The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

There Are No Stars Tonight, Part 1

-On This Judgement Day-

Jellal's fist slammed into the wall so hard the entire guildhall shook. On any other day, no one would have noticed; a little bit of violence, whether it threatened the structural integrity of the building or otherwise, was nothing out of the ordinary for Fairy Tail. On this day, though, no fewer than three swords jumped from scabbards at the sound, with sparks of magic flashing through the air.

Jellal was the only one who didn't seem to notice the swell and pop of panic washing over the guild at his actions, dragging breaths into his lungs as beads of blood began to crown his knuckles. "I never should have left her," he spat. "I never should have taken her to Vistarion in the first place!"

"Jellal." Although their guilds were officially allied, there were few in Fairy Tail who would readily approach the former dark mage – and when he was emitting such an aura of fury, that number dwindled to one. Erza's arms were folded as she leaned up against the wall, close enough and stern enough to dissuade him from striking again. "Stop it. Guilt isn't going to help anyone."

"I have to go back for her."

Erza seized his arm before he could act on that impulse. "Lucy sent you away for a reason, Jellal. She wanted us to trust her."

It had seemed like a good argument when Erza had first made it, but every passing hour had sapped the strength from it, until even he found it hard to believe her. "She should be back by now. Something's gone wrong."

"Then believe in her to sort it out," Erza snapped back. "You trusted her enough to facilitate her suicide mission in the first place; the least you can do now is see that resolve through!"

He recoiled visibly from her words, and only then did she seem to realize what she'd said. A groan escaped her lips, perhaps the first in many months, and she sank onto a bar stool, as dismayed as one could be while still ready to fight at any moment. "I apologize. I know you must have had a good reason for agreeing to take her to Alvarez, although I would feel more comfortable if you shared it."

As he had every time she had brought it up, subtly or otherwise, Jellal shook his head. "It is Lucy's secret, not mine, and if she didn't tell you, I won't either. However… from her absence, I can only assume it did not mean as much as either of us hoped. I wish I had entered Vistarion with her."

"I wish you had, too," Erza admitted. "But it wasn't as though coming back didn't have its merits." She nodded over to where Macao was giving Mest a tour of the guildhall, whose eyes were as wide as saucers despite the fact that this was probably the third or fourth time in his life that he had been shown the guildhall for the 'first time'. Levy was studying a map of Fiore, while beside her, Cana was laying down tarot cards in arcane patterns, combining divination, statistics, and strategy to try and turn the odds in their favour. "We need you here, and Lucy knew it. A literal army is bearing down upon us, and we have no plan, no leader, and half of our strongest mages are missing. We can't afford to let you go back to Vistarion now."

His long breath seemed to pool like dry ice around their feet. "I know. I just… if she doesn't come back…"

Erza touched his hand. "I know, but we must keep moving forward."

At that moment, there came a shriek from the other side of the guildhall.

A haze had enveloped Elfman where he stood. Lisanna, still shouting for help, reached for her brother as the spatial distortion intensified – and then he was gone, as an entirely different silhouette shimmered into existence in the space where he had been.

The newcomer had not even fully materialized when Erza forced them roughly back against the wall, gauntleted fist around their neck and dagger-point pressed over their heart. "One move and I'll- Minerva?"

She recognized the intruder quickly enough to avoid running her through, but her grip did not relent. She had heard that Minerva had re-joined Sabertooth, but they had not spoken since the battle against Tartaros, when they had met as enemies and parted as something that definitely wasn't friends, but which didn't warrant impaling on sight either. Fairy Tail mages gathered behind Erza in solidarity, ready to strike the moment Minerva's allegiance became clear.

Minerva understood the situation perfectly, biting back any opinion she may have had about Erza's method of greeting. "Sabertooth sent me to talk to you," she explained. "I'm the only one who can travel so far so quickly… although my magic is hardly designed for such long distances, and we had to borrow Elfman in return." She swallowed with an effort against Erza's grip, and added, with even greater effort, "I apologize for the shock, but there was not enough time to send a message by normal means."

"Understood," Erza acknowledged, releasing her and stepping away. "What's the situation?"

"That's rather what I was hoping you could tell me. Emissaries from the Royal Army informed us that Fiore was facing an imminent invasion by the Alvarez Empire, and that if we were willing to help defend the kingdom, we should head to the northern front. Sabertooth is on its way to reinforce the army as we speak, but beyond that, we know nothing of the bigger picture… other than that it's your guild they're after."

Erza nodded briefly. "First, take this," she said, handing Minerva one of Warren's prototype lacrima. "It'll let your guild speak to ours more easily. We're building up a communications network here, centred on Warren, which will let us talk to our allies and track the progress of our enemies."

Then, realizing that it wasn't just Minerva who was waiting for an explanation, she raised her voice to address the entire guild. "The Alvarez army stands ready to invade Fiore in four different places. We don't yet know whether they intend to charge straight across the land to Magnolia, or if they will stop to secure territory and supply routes as they go – in other words, whether their priority is to conquer Fiore or to destroy Fairy Tail. Only the first few hours of conflict will answer that. In the meantime, Blue Pegasus are heading north with Sabertooth, while Lamia Scale and Mermaid Heel have gone south to prevent the naval fleet from gaining a foothold in Hargeon. The main bulk of the Royal Army has gone west to meet the main Alvarez force, and the Magic Council has agreed to defend our country from the east."

"From the east?" Minerva echoed, eyebrows rising. "Surely Bosco has not allied with the empire?"

"It hasn't, to our knowledge, but do not underestimate the audacity of the Alvarez air fleet. As far as we can tell, they have landed in Bosco, just outside our border, and are preparing to invade across the ground from there. That in itself is in violation of international law, naturally, but they have gambled on Bosco being too afraid to call them out on it… and it appears to have paid off. Princess Hisui is currently negotiating with the authorities in Bosco in the hope of capturing Alvarez's eastern force in a pincer attack, but we think they're hedging. If we win, they lose nothing but face; if Alvarez wins, they can claim their lack of action as sanctioning and assisting the Alvarez army, and thereby try to position themselves as its ally. We can't rely on their help."

Minerva nodded slowly. "Anything else we should know, before we jump in on your guild's behalf?"

"To be honest, we know little more than you do. We are vastly outnumbered in manpower, and although most of their foot soldiers do not have magic, just like our Royal Army, they have enforced conscription on their guilds, so their overall proportion of magic-users is far higher. However, the war will be won or lost in the battles between their top mages and ours. Those who have met some of the empire's champions say that their strength is unrivalled in Fiore. That does not equate to victory, of course. Fairy Tail has built a hundred-year reputation on turning the tables on those stronger than us, and we do not intend to stop now."

Someone in the crowd gave a cheer, and Erza let them. They needed it.

"There's one other thing you should know," she added, to Minerva. "Our enemy is Zeref, the Black Mage, whose magic is the essence of death, and who is thought to be immortal. If you do not want to join the fight, we will think no less of you."

This time, Minerva made no attempt to hide her annoyance. "Of course we'll fight," she scoffed. "We have a lot to make up to your guild, myself in particular. But that does bring me to the other reason why I'm here: Sting and Rogue have vanished."

"What do you mean?" Jellal demanded.

"No one's seen either of them since Yukino's funeral. There were rumours that they were going to take on some big, dangerous job, but nothing has been logged with the guild, and no requests are missing from the board. I was hoping they might be here with you, but it seems not."

"We haven't seen them," Erza confirmed.

It was then that Levy spoke up, weaving her way through to stand at the front of the crowd. "Our Dragon Slayers are missing, too. Do you think it's connected?"

"Acnologia took Gajeel and Wendy some time ago, though," Jellal pointed out. "If only we knew what he was after…"

"Needless to say, if we knew where he was holding them, we would not be standing around here," Erza seconded. "We can do nothing but believe in them and ensure that there is still a guild for them to return to."

"I know," Levy murmured, downcast.

"Thank you for the lacrima," Minerva cut across them. "Please let us know if you hear anything from Sting or Rogue. Now, I will go back to my guild and return Elfman to you."

"Wait!" a new voice shouted.

Mira was hurrying towards them across the guild. She was smiling and waving. There was something terrifying about it.

Under her breath, Levy muttered, "I'm thinking maybe you shouldn't have picked Elfman to switch locations with."

"I had no choice," Minerva retorted, though she also sounded uneasy. "Across this distance, I could only have switched with someone I knew well." Then she looked at Mira's smile, and swallowed. "I didn't mean any harm by it…"

"No, no, it's fine." Mira waved her hand easily. "I was just going to ask if you'd stick around for a while."

"…May I ask why?"

This time, Minerva was not the only one who found Mira's smile unnerving. "I think your magic might come in handy."

There was no dawn over Magnolia that day.

At 6AM exactly, the bells of Kardia Cathedral tolled. It was not daybreak. It was not a resounding declaration of their resolve to win this fight. It was nothing more and nothing less than the expiry of the pact that had kept them alive thus far, as midnight struck in Vistarion.

The sound startled those who had not realized the hour was so advanced. All night, the sky had been the same starless grey-black pressing down upon them, confinement and claustrophobia warring with the lamplight and energy in the heart of the guildhall.

Even now that the morning bells were ringing, there was not a whisper of dawn to accompany them. The summer sunrise swept across the northern meadows, the southern ports, the western valleys, the eastern plains, but Magnolia itself was still bathed in darkness.

As hastily conceived plans sprang into action, there were those who looked at the tenebrous sky and wondered, but the first enemy ships were approaching Hargeon, and the first sightings of the force from the west put their numbers at double the most pessimistic estimates, and there was far too much going on for Fairy Tail to start letting symbolism spook them. They raised a runic barrier around Magnolia. They primed their Jupiter cannon. They communicated with their allies and scrutinized the movements of the Alvarez troops for the first sign that they were forsaking conventional warfare and heading straight for their target, Fairy Tail.

It didn't occur to anyone that the enemy was already there.

Once, the aerial vanguard had been Ajeel's unit. He had been instrumental in its formation, its mindset, its ethos; with him at its head, there was no doubt that it would have swept across Fiore in one loud, valiant charge against the enemies of their empire.

But Ajeel was dead, and the new commander of the vanguard did things somewhat differently.

After all, His Majesty's foolish non-aggression pact hadn't stipulated where the army could and couldn't go before the stroke of midnight – only that it couldn't attack. All this amassing at the borders, in plain sight of the Fiorean army, was good as a threat but counterproductive when it came to what really mattered: annihilating that guild and everyone in it.

There was nothing in the wording of His Majesty's orders to prevent a general from taking up a… well, a more prudent position.

Say, for instance, in the dark and swampy skies directly above Magnolia, already inside the rune barriers which flared up at the city limits.

Thus it came to pass that, while the mages of Fairy Tail had their eyes fixed on the borders of their kingdom, the real threat was silently descending from above, shrouded by an artificial darkness that was far, far more dangerous than the symbolic clouds of war.

There was no dawn over Magnolia that day.

He was here to make sure that there never would be again.

Eleven years ago, on the day he had hired Invel, Emperor Spriggan had impulsively fired seven members of his Spriggan Twelve and executed the eighth. It wasn't the first time he had radically altered the structure of his empire's government on a whim, but His Majesty's swift crushing of Markos Verde's fanciful dreams of a coup had had two enduring effects on the role of his advisory council.

Firstly, in the wake of the wildfire that was His Majesty's actions, the other aspects of government – the senate, the ministers, the secretaries of state; the administrators and lawmakers who had their own independent hierarchy – had taken the devastation as an opportunity for new growth. Historically, stemming from when they had been called the Council of Twelve, Emperor Spriggan's mages had been his advisors, enforcers, military leaders, and agents in the fledgling empire's administration. As the empire had expanded, its government had also grown and matured, yet the Council and its function had not evolved with them. Their emperor's brutal actions that day, combined with his willingness to acknowledge that the old system may no longer be appropriate, brought, to the survivors, an opportunity.

Promotions and reorganizations abounded as the repercussions rippled across the entire administration, and by the time His Majesty had found enough candidates to restore half the empty seats in the Twelve, their role in the administration had shifted. No more would they participate in the daily running of government. They simply weren't needed any longer.

Of course, they were still His Majesty's advisors. Their reputation and power hadn't changed, and indeed the only contact most politicians had with their emperor was via one of the Twelve, who would take their proposal to him if they could be convinced of its worthiness. However, other than Invel and August, who bridged the gap between the administration and the Twelve – the former because that was his job, and the latter because he had been serving His Majesty for long enough to have done both for his entire life – their active roles in the physical functioning of government were minimal.

Individual magical strength had always been important for the Twelve, but prowess in battle or strategy was now critical. Perhaps the only thing more important was the ability to see things differently to His Majesty, and thereby, as a body, offer a balance of opinions to complement his own. As a result, the demographic of the Twelve in recent years had tended towards younger, free-thinking mages, who understood the intricacies of politics but didn't have to care for them, and who displayed raw magical talent and a fierce ability to learn.

The second important change to the role of the Twelve resulted from the fact that people meeting those criteria were not all that easy to come by.

Emperor Spriggan may have been impulsive, but he was far from stupid. He recognized that removing two-thirds of his personal council in one fell swoop had weakened his position. The very fact that he had had to do so after a ten-year absence threatened his reputation and authority. He had to start looking for replacements, and fast.

Which meant finding powerful, intelligent, competent, ready-trained, and loyal mages amongst an empire he himself had been absent from for the past ten years.

Easier said than done.

After a great internal struggle, Emperor Spriggan – though it would perhaps have been better to call him Zeref in that moment, for it was one of the few times he had allowed his two lives to overlap – had done something he had promised long ago to never do again.

He had returned to his work with living magic.

Many centuries ago, when he had set the Etherious demons free and fled to another continent, there was one who had not been granted independent life. One who, despite his immense potential, had been deemed a failure. One whom Zeref had refused to let stand beside him when he and his demons had obliterated the kingdom of Carligne, remaining instead as an inanimate book throughout the centuries.

Right now, with power and obedience his most pressing concerns, he had retrieved the book, and Larcade had been reborn to join the new Twelve.

Time had dulled his memories of quite why he had felt such distaste towards the demon in the past. The present was all too quick to remind him.

Larcade had always thought himself superior to the other demons, special, and being 'chosen' to serve Emperor Spriggan had only reinforced the fantasy that he alone deserved to be treated as his son. The demon was presumptuous, and his presumptions were painful. Every greeting seemed to mock the four-hundred-year tragedy that family was to Zeref. Larcade didn't merely remind him of everything he could never have; he flaunted it right in front of him, heedless to the hollow agony it brought.

Needless to say, once Emperor Spriggan's power base had been re-established in Vistarion, and the search for more human servants was well underway, Larcade suddenly found himself in charge of restoring peace in the remote corners of the empire.

Still, from a purely objective standpoint, it had had the desired effect. Larcade was powerful and knowledgeable; disinterested in politics but more than willing to make an effort for his master; perfectly loyal, as all demons were; and surprisingly popular amongst his colleagues.

Well, amongst all except one, that was. It seemed Larcade was the only person in the entire empire that August didn't like.

Hardly ignorant of the tension within his own council, or of the underlying reason, he had asked August, once, if he could not rise above the demon's behaviour for the sake of the empire.

"No," August had said bluntly. "It is not me he hurts with his actions, but you, all for his own satisfaction. I will tolerate it because you have told me to, but I do not have to like him for it."

Then, when he was still off-balanced from his oldest ally's perceptiveness, August had looked directly at him and added, "You could make him stop."

Of course he could. He could rewrite the demon's entire personality from scratch if he wanted. Could forcibly override all the quirks the demon had developed. Could cut out the inexplicable desire to refer to him as 'father' and all the assumed familiarity that came with it.

But he had promised.

He had promised Anna, and the demons who had fought for him outside the Eclipse Gate, and the Celestial Spirits he had confronted upon her death, that he would never seek to control anyone in that way again.

So he hadn't. And August had been punished for the impudence of his suggestion, and they had never spoken of it again.

The addition of Larcade to the Twelve wasn't the only decision he had made that day, though.

He'd lost something important on the day he had executed Markos Verde. That man had been a traitor and a fool, but he'd had another vital quality too: he was intimidating. Both at home and overseas, politicians and warriors alike were afraid of him.

That was something the present administration sorely lacked. Emperor Spriggan was absent too often, and too unintimidating in appearance, to have quite the same effect. Politically terrifying, yes, but physically? Only with great effort, and a lot of wasted life. August could be terrifying, certainly, but only when he was truly angry, and it took a lot to get him to that point. Otherwise, he was too empathetic to have the ability or the desire to invoke negative feelings in others. And as for Invel… well, the only scary thing about him was how professionally he could function on a consistent four hours of sleep.

As he rebuilt his Twelve over the years, finding mages who would be admired, respected, trusted, envied, or obeyed, he had yet to come across any who would be truly feared, by his allies or his enemies.

So he decided to make one.

It was the first time he had created a new demon in centuries. When he had set Mard Geer and the others free, he had always intended for it to be the end – and as he worked on this new project, he began to realize why. He did not have the time, the patience, or the meandering curiosity that had driven his original experiments with living magic. The freedom and creativity he still felt whenever he was inspired to research magic was notably absent from this project, replaced by a dim sense of guilt diluted in a great sea of nothing much at all.

He worked with mechanical efficiency. He pulled together the most dangerous elements of the Etherious demons, and combined them into a single being of immense power and not a sliver of humanity: the demon whose name had immediately been replaced by the title he had won in his first battle, Bloodman.

He didn't need human emotion, not like the companions Zeref had made for himself long ago. It didn't matter that the others in the Twelve had a wary relationship with him at best. It didn't matter that his creator was the only one he listened to. Ever since Zeref had first put pen to paper and realized there was no passion in it, the demon he created had been a tool and nothing more.

And what an effective tool he was. From his appearance to his cursed powers, from his attitude towards human life to the very first – and very public – mission on which his emperor had sent him, the brutal subjugation of the western isles, his reputation had spread across the battlefields like the plague, and with almost as many thoughtless deaths.

In a way, he was a walking paradox: living magic, yet the antithesis of life; born for a purpose and despised for carrying it out. Magic was life and creation an act of love, but there had been no love in the words Zeref had written, and the being thus born from them had no concept of it.

Bloodman had little to no experience of aerial combat. Furthermore, there were plenty of fine commanders under Ajeel who weren't of the Twelve, but who nonetheless could have stepped up to lead the aerial vanguard in his place, had His Majesty permitted it.

But effective leadership wasn't the point of the exercise.

Out of all the people Zeref could have chosen to lead the first strike against Fairy Tail, he had selected death incarnate.

It was a message to anyone foolish enough to think his feelings for a certain Fairy Tail mage were going to stand between him and his goal. Not five minutes after the lapse of the non-aggression pact, in the darkness that forbade the dawn, Fairy Tail would fight or they would die.

"Fire," Bloodman rasped.

Lacrima transmitted the message from ship to ship, and then there was nothing. No burst of light to mark the barrage of energy. No looming shadow as explosive missiles approached the ground. The darkness in the sky smothered it all.

There was nothing, and then there was everything.

Eruptions of magical energy burst along the street. Flames sprung from the shells of gutted houses, casting a hellish glow upon the underside of the thick, swirling darkness above. Noise and panic enveloped the guildhall they had thought was safe behind their pretty purple barrier – and oh, how wrong they were!

Bloodman laughed the reaper's laugh, revelling in how swiftly the soldiers on the deck of the command ship scrambled away from him at the sound. "Again," he hissed.

"Y-Yes, Dread Lord!"

Slowly they descended in their shroud of artificial night, and the bombardment rolled out a carpet stained red with blood to greet them.

Down below, their foes were scrambling to retaliate. A gleam of white on the mountainside alerted Bloodman to the presence of a Jupiter cannon, but in the darkness the guild mages had nothing but fortune to guide them, and fortune was not on their side.

The blast of white energy went far wide of the fleet. For a moment, its light slashed through the veil, and the Fairy Tail mages could see what horror awaited them: steel and fire and the engines humming the pale horseman's march. Then the demon exerted his power and swirling black clouds enveloped them once again. With their sight stripped away, the taste of his enemies' fear was even sharper along his tongue, and he threw back his head to drink it in.

After all, the Alvarez fleet did not need visuals to aim. Their technology was the most advanced in the world. The coordinates of the guildhall and their own global positioning magic was all they needed to continue the overwhelming bombardment.

Shielded by the darkness, there was no fear of retaliation. Bloodman had read the strategic reports; Fairy Tail had no technology to their name – the Jupiter cannon had slipped through their informant network, it seemed, but it was so inferior to Alvarez military technology that he did not care – and the Dragon Slayers and their Exceed were the only real aerial combatants amongst their number.

But there were no Dragon Slayers in Fairy Tail any more.

That was another reason why Bloodman had been chosen for the vanguard: he did not care for proving himself or testing his strength. As long as his opponents died, the method was irrelevant to him. Where others might be tempted to ignore orders and fight the mages of Fairy Tail one on one, he could be relied upon destroy the entire guild with nothing more than the gulf in technology and finances between the lone mage guild and the continent-spanning empire.

No risks. No recklessness. Nothing but one-sided annihilation.

Then there was a blur of motion, and the airship on his right exploded.

At first, there was silence. Even the bombardment of the guildhall stopped in shock.

"B-B-Beta Unit Three is down, Dread Lord!" someone stammered.

Bloodman's breath rattled in empty lungs. He could see the ship was down. What he couldn't see was how, and he had better vision than anyone in the darkness he had summoned.

Slowly he turned on the deck of the command ship, tongue flicking out for any taste of fear that wasn't his own soldiers' apprehension; for any trace of heat that wasn't the white-hot fusion of the engines.

Even though he was looking out for it, he almost missed it: a streak of dark on dark. It ploughed through the hull of a neighbouring ship without slowing, bursting out the other side as the ship began to fall. He caught a glimpse of angular wings, of something not human, but it was quickly swallowed by the night that should have been his domain.

No, it was his domain, and the human mages who thought to oppose him would learn that soon enough.

The darkness thickened, becoming something almost tangible, something which flexed in and out like the lungs of a gigantic beast – ready and waiting to swallow the life of any human foolish enough to draw close.

When it came again, it did not break the darkness as much as slide through it. The first Bloodman knew of its attack was the first anyone knew of it: a line of shadow swooping, hawk-like, seizing the command ship's first mate and vanishing back into nothing. The man's scream lingered like a ghost long after the disappearance of his body.

"There's something out there!" someone shouted.

That shout triggered an avalanche of realizations: that the guildhall wasn't as defenceless as they had been told; that Fairy Tail's aerial capability was greater than their strategists had accounted for; that, trapped on board their airships in this artificial night, there was nowhere for them to run.

All of a sudden, the ground seemed a long way down.

"I won't wait for it to pick us off one by one!" Breaking ranks, the speaker lunged for the emergency parachutes.

He hadn't managed more than one step before a bony hand locked around his throat. Bloodman lifted him effortlessly. The soldier's face bulged and then shrunk in on itself, withering before their very eyes. Pale death ran its long, slender fingers through his hair; limbs contracted like the legs of a dead spider. By the time the demon cast him over the side of the ship, there was nothing left of him but a lifeless husk.

A long hiss seemed to wrap around the throats of the terrified crew. "Run," the demon rasped, "and I will kill you myself."

No one took the invitation.

"A wise decision," hissed he. "Now, resume the descent towards Fairy Tail-"

A curve of darkness blurred at the edge of his senses – followed by a bolt of light. It blew apart the cursed night with a far-too-solid explosion, and as the light-blindness faded, he could see a rain of wreckage falling through the sky. The wreckage of one of his ships.

But Fairy Tail didn't have the firepower to blast apart an Alvarez ship while their Jupiter cannon was blinded.

The only thing with energy cannons like that… was another Alvarez ship.

The black silhouette materialized just long enough to be spotted. This time, Bloodman saw it dive; this time, he roared, "No!"

Too late.

The desperate thunder of machine-gun bullets shredded the night. Some scattered uselessly. Some hit the gliding stranger – and bounced off, proving that it was a physical creature, after all. But most of them sank into the neighbouring airship's armour plating, its engines, its bridge, the bodies of those on the deck.

Screams of pain, usually so delicious to him, set his teeth on edge. Watching his own soldiers take each other down was humiliating.

How was there a human who could move unseen through his magic? How, in this guild of extreme power and explosive reputation and heroic deeds, was there an individual with the subtly and the tact to turn his own fear against him?

Letting his spell of night unravel was the obvious thing to do, but that would leave them vulnerable to the Jupiter cannon, and cost them any advantage they still held over the mages on the ground…

"I really must thank you," a gravelly voice rang out. "This trick isn't nearly as effective in the daylight. It's been a while since I was truly able to spread my wings."

Bloodman might have been the only person on board the ship who didn't jump. He turned slowly towards the prow of the ship, where a lone figure crouched. Two spiked ears adorned a black mask, which melded perfectly into black armour, sizzling from the spray of bullets but otherwise undented. There was no wind, not within Bloodman's night, and yet the figure's cape undulated softly.

Confident behind that mask, the voice continued, "It was Lucy's idea, you know. She was the one who realized that if Avatar hadn't been able to get agents into Alstonia, Alvarez probably hadn't either – and therefore that your airships wouldn't have planned for the magic my sister and I have gained since Fairy Tail split up."

Just like death, the demon could come slow or quick. He crossed the deck in an instant, drawing on the curse power his creator had granted him and slashing with enough unholy force to sever head from shoulders and soul from body.

"Whoops." The figure leaped back, and the slash cut deep into the prow. Bloodman lashed out again, but his opponent's cape caught on the wind and became gliding wings, carried swiftly back into the darkness.

In the lull that followed, not a single bomb was dropped on the guildhall. Every soldier on every ship was staring into the swampy depths that had swallowed the black-armoured figure.

"What was that?"

"It wasn't human!"

"A monster-!"

The demon's purr was thick with leprous filth. "Do you want me to show you what fighting a monster is truly like?" His soldiers trembled and fell silent. "Good. Resume the bombardment. There will be no trace of a city by the time we-"

The next strike did not come from below. No, somehow, despite those artificial wings, the darkness had spat that shadow out above them – as an arrow of black energy that drove straight towards Bloodman. He and it plunged through the deck, through the hull, and as the command ship exploded above them, the ground loomed up beneath.

At the last minute, the shadow's grip loosened and it pulled away. The demon's body hit the ground and burst apart, spewing spores of darkness across the road.

And as those spores gradually began to pull themselves back together, there was no longer a grin upon that skull-like face. Fairy Tail was going to pay, and if he had to wipe them out with his bare hands, all the better.

Hidden by the spread of Lisanna's bat wings, Happy's angel-white ones were working overtime to pull them up before they hit the ground. Her Bat Take Over's cape was great for gliding, and even better for dramatic effect, but only Happy's Aera magic could have let her pull off those gravity-defying acrobatics.

"Thanks, Happy," she grinned, as their combined efforts brought them to a gentle hover above the still-smoking city.

"You're a lot lighter than I'm used to carrying," he chirped back. "We make a great team! Bat-woman and Cat-man – I think it'll catch on!"

"That doesn't sound quite right," she sighed. "Still, how long has it been since we last teamed up like this?"

"Far too long," the Exceed reminisced in agreement, with the little contented smile usually reserved only for fish or Carla. "We should grab a job together when all this is over. It'll be just like old times – you, me and-"

He cut himself off abruptly.

"I know," Lisanna murmured. The mask may have hidden her grimace, and the Take Over may have obscured her voice, but there was no denying the dismay that had crept into her heart. "I'm sure Natsu is alright, Happy. You know how it goes – he'll rock up right at the end of the war, just in time to defeat Zeref and save us all."

"Yeah. I'm sure he's fine."

Happy didn't sound like he believed it, but he was trying very hard.

As if she hadn't noticed, Lisanna continued, "Anyway, you heard what Erza said: it's our job to ensure that there's still a guildhall for him to accidentally destroy in a brawl when he's back, right? Let's get back up there and finish off their fleet while they're still paralyzed by fear."

"But what about the death guy?"

"Oh, don't worry about him. Mira's got a friend who has been dying to meet him…"

The city was burning.

Orange flickered in the dark hollows of the houses. Twisting firelight, the smouldering remnants of the extinguished dawn, danced upon the clouds of darkness pressing down upon them.

The bombardment of the city had paused, the soldiers too concerned with their own well-being to worry about the success of a mission that was supposed to have been safe and easy, but the damage had already been done. Smoke scratched through the air. Rubble blurred the carefully demarcated streets. Flames crowned the large building on the shores of the lake.

In a world of uncertainty, the blazing guildhall was a symbol of absolute destruction.

Yet in front of the burning building stood a single woman. She did not look like a soldier. Her arms were bare of armour, her hands were empty of weapons, and her smile was gentle.

Were it not so dark, Bloodman might have noticed that that smile did not extend to her eyes.

"Welcome to Fairy Tail," Mira greeted. "Or, that's what I'd usually say, but you're not welcome here, and I suggest you turn around and go home."

Bloodman tasted the air with his tongue. The dust didn't bother him, and the smoke was so very sweet, but there was something else, something delicious, underneath it. Life.

As impressive as the bombardment of the city had appeared, there had been something empty about it. The buildings, he realized, had been evacuated before the fleet's arrival. The only things which had been left behind were those which could be done without. There was too little fear, and far too little death.

Mirajane Strauss, though – she was alive. He could hear the blood squeezing through her veins; feel the warmth of her skin distinct from the hazy flames; taste her pride and determination like nectar upon his tongue.

How he longed to snuff out her life.

As long as there was death, he did not care what caused it, but within the aerial vanguard, a part of him had been bound by His Majesty's – or, rather, by his master Zeref's – inviolable command, to restrain his power amongst his own men for the benefit of the army as a whole. Now, the fleet was stuck in the black mire of a sky, and he was down here, alone, free to be death in all its unstoppable glory.

The air he exhaled was poison. Dark spores swirled in every footprint he left behind. His cape hummed and shimmered, as if there was not a body underneath it at all, but a million mosquitos in the vague shape of a man. He was pestilence and war and famine and death.

Sensing the shift of the atmosphere against all human life, Mira's eyes narrowed. White light enveloped her body, momentarily banishing the hellfire-glow. Yet there was nothing holy about it. It faded to reveal a woman who looked about as human as he did: lethal claws and reptilian tail and bone-white hair pulled up above her head.

Behind her calm smile, there was something screaming to be set free.

She moved first. She pounced like a lioness but became a roaring dragon mid-flight, claws flashing with no need of a pack to support her. Bloodman was not quick enough to react, but why would he have bothered honing reflexes he didn't need? Mira's claws pierced the place where a human's heart would be and found nothing there to break.

A wave of black particles flooded forth from the wound. They smothered her body, embraced her bare skin, infiltrated her bloodstream; he could feel every one of them leeching that delicious vitality out of her.

As she froze, still impaling his gaseous body upon her arm, his face split into its usual skeletal grin. "You can't kill me," he purred. "I am death."

"Then it seems we've reached a stalemate." Mira withdrew her arm. There was something dismissive about the way she flicked it, shedding black particles as though they were rainwater. "You can't kill me, either."

Bloodman did not frown outwardly, but he did hesitate. She was breathing far too easily for one whose lungs were drenched with poison. The plague of his existence wasn't harming her at all. No, her body was assimilating those cursed particles like a plant would swallow sunlight. Take Over magic, it had to be.

How fortunate for her, that she possessed the only kind of magic that would have saved her.

How fortunate for him, to stumble upon an opponent he could thoroughly enjoy killing.

You can't kill me, she had said, disdainfully, and the naivety of it made him want to laugh. Death came for everyone, in the end.

"Is that what you think?" he hissed.

Even after that considerate warning, his attack still caught her by surprise.

A flick of his bony finger slashed across her body like the blade of an invisible sword. Half-twisting, Mira took the intangible blow against her shoulder in a fountain of blood. Her reactions saved her from bisection, but she might have wished for such a quick death, had she known he would press his other hand directly to the wound and release an explosive burst of energy.

It tore through flesh and bone alike. As she stumbled back, he drew upon yet another of the powers his creator had bestowed upon him, and with a snap of his fingers, he doubled her sense of pain. Her mental fortitude collapsed. To an orchestra of collapsing buildings and crackling flames, her scream was the sweetest complement.

Mira's Satan Soul transformation vanished. Still, she struggled to her feet amidst the ashes, wiping a trail of blood from her chin. "I remember that magic," she panted. "Or, should I say, that curse. You're no effigy of death. You're just another demon."

"I am no mere demon." Bloodman would have smiled, if skulls could do so, but that was far too pretty a word for his gaping leer. "I am the power of all the greatest demons combined. I am all the strengths of those who came before me, and none of their weaknesses. I am the perfect demon."

He had been surprised more than once this day already – when the black-armoured mage had turned his own darkness against him; when this harmless-looking woman had proven herself immune to the pestilence which followed in his wake.

Nothing, however, would stick in his mind as much as the smile that lit up Mira's face when she should have been trembling with fear.

"I see," she said. "Well, then. Shall we dance?"

Then, before he could say anything, she answered her own question: "We would love to."

And the next time she moved, she was different.

It wasn't just the alternate Take Over form she selected, silky black and domineering, with four chitinous tentacles at her back. It wasn't just the marginal change in the texture of her magic, one no human would have noticed, but which felt oddly familiar to an Etherious demon like himself. It wasn't even the sneer on lips that had known nothing but humility and determination for years.

A crazy laugh tore from her throat, as if her personality had finally caught up with her external appearance, and she launched herself at him with wild abandon.

Bloodman's body broke apart into a storm of darkness. Knowing it would not infect her like it would any other, he let his cursed power circulate through his disassociated consciousness. Explosions raced through the cloud while she was still inside it.

It was a cruder death than he would have liked, but something about that gleam in her eyes when she had changed pushed him towards caution.

Which proved sensible. Even in the midst of the explosion, he could hear the snap of her fingers, taste the grin blazing in the inferno as she stated, "Whoosh."

Suddenly there was a tornado. Winds tore the firestorm apart, and would have done the same to his scattered body had he not urgently re-formed from the darkness, cape fluttering behind him.

A clawed foot met his stomach the moment it was solid. Bones crunched. It hurt more than it should have done; it had been too long since someone had last hit him.

But being physical had its advantages too, and he lashed out with the cutting curse worthy of a reaper, one which could slice through anything. Unfortunately, there was no longer anything to slice. He felt, again, that shiver of familiarity in her magic, and then she was gone.

And in her place there swirled a cloud of black, pestilent particles.

Before he could comprehend what she had done – that was his power! – he burst open from the inside. From a single speck of dust caught within his lungs, she had re-formed her physical body in a place far too small for it. This time, his dissolution was entirely involuntary.

"You use this power like an amateur," she smirked. "Get out of our sight."

A deluge of bitter water drowned the street at once. It swept up his gaseous cloud of being as easily as it did the dust of the ruined houses; it quenched the power he was building along with the flames in the guildhall. For one brief moment, his sense of self hung in the balance. Then he jerked back to physicality, body and mind both flailing in the floodwater.

Grinding his teeth, he drew upon his power and threw open a portal. Perhaps it led to a netherworld, perhaps it led to nowhere at all; he had sent many through it, but none had returned for him to ask. Now, he let the flood drain into it. Perhaps it would be a welcome relief for them, in hell.

His opponent was stood in the middle of the road, her head tilted to one side, watching him expectantly.

There was not a scratch on her body. Even the wound in her shoulder had disappeared, hidden beneath a patch of diamond-scale armour… which, now that he thought about it, looked exactly like the perfect defence he, too, could invoke.

But that was impossible.

Wasn't it?

Twice as fast as before, she lunged at him, claws ripping through his body before he had time to shed his physical form. He staggered back into a bath of explosions, mines her footsteps had pressed into the ground. Severing curses, blindingly fast, crisscrossed his body.

Screaming in rage, he raised his hands towards the sky. The earth split open, spewing forth dark souls and rotten bones, all that remained of those who had died in this place.

The evacuation may have limited the casualties that day, but the city was old, and death eternal. Beneath those clean-swept streets lay innumerable bones: the poor, the savage, the beggars and the dispossessed, the plague-pits from an era all but forgotten, the victims of brutal wars erased from civil history. All cities were built on blood, and it bubbled to the surface at his cry; a torrent of corpses and all the things which had killed them.

And as she slashed in revulsion at their grasping hands, momentarily distracted, he became an arrow of darkness, shooting through the gloom left by the drowned fires. There was no way she should have seen him coming.

But some part of her knew him. Knew what he'd try in his desperation.

The same part which spoke, with cold finality: "We won't let you."

Power surged around her. The dead, the heartless, hungry dead, backed away from her in a way they had only ever done from him, their lord and master. She turned lazily towards Bloodman, and a blast of energy tore him apart on the spot.

When at last his mortal form condensed again from the darkness, his dimly flickering consciousness found himself lying at her clawed feet, with no desire to stand.

"What- what are you?" he rasped.

"We are Alegria." She sounded amused. "We are the Circle of the Nine. And you? You are less than nothing. You are a cheap knock-off, lacking so much we do not know where to begin. You were beyond foolish to challenge us."

"You're like me," he realized. "You belong with me, with our master. On the side of death and devastation."

She tilted her head, considering. "We are nothing like you," she said, at last. "We are free. We may be what is left of those who were once bonded to your master, but we are not the same as them. We like being alive."

Bloodman laughed at the bizarreness of it all, at the hollowness in his chest, which had been a part of him for so long that he didn't notice it except by the lack of an ache. "You're nothing but foolish ghosts."

"Are we? We do not feel like ghosts. We know excitement and amusement and desire and pain and respect and fear. You don't know any of those things. You're just a weapon. You're not real." There was a pause. For a moment, her face showed a confusion as great as his. "We feel sorry for you. What a strange thought that is."

"You've chosen the wrong side." One last laugh rattled around his empty ribcage. "Your city is dead. Your guildhall is a ruin. I have achieved what I came here to do."

She had already raised her hand to finish him when she was interrupted by a voice: her own. "Wait. Let him see this."

"Hmm?" she responded to herself. "Sometimes, you can be even crueller than we are, Mirajane."

"And you can be as human as me," she told herself.

Her transformation shimmered and vanished. It was Mira, not the amalgamation of demon consciousnesses, who turned towards the burnt-out wreck of the guildhall and snapped her fingers.

The building shimmered and vanished.

A heartbeat later, another building was in its place: the real Fairy Tail guildhall, as bold and bright as the day it had been (re)built. Every window and every open door was lined with Fairy Tail mages. Not one of them was harmed, just as there was not a trace of damage to the building itself.

As Bloodman stared, uncomprehending, there was another distortion of air, and a woman appeared next to Mira on her hands and knees. Despite the exhaustion resounding in her every breath, she still managed to level a glare at Mira. "My magic is not supposed to be used on buildings, you know!"

"Thanks, Minerva!" Mira chirped.

That glare did not lessen. "I still don't see why you needed me to switch the guildhall with that old warehouse, though. What does it matter if your guildhall gets destroyed? It's just a building. You've already rebuilt it enough times."

Mira beamed. "Clearly, you've never defended a pub from a city full of gangsters before."

"Of course I've never…" Minerva blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You're right, the building itself doesn't matter. We can just rebuild it once the war is over. But the guildhall is more than just a building – it's a symbol. It's our strength and our resilience. It's where Zeref is coming, and it's where we will make our final stand, even though there might be a hundred more strategically advantageous places in Fiore to defend. While it stands tall, so do we."

She smiled as she turned her gaze towards the sky. "And our enemies know it."

Bloodman's spell of darkness shattered. The artificial night was stripped away, allowing the aerial vanguard to see the situation with their own eyes for the first time.

What was left of the aerial vanguard, that was.

Many of the airships had been brought down across Magnolia, almost indistinguishable from the wreckage their own bombing had caused. Over half of the remainder were smoking or spluttering or bore visible holes in their hulls: some had been victims of Lisanna and Happy's guerrilla strikes, but more, in the fear and confusion Lisanna had turned against them, had been accidentally torn apart by the same unparalleled weaponry which had laid waste to Magnolia. Their commander had threatened them, abandoned them, and now lay motionless at the feet of an unarmed barmaid.

And what had their sacrifices bought them?

Destruction, yes. But it was the destruction of abandoned buildings, of unneeded roads, of infrastructure that had been written off the moment Alvarez had made their intentions clear. The only thing left of any value in Magnolia was Fairy Tail's guildhall.

The guildhall which stood unharmed and fearless at the epicentre of the destroyed city.

And the guild, unbroken.

The aerial vanguard had been shattered, and one of Zeref's commanders fallen, and it had all been for nothing.

"Tell Freed to lower the rune barrier around the city," Mira instructed.

"Why?" Minerva shot back. "Wouldn't it be more practical to trap the remnants of the fleet here, and get your sister to finish them off?"

"But then who would tell the rest of their army what happened?" Mira smiled.

And as the guild's victory roar eclipsed the wails of despair from the airships above, Bloodman – the incarnation of death, the very embodiment of fear – thought he understood, for the first time in his artificial life, the feeling that was driving the few surviving pilots to turn and flee from the city.

There was no dawn over Magnolia that day.

The clouds of darkness fled with the surviving airships, and night burst straight to midday in an unflinching blaze of passion.