The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Hubris et Orbi, Part 9
-Fierce and Wild Through Velvet Skies-
Weisslogia is dead.
Anna felt as though the floorboards were falling away beneath her, only to reveal that the Heartfilia homestead had never been built on compacted soil after all, but on the prison of a humongous black dragon, who was waking, twisting, opening malevolent jaws as she fell…
She gripped the bedpost hard enough to splinter it. "What about Sting? Is he still alive?"
"I don't know," Zeref replied. "We set a telepathic network up a few weeks ago in preparation for going through the Gate, but only the dragons are on it, not the children."
"Then he might have managed to escape," Anna said, trying not to think about how death might be preferable to the fate that awaited him in a world without Weisslogia – a world where, even with Zeref's ritual, there was no longer a way to prevent him from turning. "We can't abandon him. If Acnologia knows, we're already out of time. We have to find Sting and go through the Gate, all of us, right now."
The before Acnologia can kill anyone else did not need to be said out loud.
Still, Zeref seemed to waver, silvery despair in his eyes. "Anna," he began, uncertainly. "There's- there's something you ought to know-"
"Can it wait until we're on the other side?" she demanded, as she threw on clothes more suitable for travel.
"I… yes." He shook his head vigorously, as if trying to throw off his doubts. "Yes. We have to go. If we stay in the present, Acnologia will pick us off one by one. If we jump to the future… well, he won't know when we're going to arrive, and he won't spend his entire life guarding the Gate when there are dragons to destroy. We might have a chance."
"Right, then. We're doing it."
Anna was halfway down the stairs with Zeref when Darryl said, "Anna? What do you mean, through the Gate?"
His words might as well have been some ancient spell for how quickly she stopped – and Zeref, too, turning back with his foot still hovering in mid-air.
"You haven't told him?" Zeref accused.
"There… wasn't a good time," she said weakly.
"In three years?"
"Anna?" Darryl repeated.
It was not just the floor giving way beneath her now, but the walls and the ceiling, too; everything she had worked so hard to build was no match for the tsunami of fate sweeping in. "Go," she said to Zeref. "Gather the dragons. I'll meet you at the Gate."
Three steps out of Anna's house, and the chaos swirling through Zeref's mind had already eclipsed the trouble he had left behind.
For once, it was not the chaos of his curse. The warring voices in his head were not his own, but belonged to a sky dragon, a shadow dragon, and an iron dragon; the vortex of emotions came not from his broken magic, but poured like molten metal down telepathic links made stronger by their overwhelming feelings.
But he was used to it. The madness was so familiar that it helped to ground him, and his mental call cut through their warring voices like an anchor plunging into the stormy waves.
-Who's closest to Aster right now? It wasn't a question but a demand, and although the undertone of panic remained, the other voices fell silent at once.
-I am, Skiadrum sent, after a brief pause. I'm coming to get you now.
-We're heading over too, Grandine declared, and Metalicana added a wordless sense of agreement. But none of us can get through to Igneel. He took Natsu into the mountains for training, and if they've gone deep within a cave, they may not be reachable through telepathy.
-Leave Igneel to me, Zeref sent, and he dropped out of the telepathic network.
The sense of panic receded at once. His run became a walk, and then he stopped in the street, taking one long, slow breath. The stars jittered overhead. Every atmospheric distortion could have been the passing of Acnologia's wing, but he pushed it all away, concentrating.
The Book of END materialized in front of him, although he hesitated to touch it. He knew exactly how he would summon any of his other demons, but Natsu was different. The existence of a book separate from his physical body was proof of that.
To Natsu, Zeref was neither brother nor master. He only knew Zeref in passing, as the shadow who flitted around the edge of his and Igneel's life. Unlike Anna, who had had such an active role in helping to raise the dragon-children, and who was adored by them in turn, Natsu took Zeref's need to stay away from him as dislike and disinterest, and thought no more of him beyond that. He felt none of the allegiance embedded into the false souls of the Etherious – and from everything Igneel had shared with Zeref about his brother's growth, and everything Zeref himself had observed from afar, he would no doubt reject it even if he did.
That was okay. There was one thing Natsu would always respond to… one part of him that had remained the same through death and rebirth.
Closing his eyes, Zeref brought to mind a dozen memories: Natsu, squabbling with Gajeel, showing off in front of Sting and Rogue, exploring with Wendy, flying with his foster father, roaring a challenge towards a foolish king in support of his new family… a new, unusual, part-human, part-dragon extended family, currently scattered and broken and at the mercy of the apocalypse scything through their ranks.
"Come to me, Natsu," he whispered. One hand touched the cover of the book; the other curled around the new pendant at his neck. "Your family needs you."
He had barely vanished the book again when an arrow of night plunged out of the sky, landing near-soundlessly on the ground before him. The sense of urgency returned in force; he flung himself onto Skiadrum's back and they were in the air at once.
He didn't need to ask where they were going, or why. They were both clinging to the fast-fading trace of Weisslogia's last telepathic cry with everything they had.
Just in case.
"Umm… excuse me?" came a small voice from behind Zeref.
Startled, he glanced around to find its equally small owner perched there with him on the dragon's back. He should have expected that. As if any of the dragons would let their children out of their sight on a night like this.
Peering at him through a curtain of dark hair, Rogue whispered, "Do you… do you think Sting will be okay?"
In truth, Zeref didn't. Acnologia had no sympathy for humans who sided with dragons. Not even for children. Surely too many long minutes had passed for there to be any hope remaining.
And yet they were flying anyway, believing anyway, just in case there was more to be found there than death.
"Yes," he said, touching the boy's shoulder reassuringly. "We'll find him. Don't worry."
"Anna."
Panic of an entirely different kind was locking its claws around Anna's heart. She almost wanted to laugh. How many times had she yelled at Zeref for pushing everything away? For denying reality? And now here she was, facing the consequences of having done the exact same thing herself. She finally understood – and it was an unpleasant, bitter understanding indeed – why Zeref had spent so long running from her.
"You owe me an explanation," Darryl stated.
"What is there to explain?" she snapped back, harsher than intended. "You already know Zeref, the dragons, and their foster children are planning to travel to the future through the Gate. I'm going to go with them."
"Why?" he asked. It wasn't an accusation, but a punishment. After all this time, he must have known why. He just wanted to make her say it.
"Why else? To end this godforsaken war! To help Zeref and the dragons with the ritual, and defeat Acnologia, and save the dragon-children!"
"And what about our child, Anna?" he shouted, his voice rising to match hers. "You're choosing them over Ellie and me, is that it?"
"That's not what this is about!"
"Really?" Darryl asked, ice-cold. She wondered, briefly, when the timid but earnest man she'd once met had turned into someone capable of taking a stand against her. Perhaps she had missed as much from him as he had from her. "Because that's exactly what it looks like to me."
"It's about saving everyone, Darryl! It's my duty – my legacy! It's about doing something that is going to fix this broken world!"
"By abandoning it."
"By realizing that there is more to it than just the here and now! It's not my fault that your entire world begins and ends at the boundaries of this stupid farm!"
"You have a responsibility to your daughter-" he tried.
"I have a responsibility to all humankind!" Anna roared. "Do you think I would leave her for any reason less than that? Do you think I should let future generations – our own grandchildren and great-grandchildren! – grow up in an age of hate and fear, as humankind is driven to extinction, all so that I can have a few more happy years with my family?"
Stubbornly, Darryl shook his head. "Why do you need to go that far? Who's to say that the war won't end tomorrow?"
"It won't. You have no understanding of the magic or the madness that drives it. It can't end until Acnologia is dead, and maybe not even then, if something doesn't fundamentally change between the dragons and ourselves. If I go, we know for sure the war will end one day. But if I don't go, there's no guarantee it will ever end."
"The others can go without you!"
"No, they can't. Zeref will fall apart without me, and even if he doesn't, the complex magic we create always takes two people, one to catch the other's mistakes. Not to mention, despite my best efforts, the dragons are still… well, dragons. They'll need a responsible human being to help them adjust in the future. Zeref does not fall into this category."
"But still," Darryl persisted, and she had to give him credit for trying, "it doesn't have to be you."
"Yes, but if we all felt like that, there would be no hope for mankind at all. I'm going, Darryl. I made up my mind a long time ago."
"So I see," he said. Still he stood between her and the door; still those words, which purported surrender, hovered dangerously in the air between them. "And you were going to tell me about this when, exactly?"
"Oh, come on, it's not like I wanted to do it like this!" Anna burst out, practically clawing at her hair in frustration. "Acnologia has murdered one of my friends and is going after the others as we speak! I don't exactly have the time to break it to you gently!"
"You've had three years, apparently," he stated, and she should have expected that, after Zeref had gone and opened his stupid mouth. What she hadn't expected was for Darryl to add, "When were you going to ask me to come with you?"
Caught entirely by surprise, she stumbled over the counterargument already forming on her lips. "Well… I thought you wouldn't want to."
"Why?"
"Because… you have the farm here. It's my friends who are going to the future; yours are all staying here in the village you love. You whole life is here."
"Yes," said he, almost sadly. "But I love you and I love Ellie. As long as I had the two of you, I could have built everything else back up again from scratch."
"…Oh."
It was then, she thought, not when they were shouting at each other, that she lost the argument.
Lost him.
"Anna," he said, "why aren't you asking me to come with you now?"
"Because… the Gate isn't safe. It's fine for me and the dragon-children, because our magic is strong enough to protect us, but you wouldn't make it through in one piece."
"Don't do this, Anna," Darryl sighed. "I may not know anything about magic, but do you honestly think I can't tell when you're lying to me?"
"You can't come with me!" she burst out. "You've got to stay with Ellie; she's going to need you!"
"And why can't she come with us?" he asked, horribly patient.
There was nothing she could say that wouldn't make things worse, so she remained silent.
"Do you know what I see, Anna?" he continued. "I see exactly how those creatures of yours treat her. They ignore me, and Zeref, and the dragon-children – but they fawn over you, and they fawn over Ellie. They take everything she says so seriously, even though she's only a child. They come when she calls them, and she's the only one, other than you, who can make them disappear again. What did you do to my daughter, Anna?"
"I…" She bit her lip, but it couldn't stop the words from bubbling up like blood. "I didn't have a choice! It was my bloodline or Zeref's, and his was already too contaminated to work-"
"No choice? There are a hundred thousand people in Carligne alone!"
"But I can't trust them with this magic!" she burst out. "This is secret, it's dangerous; it couldn't go further than the two of us-!"
"But it was fine to force it upon your daughter?"
"You're saying that like it's a bad thing!" Anna retorted. "All it means is that she's inherited the magic we created – a living magic that will protect her and care for her! If she doesn't want to use it, she doesn't have to! She can put the keys somewhere safe and never have to think about it for the rest of her life. I know she's too young to truly understand it now, so I've written it all down for her to read when she's older. The only thing she has to do is open the Gate when the time is right. The only thing! I can't see why you're making such a big deal out of it!"
"No, I guess you can't," Darryl agreed quietly. "After all, taking control of other people's lives is just what you do."
"What? No, I don't!"
"Yes, you do. You force them into your way of thinking, trample all over their own aspirations, and make them do what you want. Your so-called best friend was happily living a quiet life until you dragged him into yours, ignoring what he explicitly told you he wanted over and over. You helped – no, encouraged! – those dragons to kidnap children too young to understand what was going on, isolating them from society and making them into a target for Acnologia. Even your own daughter was just another tool for you to use. As long as she opens this Gate for you, you don't care about her, do you?"
"Of course I care about her!"
"Not enough to make you think twice about imposing your own ideals upon her life," Darryl said. "You've always been destined for greatness, Anna. You've always set your aspirations somewhere us ordinary mortals can't follow. It's always saving the world or ending this war with you, and nothing less than that is good enough. Your own daughter isn't one of the first children in the world to be raised by a dragon, so she's not important. Just finding a way to win the war isn't enough – you have to be the person in the future winning it. I loved you, Anna. I thought we could balance each other, that I could ground you, that you might not forget the value of those around you. But I couldn't. You burnt far too brightly for me."
"No!" she protested. "You're wrong! That's not- I never meant it to be like that- I was only trying to help-"
"Help yourself, yes. Without stopping to think about what anyone else might want."
When she opened her mouth to try and convince him how completely backwards he had everything, that she'd never meant it like that, that she had only ever done what she thought was best – not for her, for everyone – he just shook his head.
"It never occurred to you that Ellie and I might want to come with you, did it?" he asked, though it wasn't truly a question. "You never even tried to find a way around tying your grand new magic to her life. And why would it have occurred to you? Why would you think that I would give up my life here for you, when it wouldn't cross your mind to do the same for me and Ellie?"
He stepped aside, revealing the open door and the staircase down she did not want to take. "That's the thing about you, Anna. You've always been surrounded by people who loved you far more than you loved them."
"No." Shaking her head, she stepped back, raising her hands, anything to convince him that this wasn't what she wanted. "Darryl, I didn't mean- please-"
"Go, Anna," he said. "And don't come back to this place and time."
She only made it as far as the end of the garden before she fell to her hands and knees, no longer able to see where she was going. Tears streamed down her cheeks; she was no more able to stop them than she could stand or move on. Her shoulders shook. Crying hurt more than she had expected. How did Zeref do it all the time?
Probably, she thought bitterly, because she was always there to hold him through it, whereas she had no one.
She had always had her eye on the future she was shaping, rather than those she claimed to love.
All she could see through her waterlogged vision was the silver-green sapling of the Aureum Oak, protruding inquisitively upwards from between her hands.
Even after nearly twenty years of growth, protected from adverse weather and hungry goats alike by a tiny ring of runes pressed into the dirt, it was still such a small and fragile thing: a spindly stem, a scattering of flat leaves.
Seeing how close she had come to accidentally squashing it made her recoil in horror – and then she raised her fist just as suddenly, because why shouldn't she? The plan with the Dragon Slayers was crumbling, her family had fallen apart, her friends were dying; why should this stupid plant be the only thing in her life that ever endured-?
"I was angry with you too, wasn't I, Grandad?" she whispered.
She let her hand fall back to the soil.
"So angry," she murmured. "Because I thought you'd chosen the people of the future over me, over us. I resented you… and look at me now! You may have planted the acorn for future generations rather than studying it with me, but you didn't know that doing so would cause us to be separated forever. But I knew I would be walking away from Darryl and Ellie. And I still expected them to understand!"
The Aureum Oak had no words of solace to offer her.
It was only a plant.
But it was also more than a plant: it was a legacy. Her grandfather's legacy, one still going strong twenty years after his death, planted in hope and growing ever so slowly towards a brighter future. Towards a better world. There were some things more important than her own happiness – more important, even, than her own life.
"I didn't know what I would do without you," she murmured, winding the leaves on their young, springy tendrils around her finger. "I felt so abandoned, and that's why I was angry. But, you know… I've been fine, haven't I? And I know Darryl and Eloise will be fine, too. Maybe one day they'll understand why I have to do this, just like I came to understand your decision to plant that precious acorn."
Slowly, she stood up, wiping the last of the tears from her cheeks. "I don't think they'll forgive me. But I think they'll understand."
She hadn't meant for things to turn out like this. Maybe her motives hadn't been as pure as she had thought. Maybe it had only ever been for herself – her glory, her success, what she deemed to be important. Maybe she had bullied Zeref into becoming her co-conspirator, never asking what it was he wanted.
But however it had started, they were in it together, now – and they were out of time.
The reckoning would have to wait. She hadn't brought them to the precipice only to let them jump on their own. Whether they fell or flew, she would be right there with them.
Zeref Dragneel was not a decisive man.
That had been true even before the incident that had left his magic broken and his will in tatters. The contradictions only exacerbated his natural tendency to think and over-think, and although he'd learnt much from Anna, who had always known exactly what she wanted and how she was going to get it, navigating the warped recesses of his own mind still took an effort that she never had to worry about.
There had only been two moments in his life when he had known immediately what to do.
The first had come as he'd dragged a lifeless body out of his burning childhood home; when he'd cradled in his arms a beloved brother who might have been sleeping and understood exactly why he had been put on this earth with the gifts he had.
The second came as Skiadrum soared over the clearing where Weisslogia had died.
There, beneath a shroud of moonlight, sprawled what once had been an earnest and hyperactive dragon. Now, the only movement came from the blood coagulating in a thick pool beneath him.
At the edge of the clearing, in the shadow of ancient trees taller than an adult dragon, prowled the apocalypse incarnate. Fresh blood left his dark scales darker in the ethereal light. One death was not enough to sate his hunger; his head turned slowly from shadow to shadow, seeking something more.
But Zeref could see what that great and terrible predator, for all his enhanced senses, could not: that, hidden between the wing and the body of Weisslogia's corpse, masked by such a similar, familial scent, there was the faintest spark of life. Life and magic.
And Zeref acted.
He didn't mentally take stock of the magic at his disposal. He didn't stop to weigh up immortality against provoking the apocalypse. He didn't consider the impact that a decision like this would have on his cursed magic.
He didn't think at all.
He just acted.
He leapt from Skiadrum's back, and when he fell, he brought the heavens with him.
To his credit, Acnologia must have sensed something, because he jerked to a halt and glanced skywards.
But his burning gaze caught on the silhouette of the dragon overhead and stayed there, not realizing that Skiadrum was just as startled as he was, nor that the Shadow Dragon was not what had triggered his instincts.
Zeref struck him with the tiny weight of his body and the immense force of his magic.
The impact shattered more bones than he had time to count, slamming his breath from his lungs and his soul from his body. Nothing except Dragon Slayer magic could break a dragon's scales, but that was okay. He wasn't trying to break or pierce or kill. He only wanted to stop Acnologia from finding Sting.
Not even death could break that will.
When he snapped back into being, magic was still roaring around him. The torrent of pure force, the product of fifty years of unbridled growth, drove the Dragon of the Apocalypse into the dirt and held him there, just like it had once stopped Igneel's rampage.
Perhaps Acnologia was a faster learner than Igneel, or perhaps some part of the fire dragon had been hesitant to hurt him even in his grief, but the black dragon loosed a terrifying roar and immediately rolled over, using his bulk and Zeref's own magic to grind him into dust.
There was a grim smile on Zeref's face as he died a second time.
Because, as Acnologia had rolled onto his back to squish his assailant, he had exposed the pale underside of his neck to the dragon diving down from above.
Skiadrum's jaws clamped shut around the larger dragon's neck with a sickening crunch. At least one fang had punched clean through his natural armour; Zeref was jolted back to wakefulness by the wet splash of blood across his face and a howl like the sky itself was screaming.
By the time he had scrambled to his feet, the two dragons were grappling viciously in the clearing. Tails thrashed, claws pounded; snarls of inhuman ferocity rent the night's mantle in two and let its horrors loose into the world.
For a moment, Zeref could only stand and stare at the brutality of it: at the dragons whose raw intent to harm each other left nothing but destruction in their wake, showing no more mercy to the ancient trees than they would to houses and shops and libraries – no more mercy than they had shown a frightened boy called Natsu as his village went up in flames…
"GO!" Skiadrum roared over the melee.
And it was different, this time, because Zeref wasn't wrapped up in blissful ignorance in the Academy's library, entirely unaware of the horror unfolding at home.
This time, he was right here.
This time, he wasn't going to let a single one of them die.
Turning his back on the storm of teeth and scales, Zeref sprinted over to that twisted shape in the moonlight, the pale thing that had once been a living dragon. He dug his heels into the ground and hauled aside a lifeless wing. There, between the wing joint and the dragon's flank, huddled a child. His wide eyes held a frightful resignation.
That terror hurt more than both of Zeref's deaths that day combined. Had Natsu felt the same, trapped in the corner of a burning house while two titans raged outside, knowing that no one but the reaper was coming for him?
Not this time, he thought fiercely.
"I'm here," he said, holding out his hand to the frightened boy. "Come with me."
And maybe Sting would have clung to any human being in that moment. Maybe he would have trusted anyone who showed him kindness. There was no reason why the boy would know him, for he had always been on the fringes of their family; the dragon-children were an integral part of his life but he was an invisible part of theirs.
And yet, when that tiny hand pressed into his, Zeref felt like he was home.
He hadn't taken more than a step towards the shelter of the trees, however, when Zeref felt a force tugging him back. Sting had wrapped his other hand around his father's claw, trying to pull him along with them. "Dad," he whimpered. "Come on, we have to go…"
"Sting," Zeref said, as gently as he could, although the words felt rough on his tongue. "He can't- he can't come with us. I'm sorry."
"Dad." The boy gazed up with uncomprehending eyes.
"We have to go," Zeref insisted. "Do you see Rogue over there?" He pointed into the forest, where the boy in question was peering out from behind a tree as thick as a dragon's hind leg. "Let's go and see him."
At last, the boy allowed himself to be pulled away. Rogue bounded out from his hiding place and threw his arms around his foster brother, much better at consoling people than Zeref was, and Zeref took the chance to turn his attention back to the battling dragons. The trees were larger on the edge of the clearing, but they would be as useful as a barrier of matchsticks against an enemy like Acnologia. Their best bet was to escape the same way they had arrived – and hope that Skiadrum could outfly the Dragon of the Apocalypse for long enough to reach the Gate.
He had only taken one step towards the battling dragons when he froze. Where there had been two gargantuan shadows, there was now only one. The other had collapsed in on itself, shrinking, changing – and white light blazed in the darkness.
The shockwave lifted Zeref and the children straight off their feet. He staggered upright, staring in horror at the truth that lay within the blinding light.
Acnologia pulled the jagged blade of energy free from Skiadrum's chest and the dragon fell without a sound.
"Two down," he remarked. "Three to go."
"DAD!" Rogue howled.
A bolt of black hurtled past Zeref, and it was only through sheer instinct that he was able to grab the boy's shirt, yanking him back. "No!"
"HE – KILLED – MY – DAD!" the boy screamed, little fists swinging mightily at Zeref's arm in a vain attempt to loosen his grip.
"If you go over there, you'll die!"
As if they weren't going to die anyway.
As if anything they did or didn't do would make a difference – but he couldn't let the boy charge Acnologia, he just couldn't.
"So that's where the little ones went," Acnologia hummed. His gaze fell upon Rogue, and it was like a claw of ice passing straight through his skin and wrapping around his heart; the boy stopped struggling at once. A whimper escaped his throat.
Acnologia gave a smile that didn't extend to his eyes. There was no emotion strong enough to pierce the grey madness that gathered there. He took a step forwards, and then another. Drops of dragon's blood fell one by one from the end of his blade, counting down the last few seconds of their lives. "You think yourself Dragon Slayers, don't you? Well…"
His dragon-eating weapon dissolved back into white energy. Then his entire form became a surge of darkness, writhing, expanding, solidifying into the scales of a humongous deity of destruction. "I am a dragon. Slay me."
His great maw opened, revealing the light of a thousand swallowed stars building at the back of his throat. As death descended, Zeref did the only thing he could: grabbed one fear-paralyzed child in each hand and dragged them behind him.
In a way, he was glad of the urgency. It gave him something other than the incoming pain to think about in his final moments.
Because it hurt. He had been burned alive by a certain fire dragon more times than he could count, but this was something else. Pure energy raked along his tendons, exploded his bones from the inside out, swept a wave of sheer devastation through his soul. He had wanted to die for a very long time, but he had never before felt such a primal need to end it; to flee not from the cruel torment of his mind but the very real agony of his immortal body.
It did end, a lifetime later. Despite the sweat clinging to him, he shivered as he gasped for breath. His senses were ablaze as they struggled to comprehend the absence of sensation.
He couldn't beat Acnologia. He had no magic that was useful for a pitched battle with a dragon; he didn't even know how to fight! The only thing he could do was get in the way, and how many times could he go through that before it broke him completely-?
He felt a faint pressure at his hands, Rogue squeezing his right and Sting squeezing his left, and he knew he could do it as many times as was necessary.
With the snap of a severed spine, Acnologia closed his mouth, staring down at the three of them with something that might have been curiosity. "That's twice I have killed you today, and yet you are still alive," he rumbled to Zeref. "What are you?"
"I am an ally of this world, and an enemy of yours," Zeref declared, with far more conviction than he felt. "That is all you need to know."
From overhead, there came a great, booming chuckle. "Well, look at you, being all heroic. They'll revoke your archvillain credentials for this, you know."
"Igneel!" Zeref cried.
"Sheesh, don't sound so pleased to see me." The fire dragon's tail twitched irritably as he hovered overhead. "I don't want anyone thinking a hero of justice could be partnered with an evil mage like you."
A tremulous smile touched Zeref's face.
"Igneel," Acnologia acknowledged, with a feral hiss.
"Acnologia. Today, I will avenge my father and put an end to your reign of terror."
The black dragon bared his teeth in a twisted parody of a smile. "Do you know how many times I've heard those words, fool?"
With that as his only warning, he reared up and unleashed a devastating blast of energy towards the fire dragon. Just like Zeref, Igneel did not flinch. He retaliated with a burst of flames so intense that the heat withered and cracked the trees before the fire had even reached them.
Neither breath attack could make headway against the other. The recoil swept across the clearing, prompting the children to take shelter once again behind their immortal ally, who gritted his teeth and tried to bear it without blacking out.
Acnologia was the first to break the stalemate, jerking his head away and trusting his scales to bear the brunt of the Fire Dragon King's flames. Claws dug into solid earth. With a mighty bound, he propelled himself skyward, bursting through the last of the firestream with jaws agape.
Igneel was ready. As mobile in the air as a hummingbird, he rotated with ease and slammed his tail into his pouncing opponent. Were his opponent any other dragon, that blow would have dislocated its jaw for sure. As it was, Acnologia was knocked back down to the ground, brushing his snout with one forepaw as if to confirm that no damage had been done. Igneel landed at the other side of the clearing, Zeref and the children behind him.
"Weisslogia," Igneel growled. "And Skiadrum. You're going to pay for this."
"Friends of yours?" Acnologia taunted.
"Family," Igneel corrected proudly.
Acnologia's tail thumped dismissively into the dirt. "Worthless."
It wasn't Igneel who replied.
It wasn't even Zeref, although he would have done, given another moment.
"Don't you dare talk about my family like that," Natsu said, and he punched Acnologia right between the eyes.
Natsu.
It might have been Zeref who shouted, it might have been Igneel. For the first time in living memory, they were of the same mind. All three opponents – the two dragons and the immortal – had been so fixated upon each other that they had made the exact same mistake Acnologia had at the start of the battle, and failed to notice the small, unassuming human creeping up on them in the dark.
It was, at first, a fierce kind of pride Zeref felt, because standing up to the apocalypse for the sake of the ones they loved was just what their extended family did.
But Natsu wasn't immortal.
Didn't even have a dragon's scales to protect him.
Time seemed to slow down.
As Acnologia jerked back from the burst of flames, magic and rage building like physical pressure around him, both Zeref and Igneel knew exactly what was going to happen next.
The fire dragon was already moving. He cut a beautiful streak of crimson through the slow-motion tableau of the clearing.
It wouldn't be enough.
In that moment, Zeref saw the world as Anna had always seen it, as numbers and probabilities and space-time coordinates and relative velocities. They unwound before his eyes, spelling out in their inevitable logic a single, dispassionate truth: not enough.
A little more time trickled by.
And what could he do?
On a long summer's day, with a pen in his hand and Anna by his side, he could rewrite the laws of magic.
In a time and place like this, he could do nothing.
For all the monumental things he could do with magic, he had never really learnt to use it in a practical way. He'd assumed the insistence of his demons on constantly training was because they had little else to do when he didn't have them running errands. He'd dismissed the dragon-children's love of competing against each other as childish nonsense. He'd always looked down on those who used their magic only for such trivial purposes as fighting.
He'd forgotten that there were good reasons to fight.
It had been too long since he'd had anything worth fighting for.
What did he have, then?
A broken piece of the One Magic lodged inside him; it kept him alive but cared nothing for Natsu. An awareness of life and magic that only reiterated the inevitability of the conclusion he had drawn. A mathematical and conceptual understanding of World Magic, which he and Anna had become able to harness in some small way by the use of a living interface, but which remained as unusable as ever without it.
Probably.
Not that he had ever tried.
World Magic was something alien, something other, something beyond the comprehension of man. It wasn't something that was ever supposed to be used.
Then again, the One Magic wasn't supposed to be used either, and that hadn't stopped him the first time.
But that was different. The One Magic was something he understood. He had spent six years studying it, reaching out to it, drawing close to it. It wasn't something he had spontaneously decided to use one day.
Not that those six years of preparation had made the slightest bit of difference, in the end.
Besides, when it came to Natsu, there was no cost too high. He had proven that once already.
Zeref spread his arms wide, grasped hold of the power he and Anna had created, living stars and metaphorical gates and all of time itself, and with every ounce of magic his cursed life had generated, he commanded the universe to obey.
Stretching.
Groaning.
Slowing.
And out there in the void beyond the stars, beyond the metaphysical structure he and Anna had constructed between them and infinite space, he felt something give.
Slow-flowing time stopped altogether.
The world was utterly silent. The air tingled on Zeref's tongue. Dazed, he turned his head one way and the other, but this was no cruel trick of adrenaline. Nothing moved. Nothing could. The night had always been dark, but now it was utterly colourless, Igneel's dazzling scales and Natsu's hair and Acnologia's arcane markings nothing more than grey on grey in a world outside time.
He ran. Perhaps he no longer needed to, but he was taking no chances. Only when his immortal body was safely in between Natsu and Acnologia did he stop, turn, and wrap his arms around his brother in a way he would never have dared to do in real-time. He closed his eyes and released his hold on the magic.
Time made its return known with blinding pain. Acnologia's breath attack played at full force across his exposed back. Biting back his scream – not in front of his brother, he would not – he held Natsu tightly and prayed that his skin and muscles would regenerate fast enough to stop the blast from penetrating all the way through his body.
"Hey!" Natsu shouted indignantly. "Let me go!"
Even before the blast had fully dissipated, Natsu was struggling to break free of his brother's protective embrace. Zeref tried to hold him steady, but he would not be restrained. Natsu's foot found his shoulder, using it as a springboard to launch himself back at the Dragon of the Apocalypse.
"Take it back!" the Dragon Slayer yelled, driving his little fiery fist into the side of Acnologia's neck.
A single black scale fell free.
Zeref stared as it tumbled down, so shocked that the instruction for Natsu to get back withered and died upon his lips. That was impossible. Dragon Slayer or not, Natsu didn't have anywhere near the strength needed to break Acnologia's scales…
Then he remembered the fangs of the shadow dragon puncturing that supposedly impenetrable defence in the exact same place. Was it a coincidence? Natsu's nose twitched as he fell back to earth, and Zeref thought not – he could smell the dragon's weakness, the blood of its wound, and had targeted it on purpose.
So what if he could do the same…?
"That's my boy!" Igneel boomed, as he doused all the combatants in a glorious rain of fire from above. It didn't particularly bother any of them – the immortal, the Fire Dragon Slayer, or the magic-consuming dragon – but it provided enough cover for him to snatch Natsu out of the melee. "But I thought I told you to stay out of it!"
"I want to fight!" Natsu roared, in a voice that would have sent the wildlife scurrying for safety if there had been any left within a ten-mile radius.
"I know you do, but I also know that this evil wizard here would skin me alive if anything happened to you, and I need my scales!"
Zeref opened his mouth to agree and was startled when nothing but a bubble of blood came out. He glanced down to find a single talon piercing right through his heart.
He looked at Acnologia. Acnologia looked at him.
"Why won't you die?" hissed the Dragon of the Apocalypse.
A smirk touched the corners of Zeref's mouth.
"Alright, then." Acnologia didn't sound particularly bothered, and as he took to the sky again, the immortal still impaled on his claw, Zeref understood why. He may have been a persistent foe, but to Acnologia, he was not a dangerous one. With a flick of his wrist, the dragon hurled Zeref towards the ground, and engulfed him, the clearing, and half the forest in an almighty blaze of magic. All he had to do was keep Zeref out of the way for long enough to kill Igneel and Natsu.
That was not acceptable.
Once more, Zeref reached into the world beyond the stars and pulled.
It wasn't like teleportation. There was no visualization of a destination, no spell, no connection, no delay. It wasn't so much that he moved as that he stayed right where he was and the rest of reality moved around him. There was a glitch in the universe, and it put him right where he needed to be: between that torrent of death and Natsu.
He threw out the strongest forcefield he could muster with his own unbreakable body at its heart. It wouldn't hold for long, but it didn't have to – not with Igneel hurtling past him like a blazing spear. The Fire Dragon King struck his foe in mid-air and knocked his breath attack off course.
Teeth and tails and wings locking together, the two dragons tumbled to the ground. Over and over they struck each other, every passing second another chance break through the other's armour.
They smacked into the earth with the red dragon on top. Igneel clamped his jaws around his opponent's neck, sending a spurt of black blood skywards from the deepening wound in his neck.
At Zeref's side, Natsu gave a satisfied snort. "Heh. Dad's got him now, look."
But Zeref had seen this exact scene play out once already.
Igneel's prey vanished just as Skiadrum's had. Acnologia's suddenly-small human form slipped like soap through the dragon's constricting grip.
Profane light blazed around Acnologia's hands as the fire dragon stumbled. "You're mine, now," he laughed.
"No," Zeref told him quietly. "You're ours."
Because the universe had got his location wrong again. He wasn't stood with Natsu; he was clinging to Acnologia's human back. One arm wrapped tight around the Dragon Slayer's throat.
He had never been able to control the death that dwelled within his body, but there was one thing that he knew could summon it forth.
He dismissed the fear and the impulsivity and everything else that had dominated his mind since he had first learned of Weisslogia's death, and focussed on how much he wanted to save Natsu and Igneel.
How much he wanted to go with them all to the future and build a new home there, together.
Wind darker than the night itself wrapped around them both, and Acnologia screamed.
Despite the shock, he reacted faster than Zeref had expected. He was already transforming back. Scales strong enough to repel death magic materialized in place – and the sudden expansion flung Zeref aside; he thudded into the ground and his magic vanished in a flurry of pain.
Yet there was no reprieve for the Dragon of the Apocalypse. Before he had even found his four new feet, Igneel was there, slashing across his neck with a claw wrapped in ruby flames. It cut deep into the wound Skiadrum had made, forced open by Natsu's Dragon Slayer magic and contaminated by the curse of death.
Acnologia staggered backwards. Blood now formed a constant stream down his side. His eyes darted from Igneel, who was watching him severely, to Zeref, as he walked, unharmed and unharmable, to stand at the fire dragon's side.
In dragon form, with size and near-impenetrable scales on his side, Acnologia was more than a match for any human – but, wounded as he was, he could not defeat the Fire Dragon King.
In human form, he could call his devastatingly powerful Slayer magic to cut through the scales of dragons and slaughter them with impunity – but without his scales, he was vulnerable to Zeref's magic. Not even he could consume pure death and survive.
Acnologia's hateful gaze moved from one to the other. Neither was a threat to him alone. But when they stood together, not even he could prevail.
The Dragon of the Apocalypse turned on his heel and fled into the night.
A small claw-like hand seized Zeref's wrist. He glanced down to see Natsu frowning up at him. "I know you," the boy observed. "You're the one who's always lurking around Anna's house. You smell like home. Or maybe… home smells a bit like you."
As Zeref stared, speechless, Natsu added, "Always figured you didn't like us. But, you know, anyone who will fight for my family like that is alright in my book."
"I don't- I don't dislike you." There was too much emotion in him, and not enough reason; he stumbled over inadequate words. "I'm- I'm just not very good around children."
After a moment, Natsu gave him a broad grin. "Well, I ain't a child any more, so you should come and join in for a change."
Zeref could feel tears prickling at his eyes. How much had Natsu grown when he hadn't been paying attention? He was what, ten? Eleven? Death and rebirth made it difficult to count. Either way, he was definitely still a child, as far as Zeref was concerned.
But he was going to be so much more, one day.
"I'd like that," Zeref whispered.
The King of the Fire Dragons raised his head and roared their victory towards the heavens. Beside him rose another thunderous roar. With eyes ablaze, one hand resting on his father's side and the other thrusting his brother's arm up into the air, Natsu's determination brought the night to life.
There were no words that could express it, and Zeref found himself shouting with them both, an inarticulate cry of passion and defiance, a hymn vibrating hot through their veins.
A triumph that could not be put into words.
A lament for their fallen brothers.
And a rallying cry for the survivors: they were not weak, they were not cowed, and they would fight as many times as necessary for the sake of their family.
They would fight, and they would win.