And with nearly fifty percent of the vote, the HAVEN ARC is officially the fan-favorite arc of the first half of 'Fairies of the Shattered Moon'! Hooray!
I'm thrilled you guys enjoyed that arc so much! It was a ton of fun to finally pay off the Nikos family drama I'd been setting up as well as Erza and Wendy's psyches dealing with their respective situations. Ruby and Cinder's confrontation at Ben Autumn's grave was one of my favorite scenes I've written and the climax fights of the arc (Yang, Blake, & Ren vs. Mercury and Erza, Pyrrha, & Raven vs. Cinder) were a BLAST to put to page.
Speaking of fights, this week's poll is for everyone FAVORITE FIGHT in the story so far! There's a lot of them (I put an 'Other' option in case I didn't list yours. Let me know what it is in a Guest Review and why you love it!), so you can vote for up to 5 options. When the next chapter comes out, I'll announce which ones got the most!
Beta-ed by xenosaiyan and MasterPrince713
Salem paused before the doorway, somewhat relieved to find it free of scorch marks. The wounds on her arms may have healed since she had last encountered the being within the room, but he was still the only person in the world that could kill her. And though she had no particular fondness for life any longer, she had the Golden Spirits of the Zodiac hibernating within her now. They had trusted her, believed in her to save the world. She would not let them down by dying before that task was accomplished.
And the first step would be convincing him to help.
The Queen pushed open the door and entered the room, a wave of heat crashing into her when she entered. The guest chambers were mostly intact from the earlier battle, only one wall was absent, the floor only dusted with rubble, but she found that the man she'd come to see was not on the comfortably furnished bed or sitting at the functional mantle. Instead, he stood where the wall should have been, staring up at the shattered moon gracing the Grimmlands with its faint light.
"Are you alright?" she inquired, assuming that he knew she was there already if he had even a fraction of Natsu's senses. "Natsu-"
"I am not Natsu Dragneel!" the demon hissed, blue flames sparking around him as he whirled on the Queen. "And I'm not 'E.N.D.' either!"
Salem edged back, her hands raised to placate. "Alright, alright, my apologies. For that and the unfortunate conflict of our first encounter. I did not expect the transformation to startle you so much."
"You mean you didn't expect me to be in control of my body," he sneered. "You intended for that buffoon to be in command."
"I admit, I had expected Natsu."
"But you're not displeased that I'm here. Or my flames," the demon snorted. "I heard your little talk with the Zodiac."
"You heard that? Your hearing is quite impressive," Salem genuinely complimented, off-guard at having her plans so easily exposed. "I suppose I should be direct then. Are you willing to help me save the world? To kill the Brother Gods who've taken so much from it?"
"Pass."
Huh?
Salem blinked in surprise, her face twisting with utter befuddlement as the horned demon turned away from her and went back to staring up at the moon's pieces. She'd expected that she might face resistance, perhaps an impassioned speech about how worthless humanity was, but a completely blase 'pass'? She could say many things about Mard Geer and the rest of Tartaros, but they were never uninterested, especially in something on such a grand scale. How could the greatest of Zeref's demons be so uninvested in destruction?
"What do you mean 'pass'?" she demanded.
"I mean 'pass'," the horned man replied, not even turning around to face her. "I have no interest in humanity, saving it or otherwise."
"What about the Brother Gods? Don't you want revenge against the monsters who cursed your creator in the first place?"
"Zeref never ordered me to kill the Brother Gods. I was only to return to him and kill him," the demon declared. "That was my purpose."
"And now?!" Salem shouted, charging around to the demon's front, only for her fervor to suddenly vanish.
The demon, this being she'd known as E.N.D. for so long, that she'd saved from Lucy's grasp so long ago, looked up at the broken moon with the expression of a lost dog, confused and filled with despair.
"Now… my purpose is redundant. And impossible. I was meant to give my creator peace and then fade away, my task done, but now…" he murmured, rage and panic filling his face. "This is that idiot's fault! I saved his Celestial bitch and then all he had to do was let me do my job! I should have let DiMaria cut his whore to pieces-"
Salem's veins flickered with dark mud. She zipped up to the horned man's head and raised a finger sparking with Meteor Metria to his eye, her other hand secure around his throat.
"I understand that you have some cause for resentment when it comes to Natsu and Lucy," she spoke threateningly. "But I do not appreciate my friends being referred to in such a tone."
The demon snorted. "What are you going to do, princess? Kill me? That might make your big plans a bit difficult. And that's without explaining to the Exceed below that you won't be able to reunite him with his best friend ever again."
Salem shot him a cocky smile. She withdrew her hand from his throat and reached within her robes, withdrawing the book with the letters E.N.D. inlaid into its cover. For the first time in the conversation, the demon's eyes widened with real interest.
"I can reunite Happy with Natsu right now," the Eclipse Etherious taunted. "Lucy was nearly able to unlink you both and she hasn't had the millennia of study I have with this. It would be a simple matter to put him back in the driver's seat."
For a moment, the demon's eyes blazed with wrathful fire. Literal steam blew from his nostrils, his claws clenching into his fists as sapphire flames began to flicker over his scales.
But the next moment, it all dropped away.
The flames were extinguished with a sizzle. The steam went silent. Even the fire in the creature's eyes vanished as if its spark was smothered by an endless blackness.
Salem stepped back in surprise, the demon not taking the opening to attack. Instead, he just took a seat cross-legged on the floor, almost as if he'd collapsed. He certainly looked exhausted enough.
"Then do it. Just… get it over with," he said. "Not like I have anything to do now anyway. Why not just be Salamander's battery again? Seems to be all I'm good for."
Salem tilted her head in suspicion. "Is this some kind of trick?"
"A trick? To what end? I have no purpose, no reason to live. I'm not like Dragneel and his ilk who can be happy just laying about without cause. They spoke of friendship, and it was… something. But no one cares about me. I'm expendable. Less. I don't matter," the demon mirthlessly muttered. "Ironic, I suppose. The first time I've ever had control of my body, and I've got nothing to do with it."
In theory, Salem should have been overjoyed at that statement. She'd been worried that she was going to have a dangerous fight on her hands, a fight she actually might not win. Instead, she had a free pass to restore Natsu to his body, regain her friend, and set about working on how to find the other spheres and start saving the world. It wasn't as if the Fire Dragon Slayer hadn't drawn on the greatest Etherious's powers before, so they could certainly work on the research without the demon's consciousness.
And yet, looking down on someone so powerful, yet so chained in despair that they saw essentially suicide as their only path… it was unnervingly familiar.
'I can't imagine what you've had to suffer, but just giving up? Letting these gods treat you like their punching bag?'
Never. Not then. Not now.
Salem tossed the Book of E.N.D. onto the demon's lap, the pink-haired man's eyebrow cocking in surprise. He looked up for answers only for the Queen to plop a seat beside him on the floor.
"What the hell are you doing?" he growled.
Salem shrugged. "It's your book, isn't it? About time you have it."
"Do you think me a fool?!" he shouted. "I know what you want!"
"You do. But you do not know what I am willing to do in order to achieve it. I will have to force a great many people to suffer in order to save them all," Salem said. "If I can reduce that number somewhat, I will try."
The demon's eyes narrowed. "You… you're just trying to get me on your side."
"I certainly hope that you choose it in the end," Salem admitted. "But you have had so many choices taken from you all your life. I would give you this one back. Give you the chance to choose a new purpose."
"A new purpose?" he snorted, glancing down at his book with melancholic eyes. "As if it were so simple."
"You haven't even tried," Salem pointed out. "Go out into the world. It may be only a remnant of what it once was, but humanity has managed some wonders still. See it for yourself, experience everything mankind has to offer. And when you're ready, come back here, either to die or to live. I sincerely hope it is to live."
"Live?" the demon scoffed. "I don't even have a name. Zeref never bothered to give me one once he'd shoved his precious baby brother inside me."
Salem smirked proudly. "Well, maybe I can help with that. I have a bit of experience choosing new names for those who need them. Or better yet, you can pick one for yourself. Your first choice for yourself."
"A name?" The demon's face perked up, his gaze narrowing on the tome in his lap. His clawed fingers grazed the hard cover, wistfully ghosting over the black letters embedded into the dark leather. "This book was made for me. Yet, his name coats it."
"It doesn't have to," Salem advised. "There are no periods. If you like the letters, what they create can be your name."
"E.N.D… End?" the horned man murmured, as if encountering a sweet, succulent taste for the first time. "End. I… I like it. End."
"Wonderful," Salem said warmly. She reached her hand over to the newly named demon. "It's a pleasure to formally meet you, End. I am Salem. I hope we can be friends."
End stared at the offered hand for a few seconds, only in contrast to his lost gaze at the shattered moon, now there was the faintest spark of something desperately shining from the darkness of his eyes' despair.
Whatever it was, he shook Salem's hand soon after it flickered, his grip warm and strong, yet fearful.
"Thank you... Salem," he replied. "I hope we can be friends too."
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He was a bit shorter than Natsu.
Lucy knew how odd it was to notice such a detail above all the other furious bombast of End's Etherious Form, but she couldn't help it. More than the lava veins crisscrossing the demon's completely scaled body, more than the skeletal emitters of his flame wings and slicked back horns and hair, even more than than the blinding white fire radiating off him like he was a supernova ripped from the sky, the Celestial Spirit Wizard couldn't shake the fact that the true form of the mightiest demon of them all was just a fraction shorter than her dearest friend had been all the years she'd known him.
But there'd only been one time in her life that Natsu's fire had ever scared her, when his Dragon Force was enhanced from eating Ignia, the Fire God Dragon's, flames. With it, he'd defeated the White Witch-controlled Water God Dragon (he'd only been at half power, but still…) and nearly burned a city to the ground in a blind fury. Had she not managed to help him come to his senses, who knew what could have happened.
Hovering before her now, End terrified her a million times more than then. His white flames were destruction in its purest form, the lava fields it conjured were just the least of it. Lucy could feel her Celestial Spirit King Star Dress actively shielding her from the scorch's ill effects, but she could already see Ruby's aura flickering with strain just from the blaze's ambient heat. Gray had mentioned the cold of Solitas having similar effects on the unprotected, but to warp the environment to such an extent artificially? Forget magic, this was fire that could burn the world.
And Lucy had a sinking suspicion that she was the only one present who might stand a chance against it. Might.
"Ruby," she said, steadying her shaking breath as she raised her luminous star sword. "Whatever happens, trust me not to die."
"I'll do my best on that," Ruby replied, sweat dribbling down her forehead. She reached out her arm, a silver weave of magic stretching over her limb. "Gather! Oh, river of light that's guided by fairies-"
End's skeletal frames flicked up, his blinding white wings unleashing a single flap, a dry desert gust blowing behind as it rocketed him across the sky. In a flash of sunlight, the blink of an eye, the demon blitzed right to the shuttle, his arm pulled back for a mighty blow as Ruby was mid-sentence, far too fast for her to react with anything but activating her semblance.
But Lucy could. Maybe her Star Dress had increased her perception, it certainly boosted her reflexes, but she caught End's charge in time and rushed out to intercept him, her shining blade rising to block his fist. Of course, it was only as she was bringing the weapon into position that she registered that she'd just walked on air, the soles of her feet shimmering gold with starlight.
Maybe if she'd known about it before then, she could have kept herself from being blown back several hundred yards when End's fist struck her steel.
As it was, at least he was mad enough to follow her.
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Ruby's hand shivered as she tried to process the breakneck blurs of white and gold light that had just blitzed around her, her sweaty body whipping around to see Lucy and End clashing quite a ways back towards the Salem and Celestial Spirit King battle. The opposite direction they needed to go.
She had really good reflexes. Extraordinary, really, her semblance pretty much required it. But Lucy and End had moved so fast-
No, no, figure out the problem at hand first. Figure out how to approach the power realm of uberdemons later.
"Ruby!"
The Scarlet Reaper looked back to see Raven flying up onto the roof, both of them needing to use their maiden powers to make sure they weren't blown away by the errant shockwaves of the battles near the castle ruins.
"What happened?" the bandit asked. "What was that thing?"
"End," Ruby urgently replied. "Lucy's holding him off, but I don't think she can do it long."
"End? He's gone Etherious?" Raven looked back at the catastrophe of colliding stars, but she had to shield her eyes from the glow. "I understand how this may sound, especially coming from me, but I advise we take advantage of this opportunity to run."
Ruby frowned. "And leave Lucy behind?"
"There's nothing we can do to help her," Raven pointed out. "No machines can operate in this kind of heat, our engines are literally melting! Our ice wizards can't keep them cool while they're also keeping Erza's water bath from boiling her!"
The airship proceeded to shudder and screech, illustrating the Spring Maiden's point.
"Penny!" Ruby called, hoping her yell would be heard over the thunder of the battles. "How long can we stay airborne!?"
"Systems are compromised by the rapid rise in temperature! Dr. Watts' designs were meant to operate around End's base form. Weathering the heat I'm registering from his Etherious Form for extended periods is impossible!" Penny reported back. "If we don't find a way to cool the engines, we won't last a minute!"
"And if we do?!" Ruby inquired. "If we can cool the engines?"
"If we can do that? A few minutes, maybe."
Ruby's lips curled into a reluctant but determined frown. "Have to do."
"Have to do? Are you insane?!" Raven shouted.
"You are well aware of the answer to that question," Ruby replied, marching for the engines. "You're a maiden. You can do ice magic well enough. You can even help me figure out the precise stuff I need to help."
"I can't make the portal to get us out at the same time!" Raven pointed. "Which I can't do at all if we go back into a fight we can't help in instead of getting outside the perimeter!"
"It's a risk! I know it is!" Ruby insisted. "But I have to trust in Lucy to keep End occupied long enough for me to get off Fairy Glitter!"
"Damn it, it's not going to work, Summer!"
Ruby reeled back, not sure if she could have felt even one of End or Salem's blows more than she was rocked by that sentence. Raven herself paled with horror after the words left her mouth, her eyes wide with grief at having spoken them.
'Mommy loves you more than anything in the whole world.'
Her mother had loved her and Yang enough to bet everything against impossible odds. Just as Ruby loved all her friends, Lucy included. But she'd seen what that love and the unwillingness to back down under any circumstances did when it went untempered. It had turned Summer Rose into COMMAND ESR and in the end, even if her mother had given her life to save her, the Gate of the Maiden's larger goals weren't aided by that fanaticism.
Fairy Tail would never leave without Lucy. Wendy's team had their own mission and Yang… Yang had made her choice for now, but Lucy hadn't. She was sacrificing herself for them to escape, just as Master Makarov had tried to do for the Tenrou team when they were confronted by Acnologia, and she knew what the rest of the guild had said about that. You didn't die for your friends, you lived for them-
'Whatever happens, trust me not to die.'
Ruby frowned as Lucy's words cut through her head. Her friend had no intention of dying to End. It made sense to some degree, Salem wouldn't let her Ophiuchus kill the Celestial Spirit Wizard even if she wasn't crucial to her plans. And observing the pair's duel now, she could tell the fire demon wasn't fighting with the same blind fury that he had unleashed when he'd first seen Lucy at Haven.
The blonde had recognized the arguments that would go through Ruby's head and preempted them. She knew that if they were all captured here, Loke's sacrifice would be for nothing. The pragmatic thing to do was to do as Raven suggested and flee. And that wasn't a concern Ruby could ignore if they were to have any chance of winning this war.
At the same time… she could not back down from helping her friends for fear of risk.
"Penny! Get outside the perimeter! Have Weiss pour all the ice dust she's got on the engines!" Ruby commanded.
"Aye, aye!" Penny responded, gunning over the field of lava End had left in front of them.
Ruby turned to Raven. "Make the portal. As soon as it's ready, you all go. Whether I'm back or not."
"Whether you're back?" Raven repeated, befuddled. "What are you-incoming!"
Ruby whipped around at the Spring Maiden's shout, her silver eyes widening as a trio of Wyvern raced for the airship, each equal or larger than the one she and Weiss had slain at Beacon Tower. The creatures opened their maws and let loose a trio of massive fireballs for the sleek shuttle.
The leader of Team RWBY and the pariah of Team STRQ acted as one without a word, their eyes lighting with the maidens' glow as each of them thrust out their arms and summoned up a fierce, racing tornado around the ship. The ravenous wall of wind sliced the incoming flames to pierces, but the force of the attacks still rocked the small craft, both huntress and bandit forced to their knees by the unstable footing.
"Damn it!" Ruby roared, punching the roof of the airship in frustration. It was so obvious! How could she have missed it?!
They had to be outside the Grimm perimeter to create the portal. If they were outside the perimeter, Salem's order to keep the ancient Umbral Spirits away wouldn't protect them. And while the ground being lava could deny them footing, that didn't mean anything to the ones that could fly.
Raven couldn't protect the ship and make a portal big enough for the entire shuttle at the same time, not without a dust blade. Jellal and Juvia were the only ones on the ship who had both the power to keep the Grimm at bay and weren't completely exhausted and they needed to attend to Erza.
Which meant only Ruby remained.
She'd planned to use her maiden powers and her semblance to jet to Lucy and End herself, blast the demon with Fairy Glitter, and rush back with the Celestial Spirit Wizard. There was no guarantee that it would work, but if it failed, she would be the only one captured with her, the others able to escape to fight the good fight.
Now, she could only look with frustration and trepidation towards her friend's valiant struggle, knowing that she could not even try to aid her without dooming the rest of their loved ones.
"I'm trusting you, Lucy," Ruby muttered. "Don't you dare let me down."
"What?" Raven asked, unable to hear the whisper over everything else.
"Less talking, more portal-making!" Ruby shrieked, turning her back on the former bandit queen before she could respond. "Requip!"
Full Magnolia flashed over her shoulders, the twin cannons rising to the sky as Silver Spirit Magic erupted from her eyes into their barrels. Three more Wyverns joined the trio already present, the airborne horde bearing down on the shuttle as more dark creatures rallied to their battle cry.
Those poor bastards. Ruby had a lot to work out.
"Gun Magic - Argenteum Salvo Bombardment!"
Silver shells ripped through the flock of blackness like bolts of divine lightning.
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As she soared back through the sky, falling perilously close to the bubbling fields of magma that had once been the castle's southwest courtyard, Lucy's brilliant mind worked a mile a minute to try and figure out how she was going to get out of this.
She was not at a total disadvantage. End's Etherious Form was astronomically powerful, equal to Salem and the Celestial Spirit King's current titanic forms (she'd have to avoid the cast-off of from that battle as well), but thanks to her new Star Dress, she was at least in the same weight class of raw power, if on a lower end of that spectrum.
Unfortunately, where she did lag behind was in experience with such might. She didn't know how often End had been able to train with his ultimate state, but she was wearing the Celestial Spirit King's Star Dress for the very first time. The nature of the magic helped, its foundation was the bond of friendship between her and the king, so she had a ghostly feeling in her mind of her benefactor's techniques, but she'd had to train to solidify that feeling into an actual fighting style with her other spirits. The Lucy Meteor Saber had felt absolutely euphoric to pull off, but she didn't know if she'd be able to pull off anything more complex.
"Fire Devil Emperor - Dante's Choir!"
"Oh, not good!" Lucy panicked, the flames radiating off End's body coalescing into hundreds of white-hot marbles.
The fire demon's bullets rained down in a hail faster and more numerous than even Evergreen's Fairy Machine Gun. Lucy did her best to dash away through the sky, but the rate of fire was too intense, with each miss sending up an explosion of lava to harry the Celestial Spirit Wizard anyway, cutting off her escape routes as the bombardment continued to zero-in.
Each time she was struck was a bomb going off in her face, her body hurdling towards the lava fields. Her aura would have shattered after just one of the fire bullets if not for her Star Dress boosting her defenses, and even it was becoming noticeably chipped. End's blaze destroyed magic with its touch and her new armor was no exception, the spell giving her half a chance breaking down with each blow.
She did her best to block with her sword, she could just conjure a new one if it was broken down as it wasn't the core of her Star Dress, but she quickly found that a difficult task. She wasn't Erza, she wasn't trained to use a blade, and using the thin hunk of celestial metal to block an onslaught of tiny bullets from all angles was just a bit outside her ability to improvise. If only she had a whip, she could work with this-
… wait. Why didn't she?
Natsu improvised new spells all the time. Yang had apparently conjured freaking wings on the fly when she'd needed them. She'd always been weaker in terms of raw power than her Fire Slayer loved ones, but now? She was wielding more power than she'd ever imagined. So what was stopping her from summoning her weapon of choice?
Just her. Only her and her doubts that she wasn't good enough, that she could never do the things her friends could do.
And you know what? Some of them she couldn't. She wasn't trained in swordplay like Erza, she couldn't pull that out of a hat. But she was not a burden. She could do things her friends couldn't do, in this case, stand against End. And there were things her friends could do that she could do as well. Things they had inspired within her.
All she needed to do was try.
"Lucy Star Whip!"
Her chipped sword shattered into golden light, only to reform into a longer, curling line, the spheres she normally conjured with Urano Metria spaced out along the golden tendril. Now possessing a weapon she had experience with, Lucy deftly lashed out with her new whip, the Celestial Bodies intercepting End's fire bullets with efficient precision. The weapon's own power softened the salvo impact, allowing the Celestial Spirit Wizard to stabilize herself in the air as she poured more magic into her weapon to replenish its curse-ravaged constitution.
The rain of flame marbles she hadn't wasted energy blocking fell around her, walls of lava surging into the sky around her as a blinding white comet, End himself, streaked towards her.
"I know you can hear me. For whatever it's worth, I'm sorry for what I nearly did to you," Lucy said, her brown eyes narrowed and hard as she readied her whip. "But my friends are trusting me not to die. I haven't given up on escaping with them by some miracle. So don't expect an easy fight. Because right now… I've got a fire in my belly."
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The Celestial Spirit Wizard's words only made End even more furious.
"Fire Devil Emperor - Purgatory's Cerberus!"
In his ultimate form, he didn't even have to move his hands to conjure his constructs, the white-hot fire surging out of him by nature and shooting an entire pack of three-headed flame hounds towards Heartfilia. The beasts tore through sky and lava alike as they howled for Celestial Spirit Wizard blood.
Lucy stood her ground, her whip flying about her in a blur as she built up speed and power in its glowing form. One by one, the circles spread out along the line's length began to light up a menagerie of different colors, until the blonde was surrounded by a sphere of rainbow starlight.
End pulled his skeletal frames close, his blazing wings curling around his body. Livid as he was, he wasn't dumb enough to run into a maelstrom like that without protection.
"Fire Devil Emperor - Purgatory's Veil!"
"Urano Metria - Slice Storm!"
The whip's building rainbow streaks surged outward, lines of celestial energy shearing trenches into the lava below as the barrage cut the flaming Cerberuses to pieces, the hounds howling their death knells as their three heads were separated before exploding in a cacophony of death. Just like that, the pack of ferocious phantasms had been obliterated, but Heartfilia's attack had merely crashed against End's wings, his blazing veil incinerating her magic like any other.
The Ophiuchus wasted no time mourning his creations, charging through the lava walls and his own flames to catch his foe while she was still overstretched from her assault. Only for her to slam into him midcharge.
Both of them spent a split second in confusion amidst the sterling blaze. He especially had not expected her to attempt such an uncharacteristically reckless move, her armor chipped and missing pieces in several places from the flames.
Perhaps that was why she recovered just an instant faster, aiming at his eye with a flash of her whip. He reacted before she could make contact, his claw snatching the glimmering tendril right in front of his face. Once more the celestial bodies along the weapon began to build up a cosmic storm to spread along the line, ready to blast him within the radius his wings could protect him from.
Not fast enough though.
Heat was energy. Energy could not be created or destroyed, with even magic just transferring the power of ethernano processed by an origin into spells that utilized that energy in a certain fashion. However, in the matter of heat, a denser object could transfer that energy into the environment, meaning raise the temperature, with far greater alacrity than a less dense object.
While End's raw firepower did increase when he entered his Etherious Form, an equally crucial change was the condensing of his body to more efficiently emit that heat. The white fire that he had to consciously call upon and build in his base form now flowed like a gushing river. Meaning he could shape his mightiest attacks with barely a move.
"Fire Devil Emperor - Cruel Sun MAX!"
With himself at the center, the demon's molten veins pulsed an enormous sphere of alabaster flames, Heartfilia unwittingly caught point-blank by the blast. The Celestial Spirit Wizard's eyes widened in horror before she was blown back through the air, smoke curling up from her body as her armor was reduced to a patchwork.
End's wings angle directly behind him and burst with a booming conflagration, rocketing him forward at the same blinding speed he'd used to destroy the Celestial Spirit King's meteor shower. In the blink of an eye, he was right in front of Lucy, a concentrated orb of fire condensed in front of his fist as his haymaker crashed into her face. He twisted his hand right into her nose to ensure she couldn't see at the moment of impact. And from a non-strategic standpoint, make it just a fraction more satisfying.
The orb ruptured upon contact, a rush of fire spread out as the blonde mage went flying backwards. Heartfilia used her newfound powers of flight to right herself, flipping herself midair and using her whip to slice a canyon into the lava as she neared the moment ground, creating a momentary safe haven to get her momentum under control before the magma rushed back in.
Of course, that safety was all dependent on whether she could fly out of the crevice in time.
End gave a mental command and a small explosion rang out from the back of her left leg. Lucy was sent reeling to the side, unbalanced by the unexpected blast as she barely scampered away from the incoming lava walls. The fire demon conjured another sterling Cruel Sun and launched it down, aiming to cut off her escape as the magma caved in from both sides.
Even off balance though, the Celestial Spirit Mage was smart, and quickly growing accustomed to her new gargantuan power. She flailed her whips forward, cutting a new exit canyon into the lava and dashing through to escape both the magma filling and End's attack.
That wouldn't do at all. He concentrated for a split second once again and another explosion rang out, this time on Heartfilia's right arm, the one that held her whip. She was sent spiraling towards the walls of her new volcanic passage, but her eyes darted to her assaulted limb too quickly. End cursed under his breath. He had miscalculated, allowed her to see what was causing those explosions to ring out around her body by targeting her weapon arm so soon after she'd used it.
A thin spider made of white fire, similar to his Purgatory Hounds but far more less noticeable, frantically crawled across Lucy's reddened skin, attempting to hide away to a new location where it and its fellows that had been deployed by his earlier punch could disrupt the Spirit Mage even further.
Fighting against him, especially his Etherious Form, required an impressively high level of fire resistance. Anything less than that would cause the opponent to quite literally melt in place rather than keep up a fight. However, such protection came with its own disadvantages, ones that his tiny Spider Skitters exploited. The incrediary arachnids didn't release much heat relative to him until they exploded on his mental command, and because of their fire resistance, his foes wouldn't be able to actually feel them crawling across their skin until they made their move. Their explosions would cause significant damage to those of a caliber he'd need to use them against in the first place, but they could create distractions for him to exploit with more dangerous attacks.
Of course that advantage only remained so long as his opponents didn't know about them.
Case in point, Lucy, even while spinning out through the air, was able to exert a surge of her new Star Dress's power over herself, sending the dozen Spider Skitters he'd planted on her flying into the closing lava walls. Once the infiltrators were eliminated, the Celestial Spirit Wizard was finally able to rise back above the molten ground to face The Ophiuchus on even air.
Smoke blew out from his nostrils, another Cruel Sun immediately sent barreling towards his hated enemy. Thoughtlessly, the blonde tried to slice through the same attack that had crippled Erza, her whip shattering as she was sent careening back towards the ground by the force of the blast, her armor not even covering her arms and legs anymore.
If End was foolish enough to believe a fight was over before one combatant laid down in surrender or defeat, he'd say it was over then. Heartfilia only had so much time in her new form to begin with, and every blow she took cost magic power needed to maintain the Celestial Spirit King's presence on their plane. Once that happened, he could sweep her and the other aside with ease, provided the latter hadn't escaped. Which he needed to prevent, without accidentally killing Lucy. Salem's love bought her that much mercy from him.
Only that much.
"Did you really think it'd be that easy?" End snorted, angling himself sideways so one of his wings could cover him while the other could stretch back to face the hole in the Grimm perimeter. "Did you think you could just copy that flamebrain's recklessness and you'd copy his luck as well?"
To her credit, even in her damaged Star Dress, Lucy managed to right herself before she hit the lava, conjuring a new golden whip as Salem's battle with her father raged just a little ways off, the runoff of the fight crashing into the lava as columns of magma framed the smaller nemeses' stand-off.
"Not recklessness, not always. Perseverance," Lucy retorted. "You hate me. Nothing's going to stop that. Even the fact that we didn't know you were alive?"
"For him, you would have gladly tossed me aside anyway," End growled. "I know what the world thinks of a demon. And I refuse to be expendable trash."
Lucy's face, before set in righteous determination, shifted at that, taking on an expression of pity (End might say compassion if he didn't know better) between crackles of her battered aura.
"No one is trash. No one is expendable," she empathetically declared. "If you knew Natsu half as well as you think you do, you'd know that."
"So you say," End sneered, his own memories telling a different story of action. "But I believe you were hoping for a miracle to let your friends escape? Let's dash that childish dream. Dante's Choir."
Swarms of marble-sized white fire spawned from his wings, holding as he primed them for the extra range they'd need to cover getting back to the Fairy Tail gang's shuttle and the Wyverns currently being torn to shreds by Ruby's valiant defense. They must have been attempting to cool its systems from the heat of his presence, but not even Gray's ice could hold up for long in the presence of his Etherious Form. They were going to fall out of the sky. Fortunately, as they were outside the Grimm perimeter, they wouldn't fall into the lava he'd left at the boundary, so he was free to blast them out of the sky before they completed whatever desperate strategy they must have been working on to escape via Raven's portals.
End was utterly furious in Lucy's presence. But he tried not to repeat the same mistakes twice if he could. His temper had destroyed Haven and crippled Erza, neither of which he'd wanted to do. He could not be like Cinder and allow his emotions to hamstring him into mediocrity. He would do his job and disrupt Fairy Tail's escape plans, beat Lucy into submission, and then collect the rest for captivity, no more outbursts involved. Though, he would admit he treasured the panic that lit Heartfilia's face when she realized what he was doing, how if she took a shot at him in the brief time she had left, he'd just block it with his other wing's veil.
However, in that moment, the panic faded into something else. Horror? And then… acceptance? And then she turned.
Turned towards Salem.
"No," End whispered, his features stretched with fear. "Don't you dare!"
"Lucy Meteor-"
"DON'T YOU DARE!"
End's wings abandoned their assault preparation and sent him screaming forward, his alabaster blaze covering his body in an inferno brighter than any star. Heartfilia's eyes widened at his charge, desperately darting only for his burning claw to rip through her whips and his wing to bash her aside harder than ever before, her aura shattering to nothing.
She would have struck Salem from behind. She would have struck his friend, his first friend, from behind, with an attack that would have certainly provided an opening for the Celestial Spirit King to exploit to the utmost. To trap her in stone, to seal her away, unable to move, but fully conscious of everything around her. She would have inflicted a hell End knew all too well on his dearest companion.
The Ophiuchus wasn't furious. He wasn't even livid. There wasn't a word adequate to describe his murderous, all-consuming rage to make this manifestation of all his trauma burn. And he'd melt her friends' precious airship at the same time.
His skeletal frame flared out behind him, his wings bursting outward and elongating into the lava, growing until they struck solid ground deep down and steadied him for the blowback of his greatest attack.
"Flames brighter than sun or star…"
RWBYRWBYRWBYRWBYFTFTFTFT
"...Sin darker than death or night."
Lucy became very, very terrified when End began speaking an incantation longer than a few words. With how powerful his regular attacks, this one could very well be apocalyptic.
Fortunately, her move had done what she'd hoped for, causing him to break off his attack on the others and reposition himself between her and Salem, meaning her path to fly back to the airship was wide open.
Still, she felt a pit of guilt and disgust for herself in her stomach. Attacking and threatening an opponent's vulnerable loved one to gain an advantage in a fight? That was a tactic that had been used against her many times by people she did not want to be like at all. But to save her friends, she had pushed aside that concern.
"Gun Magic - Argentum Long Range!"
Lucy's eyes whipped up as a silver artillery shell flashed over her shoulder. The Celestial Spirit Wizard looked back to see Ruby, Full Magnolia aimed towards her battle for a moment before returning to forcing back the Grimm. The Spirit Slayer waved back with her massive artillery cannons, drawing the blonde's eyes to the Kindred Link portal in front of the airship, nearly big enough for the entire shuttle to get through.
For a split second, Lucy's heart soared. She'd meant to buy time for the escape and she had succeeded. She immediately began to fly back to the ship so that she could join her friends.
Then that split second passed and she heard Ruby's shot sizzle away.
The Celestial Spirit Wizard glanced back at End while still flying to the ship, her eyes widening as she witnessed Ruby's cannoshot disintegrate the moment it made contact with him. The demon's flame wings grew brighter and brighter, the lava below solidifying back to steaming earth as the heat was sucked out of it.
"...God's crown of creation burns like the dawn to ash, to oblivion."
His glowing veins of magma flowed upward, leaving his scaled unaccompanied as the power coalesced around his jaws. Fire was a simple magic at heart, but in the hands of a master, it could burn the land, sea, and sky. And everything that lived in all three.
Lucy slid to a stop just before she reached the airship, Ruby able to flee back inside as the Grimm fled in a panic from the oncoming attack, even their tortured senses able to be terrified by its unimaginable power.
The portal wasn't ready. Raven needed another fraction of a moment to make it big enough and then the ship needed to fly through it. Thankfully, Lucy still had the remains of her Star Dress, a shit-ton of magic built off of her bond with the Celestial Spirit King.
The Celestial Spirit Wizard of Fairy Tail looked back to Ruby, close enough to hear in the brief instant of calm amidst the chaos.
"Trust me."
It was a risk. Not even Lucy knew if her gamble would work against a curse that destroyed magic itself. But she managed to see Ruby's nod just as she heard the most spine-chilling words she'd ever conceived echo across the battlefield.
"Fire Devil Emperor Secret Art! THE END!"
The Ophiuchus's jaws opened, a beam made of supernovas erupting from his maw.
Lucy's Star Dress evaporated around her and she played her last card.
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Go Forth and Conquer!