razor sharp as glass. They pelted Juvia's body like the surface of water, passing through, slowing and clattering to the floor like a hundred dropped pins.

"There!"

Juvia cried, pointing to the far side of what looked once to have been a great dining room. The long table at its center had been heaved on its side and pushed against the missing segment of wall, sealing them in where the exterior stone had been broken. The once towering iron Dragon Slayer was paler than she'd ever seen him, his movements sluggish as he parried boulders of dark stone from a combatant Knight, knocking them aside with jagged iron blades when he lacked the strength to break them completely. Levy felt a wave of forgotten pains lance through her. Warm, terrible relief flooded her at the sight of him. Alive. Whole. Her body sagged as whatever force that had been spurring her started to evaporate. Juvia caught her shoulders as she wavered on her feet.

"Helping you here was a mistake!" Juvia's voice was far away when Levy heard it. Like it was being filtered through the water like those stones. Laced with worry and fear and dread and doubt.

But her attention was still on Gajeel. He hadn't noticed her yet, but he was okay. He was fighting and alive and she'd always known he was. He was so close now. So close that she could feel the breath of his magic brush her own. Still held by Juvia she whispered his name and the shaven haired man across the room paused, startling at the tiny reverent sound. Levy shook free of Juvia's grasp, unable to stand the stillness, the hesitation, not when he was no so close. She ran heedlessly into the fray, passed Laxus who'd just thrown Wendy at a soldier. Passed a pair of gloved hands that reached for her only to be wetly slapped away, their owner shouting in rage and pain as Juvia took him off his feet.

She ran. One step. Two. Three. She could smell him. The tang of iron in her nose overpowering even the smoke and blood and singed flesh. He wasn't watching when the next rock came his way but a wave off her hand sent it breaking against the shield she'd conjured. Levy reached out her arms to him, smiling. He grinned back stupidly.

But he wasn't getting any closer Levy realised. She pushed herself a little more, her legs straining but the distance between them remained. Gajeel's matching smile faded as he seemed to realise this as well. Like they were on a treadmill. Confusion and horror made her shake as the world was suddenly warping around them. The air she frantically sucked into her lungs cleared and day turned to moonless night. The dining room twisted and opened into an enormous arena. A space potted with biting, jagged stone spikes and wide, dark cracks that sunk deep down into the earth along the outer borders.

Levy hadn't realised that anything had been moving until it all came to a jarring stop. The ground racing up to meet her as she fell forward into cold dirt. Coughing, she scrambled to her knees searching for Gajeel and Juvia and the others but she couldn't see them through the forest of rock.

Beyond the spikes and open plains marred by impossible craters, spectator stands walled them all in. And from the seats, still, empty eyed faces watched silently. Soulless puppets. Without breath or movement. Things without feeling. Levy had seen this magic before. The power to build worlds within worlds. Pocket dimensions.

Places were there creator was as a god.

She sucked in a breath and roared his name into the darkness. The pillars were too close together for Levy to slip through the spaces between and though she dug her fingers - her nails into the surface of the rock she could gain no purchase.

"GAJEEL!" She bellowed. When there was no response she cried his name again.

I'm here.

Gajeel's voice came in reply and Levy couldn't figure out if she'd imagined it or not. The words coming from within.

I'm here.

"No. I want the real Gajeel!" She snapped to the empty air. Frustrated that having come so close he was gone again.

I am Gajeel.

"You're not!"

The visage that appeared in front of her was Gajeel as he had been. Thick, billowing black hair. Red eyes shining out from the darkness of his face. Beautiful and cruel. Entirely without mercy.

I live inside you now.

The figure grinned and Levy was stuck by an urge to recoil from it. So strange now to fear something that looked and sounded like Gajeel - the man she loved.

"You...are not Gajeel!" She repeated.

Levy slashed her hand through the apparition, watching the image waiver in ripples of distorted air. It wasn't real she reminded herself. It wasn't real.

"Levy!"

Her ears perked and she was crying when she glanced up to find Wendy hopping across the stone peaks on a phantom wind, picking her way toward her.

"Wendy, are the others with you? Gajeel?"

"They're all fine. Just trapped the other side of all this rock," She said, scrubbing at her dirty face, smiling brightly.

In the distance, stone exploded amidst a shower of dust and shouts - they were making a path to her. Unluckily, Levy seemed to have landed alone, trapped in the middle of this spiked field. Though she'd been fortunate not to have been skewered.

The reality of this all finally began settling and Levy felt its heavy weight. Even the weakest wielders of this type of power were a threat if you fell into their grasp. As long as they were in here, they were at their captors mercy.

As Wendy retreated, Levy flexed her fingers, summoned a blade and began hacking at rock. Firing the steel words in the direction of the ruckus ahead.

It felt painstakingly slow. The rock was harder, sharper than any stone and her blades buckled and cracked, warping beyond use every second strike. It was like unpolished crystal more than stone.

Levy wiped the sweat off her face and struck again and again. Till her arms ached and her breath was strained. She fought forward till she could make out movement ahead. Flickers of light and colour between the black pillars.

"Levy..."

It seemed strained but Levy couldn't imagine a sweeter sound than her name on his lips. The sight of an eye peaking through the rock followed by the tips of three fingers that made her sob. She reached for him and the moment her hand touched his, tears bloomed, clearing her eyes with black flowing streaks down her cheeks.

"You okay?" He asked, taking in the sight of her again through the gap.

Levy laughed at him.

"You looked half dead, Gajeel, and you're asking if I'm okay?"

She brought her face close to his outstretched hand.

"Look like someone dragged you backwards through a bush, while the bush was on fire, Lev...allowed to be worried, you know," he chuckled, managing to brush his thumb down her tear streaked cheek.

"Not far off it, I suppose," Levy teased him.

"Stand back!"

Over Gajeel's shoulder lightning crackled and Levy stepped to the side as the barrier between them blew apart. She hadn't opened her eyes fully before she felt arms pull her off her feet, spinning her once before setting her down. Levy wrapped herself around him and sobbed.

He was thinner than she remembered. Were her hands couldn't touch at his back before, now they could. Now she could interlock her fingers at his spine. There was still strength in him. Still that undiminished Dragon power surging in his blood, but there was definitely less of Gajeel Redfox.

"You've lost so much weight," Levy found herself muttering against his chest.

Gajeel shushed her. Thumbs rubbing circles on her back.

"Gives the cat an excuse to cook. That's all," he pulled back, cupping her face and looking at her. "I'm fine." He said somberly. Levy might have believed that if he hadn't looked so gaunt. So haunted. She ran her fingers over his cheek leaving three dark, dirty lines in their wake. Gajeel leaned into the touch.

"What did they do to you?"

He pulled back slightly at the question. Catching her hand gently in his own.

"Nothin' permanent."

Then there was that self assured cocky grin answering her.

Levy knew it was a lie. Felt it. He wanted to spare her. Shield her from whatever horrors had gone on in this place but Levy saw it in his eyes. The same shadow she so often saw in her own. Anger stuck her like a bolt of lightning. Hard and sharp. She wanted to scream.

"When Fairy Tail do rescues..." Laxus whistled from the other side of the hole they'd blown in the column of rock. There was a large bleeding gash running down his temple though he looked in better condition than Gajeel.

"Things aren't on fire anymore?" Wendy offered cheerily, appearing underneath the arm he'd propped up against the stone.

"There's that." Laxus laughed, tugging one of her disheveled pigtails, and wincing when she not so playfully punched him in the side. "Hey, watch it squirt," he laughed at her, locking eyes with Levy, reading her silent question. "Just us," He said quietly.

"You think they're still in the real world?" Wendy asked louder.

"Hard to say."

Levy felt her thoughts drift and took a deep breath, breathing Gajeel in, swallowing down the laugh that reminded her of how much she missed the normalcy of the guild. Before all of this. Before the killings.

He's not the same. He will never be the same.

She clenched her jaw, grinding teeth at the voice that whispered to her. Gajeel but not Gajeel. She closed her eyes and pressed herself again into his chest, letting his steady heartbeat calm her while she willed that figment to be silent. There was only one Gajeel and he was here, living and breathing in her arms again.

"Any plan to get us outta here?"

Laxus shrugged.

"Nothing stopping our captor putting us back in," Laxus frowned, considering. He glanced down to Wendy. "That dangerous plan b we scrapped first time round?"

She made a face at him. An unhappy one.

"Still the same terrible plan."

They made their way out passed the border of the spiked field and into the clearing, the eyes of those terrifying puppets in the stands following their every step. In the open space Wendy gestured them back and started drawing her magic. She did so with an ease that would never cease to astound them. Summoning without the need of strong emotion. No anger. No fear. Calculated. Controlled. But there was still a Dragon in there too. In every inch of soul and drop of blood. Wendy sucked in a breath and around her the winds shifted, howling and whipping up the sands, spinning a dark vortex into the sky that blocked out the white, glowing moon. Gajeel threw himself to the ground, shielding Levy, and as the winds cleared they watched a shadow flicker passed the moons silhouette, falling from the sky, landing hard in the earth before them.

Gajeel actually laughed - some dark, broken sound that resonated within Levy as the figure rose shakily to his feet, disoriented. Their captors face was a picture of confusion at the realisation that he'd just been sucked into his own prison.

"How?"

Just a one word question. Snarled low at them. A vein of offense in his tone that they'd dared to pull him in to his prison.

"The food came from outside...so did the water," Wendy said. She could have been smirking but it was difficult to tell under the ash. It could have been a grimace, too. Her voice was flat. "I guessed the air did as well. From outside," She pointed up at the clear, cloudless sky. Illuminated by something unseen. An open lid on their glass tank.

"You should have left me out there," Steel grey eyes seemed to laugh at them before the earth itself melted and rose up to swallow Wendy. Sucking her back down into the earth, leaving only her head free and visible. The dirt becoming that crystalline rock, squeezing her tightly. Stopping her from drawing in the necessary breath she needed for her magic.

She thrashed violently for a second before stilling as the oxygen in her blood thinned.

"It's still my world, whether I'm out there or in here." Noc ground out, brushing the dirt from his Council jacket. Flexing his fingers menacingly - promising untold nightmares.

A blast of lightning crackled, piercing the air and striking Noc in the shoulder, hurling him backwards where he skidded painfully to a stop in the gravel with an agonized groan.

"Die out there, die in here. Doesn't matter a damn to me," Laxus remarked coldly, eyes narrowed with the sharp focus of a predator He made a tight fist above his head and when his arm dropped, a bolt of lightning stuck the stone around Wendy. She gave a brief shriek of pain, catching some of the blast but as the dust cleared she was crawling from the hole Laxus had just made.

Levy's gaze flashed to Gajeel who hadn't moved, having gone silent. He was... hesitant. Conflicted were he was once always so sure of everything. The sight of him like that made bile creep up her throat. Like the man she'd grown to love was suddenly so very far away.

I'm not myself.

The voice purred in Levy's ear and she swallowed.

Movement caught her eye. Shadows moving against the moonlight at the edge of her vision. When she saw them her breath hitched; the figures in the stands, they'd begun to move. Climbing down, wave after wave into the great ring were the spikes were receding back into the earth and the deep pits were healing, leaving a flat, even land for them to cross. They moved like mannequins. Stiff limbed with lumbering steps that left their motions jarring. Terrifying.

"Gajeel!" He hadn't seemed to notice yet, transfixed on the scene ahead and she shook him slightly. "Gajeel!" She said his name once more and he blinked himself back to her.

She pointed over his shoulder to the forces that were now surrounding them.

Gajeel turned but made no noise. Levy squeezed his wrist. A weight to remind him she was there with him. That he wasn't alone.

He glanced down at her and let out a breath at the softness in her face. Twenty yards away Wendy and Laxus were fighting Noc as he bent the very world against them. They wouldn't hold out against both him and the forces he had summoned to help him.

"Together?" Levy whispered up to Gajeel. Her eyes were wet. Wide. A question. A promise.

"Together," Gajeel finally smiled, a flicker of light returning to his dim eyes, Iron dancing along his skin once more.