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Chapter 61: After All This Time
Fiore, midday, somewhere in a cave
Caroline
Mark lifts up my chin with his thumb and plants a kiss on my lips, very softly. I look him in the eyes. 'Are you sure this is OK?'
He smiles halfly. 'Can't say I'm happy about it, but I think it's a good thing for us in the long run. Because there still is a long run, right?'
'Of course.' We kiss. 'Everything will be fine.'
There are footsteps in the tunnel going outside, meaning someone has entered the caves. Sasha and the others immediately jump to their feet. No one breathes as the footsteps near.
I let go of Mark. 'Get behind me.'
'What? No, I-'
'Just do it.'
There's tension in the air. Magic.
The person entering the cave could be an enemy, someone in kahoots with Kubo, or it could be one of our allies, like Lucy, but it seems unlikely.
'Caroline?' asks Sasha. I nod and activate my sight. The rock walls of the caves are a little rough to get through, but eventually I get a silhouette. Not a girl, that's for sure. I have to push further to get a visual of the face. He's only a few steps away from entering the banks of the underground lake, where we are.
'Oh,' I see, as I recognize him, 'it's alright. It's Ravin.'
We hadn't wondered where he was before. He might've stayed back at the inn, where we left for the Curse, but Gajeel was certain he would be in the caves already when we got back. Obviously, only Lucy was there. But we were all too preoccupied to think about this.
Ravin walks into the underground cave, his hands up as if he's being held under gunshot. I realize I still have my sight and I accidently look straight through his mask. I wasn't able to do so before, but I guess being in the magical kingdom helps strengthening my abilities.
There's nothing of note to hide, is my first thought. He has a pointy nose, strong jaw, small mouth and almond-like eyes. There are no ugly scars, no weird molls. Just a generic face, not even ugly. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I extract the magic from my eyes, before Ravin notices I'm spying on him. He drops his arms and looks around the cave.
'Well,' he says, 'this is unexpected.'
'Is it?' asks Sasha, who stands closest to him.
Ravin nods and then turns his masked face to Levy. He steps to the edge of the water, almost getting his feet wet.
'I came because I noticed a disturbance in the Dream Reality,' he says, and the only reason we can hear him is because his muffled voice bounces off the walls, 'but I guess that could've been you guys stepping out.'
'Wait,' says Martin, 'you weren't the one who opened the portal?'
Ravin doesn't look away from Levy. 'Nope. And by that I imagine it also wasn't Jacob.' He steps into the water. 'It's getting worse.'
'What is?' asks Rose. I look at the floating Levy. Wasn't she up higher before?
Ravin starts wading through the water, faster. The bottom gets lower and lower, till the water reaches his chest.
'What's...going on?' I hear Mark ask behind me.
And then, out of nowhere, Levy's body starts shaking. The limbs move around as if they're being shot with electricity, her head turns from side to side as if it's trying to screw itself off her neck.
Ravin starts swimming, even though his feet still reach the bottom.
'I can throw a shield,' says Martin, and he claps his hands together.
'No!' shouts Ravin over his shoulder. 'No magic. It might damage-'
Levy comes crashing down. Ravin isn't on time when she splashes into the water. And she doesn't come up to float. She's sinking like a rock.
Ravin removes his mask and throws it over his shoulder. Martin, who had a shield ready anyway, catches it before it disappears into the water. Ravin takes a deep breath and dives.
For a few moments, no one moves. The ripples in the water die out.
'Caroline!' says Sasha, and she sounds panicked. I kneel down beside the bank and activate my sight.
'Levy's on the bottom,' I narrate, 'Ravin's trying to pull her up, but it's….it's almost like she's stuck, but she isn't.'
There's movement behind me, and before I can turn to look Mark has jumped into the water, leaving his shoes and jacket behind.
'Wha…' is all I can say as I watch him swim towards Ravin. They gesture to each other-
'What's happening?' asks Sasha.
'They're gesturing, pointing,' I say, 'they've decided to both take one arm. Sasha, it's like she's stuck to the bottom, like a sticker. I can't-' I silence myself to force my sight even further, until I can see the muscles, veins, organs and bones of the three people at the bottom. Something's off about Levy's. In the place where her stomach should be, there's a shiny globe, the size of a tennis ball.
'There's something inside her,' I say, 'I don't know what. A globe thing. It's the thing pulling her down.'
Water splashes. Someone else has jumped in. I can see it's Sasha.
'Wouldn't that be the Curse?' asks Martin. 'I mean, makes sense?'
'Maybe,' I say, as I watch Sasha help pull Levy off the bottom. They've lifted her up only slightly and time is ticking. Ravin's almost out of breath and Levy didn't get the chance to breathe at all.
'I'm going in too,' says Martin, but he's stopped by Rose.
'No. Split the water.'
I have to pay attention to two things at once with two different senses, one being extremely enhanced, so I don't immediately understand what she means. Martin also struggles.
'What do you - oh, I see.' Instead of jumping in, he comes to the edge of the water and stretches his arms, his open palms pointed at the water. I look away from the struggling people on the bottom, one being my boyfriend and one being my best friend, to see Martin sending shields out. They act like shovels, slicing into the water and pushing it upwards, along the walls, up to the ceiling. There are now curtains of water surrounding the pit where the lake used to be. It's splattering on all sides and it feels like rain, but we don't get soaked.
Ravin, Mark and Sasha cough and struggle to get on their feet, dragging a very heavy and very unconscious Levy behind them. Tilly and Rose run down to help them, as Ravin can barely stand on his own. I stand up too, but Ravin holds up a hand. 'No. You keep that sight. You see it, don't you?'
I'm guessing he means the weird globe thing, so I nod. Ravin falls over his own feet, before he hits the ground Rose catches him. He breathes heavily.
'Keep looking at it. I need to know where it is, exactly,' he pants. So I stay focused on the globe thing.
Martin keeps the water curtains up till the others are save back on land. Ravin falls to his knees and almost seems sick, but he immediately moves over to where Levy is. Mark has started CPR, but Ravin pushes him away. 'It won't work. We have to get the Curse out first. Who has a knife?'
Inside a Sleeping Curse, around the same time
Floyd
The little boy jumps up. 'Let's do it again!'
My brother and I both sigh. 'Again?' Then we look at each other, because it's been a while since we said anything in unison.
'Alright, then,' says Ary, 'you see that puddle over there, right between the large rock and the medium rock?'
I push some branches aside to see what she means. We've moved to a different location, closer to the river. The forest is less dense here, so we have to be more careful not to get spotted by Doki.
The boy nods. 'Yes. I'm ready!'
Ary smiles. I eye my brother. 'Looks like she's having fun.'
He looks over my shoulder. 'At least someone is. I just hope she doesn't forget why we're doing it.'
Ary stands with her back towards us, only three paces away. Over the last half hour she hasn't reacted to anything we've whispered in the bushes, while before she would cough and clear her throat anytime we took a breath. It's almost like she doesn't hear us anymore.
'She told me something earlier,' my brother says then. 'About a little brother. He's actually older, but his mind is young, or something.'
I'm pretty sure she's able to hear us, but she doesn't move an inch, not even turn her head slightly. Perhaps she actually got caught up in this Curse. Which means she forgot everything is fake. Which is a problem.
'I'll count down to one!' she says to Doki, who grins as if it's the best thing that's ever happened to him. 'Three….get ready! Two….and….here we go….one!'
Between the "go" and the "one", something happens none of us expected. Doki's eyes roll back into his head, his legs give out and he falls face forward to the ground. There's a loud thud, dust swirling up. Ary gasps.
Then she runs towards him, kneeling down beside him, lifting his face from the dirt and placing it in her lap. She strokes his cheeks, puts her ear to his chest, talks to herself in a panicky voice.
I stand up from the bushes. She glares over her shoulder and I jump at the pure hatred in her eyes. It's only there for a second, as if she just didn't know we were there.
All emotion leaves her face. She turns back into the stoic girl I remember from school, the one who goes to the library. She looks at the boy in her arms.
'Did you do this?' she asks, and I can barely hear it. Greg stands up too. I mouth to him what Ary just said and he shakes his head.
'No,' I say. I silently ask what Greg thinks we should do. He just shrugs his shoulders.
Ary carefully lays Doki down, as if he's a baby instead of a reimagining of our evil school headmaster. She even pushes a few locks of hair from his face and folds his hands on his belly, as if he's laying in a coffin.
Perhaps, to Ary, he might just be.
She sighs and then stands up. The joy and the sadness are gone. She locked it back up inside wherever she stores it to keep that blanc expression that's always on her face. 'Something has gone wrong elsewhere, I assume.'
I think back to earlier, when we succeeded into making Doki believe he could wield magic. The Curse wouldn't break then. 'It's like we thought, right? Maybe Gajeel's wrong.'
Ary turns her face to the sky and frowns. 'No. Someone is not sticking to the plan.'
I follow her gaze. The perfect dream sky only had a few chubby clouds before. Now a gray one has appeared.
There are lights moving inside it. Thunder.
'What the…' says Greg, basically saying what I'm thinking. What is happening?
Along with the thunder cloud, the wind picks up. And we can actually feel it. Which we shouldn't be able to.
'Look!' Greg says then. I turn my eyes back to the body of Doki. Starting at the feet, it's beginning to disappear. The legs are turning into dust, that's picked up by the wind.
'Is he dead?' I ask. 'He can't be dead. Levy would die too, then.'
Then it starts to rain. And we can actually feel the water on our skins.
Then it becomes hard to breathe, hard to move. As if we're stuck in mud. My body feels heavy.
Ary tries to say something, but there's only water coming out of her mouth. We're drowning, even though there is no water.
Until there is. It's surrounding us. The shock of it makes me open my mouth, which is the stupidest thing I could do. I move around my arms and legs, trying to remember whatever it is you do when you try to swim. I can't see Greg. I can't see Ary.
There's a light above me and I just hope it's not the end of the tunnel. I kick my feet around, my clothes are dragging me back down. My chest is burning.
Then there's a hand. The water makes my eyes hurt and I blink. I cough and then there's air. Hands are pulling my shoulders. There's a face above me.
'...Tilly?'
I then roll over and puke. There's stone beneath me, daylight seeping in from a hole in the ceiling, shining into the water making figures on the walls. I'm inside a cave.
Tilly helps me sit up. Greg is already standing up, Ary coughs. There's shouting and someone dives into the lake again. Half a minute later Samdy's head pops up to the surface.
I lean against Tilly, still feeling dizzy. 'What the hell is going on?'
'You're asking me? You guys showed up.'
Caroline yells. 'It's Gajeel!'
He comes to the surface before anyone can jump in to save him. He growls and looks around angrily. 'Who was it? Who did this?! Who-' His yelling dies out when his eyes find someone sitting against the wall, wrapped in blankets. Gajeel's jaw drops. 'How…?'
He runs to her, kneels down beside her, but when he gets to her seems too afraid to touch her. She smiles, frees one arm from the blankets and touches his cheek with her hand. He places his own hand over it, water dripping from his soaked face. Could be tears as well.
'Hi,' says Levy.
Inside the Sleeping Curse, around the same time
Jake
As the Dream Reality is breaking down around me, I think back to the past four years and I wondered if it was a waste. The times travelling the world, searching for a demon gone loose, seeking out the darkest of magic and compromising myself in order to use it, to the point where I look like someone twice my age. And it's getting worse by the second.
At the end of this day, I might not exist anymore. Which makes it all the more important that I do this. To not let it be for nothing.
The wind becomes strong enough to rip out the trees from the ground. The roots screech like mice do, the branches break with the sound of bones. Lightning strikes, the sky is dark. Around the place in the valley where the town used to be there is a crater. A tornado is forming, scraping all life from the surface. It doesn't matter, none of the people living there were real anyway.
The mountains at the edge of the Curse growl and I imagine it's the sound of angry trolls waking up after a long winter's sleep. Boulders the size of houses come crashing down, rolling down cliffs, crushing the forest underneath them.
This is how it's supposed to end. With a bang.
I sense I am now one of five people still present. Three of them are dead, the other one spend the last couple years in purgatory. They somehow have found out where I am. I didn't pretend to hide either.
They appear between the trees, their upper bodies hunched forward against the howling winds. Kai tries to say something, but the breeze knocks the words out of his mouth.
Lily tries to create a bubble, but they burst before they can fully form. A blast is coming for them, they have to hide behind a rock.
'What do we do?' I hear Layton yell over the thunder. 'We can't reach him.'
'What's he doing?' asks Ibisan. Kai's head pops up over the edge of the rock. His eyes are tearing.
'Ending it,' he says, looking straight at me. That's right. I'm stopping this madness, once and for all.
Lily screams. I don't have to see what happens, I know it. She's starting to disappear. The wind has attached millions of small portals, the size of specs of dust, and they're attaching themselves to her skin, sending her off to a new life.
'Jacob!' yells Layton. 'Stop this, please!'
Lily screams louder, although it shouldn't hurt. I think it's more so the fear of what's on the other side. Her lungs are filled with water.
Ibisan steps away from the rock, but has to hold on to it not to get picked up by the wind. It's starting to rain again. Lightning touches a pine tree and sets it off blazing. This is the end.
Ibisan falls on all fours and quickly transforms back into his bear form. His claws dig into the ground, preventing him from blasting off. He starts to climb towards me, continuingly pressing his claws into the dirt, like the nails of a mountain climber.
It's no use, though. The portals have found him too. They attach themselves to the fur before he's within any reach of me. I just watch as he disappears.
Layton doesn't even try. Soon there's only Kai left.
He comes from behind the rock, pulling himself forward till he has his back against it, his face turned towards me.
'Jacob!' he screams. 'I'm sorry!'
I'm surprised I can hear him. The portals are swerving around him, but seem anxious. They know Kai's not exactly dead.
The rain is coming down hard now, though I can't feel it. My cloak stays dry and doesn't move. I can calmly walk over to Kai, who is now pinned against the rock. I come as close as I dare.
This will be the last time I see him, so I want to take my time. As of right now, my physical body is evaporating, turning me into a spirit body, or a ghost, if you will. At the same time, Kai's spirit is changing.
'Sorry,' I say, as I lift a hand, 'this will hurt.' I plant my palm in the middle of his face, pushing his head into the rock. A beam of light erupts under my fingers and Kai screams.
It's the only way.
The rain stops, the thunder stays. The howling wind drives out Kai's screams until he disappears too. Unlike the others, something stays behind with me.
On the exact place where Kai just stood, Caleb has appeared. The wind dies down. His volcano-like skin is allowed to burn once more. There are chains around his neck, arms and legs. He grins. 'Look at that. It's the-'
As a wizard, I should know better, but I still punch him in the face. The magma between the cracks of his skin should burn me, but I don't feel a thing. My spirit can't be hurt.
I grab the iron ring around his neck and drag the demon behind me, towards the giant crater where the town used to be. He struggles, calls me names, but I've learned long ago not to listen. I've made deals with demons. It's what made me.
When I come to the edge of the crater, without hesitation, I throw him in. He lands not far, not even at the bottom, but continues to roll down.
Just because I want to, I send down a streak of lightning down to strike him. He growls, spitting fire. I watch.
The forest behind me is burning. Smoke travels up, meeting the thunder clouds. It's like I'm doing Caleb a favour by turning his prison into a place similar to hell.
I turn my back to the crater and walk between the flames. Now all I have to do is wait for death.
Fiore, somewhere in a cave, around the same time
Levy
He looks terrible. His eyes are surrounded by shadows, his cheeks are hollow. He can't stop moving, constantly fiddling with his gloves, or jumping up out of nowhere to take a senseless walk.
'Gajeel,' I say, 'please. Just sit.'
Ravin, one of the people helping him, told him that there is nothing to be done now but to wait till Kubo appears. The Curse wasn't broken, it's been turned into something else. Which means the people still inside it are still inside it. So far, Ravin didn't succeed in getting his control over the Curse back, so there's nothing to do but wait till he does.
'Gajeel,' I say again, and this time I grab his hand. I'm still cold so it makes him jump, but he does stop. I pull, weakly, but it's enough to make him kneel down.
'Sorry,' he grunts. I keep holding his hand.
'For what? It's OK to be worried.'
He looks at our hands. 'I guess so.'
There is something I've wanted to ask him since I've woken up. 'Where's Panther Lily?'
The left corner of his mouth curls up slightly at the mention of his friend. 'I told him to sit this one out. Just to be sure.'
Most of his students have gone back to the inn, the one's who appeared in the lake. Ravin stayed behind and I have to as well, just in case something happens with the Curse.
'Why?' I ask. With his thumb he gently rubs the back of my hand. He deliberately avoids my eyes, almost like a child knowing he's guilty of something.
'There were enough people involved already.'
'And you thought you could better watch over them by yourself?'
His face turns grim again. 'I lost you already. I couldn't ask anyone-'
'Of course you could!' I say, and my voice bounces off the walls. A few of the students left behind turn their heads, but very secreetly, as to not make it too uncomfortable. Which it is already.
Gajeel looks at the lake, but I grab his chin and force him to look at me. 'Didn't I tell you? You're part of a guild. A family.'
'Who should I have asked? Salamander?' Despite his scary looking eyebrows and snake-like eyes, there's something soft about him. I'm not sure if it's relief, or sadness, or if he's just tired. I let go of his chin.
'For example.'
He snorts. 'Like hell.'
'He's not as bad as you think.'
'I know that. But I still don't like working with him. He has the brains of a potatoe.'
That makes me laugh a little. 'Says you?'
He glares at me. 'Well, we can't all be bookworms.'
'Books don't necessarily make you smart,' I say. He shrugs and mutters some more. I softly touch his arm. 'But seriously; you should've asked for more backup. There are always risks. You can't avoid all of them. Besides; I'm back.'
He breathes out loudly through his nose. 'Yeah you are.'
We look at each other for a second and it makes me blush. But before anything can happen, there's splashing.
Gajeel stands up immediately and kneels down by the lakeside. 'Caroline!'
A blonde girl appears next to him, her eyes give out a green light. 'Three...no, four people-' She gasps. 'That's...impossible.'
Gajeel jumps in without further hesitation. The blonde girl starts shaking, another girl grabs her by the shoulders. 'What? What is it?'
She can't keep her eyes away from the water. I wait to see what happens, when all of a sudden there's pain.
I scream. It feels like someone is cutting my stomach from the inside. Then Ravin sits next to me. He curses.
Water splashes. Gajeel looks at me, his eyes widen. 'No!'
I fall over, Ravin catches my head before it hits the stone ground. Someone removes the blankets that were keeping me so warm. I can't feel my legs. I scream again.
'Stay with us, Levy,' says Ravin, his voice sounds strangely far away. The cave turns upside down in front of my eyes. There's the sound of fabric being ripped apart and the visual of my own stomach slicing open enters my mind. But there's no blood.
Someone coughs. I smell smoke. There's the orange of fire and thunderclouds above me.
I lose myself for some time.
Then, like a music box that's stuck playing the same melody over and over again, someone repeats my name. The voice gets transformed, sentences slow down or get faster. Then there is light.
