As he caught himself on hand and knee, Broken bits of seashell and sharp rock cut into Happy's skin and made them bleed. He was aware of it the same way one might be a small splinter. It hurt, but he was so much more afraid for the magic trying to literally tear him in two, he couldn't give that minuscule discomfort that much attention.

August stood in front of them on the expansive beach, specter-like. His robes flapped around him, his long beard tangling in the stormy wind while nothing but waves and sand stretched behind him, seeking the horizon. His eyes glowed, glowed, with the force of his magic. Happy had seen a lot, would see more, if he could somehow escape here, but he would never see anything as ominous as that again, of that he was confident.

"You disgrace your country siding with the enemy, Happy," he growled, and so help Happy, he believed August at that moment. He was disgracing his country standing with Lucy.

"To hell with you, kingslayer!" Happy made his voice big though he felt very small. "You're the disgrace."

August made a face and a small movement with his hand. Lucy snarled and pushed Happy's shoulder hard, forcing him back to the ground again. Traitor, he had the wherewithal to think just before the rock where he'd stood exploded. Dust rained down upon them, choking the air for an instant before the wind snagged the particles and ferried them away.

"I'm your opponent." Lucy roared.

Happy looked up. Lucy stood above him. Her cheek was bleeding, seen as the wind pulled its fingers through her hair. Her dress was soaked and clung to her skin, stained a faint coral colour from wounds Happy couldn't see. She must have been injured when they fell.

She looked brave and angry.

"You cannot hope to win this fight," August said to her. "Leave, return to your country. We'll overlook your interference if you allow Alvarez handle the prospects of Alvarez."

"Let you murder your king and usurp his throne, you mean," Lucy responded.

August said nothing. His eyes tracked to Happy again. Happy had nothing, was stripped of anything that could have been considered a weapon when Lucy and Natsu had him carted out of the Throne Room. He improvised, curling his hand around a useless rock. He wouldn't hit August with this, or if he did, it wouldn't do very much damage, but it did make him feel better, the same way he might if he were standing in the midst of a pub brawl with a butter knife in his hand. It was something and something was better than nothing by a very long mile.

"I will take my chances as I am," Lucy decided with her shoulders straight. "I helped make this mess—" Happy knew she wasn't the innocent bystander, but it still made his blood boil to hear her say it aloud— "So I will help clean it."

"How noble."

August's eyes got dark. Magic burbled through the air, sickening, toxic, and then there was heat, heat, and more heat, worse than the hottest day Happy had lived, worse than a hearth fire, and then it escalated and got worse than one of Natsu's firestorms when he was sullen and furious.

It burned Happy's clothes and singed his hair. He was sure it was going to melt the flesh off his bones next, but Lucy yelled something unintelligible against the roar of August's magic and then Happy was hit with a flush of icy, skin-numbing water. It flowed all around them, taking up space in the air and then some until Happy was choking and shivering with cold.

The water disappeared as quickly as it came. Steam filled the air, dissipating at odd intervals. When it would clear, Happy could see August, dripping and bitter, and Lucy. Her clothing had changed. Her magic power had spiked. She glowed with the essence of the turbulent water, as powerful as any sea witch. Happy was too awed to cast around accusations (this is why Natsu is so in love! How tricksy, trading in octopus' arms for a woman's form! Villainous!) He'd never been in the presence of such magic before. It was totally different from Natsu's, or Zeref's, or August's, even.

Lucy panted. Her breath condensed in the air, puffed like a cloud, was gone again. "Stand down, August, and I will beg His Highness to spare your life when the time comes."

August showed Lucy his teeth like a dog might, peeling them back from his lips, eyes flashing. "I cannot."

The sand began melting beneath Lucy's feet, as though she were trapped in a quagmire. She gasped, tried to get her balance, stumbling across the storm-tossed beach, but it was no use. She couldn't get her footing, couldn't escape August's spell.

Happy closed his eyes against her end, sure that he'd seen the last of her (was he supposed to be relieved? Or aghast, because drowning in sand was an awful way to go, even for an enemy,) and felt again a shift in Lucy's magic.

Air buffeted Happy's cheek, rough sand. When he was able to peek between his lashes, he saw Lucy had beaten the suck of the ground and had changed again. Now she was dressed for battle in red and silver armour. A spirit stood beside her, some dangerous-looking grotesque marry between man and scorpion.

Another incomprehensible yell left her lips, a name, or a command, lost to the storm, and then the air was full of a flurry of sand.

August, the great and terrible, the most powerful mage in Alvarez… he was pushed back when that spell hit him. Happy saw him stumble. Saw him reach into thin air as a pillar of sand hit him and knocked him off balance. This king killer, this fraud, this, the most feared mage in Alvarez…

Gods, Happy thought, fearing for His Majesty for new reasons. Is she so powerful? This pampered princess, this girl child, this daughter of Fiore?

And then, perhaps she is a match for His Highness. Natsu was always breaking things, ruining them unintentionally; his own magic power was great. It would be good for him to have someone he couldn't easily harm. Unfortunate it might be this beastly, unladylike girl. Perhaps she was meant to be a man, once upon a time, and the gods thought it might be funny to change her sex, make her comely and put her in Natsu's path.

Lucy straightened. The ground solidified beneath her feet. At her behest, another sandstorm hit August and sent him back again.

He recovered. August always did. And when he did, he was three times as angry, thrice as likely to steal Lucy's life out from under her. He took her attack, reversed it, and sent Lucy sprawling in the sand, coughing, bleeding out of new holes in her skin where the sand had rubbed her raw.

"Lucy!" Happy said without ever meaning to. He felt August's attention land on him. The cloying toxicity of his gaze. The horrid poison of being in his sights. And then the fire spell began again, slow at first, and then more and more until Happy felt like he was burning alive. He threw his rock, saw it hit the barrier around August, watched it return to its molten roots, and knew there wasn't any hope for him, he was going to die by fire, he was going to—"

"Gemini!" Lucy bellowed, and the flow of magic went another way, pulled in, changed. Lucy's clothing changed again. Now she seemed powerful. Godlike. August-like as she focused her attention on him, summoned magic from a place unknown, and began giving off the same sort of feet August had, the same charged pressure, the same horrible ear-splitting screech of magic.

The world came to be unbearably hot, and then simply unbearable. Happy wished for death as magic stole across his skin, robbed him of breath, ruined in him ways he wouldn't understand for the rest of his life.

Lucy's spell mimicked August's, an inferno. August started to scream. He was unprepared for this level of resistance, that much was obvious. He couldn't repulse Lucy's magic. Couldn't do anything but let the storm burn him. It took everything. His clothing, his visage, the man he was, the man he'd twist into. Gone, in a flash.

Lucy had killed him.

And then she collapsed.

Natsu's heart catapulted against his chest in an uneven way as a dragon bore down upon him. After Igneel left, promising there would be no more dragons, he never imagined he'd find another. But wind from her wings buffeted his cheeks, and the piercing cry punched his ears, and to deny her presence would be willfully ignorant and dangerous.

He dropped to the ground and felt her clawed feet graze over where he'd been standing. Natsu tasted dirt against his lips, felt stone against his cheek, cutting him.

Gemini grinned in a manic way. "You shouldn't have come out of the hole. You shouldn't have hurt Virgo."

"I'm not laying in a hole while my kingdom is destroyed," Natsu thrashed back. He pushed himself up on his elbows. His arms shook. He clenched his fingers in the dirt to try to hide the fact. No one was paying attention. Gemini stood just to his left, face twisted back to look at Eileen circle in the sky to come by for another pass.

"We can try together," Gemini said. "To defeat her." He didn't sound confident, though.

Natsu stood next to Gemini. He wasn't sure he could trust Lucy's spirit but thought they had a better chance of defeating Lady Eileen together.

The dragon opened its massive mouth, exposing its sharp teeth for a powerful spell that burned through the land, destroying everything it touched. The water in the river evaporated, trees exploded, the outpost for the royal guard disintegrated. Natsu hoped there were no people in there. But if there were, at least they might have died quickly.

The spell missed him by a hairsbreadth and only because he'd begun moving before he really understood why.

Eileen roared, shook the treetops, breathed her destructive power out onto the ocean. Fires scorched against the dark sky as approaching ships caught flame and burned into the ocean. Lucy's people. Were they all gone? Or did some ships remain? How could it happen so fast? How could she be so thoughtlessly cruel?

Natsu watched her swoop back around again. She came in fast and low like she was going to land. Natsu prepared to be thrown off balance when she hit the ground, but when she touched down, she was a woman again, luminous, dangerous, holding her staff close to her body and looking between the two Natsu's, assessing with a cruel smile on her cruel mouth.

"Is this meant to trick me?"

Natsu said nothing because he honestly had no idea what Lucy was thinking. Gemini didn't answer for unclear reasons.

"A ridiculous trick that might have confused a beginner. How insulting Lady Lucy thought it might work on me." Eileen turned on Natsu directly. "Surrender now and I'll spare your life the way you thought to spare mine."

There was very little moisture in Natsu's mouth. He was pure adrenaline, thoughts cloudy, blood roaring. If he was going to fight, he wanted to fight. He didn't want to talk about surrender. "You're dreaming if you think I'm going to give up."

"You never wanted this kingdom, Natsu." Lady Eileen smiled. Her teeth were pointed like her dragon's. "You never wanted to be a king. You only wanted adventure, remember?" She drew closer with every word, reminding Natsu of a hyena circling its prey.

"I didn't want to follow someone else's rules," Natsu corrected her. "Now I can make my own."

Her smile drew wider, unnaturally. She swung her staff back and then brought it down like she might stab Natsu through the chest. He deked out of her way, feeling the pull on his injured middle, the same time Gemini attacked her.

Hot fire identical to Natsu's sheathed her, distracting her for Natsu's coming rebuttal.

He wasn't a battle mage like Eileen. He'd trained with Brandish, he'd brawled with commoners, but he'd never had a fight to the death before. He was sure that's what this was now. Lady Eileen wasn't going to let him walk away with his life, and he couldn't let her, either. He had to be ruthless. He had to be cruel. Like he was to Invel.

Natsu summoned that level of conviction again, imaging Porlyusica clinging to the confines of her dark and lonely prison, Zeref on his death slab, pieced together by ice magic and nothing more. All of that was Eileen's doing. And for what? His throne? He might have given it to her once Zeref passed it on. She was right. He had never wanted to be king.

But now she'd taken Zeref, his only remaining family member, she'd taken Porlyusica, who had salved his wounds as a child, and she'd left him with nothing but a cold throne and a broken kingdom. It didn't seem like much, but he would cling to it desperately now.

Fire swathed his body, destroyed everything around him, and he attacked. He had to be faster than Lady Eileen. He had to be harsher. He had to not give her a second to even think about how to rebuff his strikes.

He felt his fists hit her body repeatedly, burning through her clothing, blistering her skin straight to the underlayer, where it was fat and blood. Part of him wanted to recoil. This was the Scarlet Despair and once he tired, she was going to destroy him. Part of him wanted to cheer because it felt like he was doing something, finally, something productive, something good, with his efforts to rid Alvarez of her evil. Even if he died, at least he could say he tried.

Eileen screamed and then Natsu was airborne. He hit the ground, rolled. His arm bent at an odd angle and it hurt for an instant, and then it went numb and he didn't think about it again.

"You're pathetic," Eileen rumbled. Natsu lifted himself up, spotted her amongst the smoke and debris. She was burned, blistered, smoking, but still standing. How? How was she so powerful?

Eileen flexed her clawed fingers around her staff. "You should have died long ago."

"Get up." Gemini grabbed Natsu's elbow and yanked him to his feet. He felt another phantom twinge in his arm. It's broken, he thought. And it was going to hurt just as soon as he came off this adrenaline high. But for now, he could work through the inconvenience.

"We have to attack together," Gemini continued. "It's the only way."

Eileen didn't seem concerned as Natsu got his feet beneath him, as his doppelganger steadied him. He was no threat to her, she thought, even as she bled, and her skin tightened with burns he left behind. It was like she wasn't even human. All the times he used to whisper to Zeref at feasts about how beastly she was, all the times he would cringe away from her gaze, all the times he nightmared her visage in darkened corridors, torturing men and women for her own pleasure. He wasn't overreacting. She was a monster.

Eileen tipped her face back to the grey sky. Rain drilled down around her. Her power grew to awesome levels. Natsu expected her to become a dragon once more but instead, the very air around him began to pop and burst with explosions, under his feet, sending him to the ground again, around his ribs, rolling him end over end, scraping through the rocks and stumps, shattered concrete from the guard outpost.

When it stopped, his ears rang, and his body burned. He tried to give himself an instant to recover, but Gemini was there, pulling him up again. The spirit was worse for wear, its eye closed against the stick that protruded out of it. Natsu wanted to ask if it was okay; he didn't have enough breath.

"Together," Gemini repeated. Natsu could hear the duality in its voice; its visage wavered like a candle guttering in a swift breeze. It steadied again, but the spirit seemed weaker. "Hurry."

Natsu's magic felt low, though if he were to die in battle, he was determined to die on his feet.

"Your breath attack," Gemini ordered.

I use it to entertain children, Natsu thought wryly. He never would have considered harming anyone with it. It could be powerful, though. With it, he burned a swath of the royal forest when he was young.

Shoulder-to-shoulder with his lookalike, Natsu breathed in a huge gust of air. Fires smouldering after Eileen's attack was attracted to him, dancing through the air and then fusing with his magic. He felt his power grow; what an incredible feeling, and then he felt it marrying with Gemini's. With Lucy's. Felt it expand and change and become something extraordinary. Something perilous.

Natsu felt Eileen's calculating gaze on them as she assessed their threat and reasoned out a rebuttal. He was determined not to give her a chance. This would be the end. There would be no more fighting. If he lived, he would have anyone loyal to her arrested and sentenced to a lifetime in the dungeons, or perhaps death was the more humane action. He would settle his disputes with Lucy. Perhaps send her back to her own country, if he could fathom the long nights in an empty bed, thinking about the place her body used to keep warm. And then he would move on, because the world moved on, and his country needed him.

The spell reached a critical point. The remaining tree leaves crackled on their branches, died, the trees caught fire, turned to ash. This is it, Natsu thought. This is the spell. They hadn't even released it yet and the destruction it was wreaking was incredible. The very air trembled with it. Lady Eileen took a step back, and then another. Something like concern crossed her stony face.

And then Gemini was gone. Torn away from Natsu. He staggered like an old man suddenly without his cane. He went down to his knees, and the magic that'd been building inside gushed out, painful, awry, burning things to ash but not with the same force. It hit Eileen. Her clothing and hair singed. But that was all.

She blinked, not quite believing it herself. Then she started to laugh, cruelly. Relieved. She, too, had thought that to be her end.

Where is he? Natsu asked himself. Where did he go? Why? Why did he abandon me? Why did she abandon me? He and Lucy had their differences, true, but enough to leave him at the mercy of an enemy like Lady Eileen?

"It's over." She hefted her staff to bring down on his neck. She'd cleave it in two and prop his head on the castle wall as a warning against any that might challenge her.

The sand flickered in the firelight. Three of Fiore's ships lay in ruins on the water. Happy thought he heard people screaming as they died. He told himself he couldn't be sure. It might have just been the wind. Another ship limped to shore. Its keel hit the sandy bottom and men started pouring out of it. They all had weapons.

A ramp eased down into the water and they began rolling off ballistae, floating them on a raft to shore.

Happy couldn't think about their siege weapons just then.

"Where are you injured?" Happy's voice almost couldn't be heard above the roaring wind. Rain hit the ground so hard, it splashed up again.

Lucy looked out to the ocean. Tears crowded her eyes. She blinked them away. "I'm fine."

She sounded weak, as though she'd gone a week without water or food, left to rot in the sun.

"Are we always going to be at odds?" Happy snapped. "You're not fine."

"Bring me to Natsu."

Natsu.

"Please," Lucy begged. When she tried to stand, she couldn't quite make it. Happy was forced to grab her shoulders, hold her close. "He's going against Eileen, and he can't, not alone. Even if they reach him in time, those men and their weapons won't be enough."

Happy's blood ran cold thinking of Natsu standing against a dragon right then while he stood on a beach. "Where?"

She panted. Her skin was deathly pale. "Can't you feel her magic?"

He could. He could feel Lady Eileen's evil presence even when he couldn't see her.

Happy couldn't drum up enough energy to make his wings unfurl. They'd have to go the traditional method. He looped his arm around Lucy's back and together, they moved as quickly as possible toward Eileen's pussing energy. He tried his best not to wonder what they were going to do against her. Lucy was as weak as a lamb and Happy wasn't any good in a fight. Most of Fiore's advance guard lay in waste in the ocean.

It seemed impossible.

Okay. So maybe two more chapters.