The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Hubris et Orbi, Part 2
-That Meddling Dragon!-
Three weeks, two notebooks full of calculations, and one anomalous term that just would not cancel out later, Anna Heartfilia and Zeref Dragneel came face to face once again.
The time was a little before sundown.
The place was the otherwise-deserted road outside Skartown.
It was a far less memorable setting than their first encounter, but to be quite frank, Anna was so relieved to have found him again that the lack of poetic imagery was the last thing on her mind. Despite knowing that he couldn't have travelled far, it had still taken days of information-gathering to track him down a second time. She had even started keeping an ear out for reports of unnatural deaths or black magic, after Igneel's warning, but the only destruction was that of the war – the mad dragons on one side, and the Dragon Slayers on the other.
That was why, as soon as she'd spotted him leaving Skartown, she had pounced. "Zeref! Hey! Wait!"
He duly stopped, though his gaze settled upon her in a way that made her feel like the distance between them wasn't closing, even as she sprinted over to him.
"You are a difficult man to find," she berated him, as she caught her breath.
Uneasiness drifted through his eyes. "Why were you looking for me?"
"Why else? To tell you that you're wrong. Again."
"I'm sorry…?"
"I did as you suggested," she informed him briskly, digging the second of the overflowing notebooks out of her satchel and handing it to him. "I tried to replicate your mathematical proof of time travel using the standard notation, but it doesn't work. Your improvised notation relies on an implicit assumption not present in the correct formalization that, when added explicitly, causes the proof to fall apart right at the end. It doesn't balance. There's an extra term in the equation, and no matter what I do to it, it won't go away."
The blank look on his face was something she would have expected from someone who hadn't singlehandedly founded this discipline of study.
"Look." It seemed he wasn't going to do it himself, so she opened the book she had pressed into his unresisting hands and pointed at the offending term in her workings. "Here. It should be a temporal term, but it has the dimensions of space. Everything else represents some known physical or magical quantity, but that's just a nothing term. It's meaningless. There's no way of getting rid of it, and it invalidates the whole proof."
"Why… why are you telling me this?"
"Because I thought you'd want to know that you were wrong, and how you were wrong, so that you could correct your own mistake for the sake of your reputation before I do it for you."
"I really don't care about that," he said quietly.
"Is that so? Because last time we met, you were adamant that you were right and that I was too petty to even come close to your work!"
"I was?"
Anna snorted. "There's no point pretending now! Oh, you claimed you didn't care, but then you just had to tell me I was wrong – even though my new calculations have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is an error in your mathematical reasoning – and as if that wasn't enough, you called me a child just for daring to explore the frontiers of science…" She tailed off, frowning. She had argued with stuck-up academics before, and this silence was unnervingly new. "You do remember meeting me, don't you?"
He bit his lip. "Miss… Heartfilia?"
"Anna," she corrected.
"I remember," he said.
She wasn't convinced, though she had a strange feeling that she wasn't the one he was trying to convince. "Then why are you acting like half our conversation never happened?"
Zeref didn't answer the question. His gaze dropped, and he whispered to the gravel and the weeds on the side of the road, "Please, just leave me alone."
"Allow me to make you a counter-offer," she overrode him. "Let's work together."
"W-what?"
"I've revised my earlier opinion of you. Your theoretical proof of time travel is wrong, but it's not because you are a moron. I think there's more to it than that. I think there's something in this unknown quantity – something that could make this more than just a conceptual proof. Let's look into it together."
"I… don't want to be involved."
"Why not? With your insight and my actual competence, we might be able to make some progress in this field that you founded and then neglected for three decades!"
"I don't want to," he repeated, fingers twisting in his robes, shoulders slightly hunched. "Please go away."
Her eyes narrowed. "Look, can't you see how generous I'm being here? I'm going to solve this myself; I don't need your help. I'm only giving you the opportunity because the original paper was yours, and it might have taken me longer to come across this anomaly if you hadn't bungled the proof in the first place, so I'm offering you a share of the credit as a token of goodwill!"
"You don't need to do that," he whispered. "I don't mind if you leave me out of it."
"I don't believe that. Beneath that pathetic exterior, you do care about this. That's why I've spent so long trying to find you again!"
Taking a step back, Zeref shook his head. "You must be mistaken. I have never cared about anything like this. I'm sorry you've had another wasted trip, but please, stop trying to find me."
"What is it that you want?" Anna shot back. "Not answers, not understanding, not fame, not money, not the truth about the world we live in, not even to end the eternal war into which we have been born – so what is it?"
He glanced away. "I just want to be left alone."
"How long have you been left alone?" she challenged.
"I don't know," he admitted, and that, she could entirely believe.
"Why do you kill things?"
She had hoped that the sudden change of topic might elicit a stronger response from him, but he responded with the same numb whisper: "I don't know."
"As in, you don't know how it happens? You don't remember doing it? Or you just can't explain it?"
"I don't ever mean to do it. It just happens. Every time I think I've worked out how to stop it, it happens again."
"Is that why you want to be on your own?"
He twisted further into himself. "I don't know."
"Because if you're honestly telling me that you'd pass up the once-in-a-lifetime chance to study this with me for some trivial, self-absorbed reason like that-"
"You don't understand!"
"Yeah, you're right, I don't!" she retaliated. "What part of that prevents you from keeping up with the latest journals? What's stopping you from researching magic and writing papers and sending them off to share with the world? In fact, you'd be a lot less of a problem in a library than out in the countryside, because all the trees there are already dead!"
"It's- it's not like that-"
"Only because you're not putting the slightest amount of effort into trying!"
This got no response at all. Not even a denial.
"Zeref-"
She stopped wasting her breath when she realized he wasn't listening.
He had spent most of the conversation looking at everything except her, but the way his gaze jumped skyward now wasn't mere evasion – it was deliberate, and it stood out because it was the first decisive move he had made since she'd confronted him. Maybe, this time, he had a good reason for ignoring her.
"What is it…?" she wondered, following his gaze.
A moment later, she saw it too: a streak of crimson against the burning sky, the ruby set in the horizon's golden crown. Behind it, like a shadow, a streak of black followed in its wake. Both were heading directly for them.
"Oh, great, now there's two of them," Zeref sighed.
"Two dragons? Seriously? Can't I get through one conversation with you without being bothered by freaking dragons?"
Hearing the accusation for what it was, he folded his arms defensively. "This is your fault. I told you to ignore him, and did you?"
"Well I'm sorry for finding it a bit tricky to ignore the man-eating monster as he kidnapped me!"
"So you should be. I manage it just fine."
"Yes, your devotion to apathy is remarkable," Anna drawled. "If only you could show that same level of determination towards literally anything else, you might actually be able to make a difference in the world!"
"Look," said he, tiredly, "I've told you – if you want to work out how the non-vanishing space-between-time term affects my time travel calculations, do it yourself. I want no part in it."
She frowned at those words. There was something off about them, but before she could put her finger on it, the twin omens of fire and darkness had drawn too close to be ignored. "Is that Igneel?" she asked. "Who's the shadowy one with him?"
"With any luck, his babysitter."
A streak of flame split open the world before them. The ground exploded. Wings flared, fire rose, dirt rained down, and from somewhere behind the arm Anna had raised to shield her face, a voice boomed, "Lo, I have come!"
Anna had to fight back the urge to groan. Lowering her arm, she saw the fire dragon posing as triumphantly as possible when half-buried in a crater of his own making. Dirt crested his snout and horns.
Beside him, the second dragon's wings fluttered as he descended slowly, proving that the concept of momentum wasn't beyond the mental capabilities of all dragonkind. Where Igneel's scales were a vivid, defiant red, the other dragon was as black as coal. His form blurred at the edges, not quite properly defined, as if the world wasn't quite sure where the predator ended and the scenery began.
He landed in a near-silent crouch, giving Igneel a disapproving look. Anna liked him already.
Oblivious, Igneel released a mighty roar towards the sky. "Behold! I, Blazing Justice, Prince of the Fire Dragons, am here to right wrongs and banish evil! Honour is my courage and my worth! Burn to nothing, children of the… hang on, where did he go?" the dragon squawked, blinking at the empty space next to Anna.
With a sigh like the onset of nightfall, the black dragon pointed with his tail to where Zeref was presently slinking off down the road. "There."
"Why didn't you tell me he was getting away?" Igneel accused.
"I was beginning to think he had the right idea," the other dragon yawned. "Do you always introduce yourself like this to your prey? I'm amazed you haven't starved to death halfway through your own catchphrase."
"Some hero you are, Skiadrum," Igneel harrumphed. With an immense downbeat, he broke free of the crater and crashed down again in front of Zeref. "Hold it right there, villain! You can't run from the knights of justice!"
"One knight," the black dragon corrected, as he stretched and made his slow way over to the pair, Anna following along behind. "Singular. Don't include me in your delusions. I'm only here for the unusual shadow magic I was promised."
"Oh, right, err…" Flustered, Igneel pointed at Zeref. "There he is. Munch away."
Dubiously, the new dragon leaned in and sniffed. Zeref endured this with the patience of one who had been through it many times before, apparently unfazed by the fact that the dragons were treating him like lunch.
However, the black dragon withdrew without eating him and turned back to Igneel instead. "He doesn't smell like shadow magic," he accused. "He smells like death magic."
"Eh, well…" Igneel gave a nervous chuckle. "They're both black and billowy… what's the difference?"
"The difference," explained the other, incredulous, "is that eating shadow magic will restore my power, whereas eating death magic probably will kill me."
"Well, you know… it might not, if it's shadowy enough…"
Greyish eyelids slid sideways in a slow, reptilian blink. "Is that what this is? Some ridiculous plot to murder me? If this is all because I called your plan stupid-"
"No! I mean, yes, I am annoyed about that, but I'm not trying to kill you! I'm just having trouble destroying this Black Wizard of Evil Death, and I honestly thought you might be able to help!"
Slowly, Skiadrum turned to regard the two humans. Zeref gave him a small wave. Blinking again, the dragon turned back to Igneel. "Why are you trying to kill him? I thought you liked humans."
"I do! But I also won't tolerate evil, and he's the evillest of the lot! There can't be peace in this world until he is dead!"
"Really? Because I was having a very peaceful nap this afternoon before you woke me up with your nonsense about righteous vengeance."
Igneel stomped his paw into the ground. "Look, are you going to help me defeat the source of all darkness or not?"
"I think," Skiadrum yawned, "that my health and my sanity would both be better served by resuming that nap instead. Nice to meet you, humans. Don't listen to his stupid plans. They're stupid."
There was no overwhelming wave of air as he took off – only an insubstantial breath which curled across their cheeks as he became a bolt of darkness, heading skyward.
"Fine, be like that!" Igneel huffed. "I'm used to it! 'Tis the hero's curse to be forever misunderstood!"
"What's this stupid plan of yours?" Zeref inquired.
"Hmph! Like I'd tell you, fiend!"
"What's this stupid plan of yours?" Anna inquired.
"Oh, well, it's-" Igneel's jaw snapped shut. He lowered his head and gave her a suspicious glare from a little too close. Even with her mouth firmly closed, smoke seemed to seep into her lungs; she wondered how Zeref tolerated it so calmly. "Once again, I find you in the company of this devil, lady scholar. I cannot help but wonder if there is something more nefarious than coincidence at work."
"I'm trying to talk some sense into him," Anna snapped back, pushing the dragon's snout away. He tossed his head, startled by the bold contact. "Something which your juvenile interruptions are not helping, by the way. Could you go away and let us have an actual civilized discussion, for a change?"
The dragon shifted from foot to foot. "Well…"
"Oh, yes, please do," Zeref chimed in. "Get out of here and give me free rein to finish corrupting this innocent girl with my evil ways."
Anna's jaw dropped. "What are you- hey!" she yelled, as Igneel snatched her up in his claw.
"No, you're right, I would be neglecting my duty if I left you alone with him," the dragon resolved, leaping into the air. The earth dropped away with alarming rapidity – though it wasn't quick enough to hide the smirk on Zeref's face as she was kidnapped once again.
"Hey! Take me back this instant! I'm not finished with him!"
"You mustn't talk to him!" Igneel called to her over the rushing of the warm evening wind. "He's manipulating you!"
"You're a moron!" Anna shouted back.
Humming obliviously, the dragon flew onwards into the sunset, the kidnapped scholar dangling from his claws in despair. It had taken her so long to find Zeref again. Now she'd lost him once more, all because of that meddling dragon.
And no thanks to Zeref either, the manipulative bastard. How could someone so unsure of himself suddenly turn around and trick the dragon into taking her away? Admittedly, it wasn't difficult to trick this particular dragon, but it didn't change the fact that on both occasions now, he had seemed to become an entirely different person when Igneel was around – one who acted rather than reacted; one who was capable of expressing irritation and even cheek rather than the uncertain nothingness she got.
"Say, Igneel?" she asked.
Apparently, he was less inclined to ignore her when she wasn't yelling at him, even going as far as to slow his flight so that they could hear each other over the turbulence. "Yes?"
"Has Zeref always been like this around you?"
"Evil, you mean?"
"No, that's obviously not what I mean," she huffed, hitting her forehead against his talon. "Both times I've spoken to him, he's seemed unsure of himself. It's like he doesn't know how he's supposed to act. Then, as soon as you show up, he switches to being competent and exasperated – like he's actually feeling something, rather than trying to determine how he should feel. Not to mention, his recollection of our first meeting seemed just as confused. Do you know what I mean?"
"I can't say I've ever given it much thought," the dragon breezed.
"I'm sure there's a lot of things you could say that about," she sighed.
"Now that you mention it, though… when I first confronted him about his evil deeds, he was a bit like you described. I've never known a villain to be so timid when confronted by a hero of justice. Still, I kept tracking him down, determined to find a way to vanquish him, and he showed his true colours soon enough. Self-assured. Manipulative. Despicable. Acknowledging me as his eternal foe!"
"Yeah, yeah."
She tuned out his ranting as they flew on, leaving her to puzzle over that man's behaviour on her own.
Not that it was her problem. Zeref had no intention of working with her; he had made that very clear. And the feeling was mutual – she wasn't going to waste any more time on a man who didn't care to dig up the treasure whose location his own research had divined. Igneel was right for all the wrong reasons: a man who aspired to nothing was truly a darkness upon the earth, a waste of centuries of human intellectual advancement.
Her grandfather had been mistaken. There was nothing about this man worth admiring. She was going to get to the bottom of the space-between-time term and solve the mystery of time travel without him…
Her thoughts lurched, stalled, and then quietly slowed to nothing.
Space-between-time term? She hadn't called it that. She hadn't bothered putting a name to that anomalous non-vanishing term. That was what Zeref had called it. And it was a perfect descriptor: the space-between-time; a quantity that had spatial dimensions under a temporal transformation and temporal dimensions under a spatial one.
How could he possibly have known that? She hadn't told him how the anomaly behaved. He couldn't have gleaned it from a brief glimpse of her notes, either. No, the only way he could have known what to call it was if he had already looked into it himself.
If he had, on his own, done the same calculations she had after their first conversation, and found the same puzzle.
If, somewhere in that cloud of apathy and uncertainty, there was still a spark of something more.
What an infuriating man.
He was going straight to the top of her list of problems that required a solution – just as soon as she had escaped from this equally infuriating dragon.
Two weeks, five archive trips, and a great deal of strategic planning later, Anna was ready to confront Zeref again.
Zeref, however, was not ready to confront her.
He seemed to be making good on his pitiful desire to be left alone. Having learnt from his previous slip-up, he did not make the mistake of returning to the meadows around the ruins of his hometown or the libraries and bookshops of nearby Skartown – in other words, to anywhere that Anna might think to look for him.
Weeks of searching turned to months without success. Asking after the teenager who dressed in clothes that had gone out of favour when the great Academies had and spoke of concepts few discussed these days became more of a habit than an active attempt to find him. Either fortune would reunite them, or nothing would, and she hadn't been much of an advocate of fortune since her grandfather's death.
There were more immediate problems that demanded her attention – ones she could accomplish without waiting for the fickle universe's whims to align with her own.
Problems such as drafting a revised version of her framework for a conceptual synthesis of One-Magic and World-Magic for publication in the Journal. If Zeref wasn't interested, she'd try and get other members of the scattered scientific community – not that it deserved the title these days – working on the problem with her… though she felt a kind of guilt over what she'd written, knowing that no matter how promising it looked, it was incompatible with the anomaly she and Zeref had uncovered.
She still went back to his erroneous proof every now and then, but she could never work on it for long before anger overtook her. The fact that she was researching it, not him, annoyed her no end.
It was almost a year after their first meeting that fate got its act together and gave her another serendipitous encounter.
Unfortunately, it wasn't with the elusive Zeref Dragneel.
In retrospect, Anna should probably have noticed something was a bit off when she passed half the population of Skartown fleeing through the city gates as she approached, but her mind was stuck in the implications of the newly discovered Frene-Lionel Equation at the time, and that was far more engaging than the screams of terror.
In fact, she completely missed the commotion in the centre of the city at first. Her feet were too busy making their way towards the Whiterose Science Library with single-minded dedication. Sure, she caught the vague whiff of smoke, but she dismissed it as irrelevant – especially once she reached the library, and found her way blocked by two red-clad pike-wielding soldiers.
How irritating. When she tried to walk round them, one stepped back towards the doors. The other chose a more direct approach, sweeping the point of the pike towards her neck.
Anna looked at the library doors – the first time she had ever seen them closed – then back at the soldier in front of her. "You're in the way."
"And with good reason," the guard grunted. "Entry is forbidden by the order of King Carlos III."
She made an incredulous noise. "What, as if it's not enough that he's pulled funding for the last university of magic in the kingdom, he's now actively campaigning against urban literacy rates?"
"His Glorious Majesty is requisitioning magical books from the library to aid in the fight against the dragons."
"He's robbing it, you mean."
"Anything of magical value will be put to good use in the war-"
"They're of use here!" Anna burst out. "Where people can actually read them and discuss their findings and test their theories without the push for immediate results that are all your ignorant king cares about! He wouldn't recognize magic capable of beating dragons if Acnologia dumped a sack full of recruitment pamphlets into his courtyard! Ten gold pieces says all the books he steals are in his personal vault by the end of the day."
Sharp steel grazed her throat. "I suggest you curb your tongue, before I am forced to do it for you," the guard growled.
Anna folded her arms. "I don't have time for this. I have an appointment to view the Orrarian Manuscript-"
"I suggest you reschedule," came the cold response. "Although, since it will be the property of King Carlos by the end of the day, I don't think the odds of an upstart commoner like you ever getting your filthy hands on it are really in your favour."
"This is an outrage!" she fumed. "How can you possibly claim this is to help humanity against the dragons? You're taking our most precious weapons – knowledge, ingenuity, creativity – away from the very people who are most likely to turn the tide of the war! It was pioneers like me who gave us Dragon Slayer magic! It will be pioneers like me who save this world! And when we do, you can be sure we'll remember the fools who stood in our way!"
"Take her away," the soldier sighed.
His companion seized her arm in an iron grip and marched her away from the library.
"You're the real villains here!" she shouted over her shoulder. "You'll pay for this- I can walk by myself, thanks!"
The soldier deposited her in the town square. Just for good measure, he drove the butt of his pike into the back of her knee, sending her sprawling. "Know your place, and don't bother us again," he spat. "If you could go and get yourself eaten, even better."
"Pathetic," she muttered, glaring at his retreating shoulders. "What kind of threat is that even supposed to be…?"
It was then that she noticed the chaos into which the soldier had deposited her.
In the centre of the city stood a huge clocktower. This was currently on fire. This was also only about the third most interesting thing currently happening to the clocktower – the second being the man pressed up against the soot-stained clock face, high above the ground, trembling with fear as the flames inched towards him from both sides; and the first being the red dragon who, despite using the tower as a brace to hold himself up on his hind legs, was still not quite as tall as it.
Even more bizarre were the words coming out of the dragon's mouth: "Would you please hold still? I am trying to rescue you!"
The man in the smoking clocktower whimpered and shrunk away from the dragon.
Anna let her head fall into her hands. This had absolutely nothing to do with her. The fact that she had met someone twice, and a while ago at that, did not make her responsible for every idiotic thing he did.
An odd half-snort came from above. "Why is there so much dust up here? Do you humans never bother cleaning your bell towers? Ah- ah- achoo!"
The burst of flames from the dragon's mouth blew the roof of the tower to smithereens. At the same time, the recoil tipped him off balance. The noble beast landed flat on his back with an impact that dislodged even more timbers from the clocktower. A wail came from above; the stranded man clung to the hour hand as embers rained down around him.
"Owwie," the dragon mumbled, opening his eyes to find an unimpressed Anna looking down at him. "Ah! The fair maiden scholar!"
"I would say call me Anna, but the last thing I want right now is for anyone to think I am associated with you," she sighed. "What are you doing?"
Igneel rolled over, crushing two lampposts and a park bench in the process, and bounded back to all fours. "My duty as a hero of justice!" he beamed.
Anna watched dubiously as his swishing tail came closer and closer to taking the roof off a nearby house. "By… terrorizing the citizens, setting fire to their local landmark, and trying to kill that stranded man in about five different ways at once?"
"I'm rescuing him!"
"From a fire you caused!"
"I have allergies," he sniffed. "Besides, someone has to get him down from there before he falls."
"…Did it occur to you that, if he got up there by himself, he'd be perfectly capable of getting himself back down?"
If the dragon could have folded his arms, he would have done so. "That's what I said about the cat, but he insisted on going up after it."
Anna blinked. "What?"
"Well, there I was minding my own business when all the humans suddenly started screaming about a monster coming to destroy their city. Naturally, I, Blazing Justice, defender of the innocent, offered to protect them, but they very rudely ignored me and kept panicking… only, this guy decided he couldn't leave without his cat, who was stuck on top of the clocktower. I did try to warn him, but he insisted on climbing up… at which point, the cat jumped down to one of the open windows, leaving the poor soul stuck at the very top."
"So you decided to help the situation by adding extra fire."
The dragon gave her a reproachful look. "You know, I remember you being a lot less mean."
"And I remember you being a lot less of a natural disaster on legs, so maybe we're both mistaken," Anna shrugged. "Now, I could point out to you all the problems with your tale, but your hapless victim would be burnt to a crisp before I got halfway through, so it'll have to wait. Can you lift me up to where he is?"
"Uh, I think so." The dragon's claw closed around her with immense care. Then he uncurled as a blur of crimson power, rearing up on his hind legs, wings flailing out for balance, while his other forepaw clutched the old stone with a strength that seemed impossible next to the gentleness of his grip. Stretching, he lifted her as high as he could, and she stepped from his straining palm onto the ledge.
She personally thought this was rather neat, although Igneel's accidental victim was staring at her with as much terror as if she'd turned into a dragon herself. There was a time and a place for awe, just as there was for being paralyzed by fear. The rising flames and trembling tower were racing to be the first to teach him that.
"Come on," she ordered, holding out her hand. He reached out with excruciating slowness, which she made up for the moment his hand was in hers, seizing it tightly and yanking him straight off his feet – and the ledge.
They hadn't fallen more than a metre when an explosion engulfed the top of the clocktower. They hadn't fallen more than two metres when Igneel snatched them out of the air. He dropped back to the ground, taking the impact through his other paw first and setting the two of them gently down afterwards.
The man they had rescued immediately took several steps away from the dragon. Perhaps 'man' was a generous assessment – he probably qualified as an adult, being about the same age as her, but he seemed to hold less courage than a five-year-old.
"Thanks, Igneel," Anna breezed, and the dragon preened under the praise. She gave the man they'd rescued a deliberate look. When that didn't work, she added, pointedly, "We're both grateful."
That didn't work either. Still staring at them both, wide-eyed, the man breathed, "Did you… did you just tame that dragon?"
After her encounter with King Carlos's soldiers, it was safe to say Anna had no patience left. "Of course I didn't tame him!" she burst out. "What I did do was pay attention to what he was trying to do, rather than seeing scales and wings and assuming that told me all I needed to know! His heart is in the right place – as you would have realized, if you'd bothered to listen to him. Shame I can't say the same about his brain, as that's so small I can't even see it. Not that yours is any bigger," she added, jabbing her finger towards the stranger. "What on earth were you doing at the top of the clocktower?"
"Rescuing my cat!" he blurted out.
"Like I told you," Igneel chimed in helpfully.
Anna glanced between them. "What, really?"
"I'm Darryl, Darryl Acorn," he said, offering her his hand to shake. It was a little sweaty, but that was probably due to him having narrowly escaped burning to death. "I work at the animal shelter. We got a report saying that Tabitha had somehow got herself stranded on the roof of the clocktower, so I went up to the highest window to try and entice her down. When the dragon appeared, I knew there wasn't much time before the city was destroyed, so I climbed the rest of the way to try and grab her… but she jumped down to the window, and I, uh, got a bit stuck."
"So I tried to rescue him!" Igneel announced proudly.
With a groan, the clocktower collapsed into a pile of flames and rubble.
"Tried being the operative word there, I think," Anna sighed. "Can't you do something about that fire?"
"I'm a fire dragon," he pointed out. "I could make the fire bigger?"
"…Well, the fire service will probably be along soon," she reasoned. "Though, probably not while you're still lurking around, Igneel. We should get going; this poor city has suffered enough."
"Umm," Darryl spoke up, stepping forwards.
Expectantly, Anna turned back towards him. He didn't look like much, but if he could get over himself and thank the dragon for saving his life, he just might leapfrog Igneel in her mental rankings-
"Could I- could I buy you dinner?"
As she stared at him incredulously, Darryl stammered, "It- it doesn't have to mean anything- just thanks for- for saving me- so I could get to know you a bit better-"
"Is Igneel invited too?" she asked archly. "Since he was the one who did all the work."
"Uh… I mean, well…"
"Forget it," she stated. "I'm not interested."
With a squeak, he scurried off down the road.
Anna let out a sigh. "Honestly."
"You don't have to do that, you know," Igneel said suddenly. His tail twitched awkwardly; another lamppost said its last goodbyes. "It's not like I'm not used to… that."
There was something telling, though, about the way he didn't brush it off as being a hero's duty.
That was why she asserted, "You shouldn't have to be used to it. You deserve better. Besides… you may need to work on the whole 'rescuing civilians from burning buildings' thing, but when it comes to protecting fair maidens from dull dates, you've got a pretty sterling record."
The red dragon blinked at her, perplexed.
"Though, if you were offering," Anna mused, "I can think of a couple of evil villains in this city right now who could do with being introduced to a hero of justice…"
Half an hour later, a smug scholar and a satisfied dragon finally departed from Skartown, the latter having been lauded as a hero many times over by a small but passionate group of librarians, and the former now the proud owner of the Orrarian Manuscript. Technically, the Head Librarian had offered it to Igneel first, as thanks for scaring the king's soldiers away before they could plunder the library, but he had politely declined on the grounds that he couldn't read it, and Anna had stepped in to accept it on his behalf. Meanwhile, Igneel was more than happy with the homemade scones the librarians had given them, which Anna was tossing one by one into his mouth as they walked down the road.
"So, what do you want with that old bundle of papers, anyway?" the dragon asked, referring to the string-tied, magic-preserved manuscript she had tucked carefully into her bag.
"A paper in an old edition of the Journal referred to it," she replied absently. "I'd heard about it, and seen translations, but I'd never got round to examining the original. In their civilization, they had a concept called vigradia – it related to divinity, rather than magic, but it has a lot of similarities to our modern concept of World Magic. Of course, Zeref made the same observation in his paper decades ago, but since he's refusing to have anything to do with the inexorable march of progress, I figured I might as well review it in the context of recent discussions myself."
A low growl escaped the dragon's maw; she realized, belatedly, that there was only one word of her answer that hadn't gone right over his head. "Please tell me you are not still associating with that villain!"
"I wish!" she snorted. "I can't associate with him, can I? He's dropped off the face of the earth again! This would be so much more productive if I could just talk to him about it – I'd even settle for writing him a letter! – but he's been hiding from me for months, and I have no way of getting in touch with him."
"Good," Igneel snorted.
It was remarkably subdued for the self-proclaimed hero, and the lack of any triumphant declarations caused her to narrow her eyes at him suspiciously. "Igneel, do you know where he is?"
Igneel scuffed the dirt with his paw and said nothing.
"I am going to withhold scones from you until you explain yourself."
"I don't know where he is, but…" Igneel gave her a mournful look, and when she didn't budge, he sighed. "Well, you could always leave a message for him in his evil lair. I doubt he'll respond, if he's deliberately avoiding you, but…"
"He has an evil lair?"
"He's an evil wizard! Of course he has an evil lair!"
"Do you know where it is?" Anna demanded, rounding on him. "Can you take me there?"
"I do know where it is, but… I'm not sure I would be doing my duty as a protector of the innocent if I assisted in your really quite alarming desire to talk to that miscreant."
She countered, "I'm not sure you're doing your duty as it is, given that you know where Zeref's evil lair is, and yet you're not out there destroying it."
"There's no point! He just remakes it! All his guards – the whole building, even – they're all made out of magic, and he just recreates the whole thing as soon as his power has recovered! It's a waste of effort, especially when there are heroic deeds to be done elsewhere. He's not even there himself most of the time, anyway."
"Then there's very little danger of me running into him, isn't there?" Anna pointed out deftly. "Besides, even if I do, you'll be there to protect me, right?" When the dragon wavered, she tossed up the last scone for him to snap out of the air, dusted off her hands, and then held them up innocently. "All I'm going to do is leave the latest draft of my paper somewhere he's bound to see it. Maybe with a note stapled to the front of it telling him to get over himself and stop standing in the way of scientific progress."
The dragon's sigh, weary of the world and all its inhabitants, fled up to the heavens. "Oh, alright."
After a short detour to drop off Anna's new manuscript at home, Igneel flew north with her on his back. She had been surprised at first to find that they were approaching the capital city, but on reflection, Anna decided that if she was going to hole up in an evil lair, she'd also want it to be within walking distance of the kingdom's largest surviving libraries. After all, she herself spent more time travelling to cities like Skartown than she did in the homestead she'd inherited in Aster, which was infuriatingly far away from everything in the kingdom that mattered.
They turned away from their course when the city was still a wall-bound distortion in the distance, heading towards a rocky wasteland. None but battling dragons could have ruined the land so thoroughly; no legacy but that of the endless Dragon Wars could have dissuaded settlers from attempting to reclaim the land, or travellers from forging a new path through it.
There was no life here – only twisted, shapeless, burnt monuments of rock; heaps of debris like funeral pyres; the occasional monstrous skeleton bleached not by the sun, but by whatever blinding magic had stripped away flesh and blood. Echoes of alien energy prickled at her eyes and cast an unnatural pallor over her skin. If not for Igneel's certainty, she would have thought nothing could live here at all.
However, the dragon simply angled his wings and landed soundlessly amidst a junkheap of dead things. Belly to the ground, wings folded tightly against his sides, he picked out a stealthy path between the obstacles.
He stopped behind a sheer slab of rock that some dragon's magic had raised from nothing and the earth had not taken back with its death. His voice came as a quiet rumble. "Do you see that?"
Anna crawled up the dragon's neck, careful to avoid the spines, and peered around with him. At first glance, it looked like just another relic of a bygone war – a huge, slightly misshapen cube, the colour of the wasteland, was nestled amongst a jagged pile of rocks.
"Keep looking," Igneel advised.
A black figure appeared at the top of the cube. It was humanoid in shape, wrapped in shadowy armour, scouring the wasteland with a helmeted face. Then another appeared, identically dressed, and they launched into a conversation Anna was too far away to catch.
"There are people here?" she whispered to Igneel.
"Not people. Demons. He made them out of magic to do his evil bidding."
"That's not possible. They're sentient!"
"Yup. Living magic."
"But that's breaking three fundamental laws of magic at once!"
The dragon shrugged. "I told you, he's an evil wizard. He doesn't care about laws."
"The laws of nature are not optional! No one, no matter how evil, can just choose to ignore them! It must be a trick. Illusion magic, maybe."
"It's real," Igneel assured her. "They're all alive. Even that big cube thing. It's growing."
"And he lives inside it?"
"It's rocky inside, like caves, rather than actual flesh and blood… if you can ignore the particularly disturbing way in which the walls breathe."
"That's incredible."
"I worry about you," sighed the dragon.
"I worry about him! Who would choose to hide in a dead land like this, when demonstrating what they had achieved with living magic in the right journal would earn them recognition the world over?"
"Someone who knows a hero will slay them the instant they step out into the light," Igneel told her sagely.
There was a moment of silence, as she despaired of him, and he despaired of her.
"Anyway," Anna prompted, "are you going to distract the guards for me, or what?"
"Why did I agree to this, again?" Igneel grumbled, as she hopped down from his back.
"Because it's the hero's duty to destroy the dark lord's evil minions?"
At this, the dragon perked up again instantly. "Oh, right! I, Blazing Justice, Prince of the Fire Dragons, am here to right wrongs and banish-"
Anna gave him an entirely ineffectual shove. "Look, if you've got to do the whole spiel, can you bore the demons with it, rather than me?"
"I suppose I probably should," he conceded.
In a ripple of fiery scales, he bounded out from their hiding place and roared a challenge to the guards. Wisely, Anna stayed well out of the way. Only when the demons were sufficiently distracted fighting the dragon did she sneak around the back and approach Zeref's hideout.
Finding a window, she hauled herself up and dropped down on the inside. At least, she hoped the hole in the side of the craggy monstrosity was supposed to be a window. Fortunately, Igneel was right about it looking like an ordinary cave inside.
The tunnel was lit by torches. Their flames shed no smoke and did not waver in the breeze of her passing. When she tried to pull one down, she found it affixed to its bracket with magic. The walls were like rock, but unnaturally warm, and with a bit too much give beneath her fingers. Against her better judgement, she touched her palm to the wall – just gently enough to feel its slight rise and fall, the slow breaths of a giant, sleeping monster.
She could sense the thick undercurrent of magic oozing through it, fascinating and repulsive all at once. At any other time, she would have loved for the chance to study it… just maybe not from the inside. How was Zeref able to concentrate on era-defining research in a place like this? Maybe this was why he never got anything done. Too busy staving off paranoia about being slowly digested by his own evil lair.
She didn't really believe it, though, so she moved in deeper, seeking somewhere quieter, darker, less disturbing, where he might have made his home. The sounds of Igneel fighting soon faded, leaving nothing but the faint squelch of her footsteps.
She knew the moment she found it. It was the first proper door she had come across in the bowels of this place – a solid, metal, pleasantly inanimate thing. Into it were woven all the wards she would have used if she'd built her own lab here, stopping the living magic which saturated the rest of the structure from affecting the results of any experiments undertaken within. Admittedly, she would have locked the door too, but it swung open when she pushed it. Perhaps Zeref assumed the camouflage and his soldiers would be enough to protect his secrets.
Inside, the walls, ceiling and floor were tiled with the same non-living stone. There were no ever-burning torches here. There was no room for them, with every square inch of wall covered by shelves of books, except for a small bare patch where a desk nestled in snugly. When she closed the iron door behind her, the only source of light came from the half-open door opposite, casting a blue-white glow over the study.
Perfect. She could leave her message where he was bound to see it.
When she stepped up to his desk, it wasn't satisfaction that struck her, but a strange sense of déjà vu.
The parchment already on top of his desk was just like the one she had been about to place there.
It was so similar, in fact, that only the elaborate Academy-taught cursive, quite unlike her own rough scrawl, stopped her from double-checking that her own paper was still in her bag. The calculations were the same. The numerical conclusions were the same. The frustration was the same, judging from the question marks and vague hypotheses scribbled into the margins, even if the budding lines of inquiry it had prompted from him were very different to her own wild speculations.
There was no denying that Zeref had analysed the time travel calculations just like she had; had started investigating the space-between-time term like she had; had done what he'd insisted he had no interest in doing.
And as she leafed through his pages, she saw that he hadn't stopped because he'd got stuck, or because he'd wanted to formally write up what he'd found for publication. He'd stopped, suddenly, halfway through an equation. As if there had been a knock on the door. Or a sudden dragon attack…
Her heart stopped, until a second glance at the parchment grudgingly restarted it. Not only was the ink long dry, but her fingers came away lined with dust. He hadn't worked on these equations for a very long time.
So, if it wasn't an assault on his hideout that had disturbed him, why had he given up so abruptly? Why had he left his research here, untouched, and not come back to it? Why had he pretended he had no interest in the subject, and then gone off to study it on his own, only to stop again?
Irritated, she flicked through the other papers on his desk, wondering what else he had been working on. They were difficult to understand without context. For some, he used a notation she had never seen before, which may well have been his own invention. Others were personal memos not intended to be comprehensible to anyone else. They meandered, floundered, doodled, and every now and then, put forward something truly original.
Something like a theoretical way of stopping the dragonification of Dragon Slayers, for instance.
She almost had to sit down at that. Was it possible? Scanning briefly through his notes – a general principle; some speculative ideas; one of the frameworks commonly used for crafting new rituals, which he had only just started to tailor to the problem – she had no idea, and by the looks of it, neither did he, yet.
What she did know was that in a world where mages all across the land were looking for faster, better, easier ways of killing dragons, he was the only one who had asked if it was possible to mitigate the damage their methods caused.
Not that he had bothered telling anyone.
Not that he had done anything with his ideas except jot them down half-formed, lock them away where no one would find them, and proceed to ignore them for decades.
By the time she heard the great iron door click open, her last shred of guilt about trespassing in Zeref's hideout had evaporated.
There he stood in the doorway, that failure of a genius, that disappointment of a human being, not quite meeting her eyes as he whispered, "Please leave."
"Please leave?" Anna exploded, rounding on him. "Is that all you have to say? I've set a crusading dragon loose on your sanctum as a distraction to break in, and you're politely asking me to leave?"
"Yes…?"
"Where is your outrage?" she demanded. "Where is your pride? Why aren't you making me flee from you in terror? Why aren't you trying to kill me?"
His eyes went wide. "I don't want to kill you! I just want you to leave me alone! Is there nowhere in this kingdom where I will be safe from you?"
"How dare you hide away? I don't care how much damage your magic can cause – nothing could be worse than letting these incredible ideas waste away in the dark!"
He glanced away. He hadn't been meeting her gaze anyway, but this was deliberate, guilty.
She took the chance to thrust the first sheet of parchment she had found towards him, forcing him to acknowledge her again. "Why did you stop analysing the space-between-time anomaly halfway through?"
He seemed to think about this for an age, only to answer with such little conviction that he might as well not have bothered. "I forgot why I had started doing it."
"Halfway through an equation? Most people would keep going until they got stuck, or at least had a better idea to pursue instead! That's not normal, Zeref!"
"Is it not…? I feel as though it might be, for me." Perplexity drifted through his eyes as he glanced around his study, as though he was seeing it for the first time. "I have all these books, I keep buying them, and they just sit there on the shelves, untouched, because I don't know what I wanted them for. But still, I don't stop buying more… I don't understand why I do it. I don't know why I keep starting things, any more than why I stop them… it's just what happens."
"It's not what happens to literally everyone else."
"I can't be like everyone else," he whispered. "I've tried… though I don't know why I tried. Look, please just go. This is none of your concern."
"As an upstanding member of the scientific community, it absolutely is my concern," she corrected him crisply. "Because, if you're not going to use these ideas, you have no right to them. I'm not going to let you keep this knowledge hidden away in your lair – I'm going to share it with the world." She waved the papers she had taken from his desk. "All of it. The space-between-time anomaly, the potential reversal of dragonification, even those sentient creatures you've managed to make out of magic-"
This got a response, in the form of a short step forwards and a sharp, "No!"
"Oh?" she remarked, daring him to continue.
"It's too dangerous. If anyone goes too deep into magic like that, they- they'll risk ending up like me."
"What, useless?" she challenged, not expecting him to nod.
"Broken," he agreed miserably. "I know I wasn't always like this. At least, I think I wasn't. The things I've done, the things you've told me about – there's no way I could do them the way I am now. I know that. But even though I know it, I can't see it like you can, or… or know what's right, any more."
"Something caused this to happen to you?"
He didn't say anything, but his eyes flicked in the direction of the far door, the one spilling sterile light into an otherwise-quaint study.
"Zeref, what's through that door?"
Again, he didn't answer, so she spun on her heel and went to see for herself.
If the study was designed to be different from the living tunnels in which it was embedded, then the room beyond was different again. Instead of stone and wood and hand-bound treatises, this was twisted metal and glass and cold, cold light. There were contraptions that could only have been forged by magic, and for some magical purpose. Primary amongst them was the cylindrical tank in the very centre. It was filled with a glowing fluid, the source of the blue-white light. Inside that, perfectly still, was the body of a child.
There had been few protective wards around the study itself, but that tank was another matter entirely. Alarms, forcefields, magic deflectors, counter-shields, and that was just the outer layer; beneath the defences, she could faintly sense stasis spells, monitoring spells, and a whole host of others whose purpose she couldn't divine. All were focussed on the body within.
She wondered, "He's not alive… is he?"
"No," came the quiet response. There should have been bubbling or humming in the background, but the wards ensured silence, and their voices jarred with it. "He's my brother. He died. I tried to bring him back, but I got too close to the One Magic, and…"
He spoke without emotion; that brief pause was the only sign that this mattered to him.
"I survived the destruction of the Academy because I was the one who caused it. Ever since then, I've been unable to die, unable to stop my magic from sometimes killing things around me, and unable to- unable to make sense of my own thoughts."
"Is that why you researched living magic?" she wondered. "You're still trying to bring him back?"
"I don't know. Maybe I did it because I was already cursed, so I was the only one who could. Maybe it was to create a demon capable of killing me. Maybe it was for my brother's sake…" His brow furrowed; somehow, despite the pervasive blue-white light, there were shadows there. "Maybe, but I never did try to combine that magic with his body. How could I? What if it went wrong again? What if it wasn't just the Academy, this time, but the entire world, with me alone left alive-?"
Anna hit him. Her hand against his cheek, harsh and unrepentant, and he barely had time to gasp in shock before she grabbed the collar of his robes and slammed him back against the wall.
"Don't you dare," she spat. "I can listen to you insisting that you don't care about anything. I will tolerate you whining about not knowing what you want to do. But I will not let you back out of changing the world because you are afraid of what you've found!"
Maybe it was a trick of the light. Maybe it was her own heightened adrenaline playing tricks on her senses, but for a moment, she thought she had seen his eyes flash with anger, thought she had felt his body tense against the wall, about to strike back against an accusation to which not even he could remain numb.
"Today, I have seen the future," she quoted.
The moment was gone. Confused, he asked, his question scratchy from a lack of air: "What?"
"I found it in some archive somewhere," she explained. Her grip did not relent. "Not sure which; I must have visited every single one with any connection to the Mildian Academy of Magic over the past few months. I found a transcript of the retirement speech given by Dean Osvalio, on the Annual Magicians' Dinner of X338. You were there. Do you remember?"
He stared at her in apprehensive silence.
"The records are incomplete, but it appears to have been the first such dinner you were invited to speak at. They'd avoided it before because of your youth, but you were becoming too famous, the Academy's prodigy. Tutors and financial sponsors alike were asking to hear from you. So you spoke."
"Life," said he, at last. "I spoke about the theory of life as magic."
"Yes, you did. They opened the floor to questions, and there weren't so many of those as there were outright refutations, and you had a response for every one of them. And when you were done, the Dean got to his feet, threw out his notes, and said, Today, I have seen the future."
"I… do not recall." It was the hundredth time she had heard him say words to that effect, but it was the first time she wasn't sure she believed him.
"I have seen the future, so he said," she repeated. "I have been shown that the spirit of our Academy does not discriminate by background or ambition, by age or by experience. I have seen that it does not depend on tradition, but surpasses it; that, before the tempest of preconceived opinion, it soars. For many months, the necessary imminence of my retirement has frightened me, yet today, on the eve of that final leap, my fears have been put to rest. Today, I have seen the next generation take up the baton. I have seen an ingenuity and a verve that an old man like me, for all my wisdom, cannot match. And, so the account goes, he looked right at you, and said, It is rough and it is unrefined, but-"
"-but in them, I see the future of mankind," Zeref finished quietly. "I have studied the world, but it is my successors who will change it."
"You do remember."
A reluctant nod. "It meant a lot to me at the time. Dean Osvalio had always been opposed to me joining the Academy at such a young age, and with such goals in mind. After that day, he was never anything but encouraging."
He was silent for a moment, but when his gaze caught hers, and held it, there was no fondness in those inky depths. "And he was wrong. Three years later, he and everyone else in the Academy was dead, and all across the continent, the great magical institutions were beginning to crumble. I did change the world, and it was in the way he least expected. It's over, now. I just want to be left alone."
"I'm sure that is what you want," Anna told him steadily. "But it's the last thing you need."
"What do you mean?"
"It's killing you."
He snorted in disbelief. "I wish."
"The isolation is killing you," she repeated. "Or perhaps I should say, it's killing Zeref Dragneel. The man my grandad admired; the man Dean Osvalio knew would shape the future; the man who wrote half the laws of magic himself, and broke the other half. Every time you give up, every time you lose interest, every time you back out because you're scared, every time you start a project and let it fall by the wayside, like this one-" She gestured over her shoulder at the unearthly tank, and was rewarded with the smallest flash of crimson in his eyes. "-Zeref Dragneel dies a little bit more."
"So what do you expect me to do about it?" he snapped back. "I've told you, I can't control my mind, my thoughts! I can't focus on anything for any length of time! I don't know what it is that I want!"
"But I do," Anna stated.
"…What?"
Firmly, she explained, "Other people give you a point of reference – a benchmark against which you can measure your own behaviour. Discussing your old work with me that day reminded you of who you really are, of that passion you used to hold as strongly as me. That's why you came away and immediately started working on the calculations we'd talked about. Only after you'd been alone for a while did the doubts creep back in, removing brick after brick from the walls of your certainty until you had forgotten who you are once again."
"I…"
"You need someone else, Zeref. That's why you act more like a normal human being whenever Igneel is around. He provides a constant in your life over which your variable mind has no power. By always behaving the same towards you, his certainty reminds you of how you should act, regardless of what your confused little brain is telling you. As much as I hate to say it, that moron of a dragon and his eternal quest to destroy you is probably the only reason why there's any shred of personality left in that thick skull of yours."
He glanced away, though she couldn't blame him for that; being indebted to that dragon wasn't a pleasant thought.
"I think it's high time you got yourself a better role model, and thus I am graciously offering you my services," she persisted. "You forget who you are? I'll remind you. You lose your way? I will tie you to your desk and drill equations into you until you are dreaming in semi-intangible calculus. I will stay with you until you haul yourself out of that mental quagmire you've made your home for the past thirty years, do you understand?"
She could tell the exact moment the spark of hope winked out in his eyes. "You can't get close to me. You'll die."
Angrily, she tossed back her hair and reinforced the grip on his collar. "Yeah, about that – I would say how utterly disappointed I am that you've had this cursed magic for nearly three decades, and you've yet to empirically test what triggers it… but I'm not sure it would even scrape into the top ten most disappointing things about you, so I'm saving my breath. Needless to say, experimenting on that is going to the top of our to-do list. Along with working out time travel, investigating the space-between-time anomaly, and seeing if there is any potential in your idea for reversing dragonification – oh, and I suppose we can stick bringing your little brother back to life onto the list."
"No, I have to do that on my own," he said quickly. "I'm already cursed. There's no point in you ending up like me."
There was a long pause, and then a grin spread across her face.
"What…?" he wondered, fearful.
"Honestly, if that's the biggest objection you have to everything I've just said, I think the next few years are going to be very interesting indeed."
"I also object to the rest of it!"
"No, you don't." At last, she removed her hand from his neck, but it was only to jab him over the heart with her index finger. "Because you, the real you, never stopped wanting to explore and investigate and create. But it seems you've forgotten how, so I'm going to remind you."
"I…"
It was then that a certain fire dragon decided to rip the roof off Zeref's sanctum.
"Seriously?" Anna exclaimed. "We were having a moment there!"
"You're the one who brought him here," Zeref pointed out.
She glowered at him, but that was all she had time for as destruction started to rain down around them, and she dived for cover. Zeref held his ground, looking skyward with a kind of resignation.
"Aha!" Igneel crowed. At least, that's what Anna thought he was saying; it was difficult to make out around the huge chunk of ceiling in his mouth. "I have defeated your minions, Black Wizard, and now I, Blazing Justice, am here to-"
It was then that Igneel noticed the lump of rock in his mouth was slowly oozing blood, and he spat it out with a cry of horror. "Ew, ew, ew! Your foul – ew – creations are as foul as you are!"
"You could always try not putting them in your mouth," Zeref suggested flatly.
"And let them roam free to spread your evilness across the land? I think not!" The dragon drew himself up to his full height, made all the more impressive by the dismembered demons all around him. "You think you're so smart, hiding from me for so long, but all you were really doing was giving me more time to create magic capable of killing you!"
To his credit, he did act the minute he finished announcing his plans, although anyone with a shred of motivation would still have been long gone. Zeref, sadly, did not fall into this category. The dragon's claw closed around him, and flung him straight up into the sky.
As he fell, Igneel opened his maw, revealing the furnace within. "Blazing Justice: Fire Dragon Prince's Epic Solar Burst of Glory!"
Anna missed the result, but for good reason; it was only by clapping her hands to her eyes that her vision was saved to fight another day. She was still blinking away the blaze when a charred shape fell out of a white sky. Burnt, blackened, it couldn't be- couldn't- and it wasn't, her eyes must not have recovered properly, because the next time she looked, Zeref was whole and unharmed, struggling to stand.
"Not enough, huh?" the dragon mused. "Then, try this! Fire Dragon Prince's Colossal Crushing Claw of Cataclysm!"
The name was so dramatic that it was a bit of a letdown when Igneel simply stepped on his target.
Then again, he was so big that he hardly needed to do anything else. Surely no human could survive that – none except this black-haired mage, apparently, who coughed up blood once and then stayed panting on his hands and knees.
Well. That would come in handy when testing experimental rituals.
"Not energy, and not physical force…" frowned Igneel. "Aha! I'll try pure heat instead! Fire Dragon Prince's-"
"Alright, that's enough!" Anna snapped, stepping in front of Zeref with her arms outstretched.
Igneel choked on his own fireball. "Don't do that!"
"Stop trying to kill him, then!"
An angry wisp of smoke curled up from his nostrils as Igneel brought his head in close, peering at her with one unblinking eye. "Once again, I find the fair maiden defending the inexcusable villain. How many times must you side with evil before I have no choice but to let go of my hope for you?"
Anna folded her arms. "You know, you were doing so well as a hero of justice today. You saved Cat Rescue Guy – once you'd stopped trying to burn him alive, that is – and freed the librarians from the soldiers' reign of terror. Plus, you escorted me here and caused a distraction for me to break into Zeref's hideout. Now, you're ruining it by trying to kill a defenceless man who has done nothing more to provoke you than exist!"
"Now, look here-" Igneel began crossly, at the same time as Zeref said, "It's fine."
The ensuing silence was capable of uniting Anna and Igneel in shock.
"Of course it's not fine!" Anna burst out.
"How is being defeated by your archnemesis fine, fiend?" Igneel demanded.
"It's fine," Zeref repeated, his words drifting through the scene of destruction.
Hotly, Anna began, "Look, just because you're immortal doesn't mean you should let him use you as target practice-"
"No," Zeref murmured. "I hope, one day, he'll succeed in creating a spell that can kill me. I… don't want to be alive."
"Well, tough," Anna snapped. "You are alive, so get up, get over yourself, and get on with living. You know what they say: when life gives you- well, more life, make a cure for dragonification."
"I… I don't…"
He stared at her like he'd never seen her before – like he'd never seen another human being before. When she held out her hand to help him up, he actually shied away from it before she lost patience, grabbed his wrist, and yanked him to his feet.
Igneel, too, was staring, partly at her but mostly at his sworn foe – like he had never seen him before, either. "You have a cure for dragonification?"
"Not yet, he doesn't," Anna informed him. "But ask him again in a few years, and the answer will be yes. I'm going to make sure of it."