"So do you have anybody to go back to? Like, I don't know, some friendly grandpa, or maybe a blue-haired boy with a tattoo over his eye or something like that? Is there anywhere that you can go back to?"
Erza shook her head and I fought back the urge to sigh. As it turns out I came at a time when she had only just arrived at the Tower of Heaven and thus, had not yet met with any of the important characters who would define her as Erza Scarlet as it happened in canon. Like me, she has nobody to turn to and nowhere to go.
"Right, let's figure that out later. Come on, let's go."
I easily picked her up as we made our way to the beach. We had done one last sweep of this unnamed island, making sure that there wasn't anyone left behind. I probably had been fighting the cultists for a long while because all of the former slaves (except Erza) had escaped via the boats by the time I was done fighting and finally regained my sanity.
Thankfully, there were still a few boats left that we could use to get out of here. I originally came here from Bosco with the help of the two drunkards. The Tower of Heaven, if I recall correctly, should be sufficiently close enough to Fiore which is situated to the west of Bosco, so I should reach Fiore eventually as long as we keep heading westwards.
I took the oars and started rowing. Erza looked like she wanted to help, but stopped herself after realising that I could row the boat much faster than she did.
"Any plans for the future?" I asked in my attempt to prevent the atmosphere from going awkward. Erza shook her head once again, bringing the conversation to a standstill.
Not much of a conversationalist, is she?
"I haven't told you my name, have I?" I mused, the conversation about names making me realise that it's been a long time since anybody had called me by my given name ever since I was caught and enslaved by those slave traders. Again, Erza shook her head like she had been doing since we first met.
"Karveg Nokrud," I introduced myself. "Why don't I give you a last name? You don't seem to have one. So, how does Erza Scarlet sound? Scarlet would match with the colour of your hair, it's a beautiful colour."
Erza stared at me with wide eyes, looking as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing and I really couldn't tell if she liked the idea or not. I just thought that I might as well be the one to give her the name of Scarlet since I had somehow screwed canon and Erza had never met Jellal and co back in the Tower of Heaven. The biggest indicator of it would be the fact that Erza still have both her eyes intact.
"Uh… You don't like it?"
"N-No! I mean, yes! I… I like it!" Erza immediately replied, obviously flustered. I simply grinned and ruffled her hair, telling her that everything's alright. The topic of our names seems to have finally broken the ice between us and I managed to find out a few things from her. I did a quick mental sum and calculated that I am currently thirteen years old when the two drunkards informed me that it is currently the year X775, even if my height and build gave others the impression that I am a few years older than I look thanks to my Vajin lineage. Erza said that she is ten this year, which would make me three years older than the main cast.
All of the above are just information that is good to know, but ultimately not exactly important as of now. Our immediate concern, in my unprofessional opinion, is our plans going forward.
The fact that I can use magic makes me a mage, and Erza would undoubtedly be one as well even if she hasn't unlocked her magic yet. Under normal circumstances the best path for us would be to join a mage guild, but that is not what I am interested in. I am not going to join a random mage guild that I have no knowledge of because there is no way I can trust them, and I don't know much about mage guilds other than the standard few that were shown and portrayed in the series, I'm not sure if I really want to join because each of them have their own pros and cons, and some of their cons is enough to discourage me from wanting to join them, ever.
Blue Pegasus? Not with how Master Bob is constantly trying to… urgh. I don't want to even think about it. Quatro Cerberus? Them yelling wild all the damn time would probably force me to conduct a puppy massacre. Mermaid Heel? Out of the question. Sabertooth? No way in hell. To my limited knowledge, Lamia Scale seems to be the only normal guild with a decent standing within Fiore. After all, they did manage to produce a Wizard Saint in the form of Jura.
Why not Fairy Tail, you may ask? It's simply because I am not the least bit interested in the kind of unbelievable bullshit they keep getting themselves into. Yes, it's hilarious to watch when it's merely a fictional story you read or watch through a screen, but my experiences thus far is enough proof that the world of Fairy Tail is not a fairy tale. By all means, certain members of the main cast should probably never be alive if it wasn't for the all-powerful plot armour protecting them together with the bullshittery known as the power of friendship. I don't believe in such a thing and I am not counting on something as unreliable as that to haul my ass out of the disasters that Fairy Tail will undoubtedly involve themselves in.
I had fought tooth and nail for more than five years to finally free myself and I am not going to die by the hands of some random bullshit that Fairy Tail would pull me into should I join them. No, I still want to live, thank you very much.
Being an independent mage wouldn't be a problem if it's a decision that affects just me, but things are different when I now have a tagalong in the form of Erza, who I now have no choice but to bring along in my travels. I would hand her over to Makarov in a jiffy if she told me she wanted to join Fairy Tail but thanks to my intervention, she had never met Rob and never knew about the guild of fairies and thus, had no intentions to join them.
"Can't I just… follow you?"
I wanted to say refuse, tell her no, but I found myself incapable of refusing her when I saw that hopeful look in her eyes. We are both birds of the same feather, people with nowhere to go and nobody left to turn to, so I can understand why she's clinging onto me like she's doing now. She may be the future Titania, but right now she's just an ordinary ten year old girl and it would be too cruel of me to abandon her just like that.
Somehow, my very presence had screwed canon over to the point that there is no longer any hope that things would turn out to be the way I remembered it to be as per my foreknowledge.
So, I decided to take her in. I would let her go when she finally decides for herself where she wants to go and stay, be it in Fairy Tail or in some other guilds or place, but for now we stick together.
Thankfully, the journey to Fiore didn't take too long. We got off the boat and began our trek to our next destination, wherever that may be. We are still in the wilderness, with forests and mountains the only thing entering our vision but I am sure we will reach civilisation some day. Thankfully, we do have supplies because we had pillaged clothes and other necessities from the Tower of Heaven before leaving, so we are not entering dangerous territory empty handed.
We have to make do with what we have in the wilderness if we want to survive. We stripped down and washed ourselves in the first stream we came across once I made sure that the area was safe. None of us were too bothered by the nudity due to our experiences as slaves; slaves never had the privilege of privacy and our baths are all communal. Heck, to be able to even have a bath is already a luxury in itself. When a basic right becomes reduced to a luxury, concepts like privacy and nudity simply aren't worth anything.
I cannot help but frown when I saw for the first time just how skinny she is beneath those rags she wore. Just two months at the Tower of Heaven and she's already nothing better than skins and bones. I can see her ribs poking out. I do not want to imagine just how malnourished she would be if she only got her freedom until the rebellion truly happened as per canon.
"You need to eat more," I told her when I helped wash her back, taking great care to not aggravate the wounds on her back while doing so. Most of them are whip marks that I am all too familiar with myself. Erza remained silent. I'm not sure if it's because she does not know what to say or she simply isn't the chatty type at this point of her life. She only spoke up when I was done helping to wash her back and she offered to wash mine, an offer I didn't refuse because I can tell that the girl is desperately trying to find something to do to prove her worth, probably worried that I would abandon her if I found her useless.
She's worrying too much, but I know nothing I say or do at this point would reassure the insecurities she had until we both understand each other a little better.
We changed into a fresh set of clean clothes that we pillaged from the Tower before we left. Some foolish beast had tried to hunt us down only to be hunted by us in return, so I decided to barbeque it in order to fill our bellies. Erza did not refuse when I gave her a larger serving. I did not push her away, nor did I have the heart to, when she clung tightly onto my arm before falling asleep after we made camp that night.
The experience she went through had made her very insecure, and only time would be able to mend such emotional wounds.
We managed to get to know each other a little better over the next few days. Most of the time it's me trying to break the ice because Erza is not the type to hold a conversation. I told her about my race, my tribe, and the life I led before I was enslaved. She listened attentively, and was especially interested whenever I mentioned magic or the training the chief warrior of my tribe subjected me to the moment I turned five.
"Can you teach me?"
It was obvious that her question was the culmination of all the courage she managed to gather for an undetermined period of time. I had told her that almost everyone in my village was able to use magic, even if I never understood how or why. I unlocked my magic at the age of five with the help of my parents, the age where in my village, children are seen as old enough to be able to learn how to fight and how to use magic per the village's customs. I'm not too sure if the process where Vajins unlock their magic could be used by humans because even the elders were not sure if we are an entirely different race or just humans with superior physiques, but I think the risks of Erza unlocking magic with the methods I did should be low.
"I can help unlock your magic, but you need to let me know if it's hurting you because I'm not too sure if how my tribe unlocks their magic is applicable to humans as well."
Thankfully, the process went smoothly without a hitch. I began explaining the basis of magic to Erza in the exact same way I was taught by the village elders. While every Vajin is able to use Ragnarok as a result of our lineage, at the end of the Ragnarok is nothing but a magic that greatly boosts our physical and magical capabilities to our current limit at the cost of our mental faculty. There was rarely a chance for us to ever use Ragnarok before the tragedy and as such, many of the adults actually learned a second branch of magic for their everyday use. Ragnarok is the final trump card and the last line of defense, a magic to be used only when the situation is dire enough to call for it.
I recalled that back then, the most common type of magic being used by the adults were plant or wood-based magic. I'm not sure if the Vajin race simply has a natural inclination towards such magic, or the adults chose to learn such magic simply out of necessity to ensure that we have a grand harvest every year to last through the winter.
Maybe I should start considering learning a second branch of magic. I couldn't possibly rely on Ragnarok all the time. It just isn't realistic.
"Wood magic?"
"Sounds kinda stupid, I know, but it was the magic used by the strongest warrior in my tribe," I recalled fondly. The image of the chief warrior had been starting to get a little blurry in my memories, but the feelings associated with the memories did not. He is so proficient with wood magic that he used it to carve his very own personal weapon. He is a warrior who uses a spear, and the spear was created by the strongest wood he made from his magic, crafted by the best craftsman in the village for his use. Even though it is a wooden spear, fire does not burn it, steel is not able to dent it, and even if somebody had managed to damage it somehow it can always regrow and repair itself anew as long as magic is being supplied. It is a truly wondrous and powerful weapon, only made possible through the chief warrior's mastery of his own magic.
Erza is easily captivated whenever the topic of magic is brought up no matter how dull the stories may be. She is still fumbling around with her magic, trying to figure out just what kind of magic she is naturally inclined to. Our days weren't totally spent on magic either, because Erza had asked if I could train her and I agreed. For all I know I may be the only Vajin left and the thought of our legacy ending with me simply left a bad taste in my mouth.
I decided to teach Erza our tribe's combat techniques. With that, not only does she now have the knowledge and power to protect herself, the knowledge and wisdom of my tribe can be passed down, a proof that we were here before. It also helps that Erza is an eager learner and a prodigy in the art of combat.
The Vajin have four main branches of combat. Sword, spear, archery, and unarmed combat. I started out when I was five and I wasn't able to master it by the time I was eight and unfortunately enslaved by those slave traders, but I had learnt what I needed to and the knowledge stuck with me. The five years that I was fighting for my life in the ring allowed me to hone those skills further because it wasn't uncommon that we were asked to fight with weapons to increase the entertainment value of the deathmatches.
Thus, I'd like to think that I am capable enough of teaching Erza the basics. She will be able to hone her skills further on her own if she is as hardworking and talented as canon made her out to be.
We soon settled down into a fixed routine. In the morning I will be training Erza in the Vajin combat arts. After lunch we would continue our journey through the wilderness with me carrying her on my back. After the sun sets I would continue to teach her what I know about magic before we called it a day.
Fiore isn't as bad as Bosco, but it still isn't a safe place by any means. Case in point, we ran into a group of bandits about two weeks after we first met in the Tower of Heaven. It's both a good and bad thing. On one hand, it means that we are finally close enough to civilisation. On the other hand, bandits.
Erza did not hesitate to charge right in with a wooden spear I had fashioned for her by sharpening a wooden stick. I'm not too worried about Erza, because none of the bandits are mages and Erza is truly a prodigy when it comes to weaponry. She never batted an eye when I massacred the Zeref cultists back at the Tower of Heaven and I didn't judge her for her actions when she made her first kill without flinching, thrusting her spear into the necks of her enemies and making them gurgle in their own blood before breathing their last.
This world is not kind, and you have to be as cruel as it is in order to survive.
"Good job," I patted her on the head, and she brightened up after picking up a metal sword from the corpse of one of the bandits. She can finally start training in earnest now that she has some proper weapons to work with.
We unanimously decided to search the bandit camp for any useful supplies that we might need. Money, food, water, and the likes. Whatever we think may be useful, we took it for ourselves.
"Karveg, look!"
Erza's excited shout got me to pause in my act of rummaging through the pockets of one of the corpses, just in time to see the young girl running up to me with a worn looking tome in her hand. Luckily, I was taught how to read, write, and speak the language of this world at a young age before the tragedy that befell my tribe so I was able to read the tome's contents.
"Nullification magic?"
"There are more!" Erza quickly continued, unable to hide her excitement as her little hands held onto my arm and tried dragging me along. She pulled me into a separate tent with several old tomes and documents lying around. A quick read clued me in enough that most of them relate to magic. Most likely, the bandits were collecting things relating to magic before we ran into each other.
"Do you think I can learn this?" Erza held up another dusty old tome and showed it to me. I froze for a short moment when I realized that this is a book that documents the usage of Requip magic, but my hesitation disappeared as soon as it came. Fate sure has a weird way of working things out.
"I'm sure you can, but any specific reason as to why you chose Requip?"
"I like weapons," Erza informed me, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "I want to be able to use all of them whenever I want but there's a limit to how much I can carry. Requip removes that limit, so…"
"Understandable. We can start learning about it when we have the time, see if you can become the master of a thousand weapons like you said you want to be," I said with a light laugh and patted her on the head, making her beam at me with a huge smile. Personally, what I had briefly read from the tome that documented Nullification magic had caught my interest, and I would be trying to see if it is possible for me to learn it the first chance I get.
"Yay!" Erza whooped in a loud cheer, finally acting like a kid her age. The books suddenly levitated and wooshed about in random directions, giving us quite a scare before they succumbed to the laws of gravity a second later.
"W-What was…"
"I think we found the kind of magic you have a natural affinity for," I spoke up after I connected the dots. What happened earlier was definitely Erza's doing and it was the effects of Telekinesis. Erza had unlocked her innate magic in her excitement.
"My… magic? My very own magic?"
"Yup, your very own magic," I affirmed and watched as a big smile gradually broke out across Erza's face as she cheered and ran around excitedly, causing the objects around us to float and fly about in random directions until Erza calmed herself down.
It was at this moment, seeing Erza so genuinely happy and free from the trauma she suffered from slavery, made me felt that everything I had done was worth it. Challenging the Zeref cultists in my moment of impulse wasn't the wisest decision I had ever made and canon is probably close to non-existent at this point, but I had at least managed to bring a smile to a little girl's face.
Her smile made everything worth it.