Author's Note:

Hello all! I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween and Dio de los Muertos! (and any other holidays I may have missed, I start losing track right about now... haha)

Anywho! Here's the second to last chapter! Next chapter is going to be the final installation of part 2, whoot whoot! Don't worry, part 3 will be coming out hopefully right on schedule, so you guys shouldn't have to wait long. ;D

And of course, as always, HUGE thanks to all my fantastic, wonderful reviewers out there! Big hugs and kisses to: Copperreign12, DarkFairyGirl, CathJorda, Natsulover89, SheWhoLeavesCrappyReviews, sakshishetty3003, SistershoOk, MillennialStargazer, and f46adpg! You guys are the best! :D

And now, on with the battle!

Natsu ducked another fricken' vine thing and whipped up some fire to burn it to a crisp before it could explode on top of him.

This Asthma guy was turning out to be a seriously tough opponent, even if he did have super weird magic. Those vines were a pain in the butt… they could do everything you'd expect from vine magic: whapping, whipping, stabbing with their pointy ends, and wrapping around like ropes. But then they could also explode, which made them a hundred times more annoying. The explosions were no joke either, they hurt like heck if they got ya at point blank range.

It was just a good thing that he had some extra fire tolerance thanks to his magic type, or he would've already been toast – but even with that he was feeling kinda crispy. Not to mention bruised and scraped up, and he was pretty sure one of his fingers was broken. Though that didn't stop him from continuing to punch the vines left and right.

He'd figured out early on that if he could burn the vines quick enough, they wouldn't explode – though that didn't help out much with the vines under his feet. They were literally running around and fighting on the stuff, 'cause Asthma had turned everything into a jungle of greenery as far as Natsu could see. Actually, he wasn't even sure where the roof was anymore, or if they'd left it behind somewhere.

It was pretty freaky, but he just kept moving so his opponent couldn't send him sky high with an explosion from underneath. Asthma had already tried that plenty of times, but Natsu had been able to dodge most of them so far. It definitely helped that the vines sorta glowed and bulged for a couple seconds before they blew, so he had a bit of a warning.

The biggest pain in the butt though was that he hadn't been able to get in a single hit this whole fight, and they'd been going at it for a while. It was really starting to piss him off. He kept running straight at the guy, but swarms of those vines would get in his way, making big fricken' walls that he had to blast his way through. He could dodge them and burn them all he wanted, but there was just no end to them.

On top of that, whenever he did seem to get close, his opponent would just disappear in a mess of vines (like they'd eaten him or something), and then he'd pop up somewhere else. At this rate, it was turning into more of a magic endurance match than a brawl, and whoever ran outta magic first lost – which wasn't Natsu's style. He wanted to get some punches in, and all this running around was starting to drive him crazy.

"Oi! Stop running away! Come and fight me for real!" he bellowed at the guy as he pulled another disappearing act and got away from him again.

"I am fighting you for real. This is my fighting style… if you can't land a hit, you have no one to blame but your own weakness."

From the sound of his voice, the Asthma guy had popped up behind him, and Natsu turned slowly, feeling a vein start ticking on his forehead. Sure enough, Stripey-face was standing at a safe distance, looking smug and bored and annoying as all heck.

"Okay… now you've gone and fired me up…." he growled, legitimately pissed off.

He'd already been mad, but that snarky comment had really done it.

Building up his magic, he just stopped in place and focused on that, getting it hotter and hotter until his insides felt like they were burning. As always, he sorta went into a trance and didn't worry about what was going on around him, 'cause it all got burnt to a crisp anyways. A few explosions went off, one of them kinda close and knocking him to the side, but he just ignored it.

His fire reached a breaking point and then snapped, filling every inch of him with flames and heat. It hurt and sent him to his knees like always, but he put up with it and was rewarded with Dragon Force. All his senses got super sharp (which was kinda unpleasant with all the big crashes and bangs from Juvia and Gray fighting their opponents) and magic filled him from the bottom up until he was about to bust.

That all lasted maybe a minute, and then it was over, and he was ready to kick some ass. He slowly got back up, grinning just as slow, and snapped his eyes open to stare at the bastard through his bangs. This time, he wasn't gonna go easy on Asthma.

Thanks to the major blast of heat that always came outta him when he went into Dragon Force, all the vines around him had been burnt away to ash, which dropped him back down on the roof. It was lucky that he hadn't been dropped off the side of the castle….

Asthma was staring at him, still looking kinda blank, but his eyebrows had cocked up a bit. So maybe Natsu had surprised him. He kinda didn't care if he'd shocked the guy or not though, 'cause Stripey-face was about to get a major wakeup call whether he knew it was coming or not.

"Alright… time to get this party started…" he growled and sent a blast of magic to his legs and feet.

He shot forward, way faster than before, and the vines had a hard time keeping up. Any that did get in his way, he just blasted with a fireball. Before, it'd taken longer to burn them, but with his Dragon Force, they were incinerated instantly. He got to the guy in just a couple seconds and threw a punch, which knocked Asthma right outta his little jungle and sent him flying.

Natsu followed and jumped across a twenty-foot gap between one part of the castle roof and the next – which was where Stripey-face had hit with a big bang. A ball of vines whipped up around the guy and sucked him in right before Natsu landed. More of those stupid things popped up, blooming everywhere again, and it sucked having to try and stick a landing on writhing vines.

Even with Dragon Force, he sorta bounced off one giant vine and then managed to land on another… but skidded and almost fell off as it moved under him.

This new popup jungle had even bigger and thicker vines than the last one. WAY bigger. And there were a lot more of them too. Natsu could barely see more than five feet in any direction… and his opponent had totally disappeared in the green spaghetti ball.

He would've thought Asthma had chickened out, but suddenly he could hear the guy laughing from what sounded like every direction at once.

"Finally! It seems that I have found a worthy opponent. Come, fight me with everything you have!"

"Big words for a scaredy cat that ran away from the fight!" he shot back.

The guy didn't respond with words. Instead, a huge mess of vines shot at Natsu pointy bits first – obviously going for a stab attack – and he grinned, letting a blast of fire come outta his whole body. The writhy creepers all turned to ash, but more were right on their heels, coming from every direction (even below), and he had to do the same thing again.

With all that fire, he missed the telltale glow, and the vine under his feet exploded. But it didn't hurt nearly as bad with Dragon Force fortifying his body. He just twisted in midair and landed on another vine, then used that as a springboard and blasted his way through all the vines in front of him.

He could move freely through the mess, but it wasn't doing him too much good. More green crap immediately replaced whatever he'd just burned, and he was blasting everything blindly…. Which wasn't fun for very long, and he got pretty tired of it after a couple minutes of chasing Asthma around. His sense of smell and heightened hearing should've let him find the guy wherever he tried to hide, but Stripey-face's scent only popped up every now and then. Most've the time, his smell completely disappeared, like he'd turned himself into a vine or something.

The first time his scent appeared, Natsu immediately made a beeline for him, but the trail vanished before he could reach Asthma. So, the next time it showed up, he didn't try to chase it… he just punched a blaze of fire in that direction and burned a hole right through all the vines. For a split second, he actually saw Stripey-face as the forest went poof, and it looked like he'd managed to land a hit. The guy flew back and tumbled across the roof a couple times – trailing smoke – before he got his feet under him again and ducked into a new thatch of greenery.

They did that a couple more times, but pretty quickly, the stupid runaround started to piss Natsu off… and it wasn't long before he ran outta patience. Normally, he wouldn't go for his most powerful attack this early in the fight, but he was just mad enough to get creative.

Sucking in a deep breath, he built up the magic in his lungs until it kinda felt like he'd just swallowed a fricken' campfire. The blaze just got hotter and hotter and hotter… but right before it got downright unbearable, he let it all out in a massive dragon roar – the ultimate technique that Igneel had taught him. It actually sounded like a roar too as flames blasted outta his mouth and ripped all the vines in front of him to pieces.

The crazy, intense flame attack went on long enough for him to do a 360-degree spin and instantly vaporize every last bit of jungle around him. And luckily for the castle, it was solid stone, or it would've been toast too. Even with the thing being made outta rock though, he peeled off the roof's top layer and busted anything that poked up higher than him.

Ash, smoke, and fire made it impossible to see for a good minute while Natsu was breathing pure destruction. But as soon as the dust settled, he spotted a few black, crusty vines that were crumbling to bits and dumping Asthma out on his butt – who was also looking pretty dang crispy. He must've used extra tough and thick vines for a shield (or just kept pumping them out as Natsu burned them), 'cause everything else had been obliterated within seconds.

The fact that he'd been able to survive at all was seriously impressive, since Natsu's roar was powerful enough to take out a whole building in one go if he hit it head on. But Stripey-face definitely didn't look like he should be fighting anymore with those nasty burns. Most've his skin had been fried off, and he looked like BBQ that'd been left on the grill way too long.

Somehow, the guy staggered back to his feet though. And when he chuckled and then coughed, blowing out a puff of smoke in a totally cartoony way, Natsu had to give him props.

"It looks like I underestimated you…. I won't make that same mistake twice."

"Uh, okay. I don't think you'll have a chance to, 'cause it looks like this fight is over."

"Don't be so sure."

Asthma might've been beat up, but he wasn't outta magic yet. Vines sprouted up behind him, all splayed out kinda like a tree or a giant crown or something, and little explosions started snapping and popping all over them. For a second, Natsu had no idea where he was going with this, but then the vines curved in, and a greenish ball of fire started forming at their tips. It was like all the smaller crackles and pops were feeding it, and the weird fireball just kept getting bigger and looking nastier by the second.

The thing got MASSIVE, and he probably could've felt the power coming offa it from the other side of the castle. As it was, being at ground zero was kinda like being in the middle of an oven, and he wrinkled up his nose as the insane heat blew back his hair.

'Course, there was nothing subtle about what was gonna happen next. Even a blind, stupid person would've been able to figure it out, and Natsu wasn't surprised at all when Asthma lobbed the giant, flaming jungle ball at him. And the thing packed a SERIOUS punch. If Natsu hadn't already been using Dragon Force, he actually might've had a big problem.

But, since he was in Dragon Force, there wasn't anything to worry about. He met the fireball head on – literally. With his mouth. He opened his trap wide, and as soon as it hit him, he started sucking in a deep breath, and his magic automatically kicked in. The enemy fire went straight down his throat and into his gut, where it got absorbed.

He wolfed down the entire fireball, or most've it anyways, and the rest just kinda blew by him without doing any damage. And as the flames died out, he saw Asthma's face stuck in a pretty hilarious expression that clearly said, 'What the heck just happened?!'

Natsu belched and patted his stomach with a smirk. "Thanks for the meal."

That might've been a jerk move, but he was still pretty annoyed with his opponent for all the crap he'd pulled. It was also super funny to watch as Asthma's face just got even more shocked and confused for a sec. Though, he fixed it really quick into something more serious.

"You gonna give up?" Natsu asked, giving Stripey-face a chance, but the idiot didn't take him up on it.

As soon as vines started sprouting again, he threw another attack at the crispy jungle mage. This thing had gone on long enough, and he wasn't gonna wait around for more explosions and green stuff. He used all that fire he'd just sucked up, turned it into more magic, and spat it right back at the guy with twice the power.

Flames filled the air as Natsu roared again.

He couldn't see an inch in front of his face while the dragon fire was going on, but when it finally fizzled, he got a good look at what he'd done. The top of the castle in front of him was even more busted… there was a huge gouge taken out that was still kinda glowing and smoking. But instead of a dead mage in the middle of all that, Natsu immediately spotted a big hole where the guy must've escaped down through the roof.

"Shit…" he cussed, ticked off that the bastard had run for it.

He threw out a couple more bad words when vines started popping up through the roof and tried to grab him. The vines weren't too annoying… they didn't stand a chance of nabbing him when his body was coated in fire. Any that got too close went poof. But the hiding act WAS a pain in the butt.

"Geez! What've I gotta do to get rid of this guy? Burn the whole fricken castle down?!"

That wasn't gonna work, 'cause there were still people inside that he didn't wanna turn into ashes… like the innocent servants and stuff. He wasn't gonna blow up the place (and them) just to take out Stripey-face.

Though, he'd LOVE to blow it all sky-high right about now. This was probably one of the most annoying fights he'd had in a loooong time.

Thank Mavis he could use Dragon Force to pinpoint where other people were. It let him know that there wasn't anyone else below him right now, and he could get as nasty as he wanted. 'Course, the guy was masking his scent as a plant again, so Natsu pretty much just guessed where he might be and started blasting big-ass holes in the roof.

He figured if he kept playing whack-a-mole long enough, it was just a matter of time before the jungle dude's luck ran out.

…

.

…

Meanwhile… Lucy filled her urn once again with water, this time using more magic and pressure to create a stronger attack. She also switched to a cannonball style attack, versus the geyser she'd been aiming at Yomazu and Kawazu, because that would give her twice the velocity and power.

Killing her opponent was still something she'd like to avoid if possible, so she didn't use her full strength… just enough to take a large chunk out of a tree. Of course, on a normal person, that would likely crush their chest and probably would kill them, but obviously Kain wasn't a normal person.

Even so, she hadn't expected it to have as little effect as it did.

He lowered himself into a squatting stance as she fired, and when her water ball hit, it exploded, sending a shower of water everywhere. Kain slid backwards a few feet, but seemed completely unharmed, as though her projectile had splattered against stone. If the canon ball had hurt him, he did a good job of hiding it.

At the same moment, from behind her opponent, she could see Erza now fighting a midair battle with the cockatrice, and a spout of fire from their fight came hurtling towards Lucy and Kain. She threw herself to the side, and he also managed to dodge as the fiery blast flew over their heads and slammed into the back wall behind them.

Thankfully, it looked as though Yomazu still wasn't intending to use his roars, despite the fact that Lucy was now occupied with someone else. Maybe he assumed that she would still be able to pull out her harp and counter his sound attacks, even while fighting Kain… which actually would have been very difficult to do, so she was grateful that he didn't seem inclined to attempt it.

Just her short distraction was enough to get her in trouble, as her opponent took advantage of it and retaliated. While still in a low stance, he lifted one leg and then stomped, sending a shudder through the floor. Cracks appeared under his foot, but somehow he'd projected the force outwards, and those cracks traveled towards Lucy at a dangerous pace, growing wider and wider as they approached.

The loud grinding and snapping of solid rock that rang through the air almost completely drowned out Eisenwald's protests, and she certainly didn't notice them… she was too busy trying not to die.

It all happened within seconds, but she realized in the nick of time that the tiles beneath her feet were going to crumble and send her falling down to whatever was underneath this floor. A shot of panic went through her insides, and she leaped backwards to try and avoid the pitfall that was about to open up and swallow her.

Stones shifted under her as she scrambled to get to solid ground again, and she nearly slipped and tumbled down with them as the floor crumbled. She went to her knees, but somehow managed to throw herself the last few feet and got most of her body onto the edge of the hole. That was still very unstable though, and she quickly dragged herself forwards and scooted away from the cracked floor as fast as she could.

It was a minor miracle that she managed to escape unscathed, and it left her out of breath and with a heart that was racing almost fast enough to make her dizzy…. But she didn't have any time to recover. As soon as she was safe, she struggled back to her feet and immediately spun to find her opponent.

He had rounded the hole while she was busy trying to save herself, and now he had closed the distance between them. She yelped and clambered backwards, almost tripping again as she tried to quickly make a tactical retreat… but before she could get more than a foot away, he'd lowered himself into a fighting stance again. This time, he raised his hands, palms facing forwards, in an obviously aggressive pose.

She barely had enough time to spit out a water shield before he attacked. His open palm thrust met her spinning water, and even though she hadn't had enough time to make it as strong as it usually was, it should have at least thrown him back or slapped his hand away from her. Instead, his strike was so hard and fast, that it was like it had built up a barrier of wind in front of his palm, which clashed against her water and created an explosion that sent her flying backwards instead.

The force tossed her into a pillar some distance away, which she slammed against hard enough to nearly knock the breath out of her lungs. Pain bloomed across her back and side where she smashed into the hard stone, and she landed on her knees, wheezing for a second… but there was no time to let herself fully recover. With a wince, she forced herself to her feet and took stock of the situation.

She now found herself in a very precarious position… trapped in the back left corner of the room, with the dangerous pit to her right, and Kain in front of her. Fighting was an option, but she had no idea how much power it would take to do any damage or knock him away, so that was a dangerous gamble. There also might be some way to propel herself across the hole or possibly even escape into it, but neither of those options seemed very good either.

With him slowly bearing down on her, she only had a few seconds to decide what to do, and in the heat of the moment, she went with the first desperate thought that seemed like it had a good chance of success. Switching out her Aquarius gear for Leo's, she immediately built up enough magic in her rings to let off a flash bomb. The room went completely white as it went off, and there were a series of yells and screams of shock and pain.

She mentally apologized to Erza, hoping that her light attack hadn't messed her comrade up too badly.

As the wielder, she was immune to the effects, while everyone else had their eyes squeezed shut in pain – which gave her the time she needed to weave two complex illusions. Firstly, she created about ten copies of herself, and then used camouflage to disappear.

Copying herself actually hadn't been nearly as hard to learn as camouflage, since she already knew herself so well. The only tricky part was controlling them all at the same time, and it became increasingly difficult to do the more she created. Ten was her absolute maximum at the moment, and she would probably have to pare down soon… but right now, she knew that using more copies would increase her chances of not being caught.

Before Kain had fully recovered his eyesight, she and her copies dashed past him, successfully escaping the corner. Once free, she had her copies surround him, while she found a place to hide behind a fallen pillar some distance away. It not only blocked Kain's view, but everyone else's as well, and that allowed her to spend a little less effort on her camouflage.

When her opponent finally blinked and seemed to regain the ability to see, she could tell he was startled by the group of Lucies now around him in a circle. He closed his eyes again and heaved a sigh, looking pained.

"Could you stop running away and pulling tricks? I'd rather be taking a nap right now…."

She was surprised that he spoke loud enough for her to hear him, and his comment almost made her chuckle – reminding her sharply of Brandy. This man obviously just wanted to laze about and didn't enjoy fighting, unlike the other two Grimoire Heart members they'd met… and he actually seemed relatively nice. It was a shame that they were enemies.

If it wouldn't've broken her illusion, she would have suggested that they just call a truce and not fight anymore. However, she suspected that wouldn't work out, and she wasn't willing to risk losing her advantage for it.

When she didn't respond, he sighed again and left his eyes shut for a long moment, as though he was taking a short power nap to refuel before the next stage of their fight. That gave her a few seconds to come up with a plan of attack, and considering their surroundings, it was easy to decide on one. If she could lure him into his own hole, maybe the drop would injure him… or at least let her shoot attacks down from a safer position above.

With that in mind, she quickly put together yet another illusion (which really pushed her limits) and made it look as though the hole in the floor was further over than it actually was.

His eyes opened again a minute later, and after staring at her illusions for several long seconds, he started attacking them, one by one. Of course, being illusions, she couldn't attack back, but she ran them around him and tried to dodge his attacks as much as possible… all the while leading him closer to the hole. Whenever he landed an attack on one of her illusions, she let that one disappear, hoping to lure him into a false sense of how this magic worked. With any luck, he would think that he was narrowing down his target and had a chance of hitting the real one if he kept fighting them.

By the time he had reached the last one, she'd timed it so that the final Lucy was already standing on the covered-up portion of the hole, and as he rounded on her, she made it look like 'fake Lucy' backed up with fear and then stopped at the edge of the illusionary hole. She put all of the skills she'd learned so far into making her last Lucy look as real as possible, even going to far as to make 'fake Lucy' almost lose her balance as she crab walked sideways along the lip of the decoy hole to try and escape him.

To the real Lucy's intense relief and glee, Kain fell for her trick, both figuratively and literally. He approached the final Lucy, intent on ending their fight and probably getting back to his nap, and when he reached the edge of the real hole, he teetered and fell in, just as she'd planned.

As soon as he disappeared from sight, she dropped all her illusions and ran over to see if he had been injured – already summoning Aquarium's urn to shoot at him from above (and possibly fill the hole with water). When she reached the lip though, he was pulling himself upright and looked a bit bruised but perfectly fine otherwise.

To make things worse, before she could even get a single shot in or decide if she wanted to try drowning him, he had reached down and picked up a shockingly large piece of rubble. The next thing that happened seemed straight out of a nightmare…. She saw the rubble thrown in her direction as though in slow motion and turned to run, but she didn't even have enough time to take a single step. That huge chunk of rock crashed into the ground beneath her, and cracks ran under her shoes.

This time, there was no escape. The castle floor caved in with her still on it, and she was sent plummeting down to the next level.

Somehow, through a sheer miracle, all the instincts that had frozen up on her moments before kicked in and made her body move without any thought. She managed to twist and fire water at the ground in such a way that it softened her landing… at least a little.

The impact was still extremely unpleasant though, and what hurt even worse was when more pieces of floor rained down on and next to her. Luckily, most of them missed, but one large chunk landed squarely on her right leg, crushing it and successfully pinning her to the ground. The only thought that crossed her mind, aside from sheer agony, was that her leg was definitely broken in at least one place, if not many more.

That obviously wasn't good, especially in the middle of a battle, and once she somehow pushed past the excruciating pain, she quickly twisted to look for her opponent. He was on the other side of the hole, likely standing out of the way to avoid getting pummeled by falling rubble. However, once the pieces of floor stopped crashing to the ground, he began making his way towards her, sending a flash of terror through the emotional storm she was weathering.

She might've been able to get the rock off her by shooting it with her urn, but he was a much bigger and more immediate threat. If possible, she needed to take care of him first.

Panicking, she locked and loaded her urn, took aim at him, and fired her deadliest shot… a water bullet at its highest compression and velocity. Through experimentation, she knew that it easily had enough power to pierce through several very thick trees in a row, and she just hoped it was enough to deal with Kain. Under normal circumstances, Lucy would have second-guessed herself and been anxious about using something so destructive, but at the moment, she was in survival mode. The only thought in her head was that she didn't want to die, and the phrase, 'kill or be killed,' rang over and over in her ears.

And her new conviction paid off. This time, her opponent was knocked cleanly off his feet as the attack connected with his chest. He grunted in pain and seemed winded for a moment, which gave her a few seconds to breathe and think…. But he didn't stay down nearly as long as she'd wanted. Her water bullet should have gone straight through his body, but that obviously wasn't the case as he sat up a minute later without any blood coming out of the hole in his shirt.

However, he did move slower and groaned deeply as he got up, appearing to still be in a good deal of discomfort. That told her that she'd been able to do something to his nearly indestructible body, but she honestly didn't know if she could fire off many more rounds of her strongest water attack. Each shot took up a large amount of magic, and she really didn't have much power left by this point in the fight.

She probably only had five or six more of those water bullets left in her arsenal, and judging by how much effect this one had on him, she wasn't a hundred percent sure that those would be enough to put him down for good. If the gamble failed, it would leave her out of magic and at his mercy.

On the other hand, she had another option. Down here, she doubted that Yomazu could counter any sound magic that she used, assuming that he was even in any state to do so. Therefore, she could use her harp to try and put Kain to sleep…. Though, that was also a gamble, since switching tools also took a good amount of magic. Not to mention, she would have to play until he was unconscious, and she wasn't entirely sure she had enough power for that either.

Still, it seemed like a better plan of attack for this particular enemy, since he was so incredibly tough. For him to still be standing after everything she'd thrown at him, the magic he used must either strengthen his body to an insane degree or shield him somehow, and she had no idea just how far that ability went.

So, she took a deep breath and made her decision, knowing that there wasn't any time for her to dilly dally with it. This had to happen now, or she didn't have a chance of winning.

Within about thirty seconds, she managed to return Aquarius' urn and summon Lyra's harp – during which time, he had already staggered to his feet and started approaching her again. The trickiest part of this plan was that she had to put herself into a peaceful, restful state of mind… and that seemed like it would be very nearly impossible under these circumstances.

After struggling for a moment too long, she finally had a breakthrough and tapped into the deep pit of exhaustion that naturally came from all the stress, pain, magic fatigue, and effort this battle had taken out of her. Normally, feeling tired in the middle of a fight was a bad thing, but it actually helped her in this particular instance. All she had to do was think about how much she wanted to just fall soundly asleep and rest without any worries… and then it was easy to project those feelings as her fingers ran across the strings of her harp.

Though, it still took some work to focus solely on that as Kain continued to pick his way through the rubble towards her. Bubbles of fear kept trying to distract her, but she pushed them down ruthlessly, knowing that if she let herself panic, it would all be over. Her only option at this point was to simply put her faith in Lyra's harp. It had never failed her before… the celestial tool and Lyra had always been there for her, practically throughout her whole life, and she just had to believe in them now.

For the first minute of her lullaby, Kain continued to come at her, but right as he was starting to get dangerously close, his footsteps began to fall a little slower… eventually grinding to a halt nearly right in front of her. He wobbled and then staggered… managing to regain his footing, only to teeter the other way. Finally, he lost his balance and went to one knee, his chin dropping onto his chest. The huge monk-like man grunted out a half-snore, his eyes drifting shut for a second, before he abruptly shook himself awake again. His eyes flew wide open, looking slightly crazed as he tried to lunge back up onto his feet, but that failed, and he staggered another step and crashed onto his other knee.

He wobbled there for a long moment and then fell onto one hip… dropping to his side a moment later. It seemed like eons passed as he kept trying to push himself back up with his arms, eyelids fighting to stay open… and all the while, Lucy could feel the last trickles of her magic starting to drain out of her. Dizziness impaired her vision, and it grew harder and harder to see the details of Kain's face and judge just how far along he was. At that point, she wasn't sure whether she or he would pass out first.

Everyone knew that using up all your magic wasn't healthy, and now, she was experiencing that firsthand, as all her strength seeped out of her like water through a sieve. The energy and vitality in her body ebbed right along with her celestial powers, until it was all she could do to stay sitting upright and keep her hands moving across her harp.

Tiny pieces of glittering gold started flaking off the very edges of the celestial instrument's frame, like fireflies flickering around her as she desperately struggled to hang on until Kain had fallen asleep. He was stuck on his side now but not unconscious yet. His hand scrambled across the ground, still attempting to push himself back up despite the fact that he'd lost the will to do so. Both of their eyelids drooped, and they locked gazes, the two of them swimming in a sea of fuzzy golden lights as they performed a deadly staring contest.

Whoever's eyes closed for good would lose, and in Lucy's case, she doubted they would ever open again. She suspected Kain wouldn't leave her living if he won this contest of wills.

One of her strings disappeared as she plucked it, telling her that she'd almost run out of time, and a wave of desperation and determination pushed her to put everything she had into the last few notes that she played. And finally… finally, her opponent's head thunked to the stone ground, and his eyelids drifted shut.

She barely managed to get one… two… three more notes out, and then the instrument under her hands disappeared into a swarm of twinkling lights that drifted away as her vision went black as well.

Sneak Peek:

"Are you two alright?" Erza asked as she landed next to the pile of armor and smoking feathers.

"Better than these guys. What'd you do… put 'em through a meat grinder or something?"

The scary redhead shrugged way too casually for the damage she'd just done. "They wouldn't give up. I had no choice."

"Uh huh…" Natsu grunted with raised eyebrows and shook his head.

Then, he realized something very important and quickly asked, "Wait, where's Lucy?! Wasn't she supposed to be with you?!"

"She was. We got separated when another enemy attacked us. She and he fell down there…."

Erza pointed at a huge fricken' hole in the floor, and Natsu just about had a heart attack.

"Shit! You guys deal with that, I'll go check on Luce!"

By, 'that,' he meant the dick sitting on the throne and his last henchmen, who were both giving them the stink-eye.

As he ran over to the hole, Erza and Gray walked out into the middle of the floor. Behind him, he heard her say, "You only have one guard left. Are you ready to surrender?"

Post Note:

Alrighty! Looks like things are gonna finally come to a head next chapter...! Well, duh, right? I mean, I already told you guys it was gonna be the last one, lol. But anywho... yeah! We've got one more big fight scene to go. ;D And trust me... it's going to be a surprise how everything ends. I think you guys will enjoy the little unexpected twist. XD