Chapter I
Frozen Waste

They took the job after taking a break for a couple weeks from the 100 Years Quest. It was an SS-Class mission to investigate the destruction of a city far to the north, to search for any more survivors, and to defeat whatever caused the destruction. Naturally, Master and Mira brought it up to the Strongest Team: The legends that defeated dragons, demons, and even gods!

"We better pack for this one, Helleborus gets pretty cold this time of year... Well, unless you're Gray, AND WOULD YOU PUT ON SOME CLOTHES?!" Lucy ended up shouting; Gray, sitting on a bench immediately jumped to his feet, startled to find that he was in nothing but his boxers once again. To make matters more awkward between him and the Guild, Juvia had been picking up the habit too... Not that men like Macao and Wakaba didn't mind, but Gray was now prone to delivering kicks or snowballs to those who looked at his now-beloved Juvia with hearts in their eyes and steam shooting from their nostrils. Perverts.

"It's going to be a long train ride there," Erza stated.

"How far is it? Maybe Happy can fly me there," Natsu added.

"What?! Natsu there's no way I can fly that far in one go! We're going to have to use the train," Happy told him. Nastu was nearly choking back on the morning's breakfast just thinking about it. There was one consolation though, there were plenty of people on his dream who wouldn't mind knocking him out during the ride.

"Who posted this job?" Erza asked.

"It's from Jellal Fernandes, he said that he'll meet you outside the train station outside Helleborus," Master told them, and Erza had to turn away to keep from blushing.

Off they went to pack and to meet at the train station, oh if only Lucy had a spirit that could cure his crippling motion sickness, or if only he could fly on his own, of to have an animal he could ride on all the way there! Nope, it had to be the train, the bane of a dragon slayer. Luckily Natsu slept through most of it while Gray, Erza, Lucy, Happy, Juvia, and a special new friend to the team tried to preoccupy themselves in conversation.

"SS-Class requested from Jellal, what are we going to be up against?" Lucy asked as she hugged Plue like a timid child would with a teddy bear.

"Does it really matter? We've gone up against demons, Acnologia, God Dragons, and Zeref and his empire, if we can't defeat whatever this is, then nobody else will be able to... Unless we get the whole guild involved," Gray replied in his usual nonchalant manner.

"Now that's the spirit!" A new voice announced. Gray and Juvia glanced down at the speaker, a lilac-colored exceed with a black patch on his face that made him look like he was wearing a mask and a few black stripes that stretched across his back, and his garment of choice was a blue ascot. His name is Fleischer, a friend Gray made after the 100 Year Quest.

Fleischer has two faces in his standard form: his typical face was just as sweet and precious as Frosch - the exceed companion of Rogue the Shadow Dragonslayer - and with his 'mask' he was even cuter! His second face was an intimidating death glare, if Fleischer was human, this death glare could compete with those everyone on the train has ever made - yes, even Erza.

Like Carla and Panther Lily, Fleischer also had a second form. It was a battle form that he could really only use for desperate situations as he wasn't quite strong enough to keep the form for long. Besides, he preferred to be adorable.

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Jellal looked up as he heard the train approach, his guild mates awaited inside the train station. Something hung over the city that made them feel sick to their stomachs and Eric couldn't move his hands from his ears.

As the train came to a stop, a sense of relief and hope came over Jellal; Fairy Tail had arrived.

"Erza, Juvia, Gray, Lucy, Happy, other exceed, and Natsu, thanks for coming here so quickly!" he announced while Natsu fell on his face on the platform to catch his breath and keep food down.

"Jellal, it's good to see you, and where's your guild?" Erza asked.

"Crime Sorcière is inside, come inside, and I'll fill you in," he replied. Lucy had to employ herself as Natsu's crutch to get him inside.

Fairy Tail was shocked to see Crime Sorcière with such defeated looks on their faces, seeing their immediately snapped Natsu out of feeling sick.

"Welcome to what's left of Helleborus. We've heard that some suspicious mages were in the area and by the time we got here to investigate, the city was already destroyed. We've tried to search for survivors, or any clue on who did this, but there's something - some sort of residual magic power we suspect - over the city's remains," Jellal told them.

"It seems like you've already found something," Juvia stated looking over to Crime Sorcière. Macbeth, formerly known as Midnight, looked up and replied: "It's despair."

"Follow me," Jellal ordered.

They stepped outside, and they found that where there used to be a city was now just a pile of rubble and bodies. There were so many remains that it was fortunate that it was so cold outside, otherwise there would be an unbearable stench.

Fairy Tail froze, Gray trembled slightly as the sight brought back memories of the destruction Deliora - a demon from the book of Zeref - had wrought. However, there was something else to this destruction that made it even worse than that. As Fairy Tail pressed further into the city the atmosphere turned gloomy and hopeless. They could also feel that the lingering magic belonged to someone incredibly powerful, close to the power of the Spriggan 12, or a small group of wizards who could accumulate that much power.

The gloom made them feel like they were trapped inside their homes while a blizzard had raged on for days, and they were running low on food.

"You said that you came here because of suspicious wizards?" Erza questioned.

"Yes, but right now we're here to see what can be found. Clues that can help us track them down, or survivors that could prove to be a witness," Jellal replied.

"This is a big place, it'll go faster if your guild will help us out too," Gray told him.

"Of course." He then motioned for his guild to follow after him and they split off to scour the city: Group One was Erza, Jellal, and Macbeth; Group Two, Juvia, Gray, Meredy, Sawyer - formerly known as Racer - and Fleischer; Group Three, Natsu, Happy, Lucy, Eric, and Richard - formerly known as Hot Eye.

Group One rummaged around around a church that of course had been reduced to rubble. Being near it made them feel like their doom was fast approaching, their hearts were forced to race in anxiety, but they forced themselves to push through it. The bodies that still had flesh on their faces were blanched and frozen in terror. The bodies missing flesh had their bones turned black.

"Strange, it doesn't seem like they were burned," Macbeth spoke as he dropped to his knee to examine a skull closer, but being careful not to touch it, he wasn't an idiot.

"Only something truly evil could cause that, and then leave this sense of doom behind," Erza replied.

"We're well aware of this, Erza, the real questions are: Who did this? What do they want? Why destroy the city and its people? How are we going to catch them? Still, there are no signs of survivors in this area," Jellal stated.

They started digging into the church's remains.

Group Two scavenged the main residential area of the city. The houses were little more than snow-covered piles of debris.

"Eric said that he started hearing voices in this area when we first tried sweeping this area... At first he said that he heard something like mumbles and whimpers, but then it suddenly turned into screams, and he hasn't been able to uncover his ears since," Sawyer explained.

"Did you hear anything for yourself?" Gray asked, he scratched behind Fleischer's ear as the exceed on his back poked his head over his shoulder.

"No, but then Eric's got that crazy hearing. He says that he's never heard screams so terrible, and given our pasts that's saying something... I do feel one thing though, and that's despair," Sawyer replied.

"Yes, I feel it too... their sorrow, their sense of hopelessness, and their fear," Meredy replied.

Gray looked over to the far side of the residential district and his attention caught on one house and he saw that it really only had a caved-in roof. He ran over to it and tried the door but it was frozen shut.

"Shut like this, does that mean that this place is colder than it should be?" he questioned.

"Perhaps, the cold goes well with despair - Oh, and I meant no offense, Gray!" Meredy replied.

Gray waved the others over, encased his hand in spiked ice, and punched in the door!

"Oh, Gray you're so strong!" Juvia exclaimed while doing a hip shake with hearts in her eyes.

They stepped inside and the sense of despair was less than it was outside, and they found what looked to be a small banner with a guild crest on it, it appeared to be a soaring firebird. The banner was blood red and the firebird crest was in black.

"Jellal's going to want to see that, but we should also look for more clues, maybe these guys left behind some notion of what they were after," Juvia spoke.

"I'll look in the high places," Fleischer announced and he took flight from Gray's back.

Group Three searched the edge of the city near a forest to see if they could pick up a scent or any sign of people running from the city.

"Well, at least it's finally grown quieter," Eric grumbled.

"What are you going on about?" Natsu asked.

"There were voices and screams in the city, it was as if the residual magic left behind in the attack trapped the voices of the people. I could still hear it loud and clear; they're only now just starting to fade," Eric told him and he lowered his hands from his ears.

"Do you have any idea how the city was destroyed?" Lucy asked.

"As you can probably tell, it was through sinister magic, but the exact type of magic still eludes us. These words come to mind: Doom, Despair, and Destruction," Eric replied.

"We can already see that's come to pass, oh yeah," Richard remarked.

Natsu eventually froze and sniffed the air.

"Did you catch a whiff of something we can have for lunch?" Happy asked.

"No - well maybe - something's been burned, but it was a while ago... Strange, it also has a mix of sweat and perfume," Natsu replied. He sniffed the air some more and looked over to the dark and creepy looking forest: "I think we ought to check something out in there."

"Now that these screams are fading, I'm starting to pick up on someone's thoughts," Eric replied.

With the dragonslayers at the lead they ran off in their tracking mode, weaving between trees and leaping and ducking around obstacles.

"Will you guys slow down so we can keep up?!" Lucy exclaimed.

"It's the thrill of the hunt! Oh yeah!" Richard replied.

The 'hunt' led them to a dark and spooky cave.

"Oh great, no telling what sort of creeps or creatures are in there!" Lucy complained.

"No doubt about it, there's someone in there," Natsu stated. He lit a fireball over his hand and stepped in the cave, but it wasn't an easy cave to get through with high stalagmites and low stalactites, so Richard used his magic to open it up so they could get through it easier.

"I can hear her now, her thoughts, her breathing, and she's hoping that we don't find her," Eric spoke softly.

Lucy then decided to call out in her friendly and sweet voice: "Hey, can you hear me? We're here to help you!"

A raised tunnel in the cave caught Richard's attention, and he motioned for Eric to come and check it out. Eric paused and listened in front of the high tunnel and turned to Natsu, Lucy, and Happy: "She's up in there, and she might be more willing to come out for Lucy and the cat than the rest of us."

"You heard him, Happy, can you please just lift me into the tunnel without trying to give me a complex?"

Happy then flew Lucy into the tunnel and then he brought up Natsu to provide some light. Once he was up, his fire illuminated the face of a girl wearing a tattered dress for Lucy.

"Hey, you're going to be okay; you're from Helleborus aren't you? We're here to help you and to learn what happened to the place and how to stop those who destroyed it," Lucy told her. The girl had been crying, but she had beautiful sapphire eyes, icy-blue hair, and skin nearly as white as the snow. For her age, she was likely somewhere between ten or twelve, and the wizards could sense that she had a fair sum of magic power for her age. Lucy offered her a hand, and she took it shyly.

Once Happy brought them down, Richard spoke again: "Now it is time we should reunite with our comrades and show Jellal that we've found a survivor! Oh yeah!"

Group One rendezvoused with Group Two.

"Have you found anything?" Erza asked, looking to Gray.

"We think this might be a guild banner," he replied, holding up the blood-red banner with the black firebird.

"We also found this, it's a diary, there's a bookmark with the same emblem, but it doesn't say who the diary belongs to," Juvia added, and she looked over to Fleisher who was the one who actually uncovered it.

"What about you, did you guys find anything?" Sawyer asked.

"After digging through the church's rubble, we found this magic spear with the same emblem," Macbeth replied, but it was Jellal who produced the spear, and it seemed to radiate darkness.

"Hey! Hey!" the distant voice of a shouting Natsu called out.

"We've found a survivor!" Happy followed up.

All eyes turned to Group Three. They were all running their way, and Natsu was carrying the girl over his shoulder. The other groups took off at a sprint to meet up with them, and Natsu set the girl down, with a swarm of strange people around her - some of them looking rather odd to her, like the half-naked man with scars on his abs and big ones at that, the lady wearing armor, and the man with the peculiarly angled face - she shivered where she stood, driving Meredy to drape her cloak over the girl.

"Oh, I'm not cold... In fact I use cold magic," she finally spoke, eyes opened up a bit wider and Meredy accepted the cloak back.

"Wait, don't you mean ice or snow magic?" Gray asked.

"Well, it's more like snow and ice magic, but there's even more to it; folks in town nicknamed me the 'Winter Princess'... At least they did before..." she trailed off.

"What's your name?" Jellal asked her.

"Zyma Valkoinen."

"Will you tell us what happened here? We found these objects," Jellal asked her, they showed her the spear, diary, and banner, Zyma looked at the emblems and then her surroundings, and then let out a screaming wail of anguish and terror. Everyone stepped back as snow rose up and swirled around her until she dropped to her knees crying.

"Please, just take me away from here! Anywhere! Please, you'd said you'll help me!" Zyma cried as she looked over to Erza.

"Alright, we'll take you to Magnolia, to our guild hall," she replied.

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Alright, how do you like it so far? Tell me in the reviews on what you want to see next in upcoming chapters!