The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Interlude: The Itinerant Emperor
Vistarion, The Same Day
At 5:41 AM every morning, with the staunch dependability of day following night (though often before it had deigned to do so), Invel Yura came to the conclusion that he had the worst job in all of Alvarez.
That was when his designated minute of dozing would expire, and the alarm clock would resume its frantic clamour for a split-second before being frozen solid for its troubles, and he'd tumble out of bed with all the grace of a one-legged goose often less than four hours after getting into it.
Today was no different: the morning – if one could afford this godforsaken hour the dignity of the name – began as a festival of stumbling, fumbling, and tripping; pawing blindly at the coffeemaker; staggering down the pitch-dark corridor as if gravity were swinging pendulum-like from one wall to the other.
The first light switch his flailing hand found successfully was the one in the bathroom. His eyes closed reflexively against the flare and didn't open again until enough icy layers had accumulated around the poor bulb to dim its unwelcome glow, by which point he was already slouched against the tiled wall with the water streaming. Cold showers were of little use in waking an ice mage, so he cranked the thermostat up as high as it would go, watching detachedly as his skin turned faintly pink and then cherry-red, and the water, ice and steam settled into that anomalous triple point unique to the Winter General's bathroom.
At last he was awake enough to slap at the right button on the coffeemaker – though not quite enough to remember the milk, which he downed as a chaser straight from the carton while tugging a brush through his hair with his other hand. Shirt, tie, suit, overcoat – each was plucked on autopilot from the wardrobe, entirely dependent on the organizational predictability of his past self. A glance in the mirror, and then another, just to be sure; running down the checklist his predecessor had advised him to tape to the wall beside it, reassuring his still-booting brain that he did indeed have communication lacrima and boots and trousers – and then he was gone, out the door. A layer of ice formed across the lock, there to protect it until he staggered back in, twenty hours later if he was lucky and forty-four if he was not.
At 6:00 AM sharp, an entirely different man strode through the front gates of the palace at Vistarion.
He was commanding, he was statesmanlike; there was no trace, as he swept through the courtyard, of the man who had stumbled drunkenly through corridors he couldn't remember ever having seen in the light. Each magisterial step rang out proudly upon the stone. The guards greeted him as he passed – they had not asked to see his security pass in many years, though he still wore it under his coat every single day – and he inclined his head solemnly in return, no indication there that they were addressing a man who had not had a full night's sleep in as long as he could remember.
His dress was immaculate; his every step was measured; his every word was chosen with care. In a regime headed by a whimsical emperor, whose closest advisors were predominantly of a military, rather than a political, mindset, the Chief of Staff to the Emperor of Alvarez wasn't so much a rock of stability as the keystone which held up the entire day-to-day running of the empire; his the only island in this crazy storm-lashed archipelago of an administration upon which anyone had thought to build a lighthouse.
If that wasn't a good reason to be sat at his desk reviewing the briefings for that day's meetings before any of his secretaries had even woken up, he didn't know what was.
It was rumoured amongst his staff that the desire to keep those inglorious first nineteen minutes of each day a secret was the reason why Invel Yura was still single.
The hardest part of maintaining a stable government in Alvarez wasn't so much that His Majesty changed his mind, but that he did so unpredictably.
It was the one potentially disrespectful thought Invel would permit himself, for it was foolish to imagine that a man as precise as himself could ever overlook it, let alone when it fell upon his shoulders to transform that unpredictability into a functioning regime.
Not knowing what His Majesty would do next was the worst part of this job. So the southern governors had spent the first hour of today's meeting insisting, as if they thought Invel was in league with His Majesty's capriciousness. As if they honestly believed Invel enjoyed never knowing where His Majesty was or when he was next going to show up for work. As if Invel had somehow been in on it that fateful day ten months ago, when after two months spent finalizing their preparations for war, His Majesty at last announced that they were going to invade Ishgar… and then promptly disappeared.
How the governors could still cling to the misapprehension that Invel approved of His Majesty's behaviour was beyond him, and given that he had a hundred more important issues to deal with that morning alone, he doubted he would come to understand them any time soon.
This was hardly the office of a man given to caprice. His wasn't an obsessive orderliness; all right-angles and alphabetization and glowers thrown at any assistant who nudged a stack of papers. It was, first and foremost, pragmatic. This was a place where things got done. His desk was a snowstorm of reports and schedules and draft legislation, but only because he'd get through a snowstorm's worth of papers each day, and it was his snowstorm; nothing would ever be lost or broken there unless he willed it. There were bookshelves stripped of anything except the latest editions of legal manuals, ordered from most to least frequently consulted, with the spaces in between stuffed full of files he needed to hand. It was no colder in here than it was in the rest of the temperature-regulated building – certainly there was no indication that the room was inhabited by a powerful ice mage, because letting his magic take over his place of business would have been highly unprofessional.
Somewhere behind the cabinets (containing more files, neatly sorted and kept unobtrusively out of sight) and the obligatory dust-free paintings (landscapes from across the empire, a balance between the mountainous winterscapes one would expect from him and the urban and summer scenes only one who did not know him would not), the walls were an inoffensive yellow-grey. They did not suit a man of ice-blue and snow-silver, yet he had refused to have them repainted upon inheriting the office from his predecessor. Some things transcended individuals. As far as Invel was concerned, the Office of the Chief of Staff – both the role and the room which symbolized it – was one of them.
If the glorious throne room down the corridor was where the big decisions were made, then this small and functional office was where those decisions were executed.
And in an administration headed by an itinerant emperor, it was all too often the single axis upon which the great and sophisticated clockwork of the Alvarez Empire turned.
There was a knock at the half-open door, and his executive assistant stuck her head through the gap. "Do you have five minutes to see August?" she checked.
"Of course." He didn't have five minutes to spare by any means – he hadn't for eight years – but he did have a schedule full of ministers and senators and lobbyists, all of whom would be better to antagonize than the emperor's unofficial second-in-command. There was, strictly speaking, an unlocked door which led directly from August's office to his, but Invel did not ask why August had not used it, nor indeed why it had remained closed for ten full months.
If Invel looked too young to hold a position as critical as Chief of Staff (and he did, never mind that he had put more hours into this job than colleagues twice his age), then August looked too old to be the one implicitly expected to assume control were anything to befall their emperor. That was perhaps the only thing they had in common – no one would make the mistake of judging either by age alone more than once. If they thought the leader of the Spriggan Twelve's position was purely ceremonial, they were too young to remember the Unifying Wars that had preceded the empire's ascendance; if they thought him frail, it was only because they were ignorant of magic, history, politics, and common sense; if they thought a mortal nonagenarian unsuitable to assume, even temporarily, the throne of a perpetually young immortal, they had not borne witness to the authority he commanded amongst the twelve most powerful mages in the empire, nor registered the unparalleled trust afforded to him by the emperor.
It was whispered, amongst the Twelve, that August would die only when His Majesty permitted it – and if His Majesty did not, he would simply keep on living forever, natural laws be damned.
The two regarded each other in silence. August did not sit, nor was he invited to; Invel did not stand from behind his desk.
So it was between the two most powerful figures in government.
So it had been for ten months.
Apologies had been made and accepted, and working relationships stitched back together, but sometimes things never quite went back to how they had been before.
"Any news of His Majesty?" August asked.
Invel sighed inwardly. Seventy-odd years of being the emperor's most trusted advisor, and August still had yet to master that asking-for-a-friend face.
"I would have informed you at once, were that the case," he answered crisply.
"I saw the southern governors leaving," the elder mage persisted, every word perfectly balanced, perfectly even, a perfectly horizontal seesaw with a thousand tonnes on each end. "I thought perhaps you had received news concerning the invasion."
Invel plucked the report in question from the middle of the third pile on his desk without looking, and handed it to the other; a silent challenge to the man who might have been explaining his sudden curiosity or might have been accusing Invel of lying. "Not at all," said he. "They merely wanted to discuss incident preparedness."
That was the euphemism they had taken to using; their answer to all the accusations that came their nation's way. Increased Alvarez military presence in neutral waters? Incident preparedness. Testing new magical technology in strict violation of international law? Incident preparedness. The quiet closing of trade routes, the tightening of internal security, the systematic unearthing and neutralization of foreign spies that they had, until now, tolerated as a matter of course? It all fell under the umbrella of incident preparedness. It was bureaucratese for a matter they did not want their opponents taking seriously, because the fate of the empire – and the world – depended upon them not doing so until it was too late.
The assumption, amongst other nations, was that the incident for which they prepared was the unfortunate breakdown of negotiations with Ishgar, from which animosity would surely follow, if not outright war. Their enemies thought it a display of strength from an empire which feared it may soon find itself without allies on the international scene, if it could not prove its worth, its independence.
It could not have been further from the truth.
The incident in question, one over which – quite unlike the negotiations with Ishgar – they had no control and almost as little means of predicting, was their emperor's return.
As soon as he came back, the most powerful military nation on the planet would shed its mantle of diplomacy and begin its conquest. Nothing would be able to stop them – not Ishgar, and not Acnologia either. The apocalypse would be prevented, and mankind saved, and the entire world would at last be united in triumph and in might.
Until then, they continued to act out their role in this international game of chicken, hiding their true intentions within this farce of a negotiation… and they prepared. Prepared for an order that many – the alliance of southern governors this morning being just one little eddy within a growing tide of opinion – had started to believe would never come.
It would come. Invel knew it, August knew it. The rest of the Twelve knew it too, which might have been an advantage if they would come to Vistarion and say so, but they had scattered after the incident ten months ago. They were first and foremost military advisors; they did not have the patience to participate in the mundane affairs of the empire unless His Majesty explicitly requested it, and he was not here to make such a request.
The problem was that, as far as the majority of His Majesty's civil servants and regional governors and political ministers were aware, their emperor was simply an unsurpassable mage, who had achieved immortality by dint of his magic. It was only the Twelve who knew the truth – only the Twelve whom, upon passing the final trial and entering His Majesty's inner circle, had been informed about the Curse of Contradiction by His Majesty himself.
And of the Twelve who currently served, Invel suspected that only he and August had worked out that there was more to the curse than their emperor had admitted.
Emperor Spriggan was a brilliant man, a singular genius of strategy as well as magic, who had walked alone amongst the ruins of a continent ravaged by the dragons and built an empire from the ashes and the dust, but his curse affected his mind as well as his body and magic. It made him erratic and it made him inconsistent, the unpredictability of a spring breeze with the consequences of a meteor strike. His desires were subject to abrupt, irrational, and often self-contradictory change.
He was almost always stable in Alvarez – he had told Invel, once, that being within the nation he had created gave him a safe focus – but the crucial word there was almost. Invel had seen it happen only once, seen his mighty emperor confused and fragile and scared, but once was enough. It was the first and only time that he had experienced the sensation others called cold, as ice beyond his control had seeped into his stomach and frozen his heart within his chest.
That was the moment he had taken upon himself the duty to keep the empire stable; to be the bridge between His Majesty's tumultuous will and his destiny to unite the entire world. It was the worst job in Alvarez, and it grew more difficult daily, as the political situation at home and abroad worsened and there was still no word from His Majesty.
Their emperor left because he liked to travel, and there was no point in ruling half the world if it didn't give him the freedom to do as he wished, but Invel suspected that the reason why he went silent when he was abroad in this age of communication lacrima had little to do with any desire to immerse himself in a foreign culture. He left because he was uncertain, or because he felt he was becoming so; he sought to put distance between himself and his nation during his moments of weakness. His devotion was admirable, and the trust he placed in Invel and his staff to keep things running smoothly in his absence was what made this most difficult of jobs worth every exhausted hour, but it didn't make the role of the beleaguered Chief of Staff any easier.
No one else had deduced the reason for their emperor's frequent absences, and for Invel to tell them what he suspected would be an unthinkable betrayal of trust. Indeed, doing so had not crossed his mind once in months of tumult. But the alliance of southern governors was just one of many factions increasingly unsatisfied with the current state of affairs, and Invel was running out of ways to pacify them.
And August, who should have understood, who should have been his sole ally in this chaos, had not been for ten months now.
The old mage finally stopped flicking through the dossier, satisfied that Invel had not been hiding any secret communications with the emperor from him. Invel had done no such thing – they were allies who had disagreed, not enemies – but it was the lack of trust that mattered. For two of the Twelve to be at odds on the eve of war was a matter of great disconcertment for the man who all too often felt like he would have to encase the entire administration in ice just to hold it together until His Majesty's return.
August said, suddenly, "I'll meet with the southern governors this afternoon. I've known the ringleaders for a long time. I can get them off your back for a few days."
Invel's first thought was that this was an attempt to undermine him, though he dismissed the suspicion at once. Perhaps it was, but he would choose to believe that it wasn't. Duty always came first. That was something they both agreed on, at least. "I appreciate it, although I fear I may need longer than a few days."
The other shook his head, slowly and with great weight. "I think it will be soon."
"You've heard something?"
"It's just a feeling."
When it came to His Majesty, August's hunches were often more reliable than any rumour from a distant land. The old man seemed to understand him in a way no one else did. Though, by all accounts, he had been at His Majesty's side for going on ninety years, so perhaps it wasn't surprising. "Very well."
August nodded once and swept out of the room, his black cloak billowing momentarily back through the door like sovereign flag, a nation of one that would remain loyal to His Majesty even if every other territory in the empire were to defect, and then he was gone.
Invel permitted himself a moment to rub at his temples. August's feeling had better be right. If this was allowed to go on for much longer, half the governors would end up signing a peace treaty with Ishgar's Magic Council, and the other half would be landing on the beaches of Fiore with an invasion force before the ink had even dried… and he and August would be caught in the middle again.
Then he straightened and called for the secretary to send in his next appointment.
When the previous Chief of Staff had stepped down, she had put together a file for Invel containing the most useful information she had uncovered during her time in the role. Amongst the background information on Ishgar-born senators, and the diagrams of connections between minor ministers and special interest groups, Invel had found the contact information for a local pizzeria. He had duly taken note of it, as was his nature, though he had been unable to picture any scenario in which the smooth running of the Alvarez Empire could depend on takeaway pizza.
Now, as he raised the handheld lacrima to his ear – a technology Alvarez had mastered long before Ishgar had 'invented' it – and was greeted by a chirpy voice saying, "Ah, right on time, Invel. The usual?" before he'd even opened his mouth, he wondered how naïve he had been to ever think this job would allow him to take meals in his own home. Sure, there was a staff canteen, but it usually closed for the night long before his back-to-back meetings had come to an end. If not for the twenty-four-hour corner shop between here and his house – another little local establishment with whose owners Alvarez's Chief of Staff was on first-name terms – there would have been nothing edible in his house at all.
Order thus placed, Invel settled back at his desk to scan the latest force depletion report for a single-landing-point invasion of Fiore (far too simplistic a scenario for His Majesty to ever consider, but simulating different invasion strategies was one of the ways Invel had been keeping the Department of Defence too busy to cause trouble), but he'd barely had time to wince at the pessimistic summary figures before the faint vibration of communication magic stirred against his senses.
Flipping the pages with one hand, he retrieved the lacrima with the other and held it to his ear, wondering how there could possibly be a problem with his pizza order when it was the same one he placed every day. He'd even given them a heads-up about the pending anchovy shortage after a prolonged standoff with Fiore's navy had cut into the fishing season-
The lacrima failed to connect.
By the time he took it away from his ear, the lacrima held his full attention. Military-class communication magic never just failed. Not in Vistarion, which would have been labelled the technological capital of the world had they shown any interest in sharing said technology with the rest of it. The device in his hand was blank, lifeless, emitting as much magic as a brick and mildly less useful for communicating with, because its lesser weight could not guarantee that a note taped to it would successfully penetrate the window it was thrown towards.
Yet the soft tingle of energy continued, his own magic vibrating in sympathy with sound waves at a pitch he could not hear, and if the lacrima in his hand wasn't causing it then it could only be his other lacrima; the one he carried with him religiously even though the man in possession of its counterpart hadn't used it in over four months.
There was no sharp intake of breath, no skipping heartbeat, no nervous moment needed to compose himself. From the moment he left his house to the moment he stumbled back in and collapsed on top of an unmade bed, everything about Invel was professional. He reached into his other pocket to touch the ultra-long-range communication lacrima hidden there, and bounced the call through to the large crystal orb sat upon his desk.
He was on his feet before the picture within had stabilized, bent at the waist in a bow so sincere that he would happily have held that position forever, had the figure in the lacrima not chuckled softly and chided, "There's no need for that, Invel. I'm not even in the room."
"Your Majesty," Invel conceded, straightening; accepting though not approving of the unspoken command.
That disapproval must have been evident in his voice, or perhaps the other simply knew him too well, as he chuckled again and waved his hand casually. "Sit. I can't see you like that."
Invel did so. The orb atop his desk held a hazy, dark image of his emperor, which sharpened as the connection between their lacrima stabilized but grew no brighter. Wherever he was, he was outside, and it was late – far later than it should have been. Invel's gaze flicked up to the five clocks on the wall, seeking out the two he had deliberately set next to each other: Vistarion, Alvarez and Crocus, Fiore. A six-hour time difference. Well, the hope that His Majesty might still be within his own empire had always been a long shot.
Invel's attention jumped from detail to detail in the lacrima image. There were no buildings in sight that might have given his emperor's location away, only the shadowy pillars of trees too indistinct to determine if they belonged to a rare species. Through the black tendrils above, however, Invel could make out a handful of stars. If he found a constellation he recognized, he could hazard a guess at the latitude of the scene in the lacrima – but no sooner had he thought this than the other flexed his fingers slightly, and the image blurred and shifted. By the time it refocussed, the sky was no longer visible. His emperor was sat cross-legged on the ground – his body was young enough for that to be a comfortable position – and he was smiling faintly.
Invel felt a surge of admiration for this man, this brilliant man, even as he understood what the gesture meant: don't bother, I'm not coming home any time soon. "You seem in high spirits this evening, Your Majesty."
"The universe is falling apart, Invel," came the mild response. "And this time, it might not even be my fault."
"That sounds like a matter for concern."
"Oh, it is. But if the world's going to end, I'd much rather it did so in an interesting manner than simply being destroyed by the Dragon of the Apocalypse, wouldn't you?"
"I do not believe that the world will end while you yet live in it, Your Majesty."
Another faint smile. "I shall endeavour to live up to your expectations. On a not entirely unrelated note, you haven't withdrawn my ambassador from Fiore, have you?"
"Not yet. The Fiorean authorities would perceive it as a sign that we have abandoned the diplomatic process, and we don't intend to give them any reason to lose faith in the negotiations until we are already at their doorstep. Although, the ambassador has repeatedly requested that we pull him and his family out of Crocus at the first indication that Fiore has caught on to our game."
"Noted, but I need him where he is for the time being. I might need his help getting into Mercurius if all else fails. Do not extract him without first consulting me."
Invel did not shift uncomfortably in his chair, and he certainly did not ask why a man who had not attended a single diplomatic summit in person for at least as long as Invel had held office was suddenly considering a trip to Mercurius. "Understood, Your Majesty."
"Good. There are two things I need from you right now, Invel."
"Name them," Invel said, at once.
"Firstly, I'm going to send you a Fiorean military communication sent between army outposts on the afternoon of the Seventh of July. I need it decrypting. I know we have spies in the Royal Army; pass it to someone who can interpret this sort of communication as quickly as possible."
"Of course. May I ask why?"
"Because side quests aren't as optional as I was led to believe," came the calm response. "Secondly… you have the intelligence files on the scattered members of Fairy Tail, do you not?"
"I do," Invel confirmed.
"Good. I need to find the man named Gray Fullbuster. Tell our agents in Fiore to keep their eyes peeled for any sign of him… anything at all. In the meantime, I want you to personally pull his file and check it over for me."
"What am I looking for?"
"Anything that might have been missed the first time round. Anything suspicious."
"More suspicious than him disappearing without a trace, you mean?"
"I'm hoping for some indication that he was taken by someone, or that he vanished of his own accord… rather than that he's decomposing at the bottom of a ravine somewhere." A shrug, as if it didn't much matter. It might have been convincing, if not for the fact that he'd made contact for the first time in months just to ask about it. "Well, if there's nothing to find, there's nothing to find. I'd like to be sure of that, though, which is why I'd like you to go over the reports yourself. Can you take a look tonight?"
Invel immediately dismissed every item on his itinerary less important than a direct request from the emperor – which was to say, all of them. "Of course." When no response came, he prompted, "Is there anything else, Your Majesty?"
"Focus on that for now. If you call me back tonight, I'll pick up."
"Understood. May I ask why the sudden interest in this man – in Fairy Tail in general?"
"You may not." A flash of something sharp in the shadows; a jagged edge drawn across their connection, glimpsed and then gone. "However, I will speak to you and the Twelve upon my return, and all will become clear, I think. Is that acceptable?"
"Of course. Thank you, Your Majesty."
Opposition research.
That was what His Majesty had called it, when he had told his intelligence agencies to start gathering information on the members of the Fiorean mage guild Fairy Tail over a year ago.
Invel hadn't believed him then, and as he sat at his desk, proving that he alone in this administration possessed the ability to look dignified with a confidential file in one hand and mozzarella entangling the fingers of the other, he found that he didn't believe him now.
Perhaps believe was the wrong word. This was opposition research, and those who had wondered at first why their spies were spending so much time with this one particular guild had ceased to wonder once reports of the power their mages possessed had steadily built up. They weren't a threat to the might of the Alvarez Empire, but they were notable enemies all the same. Anyone incapable of acknowledging that would not be worthy of advising the emperor.
But there were strong individuals in other Fiorean guilds, too, and it had not escaped Invel's notice that His Majesty's interest did not extend far beyond Fairy Tail. Fundamentally, their plan was to take and hold the entirety of Fiore, so that they could use it as a base from which to either strike against Acnologia or to conquer the rest of Ishgar and shore up their strength first, depending on how the Black Dragon reacted to their takeover. His Majesty, however, was only interested in hearing about the mages of this single guild in Magnolia, a city of no strategic importance whatsoever.
Not to mention, collecting information on said guild was made far harder by the fact that it had disbanded ten months ago. That should have made it less of a threat than other guilds, not more, but His Majesty had been adamant.
Then there was the fact that Fairy Tail's own Master had been an uninvited guest in the palace for the last ten months. At first, they had had no choice but to claim that His Majesty was too busy to meet with him. Makarov wouldn't speak about his purpose to anyone other than the emperor, but it also wasn't supposed to be common knowledge outside the administration that said emperor liked to drop off the face of the earth without contact for months – sometimes years – at a time, so a several-month game of delay and distract had begun. After His Majesty had returned to Vistarion, he had decided that Invel and the others should keep up the pretence. It seemed he had no intention of speaking to Makarov, yet wanted him to remain in the palace nonetheless, a prisoner of his own hope.
No, His Majesty's actions certainly weren't the necessary curiosity of a military commander towards his opponents. This was personal. That had all but been confirmed ten months ago, after Invel had happened to notice that His Majesty's calamitous disappearance had coincided with Fairy Tail's battle against the demonic guild Tartaros. That was what had caused him to question his course of action; that was what he had abandoned them for on the eve of war. Why, Invel had no idea, but it had precipitated a crisis in Alvarez and disturbed His Majesty's conviction enough that he hadn't returned to Vistarion for months.
Since then, Invel had mastered his unease. His Majesty was a master strategist, and could play the long game in the way only a four-hundred-year-old immortal could. Doubting him wasn't merely traitorous – it was idiotic. Fairy Tail was a threat, and the fact that they recognized that now would only make it easier to deal with them when the time came.
And if there was more going on here, well, Invel had no doubt that His Majesty would tell them when the time was right.
Because he was neither cruel nor stupid, Invel contacted August before calling His Majesty back. They sat beside each other – not quite relaxed, not quite friends, but August had placated the impatient governors for him and he had let August join the call and that, for now, would have to do.
Not that Invel was particularly fond of being in such close proximity to the old mage. August was the only person he had ever met with a complete inability to restrain his own magic; it was everywhere and everything all at once, and no attempt to suppress his magical presence ever worked. It was highly uncivilized not to restrain power of such magnitude – it was almost a threat – and when they'd first met, it had taken Invel several weeks to accept that the old mage was neither rude nor oblivious about it. The nature of his magic, unique that it was, made following etiquette a physical impossibility. It had always silently irritated Invel, although it had only been in the past ten months that he had started to find it uncomfortable.
Neither said a word to the other as they waited for the call to connect. It had never done so before. It had taken seven years of persuasion before Invel had managed to convince their emperor to carry an ultra-long-range communication lacrima with him on his travels, and it would likely take seven more before His Majesty was willing to use the blasted thing. He would answer no calls made to him – Invel suspected he had found some way of disabling the lacrima without setting off the military-grade anti-tampering wards; working for a genius of magic certainly had its downsides – but he had, on occasion, called the administration he had left behind, with the somewhat asymmetric expectation that Invel would pick up at once.
Well, he could understand a cursed soul's need for isolation without having to like it.
And, as promised, this time the call connected: the orb on the desk blazed white, and then dimmed almost at once, projecting across thousands of miles an image which contained little light when it left and almost none when it arrived. It was with no small consternation that Invel noticed the Emperor of Alvarez was still in the forest, a dark shape amongst darker trees, even though, if his suspicions were correct, it was around two in the morning where he was.
So it wasn't surprising to note that he had clearly been asleep, though it was surprising that he appeared before them as such. He was careful to maintain an authoritative appearance and demeanour in Vistarion; elusive he may have been, but he couldn't always avoid the formalities of state, and an emperor whose body had never been allowed to reach adulthood needed all the help he could get to project a sense of control. It was precisely to avoiding compromising this image that he left whenever he felt the curse beginning to dig its claws in.
Yet he wasn't in Vistarion right now, only appearing via lacrima link, and Invel thought that the line between who he was in Vistarion and who he was when the curse was getting the better of him wasn't fully drawn here.
A crown of leaves and twigs was woven into his hair, and he was rubbing tiredly at bloodshot eyes, seemingly ink-stained in the dark. It was almost intimate, his willingness to appear before them in his vulnerability, though any happiness that display of trust might have inspired in Invel was dashed by twin realizations: that his emperor was sleeping outside in the back of beyond when he had a perfectly good palace, and that, unsurprisingly, he clearly hadn't been sleeping well.
"Have you found something, Invel?" he was asking. "Oh – hello, August."
"Your Majesty, are you well?" August demanded, with all of Invel's observational skills and none of his tact.
"Quite well, thank you," came the sharp response. "And if you have called me simply to inquire after the health of an immortal man, I'm going to go back to pretending this lacrima doesn't exist."
"Of course we haven't," Invel cut in. "I have what you asked for. First, the message. You were correct in thinking it was military code, although even translated, it means nothing to me. 'Suspected attack imminent. Retrieve the target and bring it to Point Nova.'" When only static crackling followed this, he added, "Does that mean something to you, Your Majesty?"
"Not as much as I had hoped," he mused. "It implies that our theory is correct, but gives us little else to go on. Still, I appreciate it. Anything on Gray?"
"Unfortunately, not much. As we discussed, he has been missing for six months. However, there is one point of note… Our file on him contains a missing persons report that was filed shortly after his disappearance by one Juvia Lockser."
"There's nothing unusual about that."
"I thought so too, until I followed it up. The report no longer exists. By the looks of things, it was erased from the records only a few days after being submitted. It is likely that our duplicate is the only copy still in existence."
August remarked, "So, someone doesn't want him found."
"Someone with contacts inside the Magic Council," their emperor added.
"No – the Fiorean military," Invel corrected. "The report was filed with the Royal Army, not their Magic Council. I can only imagine that the Council and their Rune Knights were still in a state of disarray at the time, following the assassinations. Ten months on and they aren't much better."
"That makes sense." He ran a hand through his hair, a tired gesture neither had ever seen him make in daylight, sending dead leaves tumbling like confused moths around his shoulders. "Gray couldn't have done that himself. Someone is hiding him… but is it at his wish, or against it? Either way, it doesn't help us locate him."
"I can only apologize-"
"It doesn't matter. He'll turn up, I'm sure."
"Very well. Is there anything else we can do for you?"
"As it happens, yes, there is." And then, every bit as casually as he had asked for information on a missing mage, he said, "We have a date for the invasion of Fiore."
Invel and August exchanged glances. Never mind that it was the most companionable gesture either had made towards the other in ten months – there simply was no other way of reacting to that statement.
"You've finally decided?" August said, at the same time as Invel demanded, "Without consultation with the Twelve, the governors, or the Secretaries of State?"
This time, the look they exchanged was a little more exasperated.
"Yes, to both," came the amused response. "To be precise, it was decided for me by circumstances beyond my control."
"Circumstances?" Invel inquired.
"Symbolism, mostly."
The joys of having a whimsical emperor. "With all due respect, Your Majesty, we've spent the past four months gradually dialling back our state of military readiness, on your orders-"
"And you've got a month and a half to dial it back up again. We invade on the First of September. Not a day sooner, and not a day later. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Your Majesty," both said at once, and nothing more. They would make it happen.
"Good. August – assemble the Twelve. I want them all in Vistarion at least two weeks ahead of the invasion. However, not a hint of this is to reach Ishgar. Make plans, but tell no one who doesn't need to know."
"It will be done," August promised. And then, softer, "Are you coming home, Your Majesty?"
"Not right now. I'm in the middle of something." A small smile crossed his face, no doubt picking up on their emotional reaction through the remote magical connection, for both had kept their facial muscles perfectly still. "Naturally, I will be back well before the invasion commences. You have my word on that… assuming, of course, that my word still means something to you both?"
A wave of his hand brushed their hasty apologies aside; he had made his point. "I do understand your concern. I will endeavour to keep channels of communication open… if you call, and it is convenient for me, I will answer. However, I expect you to contact me only in the event of an emergency. Is that clear?"
If their response was more subdued this time, it was not because either objected to his actions, or because they were not pleased by the idea of greater access to their itinerant emperor. It was because both heard the subtext loud and clear: there will be no repeat of what happened ten months ago.
"Well, then. Our conquest begins on the First of September. I trust that you'll be ready."
"Your Majesty, if I may…?" Invel ventured, and received a nod in return. "Am I correct in assuming that Fairy Tail will still be our first target during the invasion?"
"You are."
"Then I feel you ought to be made aware of a rumour I heard from our spies while investigating this evening. It is whispered in Fiore that Fairy Tail, once scattered, is reuniting…"
It wasn't quite silence, filled as it was with the crackling of magic as it stretched across several thousand miles, but it might as well have been.
"Don't worry about it," came the even response. "I have also heard that rumour. It isn't a cause for concern."
"Would it not be expedient to eliminate them before they can reunite?"
"It isn't a cause for concern," he repeated. "It does not affect our actions in any way. We move on the First of September, and not before."
"Very well," Invel conceded. It would not matter either way. One guild could not stand up to the might of an empire, after all.
"Good. I think that's all… unless there's anything else?"
"No," said Invel.
"Are you well, Your Majesty?" August inquired, so grave and so soft.
Invel was expecting that to force the end of the conversation, but the elder mage had always been a better judge of the emperor's mood than he, and the question His Majesty wouldn't normally have tolerated was met only by an honest sigh. "I'm not sleeping well at the moment. Although that, too, isn't a cause for concern."
"Perhaps you would sleep better in your chambers in the palace than in a forest in the middle of Fiore," Invel suggested, before he could stop himself, but the other only laughed.
"Nice try. There are things I must do here before I can return… and I appreciate the concern, but I doubt it would make a difference, the way things are right now. Rest assured, it won't be a problem by the time the invasion commences."
"If you're sure," he relented.
"Alright, I'm going to go now. Don't bother me unless it's an emergency, or I'm going to smash this lacrima. Thank you both for your time."
The connection cut off as they were murmuring their thanks. The lacrima went blank; the magic that had accumulated around it buzzed in confusion and slowly began to disperse.
After an age, Invel spoke. "Do you think he is unwell?"
August spent far longer considering the implied question than the spoken one: to what extent do you think his curse is influencing his current actions? "It's hard to say. I have never seen him as relaxed in Vistarion as he was just then. Whatever it is he's doing right now, I think it's good for him."
Invel tried to focus on the openness with which his emperor had spoken and not the soreness glimpsed around his eyes or the leaves entangled in his hair, alone at the mercy of the elements when there was absolutely no need for it. "As long as he comes back to Alvarez."
"He will." The old mage stood, and Invel did too, regarding each other with balanced sincerity. "This is it. I know it."
And he held out his hand.
To anyone who might have been walking by, it was an odd gesture: the Chief of Staff and the Emperor's unofficial second-in-command, two mages integral to the running of the empire and unimpeachably loyal to His Majesty, who had been allies for many years, shaking hands. Surely the symbolism was superfluous; surely their partnership went without saying.
But August meant only one thing in offering the gesture, and Invel only one in accepting it.
It won't happen again.
Ten months ago, following two months of intense strategizing with His Majesty, they had received word that the entire Magic Council of Ishgar had unexpectedly been wiped out. Just like that, the foreign continent had been plunged into chaos, and its military deterrents disarmed. It was an unprecedented stroke of fortune. His Majesty, the Twelve, the Secretaries of State and everyone else who mattered – for the first time since the Alvarez Empire's founding, all had been in agreement. There would never be a better opportunity to strike than right now.
Ten months ago, less than five minutes after giving the order to invade, their emperor had vanished. Alvarez had found itself poised on the brink of war without a Commander-in-Chief.
Ten months ago, the chaos in Ishgar had been nothing compared to the chaos in Alvarez. The empire had been torn in two, each faction led by one of the only two men with a valid claim to authority in the emperor's absence.
Invel sought to carry out His Majesty's last order, and proceed with the invasion he had explicitly sanctioned.
August believed that His Majesty's disappearance signified that this was not yet time, and that invading without their Commander-in-Chief was nothing short of a military coup d'état and a transgression against the emperor himself.
Ten months ago, the two had almost come to blows within the palace.
Two titans of magical and political power clashed in a contest of fervent will and zealous desire, and in doing so had forced everyone in Vistarion to pick a side or get the hell out; had shattered the strength and integrity of the nation both were trying to serve in a way that trivialized the failed invasion.
There had only been one loser: the empire itself. In the end, August had got his way, if only because the administration had been too crippled to do anything but await His Majesty's return.
The emperor's absence had continued for several months, and they had been forced to resolve the matter between themselves. Over time, they had come to accept that although they had disagreed over the method, they had both been trying to do the right thing for their emperor and their nation. And it had been enough to stabilize the empire, although the curtains drawn across that particular window of opportunity would never open again.
When His Majesty had finally returned, he had refused to accept either of their resignations, and had taken full responsibility for the matter himself. It was a resolution that satisfied no one. Perhaps the inability to see that his government had become as contradictory as he himself was another symptom of his curse.
But time had gone on, as it always did, and they put the incident behind them. There had never been any true, personal animosity between the two of them, and thus the problem had not persisted, but Invel doubted that there would ever be any true, personal friendship between the two of them again.
That, however, mattered far less than the strength of the empire. It would not build bridges, but it might well divert the river's course for the greater good of Alvarez.
And this time, there would be none of the ambiguity that had driven them apart ten months ago. His Majesty's will would unite them. And not just them – all the Twelve, and all of Alvarez, would come together for His Majesty as they would for no other human being, past or present.
It won't happen again.
Come the First of September, they would be unstoppable.
A/N: With this being an alternate final arc, it has three antagonists: Avatar, Alvarez, and Acnologia. Of the three, Alvarez is by far the most interesting to me. Partly because of the range of characters, partly because it is a whole other side to Zeref (that we only usually get to see a fraction of!), and partly because it is just so unexplored in canon. Huge questions are left open - questions like "How the hell does this even work?" To which the answer in this story is, "Invel". But it isn't easy. And Alvarez in reality is far from the united front it presents to its enemies.
After Zeref and Lucy, Invel is probably the most important character in the story, and his evolving relationship with Zeref is quite possibly my favourite of them all. It's just a bit slow to get off the ground, as I need to establish the firm starting point that canon doesn't bother with first... ~CS