An excited energy buzzes through the air causing Natsu to tense up. The dolls stare at him with their dead glass eyes, but their small, deformed bodies vibrate with excitement. They whisper amongst each other as they continue to float in the air before him, their dead stares making him more nervous with each passing second.

~pLaY~

The word resonates through the hallways, tiny, excited voices bouncing off the wall while the dolls dance around in the air excitedly. Dread creeps up Natsu's spine and he can't help but close his eyes when a few of the gnarled dolls swoop towards him ready to drag him away like they had Lucy; however, he isn't dragged away.

Natsu opens his eyes, shocked, when tiny hands grab onto his own hands and gently nudge him to loosen up. Natsu stares with a mixture of bewilderment and shock as the dolls carefully lead him down the hall by pulling his hands. A few other dolls have floated to the ground landing on either side of his legs and cling to the cloth of his pants while walking haphazardly beside him. Strings from the marionette doll trailing behind it like long hair making it hard for Natsu to walk comfortably without accidentally stepping on the strings every few steps.


Chapter 18

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail

rEAd oN if YoU sO dArE!


The tiny hands holding onto Natsu's hands feel weird. He expected the porcelain dolls with cracked faces and wide eerie smiles to feel cold and rough, but they aren't. For one, their hands are so tiny that they can barely wrap around his thumbs which both floating dolls were holding onto. They are surprisingly warm, and their grip reminds him of when Wendy would drag him around when they would play together as kids. The smooth porcelain of the dolls pulling him along is the only thing that reminds him that these are haunted toys and not actual children dragging him off to go play.

Just because they said they wanted to play did not mean it would be regular childish games like hide and seek or tag. Natsu needed to keep his guard up.

No one says anything as they make their way down the hall and reach the corner where many of the other dolls have disappeared behind. Natsu is surprised to find a lot of them waiting for them, scattered throughout the hallway and laughing when they see him. Some of them put their hands up to their painted mouths before ducking behind the furniture lining the hallways as if hiding from him. They aren't good at it since Natsu can see pieces of clothing or limbs peeking out behind tablecloths or table legs. One even tries to hide behind a light sconce with no success at all.

They all continue to jump around, giggling as they scurry and float throughout the hallway, slowly making their way towards the end of the hallway that they are currently in. One by one they disappear around another corner and repeat the process when Natsu and his entourage turn the same corner only a moment later.

Around him, the dolls still holding onto his hands and clothing giggle and start to pull him down the hallways faster with excitement. Soon enough they have him playing along, albeit against his will, by leading him towards walls and having him kneel down and press up against them as if he too were hiding from something. They laugh the first time he crashes into the wall, his back hitting it a bit too hard from his lack of balance, which causes him to blush. He doesn't have enough time to reprimand them for laughing before he is pulled to the other side of the hallway to hide beside a random chair situated in the hallway.

On and on the dolls drag him throughout the hallway, making him press himself against the wall before scurrying to the otherside. They laugh when he trips and almost falls or when he crashes into the wall because he wasn't paying attention to the direction the dolls were dragging him towards.

~wE hAve tO hUrRy~

~HuRrY~

~hUrRy~

They chant in hushed giggling voices.

"This feels like playing ninjas," Natsu murmurs when he is forced to peek around another corner while crouching. He wants to laugh when the other dolls still holding onto him peek around with him and giggle when they see the other dolls scurry to hide.

~nInJas~

~NiNjAs~

They agree, laughing and tumbling over one another while his companions tell him to hurry, but he still doesn't know in what hurry they are in. His hurry was getting to Lucy as fast as possible, but he didn't feel that the dolls had the same plan.

For a second he is worried that they are leading him in a different direction that they took Lucy; however, he doesn't get much time to think about it before he is chasing down the marionette who had been pulling his leg and was now running off with the other dolls. The baby doll pulling his left-hand screeches for Natsu to not let the marionette escape, so he chases down the doll who laughs and yells along with the other dolls running and scurrying around them.

It doesn't take long for Natsu to grab a hold of the marionette who screeches with delight and waves it's hands in the air as if Natsu had frightened him. The act looks so ridiculous, and it reminds Natsu of when he used to chase Wendy and their neighbor Romeo down the hall, and he would lift them up after catching them. They would wriggle in his arms similar to the way the doll was currently squirming, and it would always make him laugh. He loved their curious reactions, and the marionette's own reaction did not disappoint him.

~tRaPpEd~

The marionette screeches while trying to escape Natsu's hold with no success.

Natsu can feel his flimsy cloth hands, since this doll was mostly made out of cotton and cloth, push against his hands futilely. It makes the fear in Natsu's chest lessen at the realization that this doll is so flimsy and weak. He has to wonder how these tiny things could be so destructive when a lot of them were so easily breakable or weak. The thought doesn't last long after he remembers that there is strength in numbers, and there were probably enough dolls to overtake him if he tried to fight them off alone right now. They were also strong enough to drag Lucy away.

Right now they were probably docile because Natsu was doing what they were telling him to do. He just had to keep playing along and home that soon they would be taking him to where Lucy was. Until then, he'd have to keep playing.

Releasing his hold on the marionette, the doll falls to the ground in a tangle of strings and limbs. He only gets more tangled when he tries to run away again in a fit of giggles. It isn't until Natsu helps untangle him does he rush off behind the other dolls who have already turned the corner ahead of him and his companions.

He moves to follow when a group of wailing screams fills the air sending fear shooting right through him in seconds. Around him, the remaining three dolls still holding onto him freeze and stare in the direction that the dolls had disappeared around. The direction where the terrified wailing was coming from.

Natsu tries to take a step forward, curious to know what it was that was scaring what he thought were the scariest creatures loose in the hallways, when the marionette returns running. If it wasn't for the panicked movements, Natsu would have thought that the doll was laughing because of his painted smile, but somehow he knew better. There was something going on and it was coming from the direction the doll was coming from.

Soon enough the other dolls follow suit, running away from whatever was chasing them, distorted screams making Natsu's stomach churn as he is forced to turn and run back in the direction they had come from. Natsu tries to look back, but the baby doll pulls him hard to keep him from slowing down, all laughter and childish delight gone from her hold. More dolls scurry around his feet, nearly tripping him, but two more dolls grab onto his arms to keep him upright and pull him faster down the halls as he tries to keep up without tripping on the panicking dolls that don't float up into the air around them.

~wE hAve tO hUrRy~

~HuRrY~

~hUrRy~

A few dolls that had disappeared from their group pop out from around a corner, their tiny arms waving at them to hurry. Natsu recoils from the sight of broken, misshapen faces and dead or nonexistent eyes looking back at him from down the hall. During the game, he hadn't paid attention to the defects of the dolls to keep himself from recoiling and possibly insulting the dolls. They had mostly been hiding or scurrying away with their backs to him the entire time they had been "playing" so he hadn't been forced to see their broken faces. Now they kept looking back towards him to really make sure that he was following them and not being left behind.

As he is being dragged around another corner, Natsu has to wonder what everyone could be afraid of? A flashback from a previous dream where a giant doll nearly gobbled him up sends him panicking, but he bites down the fear. That had simply been a dream and that giant dolls head had not been found once while he was in this place with Lucy. All the toys he had encountered were all the sizes one would imagine a doll to be, so what could this new big bad really be?

Before Natsu gets to question what is going on, the dolls pull him around the corner and up two flights of stairs that he really has to concentrate on. It is hard climbing steps without tripping over your feet when you are being unwillingly dragged.

It isn't long before they reach the second landing and by that point Natsu is completely out of breath. His legs are burning from the strain of running around and being pulled, and his lungs are burning from the exertion. He just wants to rest for a second to catch his breath, but the dolls refuse to slow their run for him or any of the others around them.

He is about to ask if he could please catch his breath when they turn one last corner and he is faced with a familiar portrait. It is the same portrait he and Lucy had found when they had exited the kitchen a lifetime ago. The one with Jose Porla staring straight ahead behind a desk and surrounded by books and paperwork.

Jose's eyes almost seem to stare directly at Natsu, as if watching and judging his every movement while he stands before the portrait completely paralyzed. It isn't until the dolls are pulling insistently on his arms that Natsu realizes that they are guiding him directly towards the portrait. When they are only a foot away does Natsu then notice that the portrait hangs slightly open like a door with an entrance at the back leading into a small opening.

~hUrRy~

The dolls insist, now sounding agitated that Natsu was being difficult and not entering through the opening in the wall fast enough.

~hUrRy~

They insist, now with a few dolls floating behind him to push him through the opening, their panicked voices only causing Natsu's heartrate to quicken.

~hE'S cOmINg~

~hE'S cOmInG~

They chant, sounding almost on the verge of tears, and that's when Natsu hears it.

Heavy footsteps resonate down the hall where they had just come from. They sound like they are ascending so Natsu knows that whatever is coming is climbing the steps they had previously come from. Whatever this thing was it was heavy, that he could tell from the volume of every stomp that resounded through the air, getting louder and closer.

Natsu's stomach drops when the steps reach their landing and make their way towards them and a thick heaviness in the air nearly chokes Natsu. It sets a deeper fear than the dolls had ever been able to instill in him. A terror far greater than what his dreams or any other nightmare he has ever encountered in and out of this place has ever filled him before. It is a dangerous aura that has him scurrying through the porthole, tripping over the dolls on the ground pulling at his legs, and into safety.

Behind him, the panicked dolls quickly pull the back of the portrait. Natsu waits with bated breath as he searches the outside through the quickly closing gap and finds a heavy boot peek around the nearby corner before the room suddenly grows pitch black around him.

After the portrait is closed, all light completely vanishes along with the sound of the heavy boots. All Natsu can hear is his heavy breathing and the rushing of his blood in his ears. If there was light his vision would probably be swimming since he could feel the dark world around him sway. The sudden motion reminds Natsu of the feeling of riding in a vehicle and his stomach lurches. He has to bite back the bile that rises at the back of his throat since he doesn't want to empty out his stomach all over himself in this pitch blackness.

Closing his eyes, Natsu tries to get his breathing under control so that the room will stop spinning. He tries to keep any and all modes of transportation from his mind to keep his brain from thinking that he is on a vehicle, so he doesn't barf. Thankfully it doesn't take him long to calm himself down a bit, but when he opens his eyes he is reminded that he can no longer see where he is. In fact, Natsu no longer remembers where the exit even is.

"Dammit," he grumbles while stretching his arms out to try to find a wall somewhere.

It is at that moment that Natsu realizes that he is on the ground. He doesn't remember when he had fallen, but the thick darkness around him makes it hard to think, especially when something terrible could pop out of the darkness any minute. Not to mention that this sudden darkness reminded him of the dark room he had first woken up to when he arrived to this place. This time, however, the air did not smell of something rotten.

The air around him does smell damp, however, with the air carrying the smell of underground. Like the smell of a humid basement with a bit of earth in the mix. It is somewhat familiar since nearly everyone in their neighborhood had basements, himself included.

Reaching out, Natsu quickly finds a wall behind him only an inch away from his back. He uses the wall as leverage to help him stand up and soon he is finally back on his feet; however, he then realizes he doesn't know what to do. He could follow the wall by pressing up against it until he found another exit, but he was scared that there might be some holes in the ground waiting for him to fall through or for a creature to be waiting for him in the darkness to snatch him up. Still, Natsu could not just stand there in the middle of the dark. He needed to move… he needed to find Lucy.

Natsu takes a step and steps on something soft only to earn an outraged screech. It is at that moment that Natsu remembers he is not alone as the dolls begin to stir around him. He can hear through the thick darkness the clinking of the porcelain dolls and the rattling of the wooden ones. There is also the distinct shuffle of cloth from the marionette dolls and soon their soft whispering begins to permeate through the stillness.

"Sorry," Natsu quickly apologizes to the doll he unknowingly stepped on and listens as it scurries away with an indignant huff.

After a minute of trying to get his bearings, Natsu places his hands on the wall so he could use it to lead him through the dark. He starts to slowly make his way down towards the right when he feels pairs of tiny hands grab his shoulder and arms. He panics for a second before again remembering that the dolls were still with him. They seem to wait patiently for Natsu to release his hold on the wall and when he does, the dolls he cannot see take his hands again in their tiny hold before gently pulling on his arm so that he could follow.

~tHiS wAy~

The garbled voice of what he assumes is the baby doll says, pulling his finger insistently so that he will follow.

He wishes that he hadn't dropped his flashlight back in the winding halls so that he could see ahead of him. Wishes so deeply that for once this could be like his dream where he was always holding some sort of light source with Lucy coming out of the darkness and saving him; however, that part of the dream had already come to pass, and now it was his turn to do the saving.

The truth is in the dolls, his mother's voice rings in his head again, and it is so loud in this quiet darkness that Natsu nearly jumps.

He gets it, he does, that these creatures hold the answers that he and Lucy have been looking for this entire time. They are the key, he just needs to figure out how to use them to break the lock and finally escape, but he doesn't know where to begin. Where does this puzzle start and how will it end once he figures it out?

One thing he was certain of is that he needed to figure this mystery out and fast. Something on the back of his mind told him that the heavy footsteps that the creatures had run away from in fear was a major clue. Either way, Natsu needed to get to Lucy because he knew that she was far more intelligent than him and two heads were better than one. He was certain that she would be able to fill in any holes he didn't yet understand.

"Hey guys," Natsu calls out to the darkness and the dolls stop causing him to pause in the middle of the darkness, "I played a game with you, now I need you to take me to Lucy."

The dolls remain silent and frozen around him, yet Natsu can feel their eyes on him which causes a chill to race up and down his spine. He can feel their stares but not being able to see them unnerves him. Still, he knows now that they will not hurt him and will hopefully listen to his request to take him to wherever Lucy is.

~sHe'S tHiS wAy~

One of the dolls says while tugging his vest and without another word he follows his companions through the void.


So I rewrote this chapter so many times because every time I would reread it I would get a new idea that I wanted to incorporate into it. That and a few more life changes have happened in the past few weeks, but I finally finished this chapter for you all and I hope that you all enjoy it.

Also, who is hyped about the announcement of 100 Year Quest becoming an anime soon? I can't wait to see what crazy adventures our ragtag team of chaotic weirdos will be up to next and can't wait to see this fandom rise up once again.

Shout outs

Great amazing thanks to my Fantastic Favorite...

- akozak

To my Fabulous Follower...

- akozak

And to my Fantabulous Reviewers...

- Ushindi = He has begun to understand the dolls, now he just needs to figure out what great purpose they play in this place.

- shootingstarssel = Sorry it took a bit long for this chapter to come out, but it was hard to figure out one game that he could play with them. Then a few days ago I was playing with my baby cousin when I finally figured it out and was finally able to finish the chapter for you all. Hopefully you enjoyed it.

Well that's all the shout outs for today.

If you're enjoying my spine-chilling story give me the honor by Following, Favoriting, and Reviewing - remember, reviews are the reminders I need in order to update faster - and if you have any questions or haunting ideas you can also PM me and I'll gladly add it into the story.

Until next time my ghoulies!