The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Hubris et Orbi, Part 5

-In Fiery Alignment-

Ezaville.

It must have been an important place, because Anna had bothered to learn its name.

It was, by all accounts, a luxurious resort lounging on the shores of Carligne's largest lake: all whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs and sunlight bouncing from the authentic detoxing volcanic crystals that lined the shopfronts of every spa and guesthouse.

More to the point, it was also the place where the Duke of Eza, heirless old nobleman and former student of the second-best Academy of Magic on the continent, had recently established the Society of Marvellous Discovery.

Anna thought this was something of an optimistic name, given that he had failed to send an invitation to the two people most likely to make a Marvellous Discovery during his lifetime, and she had taken it upon herself to correct this gross error of judgement. Zeref wasn't particularly enthusiastic about turning up at the Duke's villa uninvited, but then what was he enthusiastic about? And when had that ever stopped her from dragging him along?

Besides, he may have spent most of the journey trailing along behind her in silence, but there was a world of difference between silent sulking and silent thinking, and the way he pulled ink and parchment from his Requip Space every time they stopped for a break gave her some clue as to which engaged him. For the two of them, this kind of journey had become quite normal.

Until they reached Ezaville.

Anna smelt it first. It clung to the inside of her nostrils like an acrid slime, far from the rock salts and perfume she had expected. A hundred innocent explanations whirled through her mind – ranging from malfunctioning sewers to the Duke's discoveries not being quite as marvellous as he hoped – but for all that they, as scientists, tried to rise above the times, the rest of the world barely made the effort.

She crested the rise in the road and there it was: Ezaville, or what was left of it.

Gone were the white walls and the seashell roofs; gone was the quaint architecture and its ability to make everything worth twice as much to visiting aristocrats; gone was the marketably pure air, throttled by smoke; gone was the natural beauty that needed no advertisement – aftermath looked much the same everywhere. The lake glinted red.

Anna hadn't taken more than a step forwards when a whimper reached her ears. She looked back to see Zeref paler than she had ever seen him before. A breeze could have blown him away.

She remembered, belatedly, how he had frozen just like this when Igneel and Acnologia had fought. After what he had told her about his family's death, she thought that this was one instance when she could forgive an immortal man for expressing fear. She pulled him into a quick hug, murmuring meaningless words he was still human enough to understand.

"Again," he whispered. "This world never changes, does it?"

"We're going to change it, Zeref. Now, come on. There might be survivors down there."

Zeref's bleak expression summed up her feelings accurately, though she refused to let it show.

"And if not," she amended, "the fires might not have reached the Duke's library yet. There might still be time to save his books."

They entered the town. What remained of the road blended into collapsed buildings and rent earth. Every now and then, another shell of a building joined its fellows in eternal rest, dust to dust, rubble to rubble. A carpet of dirty white ash concealed nightmares she was glad she couldn't see. She shouted into the devastation and heard nothing back.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Zeref flinch every time another structure crumbled and another shattered home was revealed. Nonetheless, he followed doggedly in her footsteps, if without her pretence of hope.

In the marketplace, they stumbled across a huge, scaly tail, draped across abandoned stalls. It might have marked their deaths, had the tail been connected to a body, and that to claws, teeth, and the like. Yet the tail ended in a pathetic, blood-encrusted stump. They carried on.

They found a disembodied horn, longer than either of them was tall, protruding from a pavilion. In what once had been a park, but now resembled a wasteland after a thousand years of acid rain, they came across leathery shreds of wing, just enough of it torn away to prevent lift.

It wasn't until they reached the Duke of Eza's villa that they found the rest of it. There, in the rubble of the house where a wealthy old man had once discussed the best way to support the next generation of researchers, the corpse of a navy-blue dragon had been left to rot where it had fallen. Its throat had been slashed open from below. Blood still oozed its steady way down to the lake.

Dragons fought with size and strength. Neither teeth nor claws could cut cleanly enough to make that wound. Anna had seen something that could, though – a savage blade of energy in the hand of an equally savage man; an insatiable magic that had momentarily held back the Fire Dragon King.

The one tiny silver lining was that the man who wielded it was unlikely to have stuck around once the dragon was dead.

However, she could no longer deny that he was likely the only person who had walked away from the town alive. If she looked closely, she could make out a black-burnt shape there or a blood splatter here or a lifeless arm protruding from that pile of rubble, but no survivors still clinging to life, no one to answer her weakening calls.

When she confided as much to Zeref, he nodded slowly. "I don't sense anyone," he admitted. "I haven't since we arrived." Then he added, unexpectedly, "This is the library."

Added to the original villa as an extension, it appeared from the outside as if the Duke's library had survived the battle unscathed – but colours shifted in the stained-glass windows, and every pane except the reds and oranges were darkened by the light from within. Fire. Smoke, too, weaving indecipherable patterns into the spray of colours.

"Zeref," she called out, bemused, as he walked towards the doors. "You do realize I was joking about rescuing books, right? I figured it would be easier for you to cope with that than the thought of looking for actual survivors. Since there are none, we should go."

"There might be something interesting in there."

Anna gave him the look she usually reserved for a certain fire dragon. "It's. On. Fire."

"I can't die. It's fine." With that, he pushed open the doors and promptly disappeared in a gout of flame.

"Wait! Zeref!"

Nothing.

"Don't expect me to come in and drag you out when the building collapses on top of you!"

Still nothing.

"Moron," she huffed, sitting down in the middle of the road. "I know you still feel pain. As if that idiotic Duke is going to have anything worth being burned alive for."

Still, it was nice to see a flash of quiet resolve from him. If only he could have chosen an act of self-determination that wasn't akin to siding with Igneel in the war against common sense.

Minutes drifted by. Annoyance, as was its habit, became worry. They had tested – extensively – the conditions for triggering Zeref's surges of death magic, but not the limitations of his immortality. Namely, because there was only one way of doing it, and her scientific curiosity wasn't that morbid.

So when the flames roaring in the doorway finally coughed up a black-robed mage, spluttering from smoke inhalation but otherwise none the worse for wear, she felt a wave of relief crash over her.

That relief would be short-lived. Whether Zeref's intrusion had been the final straw, or whether the inferno had simply become too much for it to bear, the library twitched.

Then it groaned.

Then it was falling towards them, flames and all.

"Zeref!" she screamed. He turned and saw it, too late for him, too late for her – and then there was a blur of royal red, and something slammed solidly into the falling wall, stopping it in its tracks.

Zeref fell into her and they stumbled backwards. Over his shoulder, Anna caught a glimpse of scales like the sunset, wings spread like the battlements of a castle, forming a barricade against the avalanche of debris. A command rang out: "NOW!"

From somewhere overhead came a second thunderous cry – "Fire Dragon Prince's Roar!" – and both dragon and library were engulfed in flame.

Anna blinked. That was a remarkably boring attack name by Igneel's usual standards, and as the magical flames died down as quickly as they had appeared, the reason became clear.

Igneel himself was stood in front of them, shaking off the ashes into which the once-grand library had been instantly reduced.

Above them hovered a second dragon. Unlike Igneel, this one seemed to be made of pure fire. He landed next to Igneel, starting no fewer than three fires in the process, which continued to burn merrily along the ground as he peered at Anna and Zeref.

Then he turned to Igneel and whispered, "Is this where we do the thing?"

"You bet!" Igneel replied. Drawing himself up to his full height, he proclaimed, "I, Blazing Justice, Elder Prince of the Fire Dragons, am here to right wrongs and banish evil!"

The dragon of fire puffed out his chest. "And I, Atlas Flame, Younger Prince of the Fire Dragons, am here to slay the wicked and defend the righteous!"

"Honour is my courage and my worth!" Igneel announced.

"My sacred flames will sweep across the earth!" the other continued.

"Burn to nothing, children of the night!"

"And flee before us, all who fear the light!"

There was a pause as the two dragons struck mirrored poses, heads raised and wings flared.

Zeref was also striking an interesting pose, namely trying to cover both eyes and both ears using only his two hands.

"Good lord," Anna uttered. "They're multiplying."

Neither dragon seemed to notice this less-than-warm reception. Perhaps they were too stoked by their own pride to notice. The fiery one turned to Igneel, crowing, "That was sooooo cool!"

"I know, right?" came Igneel's ebullient response. "It's so much better with two!"

"You said it, bro!"

"Bro!" The two dragons headbutted delightedly.

Zeref's hand closed around Anna's. In an undertone, he hissed, "Let's get out of here before they notice us."

Sadly, they hadn't managed more than one step when the fiery dragon's attention homed in on them. "Now, what do we have here?" he marvelled, in a voice that crackled like – unsurprisingly – a campfire. "An evil wizard and his accomplice, hmm?"

"Ignore him, please, just ignore him," Zeref begged, tugging at her hand.

Anna did not ignore him. In fact, any witnesses would have been forgiven for believing that she had burst into flames as furiously bright as the dragon she was staring down.

"So I'm an accomplice now, am I?" she fumed. "Defined by my relationship to the man I happen to be travelling with? I think I preferred being called a maiden; at least that acknowledged me as my own person!"

"Uh," said the fiery dragon, eloquently.

"And don't think I don't know who he got that habit from," Anna added, glaring at Igneel. "You should be prohibited from interacting with anyone gullible enough to see you as a role model."

"Huh," remarked the new dragon. "Are these friends of yours, bro?"

Haughtily, Igneel responded, "Friends? Don't insult me." He tapped Zeref's chest with one curved talon. "That one's my archnemesis." Then he pointed at Anna. "That's one's just baffling."

"Nice to meet you," crackled the dragon, ignoring the betrayed look he received from Igneel. "I'm Akarin, Igneel's younger brother."

Igneel swatted him with a wing. "What are you telling the villains your real name for? After I spent so long coming up with a cool heroic name for you, too!"

"Hang on," interrupted Anna. "You two are actually brothers?"

"Yup!" they both answered at once.

She glanced from the red dragon to the one who was literally made of fire and back again. "How does that work? Genetically, I mean."

"Well," Igneel answered, folding his wings and settling into a more comfortable position, "when a male dragon and a female dragon love each other very much-"

Anna clapped a hand to her forehead. "Forget I asked. Please. Right now."

"They're creatures of magic, Anna," Zeref spoke up, amused. "Not as much as a summoned god, but far more so than any human. Just because they are also made of flesh and blood – usually – doesn't mean they are bound by the same rules as us."

Akarin leaned forward to study them; both the humans shuffled warily back, in case their clothes caught fire. "And how does this little human know so much about dragons?"

"A-hem." Igneel's not-so-subtle cough stopped the interrogation in its tracks. "Does it really matter? I'm sure he has discovered many secrets by dint of his nefarious magic."

It was then that Anna noticed the scarred patch of skin above Igneel's heart. It was a similar creamy shade to the surrounding scales, so it was not immediately noticeable, but when she looked closely, it lacked the gleaming resilience of his natural armour. She remembered Weisslogia's reaction to Igneel giving her the scale, and wondered if dragon heartscales didn't grow back.

That was why she changed the subject, so loud and firm that neither of the enormous creatures thought to contradict her. "What are you two doing in a ruined town?"

The dragons exchanged glances. Igneel explained, "We were out flying with Dad when we heard Oratania screaming."

After a moment, Anna deduced that he must have meant the dead dragon.

"We were too late." Igneel thwacked his tail against the ground bitterly. Akarin copied him, and started the ruins' hundredth miniature fire. "Two minutes earlier, and we could have saved her. She was a lake dragon, you know? If she'd just made it to the water, it would have healed her wounds. He did it on purpose. Deliberately let her get that close before finishing her."

How much of the destruction they'd seen had been the work of a violent draconic battle, and how much had been the last, desperate attempt of a dying dragon to flee? Anna imagined the wild man she'd met strolling alongside a writhing dragon, chopping bits off her body as she struggled towards that false promise of salvation, and she shivered. She had no doubt that was something he would do.

"In the harbour, Acnologia said he wouldn't normally hurt humans," she recounted. "But if he deliberately let her get as far as the village… he's responsible for this."

Igneel spat a globule of fire into the road, igniting yet another bonfire. Akarin said, "He may not go around actively killing humans, but when it comes to dragons, he doesn't care who gets hurt as long as he achieves his goal."

"So much for trying to save humanity," Anna snorted.

"He's pure evil," Igneel snarled. "Humans think all dragons are like that, just because he is. And some dragons think all humans are like that because he is. But we're different!" he added fiercely, and his brother gave him an encouraging nod. "Dad went after Acnologia. He said that Oratania wouldn't have gone down without a fight, and that he would finish the job while Acnologia was weakened. But he told me and Akarin – I mean, me and Atlas Flame – to stay here and look for survivors."

"There are no survivors," Zeref informed him quietly.

Predictably, Igneel flared up at once, though it was as likely to have been because of the truth he had been trying to deny than the reminder of Zeref's existence. "And why are you here, miserable wizard? Come to revel in the suffering and death, no doubt."

In the interests of everyone's sanity – or just hers, as she suspected she was the only person here with any sanity to speak of – Anna intervened. "Actually, we had an appointment with the Duke of Eza."

"The who of what, now?"

"The man whose library your brother just disintegrated."

Akarin beamed in a manner that immediately dispelled all Anna's doubts about his and Igneel's brotherhood.

Rolling her eyes, she continued, "We saw that the town had been destroyed and came to search for survivors, same as you."

"You just said there weren't any," Igneel echoed suspiciously.

"No," Zeref agreed, "but the Duke had a genuine first edition of Eldris Magick-"

Anna clamped her hand over his mouth. "We tried, just in case," she shrugged. "But you're right: Acnologia wasn't merciful to the village that just happened to be in his way."

"At least it wasn't an entirely wasted search." Igneel narrowed one opalescent eye at Zeref. "I didn't find any innocents to save, but I did stumble across a wicked-hearted villain to strike down instead!"

Zeref gave him a tired look. "There's no need to bother. Give it another couple of minutes, and all the fires you two have started just by existing will do the job for you."

"Alternatively," chimed in Anna, "you could help out a couple of innocents, like the true heroes of justice you are, by giving us a lift out of this place and back home before we burn to death."

Igneel twitched. "Aster is a long way away, and Dad specifically told us to go straight home after we were done here…"

"That's okay, you could just take us to Skartown, that's much closer," Anna volunteered sweetly. "We can stay with Darryl tonight."

"With who?" Zeref asked.

"Darryl. You've met Darryl." At his blank look, she explained, "You know, Cat Rescue Guy."

"Oh… him."

What Zeref lacked in enthusiasm was more than made up for by Igneel. "Ah, he of the dragon-slaying spicy rock cakes! Yes, I like him. Much better company for you than this evil fiend. Unmarried too, I hear."

Taken aback by the sheer unsolicited nature of this advice, Anna missed her chance to say anything, and Zeref was free to sulk. "Do we have to stay with him?"

"Of course not," she snapped. "Feel free to invent teleportation magic in the next five minutes and take yourself somewhere else. You'd also have your choice of Skartown inns that would be willing to rent a room out for free to a seeming-adolescent who spends all his money on books. When he's not stealing them from dead dukes, that is."

"Very funny. I'll stay with you."

"Thought you might."

"You're not going anywhere," Igneel declared. "I'm not helping despicable foes like yourselves."

"I could take you," Akarin piped up.

The offer was made cheerfully and in good faith, so the dragon deflated a little – his fiery body actively shrinking – when they exchanged unenthusiastic glances.

"Good of you to offer," Anna said, "but we were kind of hoping for the one of you who isn't on fire."

"…Oh."

Igneel said nothing.

Anna gestured at the fires, which had banded together into one great ring, sneaking up on them from all directions. "You know, for those of us who aren't immortal and/or fire dragons, it's getting a bit hot in here."

Igneel gave her a doleful look. "Is there any chance I could take you and leave him?"

Anna folded her arms.

"Oh, alright," the dragon grumbled. "Just this once."

He crouched down so the pair of them could scramble onto his back, and then gave his brother a pointed look. "Go home, bro. I'll drop these two off and come straight to join you."

If Zeref hadn't exactly been thrilled at the idea of staying at Darryl's for the night, then Darryl was downright resentful about it.

He had beamed as widely as Igneel given a library full of villains to destroy when he had opened the door to see Anna standing there in the gloom, and when she had asked if there was any chance he could put her up for the night, pretty please, he didn't even bat an eyelid.

"And my friend," Anna had added, with her best smile, as she pointed at Zeref lurking somewhere behind her.

Then he had batted quite a few eyelids, and pretended to worry about not having the space or facilities for guests, while she waited on his doorstep with killer patience. Eventually, he decided that he was willing to help her, but that he only had one spare room.

"That's fine, I'll kip on the sofa," she assured him.

Zeref was silent, as he usually was around anyone who wasn't her or a dragon. Anna could feel Darryl's already unfavourable opinion of Zeref falling further, having taken his natural shyness to mean that Zeref was fine with the lady sleeping on the sofa so that he could have the spare bed, and she sighed internally.

"It's fine, he needs the rest more than I do," she said, waving her hand, as if to blow out the fuse before it reached detonation. Darryl didn't try to stop her from entering – or Zeref from following her – though he did fold his arms, registering his displeasure regarding the finer details of her plan. Igneel would be proud to see such archaic behaviour in a human male, she was sure.

"I can't have a lady sleeping on the sofa in my house," Darryl objected. "You can sleep in my bed."

No, scrap that, Igneel would have a fit.

Anna raised her eyebrows, waiting for Darryl to realize what he'd said. She could tell the exact moment it clicked, because his cheeks went as red as said dragon's scales, yet without the same aura of invulnerability. Quite the opposite, in fact. "I didn't- I only meant- I'll take the sofa and you can have the bed-"

"Aww," she grinned. "You mustn't lead a lady on like that just to let her down, Darryl."

He mumbled something that was very uncertain and very, very adorable, and to be quite honest, she could have kept this up all evening – and might well have done, had she not caught a glimpse of Zeref's reproachful black eyes. Then she remembered why the few occasions on which she'd come to Skartown for something other than the library had always been scheduled for when Zeref was busy with experiments in his secret lair.

It was going to be a long night.

Still, she did her best to make it civil. It wasn't that late, so they sat around the table with wine – or, at least, she and Darryl had wine. He didn't offer any to Zeref, probably on grounds of his apparent age, and Zeref didn't say a word about being overlooked, preferring to make himself as small as possible and pretend he wasn't there.

Anna opened with what should have been a safe question: "So, how's work been?"

"Fine, up until a couple of hours ago," Darryl answered, his brow furrowing. "The animals got restless all of a sudden. They do that, sometimes. When one gets it, they all do. I think they can sense when trouble's on its way."

"Trouble, hmm? Is this like the cat who fled up a clocktower when she sensed Igneel coming? Because if so, I think your cats might be on to something. We could employ them as an advance dragon detection system."

"Cats…?" Zeref wondered.

"Yes, Darryl works at the animal shelter," Anna explained, remembering once again why she tended to keep these two apart. "I thought you knew that."

Zeref blinked, long and slow and almost dragon-like, at the unfortunate Darryl. "That's your actual job?"

"Yes," Darryl responded, trying his best to be polite. "We look after stray and abandoned animals, mostly cats and dogs, but every now and then something more exotic comes along and we try to help as best we can."

"Why?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"What difference does it make, keeping animals that no one wants alive for another few years? It's not as though they're going to make the world any better. Their lives aren't worth anything."

"Zeref," Anna warned. As Darryl jumped to his feet, slamming his glass down on the table, she added a sharp warning to him, too: "Darryl!"

She wasn't sure Zeref would listen, but Darryl definitely would, and indeed he quailed under her gaze. Instead of shouting at his unwanted guest, the beleaguered host turned to her and muttered, "Is he going to be like this all night?"

"He's not," Anna said firmly, "because he's going to go upstairs, right now, and sit in the spare room with the book he stole from the Duke of Eza and not come out until the sun has risen."

She was expecting some sort of resistance to being treated like a child, but Zeref got up without a word and vanished up the stairs. Only then did she realize how uncomfortable he must have been, forced into a domestic setting with other human beings for the first time in… well, perhaps ever.

"Sorry," she sighed, more heavily than before, as Darryl sat back down. "I know he's not good with people, but he isn't normally this bad. It's been a difficult day."

"I don't know why you put up with him."

She shot back at once, colder than ice. "I put up with him, Darryl, because he is my friend, and a distinctly more important one than you. If you even think about badmouthing him in front of me, I will take his side and then some."

Then, relenting, she offered him an apologetic smile. "It's complicated. He's complicated. It's a lot better for him to be disdainful of your job than the opposite, believe me. Unfortunately, as a result of it, I doubt the two of you will ever really get along."

Which was just her luck.

Zeref resurfaced again not half an hour later.

At first, Anna was annoyed to see him, and understandably so. Darryl, having only just started to relax, was halfway through a story about the ill-tempered donkey his shelter had taken in the week before. Another ten minutes or so, and she was sure he would have forgotten about the peculiar immortal hiding in his spare room, and started acting more like himself… but said immortal was currently bounding down the stairs three at a time, skidding across the hall, and slamming a set of papers down on the table in front of Anna.

The exasperated yell was already half-formed in her throat like a dragon's breath attack when she caught sight of Zeref's expression.

She had only seen that look once or twice before, but she wouldn't quickly forget it. There was no point trying to berate Zeref Dragneel when he was excited about something.

Thus she wasn't remotely surprised when he looked her in the eye and said, almost awestruck, "I've done it."

"Done what?" she asked, trying not to let her anticipation show.

"Completed the ritual to prevent dragonification!"

"In the last half hour? You were nowhere near this morning!"

"I know! It was that book I found in the Duke's library – Eldris Magick – I knew I'd seen the calculations I needed somewhere before, but I'd already checked my edition; only it turned out he had the uncensored first edition, and that was it! The missing piece of the puzzle! All I had to do then was synthesize the Eldris thaumaturgical dissolution shielding with the thirteenth and twenty-first components of my ritual, and it stabilized!"

He had managed all this without taking a breath, which was an impressive feat even for an immortal. "Breathe, Zeref," Anna reminded him, glancing over the documents he handed her. He did his best, but it came out frantic, sharp, as if every second the oxygen spent in his system was a second wasted.

Darryl glanced from one to the other. "I don't suppose either of you would like to explain what's going on, would you?"

"Later," Anna told him absently, not looking up from the papers.

He stood up suddenly. "I'll just go to bed, then, shall I?"

"That'd be great, thanks."

She barely noticed the disbelieving look he shot her as he left, banished from his own kitchen. She didn't hear the door slamming overhead, and probably wouldn't have cared either way, when she was holding a piece of the future in her hands.

Zeref was saying, "It needs a second opinion, of course, but I really think I've solved it, Anna."

She turned to the final page. The parchment there was smoother, cleaner, synthetic; decades younger than the very first page he had written on the subject. She ran her index finger over the concentric circles of runes it bore, no fewer than twenty-five individual layers, switching between technical Eridanian to chunky Nesath to the old Tanuk style seemingly at random, though she knew that he switched languages – against the advice of every runic master in history – because he wanted to accomplish something that was beyond the capabilities of any one of them alone.

Every single symbol in those final circles had ten pages of calculations to support it. She was good, oh yes, but he had been doing this for decades, and it showed. To have any hope of untangling his workings, she would need to sit down with several days to spare and every runic dictionary she owned.

Zeref was still waiting anxiously for some kind of validation, so she promised, "I'll look over the calculations for you when we're back home. Right now, it'll be best if you talk me through the theory. How does it work?"

"Well… there's good news, and bad news, and good news," he admitted. "It works by transfusing a dragon's magic into a human Dragon Slayer's body."

"…That the whole point of Dragon Slayer magic in the first place, Zeref."

"No. It's different. A Dragon Slayer, properly defined, is a human who has taken a dragon's magic into their magical core. As long as the dragon is willing, it's easy enough to transfer part of their magic, and once the draconic core is formed in a human, it grows as normal as the human gains in strength. But dragons are much more creatures of magic than we are. A draconic core can't stabilize in a human body."

Zeref turned to a page covered in sketches of a very familiar dragon. Anna wondered if one of the reasons he unresistingly let Igneel breathe fire at him was to get a good look inside a dragon's mouth.

He continued, "As a result, the draconic core slowly unravels, warping the user's body in an attempt to return to a stable state. That's what gives Dragon Slayers the physical strength, the enhanced senses, the invulnerable lungs, and so on."

"And at the end, they transform completely, as Acnologia was the first to discover," Anna finished. "Because it's the most stable form for that draconic magic to take, I assume."

"Yes." He licked his finger and skimmed through the pages once more. "I've proven that somewhere, hang on."

"I believe you," she shrugged. "And you're getting around this little problem how, exactly?"

"Well, my ritual is a lot more precise. Rather than transfusing the dragon's magic into the human's core, it sends the magic everywhere but the core. In other words, it transfers draconic magic to the human's body. It's not connected to a core, so it's not living or changing. It won't be dangerous in any way, it won't increase or decrease in strength, and it can't be used – it'll just be there."

"Enough to fool the unstable part-human, part-dragon core into thinking it's already inside a dragon, thus preventing the physical transformation, am I right?"

"Quite so."

"Isn't it the physical aspects of Dragon Slayer magic – barring the final transformation, of course – that give Dragon Slayers the ability to fight dragons in the first place?"

Zeref pursed his lips. "There's probably an optimal point to stop the transformation," he conceded. "I'll refine that in version two."

There was a pause as Anna consulted the twenty-five layered ritual circle once again. "So the idea is to keep the stable draconic magic away from the human's core, which, being the ground state, it will constantly be flowing towards."

"Correct," Zeref confirmed.

"But you can't physically isolate it from the core either, because the core won't believe it's inside a dragon if it can't perceive that magic."

"Correct."

"Not to mention that you have to somehow stop that magic from seeping out into the atmosphere, which is the default run-off for any magic not stabilized inside a core."

"Also correct."

"That sounds impossible to balance!"

"Hence why the ritual needs twenty-five distinct layers!" he protested.

"Is that even possible? The larger they are, the more likely they are to implode! I've never seen one with more than fifteen layers before – and that was certainly not safe for use on human beings!"

"I am not to blame for the lack of ambition of my forebears," Zeref told her coldly. "If the giants upon whose shoulders I am supposed to stand prove no more than dwarves, I will build a watchtower of my own."

There was something stirring at his words, something terrifying. His mind was a whirlwind of confusion and contradictions, but there was a black diamond at its heart, a dark star, drowned by his curse but not defeated by it. It shone only infrequently, for if it didn't, it would have obliterated this unfortunate planet long ago.

His inspiration was a blaze of cold lightning, splitting the darkness, striking the earth with an explosion so loud no one could hear the thunder. He hadn't stopped for the warnings of man or magic, and the punishment had broken him, but it hadn't shattered that will of diamond, that darkly glittering brilliance. Nothing could.

And she wouldn't dream of trying to stop him – not after all the effort she had invested in getting him to use it. "So I've seen," she smiled.

His earlier excitement, however, didn't quite spring back to his voice at her concession. "Well… the ritual itself is sound, I think, but this is where we get to the bad news."

"…I'm sorry, the twenty-five-layered ritual wasn't the bad news?"

"Not exactly, no. I've run the numbers, and I don't think it's possible in practice to stop the transfused magic from dissipating into the atmosphere."

Anna blinked. "So this ritual you're so proud of doesn't actually work?"

"Not… really."

He twitched under her penetrating stare. Gone was the unchallengeable master of magic, and in his place, her awkward, defensive co-researcher was back. He would have to work on that before he returned to academia proper. It ruined the effect somewhat if he went all shy every time someone picked apart his paper.

"In fact," he confessed, "I've calculated the minimum atmospheric magic density needed to stabilize the transfusion of enough draconic magic to prevent dragonification… and it's higher than the measured atmospheric density. The ritual can't stabilize in this world."

She shot him a disbelieving look. "Bad news being a bit of an understatement, then."

"No, but that's where the other piece of good news comes into play," Zeref countered. "The minimum density needed is higher than the actual density, but the atmospheric density of magic is increasing all the time. Slowly, yes, but measurably, and irrevocably. The ritual may not be stable now, but one day, it will be." Light was sparking once again in the depths of his eyes. "And you know the best part? You've just proven that time travel is possible!"

"Theoretically, yes," Anna wondered.

"So, we can send the Dragon Slayers to the future and perform the ritual to stabilize their magic there! If Dragon Slayers don't turn, they won't lose their minds, and the madness propagating this war will end! This will change everything, Anna! We can put an end to the fighting!"

Silence. The leisurely tick-tock of a grandfather clock offered a mockingly slow clap.

Zeref tilted his head, a puppy wondering why he wasn't getting a treat for performing his favourite trick.

"Zeref," Anna began, slowly, wishing she wasn't the one having to break this to him, "how many years do you think it's going to take for the atmospheric magic density to reach the necessary level?"

"Based on a very rough calculation, about forty years."

"Forty years?" she echoed. "So, what's your plan? Round up every Dragon Slayer on the continent, shove them forty years into the future using some hypothetical time machine, and then forcibly prevent them from turning into dragons?"

"Well, I wouldn't have put it in quite those terms, but essentially, yes."

"And you're not seeing the obvious problem with this?"

An uncertain look; in other words, a categoric assurance that no, he wasn't seeing it at all. Bloody immortals.

"Zeref, if you offered this to the Dragon Slayers, how many do you think would agree?"

"All of them," he answered immediately. "Why wouldn't they want to stop themselves from losing their minds and transforming into the one thing they hate?"

"Do you know why people still choose to become Dragon Slayers, even though they know what will happen to them? Three reasons: for the power to protect those they care about, for the power to avenge the fallen, and for the power to save humanity. They need that power here and now. If you send them to the future, they lose everything."

"It's only forty years-"

"You're immortal, Zeref!" Anna shouted. "Of course forty years is nothing to you! You wasted almost that many in a miserable half-life before I found you, and it doesn't matter at all, because you've got infinite more ahead of you! But if I went forty years into the future, I could have grandchildren who were older than me – children and grandchildren whose entire lives would be folded into a second of mine! The colleagues I correspond with would be retired; the authors I admire would be buried in the ground; the people I love would have moved on, rebuilding and replacing in my absence. I would miss forty years of their lives, of magical discoveries, of time and change and choices – and at the end of it, you would expect me to fight for the sake of a world that doesn't know me?"

"It's the same world-" he tried, but her eyes flashed and he was silenced.

"And that's assuming there will even be a world at the end of it! The Dragon Slayers, cursed though they are, are the only things stopping the mad dragons from massacring every human settlement in the kingdom! What do you think would happen if they vanished from the present day overnight? No, the world wouldn't survive your ill-thought-out attempt to save it, Zeref. And even if it did, no one would want to fight for what was left."

"We'd organize the time travel better than that-"

"The war is now, Zeref. The world we need to save is right here. It's a great theoretical discovery, I'll give you that, but it's not the power to change things. There's no point looking forty years ahead when we might not survive tomorrow."

Shaking his head, he argued, "Of course there's a point! The world doesn't begin and end with us, Anna! Isn't losing a few years a small price to pay for ending this eternal war?"

"Oh, this is the Aureum Oak all over again, isn't it?" Anna spat. "You and your Gregor Heartfilia was right to sacrifice his life to plant a sodding tree."

"That's not what I said-"

"I don't know why I expected you to understand," she cut in, a blade of ice, folding her arms tight like a breastplate around her. "You have no friends and no family – literally nothing worth fighting for. You've made no attempt to resurrect the brother you supposedly love. You might as well be dead yourself two-thirds of the time. The only thing you care about is your research, and you're not even capable of doing that without me there to hold your hand. The present is completely disposable to you! How could you possibly understand what it means to want to live in it?"

"I- I don't-"

In one frantic motion, Zeref snatched up his papers, turned tail, and fled back up the stairs. Moments later, she heard the door to the spare room slam.

That was the cue for all the sanctimonious buttresses she had built to come crashing down on her at once. "Oh, hell," she sighed, and sat down heavily.

She shouldn't have said that. Any of it. Maybe it wasn't the first time she had said such things to him, but it was the first time since he had come to trust her, and now what?

He was brilliant, but he missed the obvious. He was complex in so many ways, and infuriatingly simple in others, unable to understand that not everyone was like him; not everyone was too focussed on their goal to consider normal human things like hopes and dreams and not wanting to abandon their loved ones…

"Anna?" a cautious voice interrupted.

Lifting her head from her hands, she saw that a new figure had replaced her research partner at the foot of the stairs. Wrapped in a criminally fluffy dressing gown, and sporting bunny-eared slippers, Darryl couldn't have looked more different from her scholarly companion, though Anna wasn't sure she was any more pleased to see him right now.

"You were listening?" she demanded, bristling.

"It's hard to sleep when your uninvited houseguests are screaming at each other in the kitchen."

"I suppose you're going to tell me I shouldn't have said any of that, aren't you?" she scowled.

"I wasn't going to say anything," he retorted, just as crisply, as he sat down beside her. "It's not my place. You've made that very clear."

That hit home. Wincing, she let her head drop back into her hands. "I've been awful to you too, haven't I?"

"A little bit, yeah," he said. "But, it's fine. I understand."

"…Do you?"

"No, not at all," he admitted, with a sigh. "But, as you're clearly aware, from the way you shamelessly exploit it, I like you, a lot, so I'll pretend to understand, if it helps."

"I don't exploit you," she protested – entirely in vain, if his tired expression was anything to go by.

"Anna," he said, patiently, "you do what you do and you say what you say with no regard for the feelings of others. You are unrepentant in the defence of those you care about, and that's what I like about you. But, at the same time, you need to learn how to be wrong."

Angry fire jolted through her once more. "Oh, so you also think I'm wrong for not wanting to leave my home to the mercy of the mad dragons?"

"No, not at all. I can't judge you for something like that. I can, however, tell you that you were wrong to act like you did towards him, regardless of how you felt."

Anna huffed out a breath and stubbornly said nothing.

Cautiously, Darryl continued, "Now, I won't pretend to know what's going on with the two of you, or why you are sometimes perfectly in sync and sometimes like mortal enemies-"

"Because he's inconsistent!" she snapped.

He gave her a reproachful look, and she bit her lip, face flushing as she realized she was only helping his argument. "That might be part of the story, but it's also true that you don't have the patience or the empathy to deal with his inconsistency in any way except by yelling at him until he falls in line again."

"You're wrong!"

"I suppose I must be, by default," he replied, acerbically, "because you're never wrong."

"How dare you? I've never claimed that!"

He threw his hands up in the air. "Fine, have it your way! I don't know why I'm bothering, anyway. It's not as though I want your weird relationship with that man to get any better."

"Gods, it's really not like that." A whimper escaped her lips as she leaned forward again, head returning to her hands. "I really am terrible at this, aren't I? I'm always berating Zeref for not being able to deal with people, and look at me now."

"No one can be good at everything," he reassured her, patting her shoulder. "You try, though. You really do. It's breath-taking to watch."

Against her better judgement, his words got to her. For the first time in her life, there was no sharp response upon her tongue; that trusty blade had fallen out of its scabbard somewhere along the way.

"It helps," she murmured, without meaning to.

"What?"

"You, pretending to understand. It does help. A lot."

Because Zeref didn't even understand himself, let alone other people, and Igneel was fixed in his own unrelenting view of the world, and her grandfather was gone and the Academies were no more and no one understood her – and yet this man who was nothing like her was somehow willing to try. Even after she'd abused his hospitality and driven him from his own kitchen and yelled at him, he was still here, still trying to help, as if no argument could be the end of the world, too grounded for the fiery tempest that had pushed Zeref away to affect. She didn't know how long it had been since she had been able to rely on someone other than herself.

"Thanks," she added in a whisper.

She leaned into him, and he put his arm around her, and for a moment, it was like none of her mistakes mattered.

But the world was never that simple, and it decided to prove it with the sound of an explosion.

"Did- did you hear that?" Darryl asked, and she nodded, pulling away from him.

Then came the roar.

Anna's heart lurched. In her mind, she was back in Ezaville, the blood in the streets still burning.

No survivors.

"A dragon attack," she hissed to Darryl. "We have to get out of the city. Now."

He ran for the door. She made to follow him, but stopped after just one step, glancing at the stairs.

Darryl hopped nervously from one foot to the other. "Surely he must have heard that…"

"Yes, but he's been a teenager for a very long time. He can sulk through the apocalypse. If I'm not back in two minutes, go without me," she instructed, and she tore up the stairs.

Zeref had heard the explosion. In fact, he had sensed it even before it hit, because he had been listening to the magic of the city, as its tempo rose with panic and the gloom strained to encompass all the emotions of those who should have been asleep.

He just hadn't done anything about it.

Even when the roar ripped apart the night's last semblance of serenity, his only action was to wrap the blanket tighter around himself, cloaked by the scents of detergent and disuse, and wait for it to go away.

Life hadn't been doing a particularly good job of going away recently, however, and the living, breathing reason for this now kicked open the door. "Zeref! Dragons are attacking! We have to evacuate, now!"

"Leave me alone."

"Have you already forgotten Ezaville? The city's going to be destroyed!"

"I don't care."

"You don't care about burning to death?"

"Why would I? By the time I regain consciousness, it'll all be over anyway."

There was a huff, and Anna marched into the room, no doubt to bring him along by force as always.

Not this time.

Light crackled. Her fingers smacked into a shield several inches away from his body.

"Zeref!" she exclaimed, hitting it with her fist. He felt it like he'd felt the soldier's magic outside her house, a dragon noting the colour of a sparrow that crossed its path.

There was something coldly satisfying about it. With power like this, he didn't have to do what she said. He could make his own decisions.

"Gods above, Zeref!" she exploded. "Are you really so petty that you'd rather be trampled to death by a rampaging dragon than agree with me on something?"

He did not respond.

No quieter than before, she continued, "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have said that, and I certainly didn't mean to insult your scientific achievements, if that's why you're upset-"

"You shouldn't apologize," he cut in, still without looking at her. "You were right, after all."

This disarmed her. "What about?"

"I don't care. I don't care if every city in the kingdom is razed to the ground. I don't care if the Dragon Wars kill off every human and every dragon in existence. They might as well die. There's no point either way."

"What about me?" Anna asked, softly. "Do you care if I die?"

No, he tried to say, but it stuck in his throat.

No didn't debate magic and suffer the attention of several moronic dragons with him.

No couldn't explain the sheer, giddying anger he had felt when the king's soldiers had tried to take her away – or the fear of what he might have done to them, had she not stopped him.

No would have been the right answer, but he couldn't bring himself to say it.

Instead, he said, "You won't die. You're smart enough to take care of yourself."

There was a pause, and then she spat, "Fine. I'm done with you, Zeref. I'm fed up of trying so hard when you don't put any effort in yourself. You stay here and die. It's not like it will make a difference to the world."

Not the right answer, then.

In retrospect, there probably wasn't one. A slam of the door left him in a room slightly darker than the firelight rising outside should have allowed.

That was okay.

That was good.

He wondered why the incident with the soldiers had scared him so much. After all, she was gone now, and he didn't feel anything at all.

There he lay, not waiting for anything in particular, but lacking the will to do anything else.

There he would have remained, had an explosion of flames not claimed a church on the other side of the street.

Before he knew it, he was moving to the window, straining his eyes against the reds and oranges superimposed upon the darkness. It wasn't the proximity of danger that had roused him. It wasn't the onset of new screams or the contagious threat of fire.

It was… curiosity, he supposed. The only thing that had proven capable of slaying his apathy time and time again.

The thing was, he knew that dragonfire.

It had burned him alive enough times.

Darryl was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. "Is he…?"

The question stumbled and became nothing at the sight of her expression. "I'm done with him," Anna snapped, by way of an answer. "He can't die. Let's help the people who matter."

Unfortunately, her hope that one scholar still disorientated from that evening's emotional whirlwind – and one animal rescuer only here because he liked her more than he liked common sense – could somehow wrangle the entire city into an orderly mass evacuation evaporated the moment they stepped out into the street. Chaos sizzled on Anna's tongue. She wondered if this had been Ezaville's undoing: not the battle between dragon and Slayer, but the people tripping over each other as they ran, screaming, from the dying dragon and the man who wanted to see how many limbs he could detach before cumulative blood loss took the fun out of it.

Darryl hadn't been in Ezaville, but he saw the fire hop, skip and jump from one building to another as people fled like shadows in the opposite direction. It seemed adrenaline could do what courage alone could not; he grabbed her hand without waiting for an invitation. "We have to go!"

They joined the evacuees flooding down the street. Darryl's hand pulled her along with the rest. She let him guide her without looking, too busy throwing glances over her shoulder, trying to find the source of the madness amidst gloom and fire. She had to know what they were dealing with. One mad dragon, determined to wipe out the city? Two dragons fighting each other, and the city collateral damage? Or something worse still, death on black wings, a former ally of humanity who would sacrifice anything and everything to make those he had sworn to kill suffer that little bit more…?

And then, as the crowd surged and crashed together, in the gap between the waves, she saw their foe.

Saw the beauty of the sunset stamped into the finest armour nature could forge.

Saw claws sharp enough to cut through the forces of evil; mighty jaws ready to crush logic and reason with unflinching, idiotic, admirable resolve.

Saw a cream-white scar above his heart, where his most important, and most magical, scale had once rested.

Anna stopped dead in the middle of the human river. "It can't be," she whispered.

Darryl had stopped too – it was that or let go of her hand – and his fear was momentarily eclipsed by the same confusion as he followed her gaze. "That's the dragon who saved me," he wondered. "Was he evil all along?"

"Of course he's not evil!" Anna snapped. "He's too stupid to be evil! They'd never let him join! We must be missing something."

So she insisted, even as she saw liquid fire roiling around his fangs.

So she insisted, desperately, as he blasted a building into rubble.

She could hear the ensuing screams over the madness bubbling all around.

Darryl heard them too; he tugged at her hand once more. "Anna, come on, we've got to go."

She looked at him, and then she looked back at the great raging dragon.

This couldn't be right.

"Anna!"

"Sorry," she whispered, and she let go of his hand. The human tide immediately swept him up in its single-minded chaos. She heard him call for her, one final time, as she turned her back and began running against the flow.

All the while, she kept her eyes peeled for the sight of another dragon. Surely there had to be one – another Dragon Slayer transformed into a mindless creature of hate; another living nightmare who viewed humans as a lesser race – something, anything, that would explain the inn his tail had just flattened, or the row of houses his wordless snarl had set alight…

It was into this devastation that she threw herself, arms outstretched, hair coming loose, a golden flare fanning out to mimic the dragon's wings, as she screamed up at Igneel, "THAT IS ENOUGH!"

He wasn't going to stop, and then, as the smoke pressed death's kiss to her cheek, he did.

The dragon swallowed back the white-yellow blaze that would have ended her. It didn't wink out, though, that raging fire. It travelled straight to his eyes, where the opalescent sheen couldn't quite hide its frenzied dance. The fuse was already lit. It was only a matter of time before it blew.

Igneel bore down upon her. "Get out of the way."

No jovial greeting. No arguing over what to call her. If not for the fact that he had stopped before striking her, she wouldn't have believed that he had recognized her at all.

"Stop destroying my city!" she countered, though for once in her life, it was an entirely false bravado. She had stood up to this dragon on countless occasions, and not once before today had it required courage. Not once before today had she ever felt in danger from him.

"He's here. I know he is. I can smell him!"

That threw her. Her first thought was that Igneel was talking about Zeref, but that made no sense. The dragon knew his so-called archnemesis was in Skartown, having dropped them off himself not long ago, before clearly not going home as his father had instructed him. "What are you talking about?"

"Acnologia!" Igneel roared. "I'm gonna kill him!"

"You're destroying the city!" she shouted back. "Calm down!"

"I won't! He killed my dad!"

"What…?"

The noble dragon who had saved them all in the harbour; the ancient fire dragon of unfathomable power… the one who had sent Acnologia fleeing in terror, gone?

"It was a trap!" Igneel howled, and the earth trembled underfoot. "Dad went after him, and Acnologia murdered him! But he's hurt," he added, and though his words were quieter this time, it seemed the earth trembled even more. "Badly. Maybe he's dying. I tracked his blood trail back here…" And then lost it amongst the buildings, the smoke, the stench of humanity, if the rage solidifying into blood-red garnets in his eyes was anything to go by. "He's hiding, but I won't let him get away. There won't be a better chance than this to end him!"

"So, what, you're going to raze the place to the ground until you find him?" she demanded. "Leave yet another Ezaville in your wake?"

"Yes! And it will be the last!" roared the dragon. "With his death, the war will end! He's the reason why more and more dragons are turning on humans, and why more and more humans hate dragons and become Dragon Slayers! I'll kill him, and then there'll finally be peace, just like Dad wanted!"

"You're out of your mind!" Anna roared back. She spread her arms once more, prepared to stop the dragon in any way she could. "I will not let you destroy the city!"

Igneel drew himself up to his full height, terrifyingly tall and impossibly far away. "I always knew you would choose the side of evil, in the end."

He raised his claw and batted her aside.

She didn't see it coming. Maybe she hadn't truly thought he would hurt her, or maybe he was just faster than she had ever given him credit for, but the first she knew about her short stint as a pinball was when a wall brought it to a sudden end. The impact separated her breath from her lungs; the former was knocked back the way she had come, and she was left to greet the ground face-first.

She inhaled and got nothing but smoke. Panic kicked in. She rolled away from the building and was somehow back on her feet. Her ribs ached, as did the back of her head. Every colour upon the battlefield – the full spectrum from candleflame to phoenix – danced dazzlingly bright to compensate.

"I will kill Acnologia, and everyone who harbours him!" vowed the dragon.

The imbalance of senses left Anna's head reeling. Concussion steamrollered right over common sense. Or, at least, that was the excuse she used later, when asked why she'd charged across the burning battlefield to grab the raging dragon by the tail.

"I won't let you!"

For a frantic moment, she thought that it had worked; that she had spontaneously acquired Dragon Slayer magic and, with it, the strength to stop a dragon who had passed through grief to a realm where reason couldn't follow.

Then he flicked his tail, and the spell was broken.

This time, when her fall was brought to a sudden end – by wall or roof or floor, she wasn't sure which – she remained where she lay.

The dragon opened his maw, revealing the half-formed stellar core that would obliterate half the city and the source of all his pain.

And a quiet voice said, "No."

A black and white blur was standing on the back of the rampaging dragon. Anna didn't know how he had got there, or when, or why. He was there, though. And the whole world was going to know it.

Zeref pressed both palms to the dragon's back, and there was thunder.

It wasn't a graceful invocation. It wasn't some clever enchantment; it wasn't twenty-five layers of improbable magic, each one lessening the side effects of the one before until it reached a level that, in the hands of the greatest user of ritual magic to have ever lived, might just be safe for use on human beings. The pace of battle was unfamiliar to him. He had neither the instinct nor the experience to do more than call his magic as a wave of force.

But there was a lot of force.

It pressed down from above, immediately flattening the dragon against the ground. His breath attack carved a channel through the dense earth and came to a halt far short of the buildings. Crimson wings, spread out like a cape, could not even be folded back against his body, let alone be lifted above the ground.

"That's enough," Zeref told him, still in that quiet, even tone. "Stop this, Igneel."

The dragon's answering bellow was choked by the earth. His meaning was clear enough, though – especially when he immediately rolled over.

Zeref was quick enough to jump clear. He wasn't quick enough to stop the claw that flashed out, raking across his chest.

It didn't matter. He fell in a shower of his own blood and was whole again before he hit the ground.

The distraction was enough to break his magic's hold on Igneel. The dragon reacted at once. No theatrics this time, no grandiose ten-word incantations, just an open mouth and a blast of white plasma.

It was no more effective now than it had ever been before. Engulfed by the light, Zeref endured deaths by heat and light and force with the same patience he had always shown his self-professed archnemesis. The flesh had not fully reformed around his skeletal hand as he swept it towards Igneel.

The second wave of force struck the dragon from the side. Like a butterfly in a hurricane, the dragon pitched helplessly through the air and sprawled along the ground. He clawed his way back to his feet with a feral hiss.

Zeref watched without a trace of fear. He did not shy away from the devastation around him, like he had in Ezaville, nor was he helpless in the grip of his own worst memory, as he had been when they had fought Acnologia in the harbour; he saw nothing but the dragon in front of him, and what he had to do. "Stop it. You won't get past me."

The dragon spat a fireball at him. "I knew it. The evil wizard shows his true colours at last, here to help Acnologia murder his way across the land."

"I'm not trying to help Acnologia," Zeref responded softly. "I'm trying to help you."

Another fireball. This one was a decoy. Anna saw it, though her attempt to shout a warning was foiled by her own malfunctioning lungs. Zeref didn't see it at all. The fire broke around him – revealing the mass of bared fangs and thirsty claws hurtling along behind it.

In the nick of time, Zeref clasped his hands together and swung them down like a makeshift hammer. Igneel was driven into the ground once more. His jaws slammed together with a jarring crunch less than a metre from Zeref.

Forcibly clenched teeth couldn't stop the dragon from hissing, "I'll kill him!"

"Yes," Zeref said. "And then what?"

"Then the war will end! Good will have won!"

"No." Zeref was visibly shaking from the strain of keeping the huge dragon pinned, but his voice was stronger than Anna had ever heard it. "Nothing will change. I have seen it so many times. Acnologia will die, and the cost will be the city – not the dead, but the survivors: the husbands, wives, children, and parents who have lost their loved ones to a dragon attack. Instead of a celebration, there will be a hundred cries of vengeance sworn on a hundred premature graves. We'll have not one, but a whole generation of Acnologias accelerating the world towards disaster. If violence was capable of ending this war, it would have burnt itself out long ago."

"Acnologia has to die!" the dragon spat.

Zeref took a step closer. "Not like this. Not at the cost of that which you and your father have always tried to protect."

At the mention of the former Fire Dragon King, a savage snarl forced apart Igneel's jaws. "So you're saying I should let him get away?"

"Yes. This time."

Zeref took another step, and stumbled. Not even he could sustain such strong magic for long.

Sensing weakness, the dragon writhed against the force pinning him down, snarling, burning, seething. "He killed my dad!"

Something shifted, ageless, in the depths of those black eyes. "I'm sorry," he said, and it was clear to Anna how much he meant it. "But your father knew that this war cannot be won with hate. And I know, deep inside, you know that too. That's why you've always tried to be a hero, not a soldier."

With one more shuddering step, the magic finally dissipated. Yet the dragon did not pounce. The weight of the magic had gone, but the weight of those eyes was heavier still.

"I am a hero!" Igneel tried to protest. "A hero of justice! That's why I have to defeat evil wherever I see it!"

With a sad smile, Zeref crouched down beside him. His palm rested atop the scar where the dragon's strongest heartscale had once rested. "If you want to fight evil," he whispered, "start with what's in here."

The dragon gave a choking sob. "I don't want to hear that from you, you villain."

"You don't know the first thing about him, Igneel," Anna chastised him. Zeref and the dragon started; both had been too focussed on each other to notice her limping approach. "He lost his entire family to a dragon attack when he was young. He's been carrying that pain with him all this time. And yet, even though he has spent the past few years being pestered, hunted, and repeatedly killed by another dragon, he never once raised a hand against you, until he had to do so to save you from yourself."

"…Oh." The dragon closed his eyes, but not quickly enough to stop her from seeing the moisture glistening like a film of dew on the world's most beautiful opal. He whimpered, "It hurts."

Anna smiled and patted his snout. "That's because your brain is too tiny to rationalize away all the feelings of your big dragon heart."

"Thanks… I think?"

No longer able to support himself, Zeref slumped against the dragon's neck, eyes closed, barely breathing, if at all.

Had he been mortal, Anna would have been panicking right now. As it was, she managed to keep her question to a more atmosphere-appropriate volume. "Zeref, are you…" After a brief pause failed to yield a more tactful wording, she continued, "Are you okay?"

Not just the repeated deaths and revivals.

Not just the clear magical exhaustion, from a man who had probably never experienced it before in his life.

But also everything she had said to him, and failed to apologize for – yet still he had come here, and fought, and died…

"Anna," he said, eyes still closed. "I had a thought."

Swallowing, she braced herself for the storm. She wouldn't fight it. Darryl was right, she had been wrong, and this time, she was going to make sure that Zeref knew she knew that.

He continued, "What if we made the mathematical framework you've built for World Magic into an actual framework?"

She blinked. "Like… a physical representation of the mathematics?"

"No, no. I mean, what if we could take the mathematical framework you use to describe World Magic, and transform it into a magical framework through which we could manipulate World Magic?"

"Zeref…" she began, before shaking her head in disbelief. "Do you really think this is the best time?"

"…It isn't?"

Guileless black eyes slid open, filled with concern, and her heart ached even as she smiled. "You're all over the place, Zeref."

"I know," he told her, with supreme calm, as if the anomaly of his own being was of no concern to him. "That's why I need you."

"Why did you come out here tonight?"

"Because… because, I…" Grimacing, he rubbed at his forehead with the heel of his hand, and tried again. "Because…"

Because he didn't want to go back to how he had been before he met her.

Because this world wasn't disposable to him, after all.

Because he wanted it, all of it, the good and the bad, the successes and the failures, the annoying dragons and the volatile research partners, the triumphs and the grief and the arguments and the apologies.

Because he hadn't been forced into acting today – he had made the decision on his own, in the dark, even after she had given up on him and Igneel had turned against him… and there was something sacred about that, something irrevocable.

He couldn't say it, though. Couldn't even consciously realize it. And as she watched him struggle with concepts he would never be able to put into words – for in making them real he would doom them – she couldn't help smiling.

"Because," she volunteered, tapping the side of the silently weeping dragon, "you realized that I might be smart enough to look after myself, but the same can't be said for this great lump of scales, right?"

"Right," Zeref allowed gratefully.

By the time Igneel connected the dots and made his indignation known, Anna was already laughing so hard the tears of joy hid the ones of sadness, and Zeref was tucked into a peaceful slumber against the dragon's side: three of them brought together in a hateful night that was slowly burning itself out, to ash and smoke and then nothing but a harmless memory.

A/N: There won't be a chapter next week as I try to get into the zone for exam season. Thank you for your patience, and I'll see you in a fortnight, all being well. ~CS