The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
There Are No Stars Tonight, Part 4
-Soon There Will Be Silence-
In the west, the Fiorean army had marched out to meet the bulk of the Alvarez forces head-on.
Compared to its neighbours, Fiore wasn't a small kingdom. Its army had been honed through historic struggles over territory and bolstered by the presence of allied Rune Knights. With cavalry units gleaming from atop white horses, watery sunlight darting from helmet to spear-tip to glittering spur, and artillery trundling along with confidence at the edges of each battalion, the defending army was truly a formidable sight.
Until the moment the Alvarez army broke the horizon.
In fact, calling it a 'moment' was particularly misleading, since that tide of armoured darkness broke the line between sky and land and then kept breaking it, more and more soldiers cresting the hill every minute with no sign of abating. The invaders outnumbered the defenders twenty to one, even without accounting for the difference in magical power between the two sides.
Almost immediately, the defenders had begun a tactical retreat. There was no hope of winning. They could only slow the invaders down.
They were doing a good job of this, Invel assessed, considering that they had only had a few days' notice of the invasion. Then again, for many years now, the only thing that had been uncertain about an Alvarez conquest of Ishgar had been the timing. Only a fool would have failed to put contingency plans in place – and from the way the defenders were carefully luring the advancing soldiers towards traps both geographical and artificial, funnelling them into booby-trapped valleys and sniping at them from well-hidden locations, the King of Fiore was no fool.
Their tactics had slowed Alvarez's advance to a crawl – well, their tactics and the fact that slow but inexorable was what Alvarez had planned for all along. In locations where swift headway was their aim, they had the Spriggan Twelve leading the way, not a million-man ground force. Similarly, if the enemy's tactics were posing a real threat, His Majesty would be dealing with them himself, rather than letting the generals in the field come up with counterplans. Instead, the command ship remained hovering back from the front lines.
At least, Invel thought His Majesty would take to the field himself if necessary. Their emperor had been quiet ever since they had departed from Vistarion, and unpredictable for even longer, thanks to their defeat against Acnologia. Still, he appeared to be watching the screen displaying the army's progress with some measure of interest, and his silence could have been a deep-in-thought one rather than a detached one.
Invel risked a glance over his shoulder, and was rewarded by the sight of that calm black gaze shifting immediately to him, assuaging the fear that he might not be able or willing to fight. It seemed he did have his head in the game, after all.
A faint smile twitched at his emperor's lips as he leaned back in the throne-like chair, enough to make it clear that he knew perfectly well what was going through Invel's mind even as he asked, "Is something the matter, Invel?"
"Not at all, Your Majesty." Chastised, he turned back to the screen he was supposed to be watching – and did a double-take. A moment ago, it had been covered with countless dots representing the leading regiments. Now, a good third of them seemed to have winked out. He tapped the screen with a brusque fingernail; the information it presented fizzled, but looked no different when it settled.
"Ah, I must apologize," Invel said. "It seems our enemies have found a way to manipulate our magical radar."
"No, I believe it is accurate."
"With all due respect, it can't be. We can't have lost so many units so quickly."
"On the contrary. I can think of at least one Fairy Tail mage capable of that much destruction."
In complete contrast to how unconcerned His Majesty sounded about the whole affair, Invel's frown deepened with every light that vanished from the screen. "If this is the work of an enemy, then I do not understand the reason for his or her movements. They seem to be cutting straight through the centre of our forces rather than making any attempt to halt our advance."
Again, that infuriating, knowing calm. "Perhaps halting our advance is not their goal."
"Then why-"
"I would dodge, if I were you," His Majesty advised mildly, and then the roof of the airship burst inwards.
Invel jumped backwards, a startled cry escaping from his lips as fragments of twisted steel punched into the floor where he had been standing. He skidded to a halt in front of His Majesty's throne. Frigid air entwined around his fingers, ready to be flung at the slightest sign of hostile magic.
Amidst the debris, a ragged cloak flared dramatically. Grizzled and tanned and steady of balance, Gildarts Clive slowly got to his feet.
For his part, His Majesty seemed entirely unperturbed that possibly the strongest mage in all Fiore had just dropped through the roof of his command ship. Similarly, it was debatable whether Gildarts had even noticed he was in the presence of Emperor Spriggan. He glanced from Invel to the photograph in his hand, then back at Invel.
"Are you Invel?" he demanded. "The fool who thinks he's good enough for my daughter?"
"Certainly, my name is Invel," Invel responded. "However, I do not believe your second question is of much use in identification. Having met your daughter, I can safely say that being as good as Cana is a particularly low bar; one that would be met, in fact, by almost the entirety of the non-incarcerated population."
The expression on the other's face suggested that Invel would have been in a lot of trouble had Gildarts been following that line of argument. Instead, he held up the dreaded photograph of the two of them at the beach. "But you are the man in this picture?"
"Much to my everlasting shame," Invel sighed.
Gildarts smashed his fist into his own palm with enough force to level a building. "Then I insist that you must fight me!"
"Why?"
"To prove that you are worthy of my daughter, of course!"
"Very well," Invel agreed. "And afterwards, we shall each write and submit ten academic articles to the Journal of Law, Economics and Society, and see who manages to get the most published within a six-month period."
"…What the hell does writing for a stupid journal have to do with anything?"
"About as much as the ability to win in a magical battle does with a man's worth," Invel shrugged. "If you'd prefer, we could add a third round in neither of our specialist areas – say, mountain biking or quantum physics – and make it the best of three."
This suggestion seemed to completely stump Gildarts, who spent several valiant seconds trying to process it before giving it up as a lost cause. "Whatever. I still have to fight you, for the sake of my daughter's honour!"
"I see," Invel mused. "I suppose, if I lose, that you will make me date her."
"What? No! You only get to date her if you win!"
"Oh. In that case, I concede."
"What?"
"I have absolutely no intention of dating your daughter," Invel told him frankly. "In fact, I struggle to think of a worse fate, hence my willingness to fight you for the privilege of not having to suffer it."
A vein bulged in Gildarts's temple. "Are you telling me that you do not find my adorable girl attractive?"
"She's not without her good points, I'll admit," Invel shrugged. "She excels at pretending to be drunk, and she's rather handy at the controls of a stolen speedboat. Unfortunately, that is insufficient to make up for how utterly infuriating she is. As I believe I have said before, she is as far from my type as it is possible to get, and I am offended that you believe I would wish to enter into any kind of relationship, romantic or otherwise, with that woman."
"But… this is you?" Gildarts checked, holding up the photograph from Invel and Cana's impromptu adventure.
Invel briefly considered telling him about the ploy behind the photo, but decided the cunningness of it would go straight over his head.
"This is you," Gildarts repeated, every word becoming more certain, more dangerous, "on a tropical island with my darling daughter, her arm around you, her head on your shoulder, and still you have the nerve to tell me that you have no intention of making her your wife?"
"That is not how I would have phrased it, but since you ask, you are quite correct. However, even if these ridiculous allegations were true, and I was secretly dating your daughter, I fail to see how that provides adequate justification for your actions. I was not aware it was up to you to decide who your daughter gets to spend time with. In Alvarez, that kind of thinking went out of fashion centuries ago." Sighing, Invel touched his fingertips to his forehead. "Still, I always knew that reasoning with you was going to be a long shot."
"Nah," Gildarts said. "I know she can date whoever she wants. She's managed this long on her own; she doesn't need me to start looking out for her now."
Surprised, Invel glanced up, a spark of hope igniting with the thought that he might not have to go through with this after all.
"But, there are two problems with that," Gildarts continued calmly. "First, as her doting father, I reserve the right to beat up any potential boyfriends. And second…" Abruptly, the air thrummed with power. It was as if a room full of generators had all been switched on at once, sucking the very air away from Invel's lips and replacing it with hostile heat. "If you think you're getting out of here alive after insulting my daughter, you've got another thing coming."
And with that warning, Gildarts lunged at Invel.
There was a blur of motion, black and white, and a small hand caught his fist mid-strike.
His Majesty made it look so effortless. It was only because Invel knew him so well that he could detect the sheer amount of magic it had taken to immobilize the Fairy Tail mage, or see the slight twitching in his shoulder-blades as bones which had shattered all the way from his fist down to his spine fused back together in an instant.
Yet there was no indication of his pain as His Majesty spoke, almost amused: "Obviously, I won't allow that."
Invel let out a long breath. "With all due respect, Your Majesty, please stay out of this."
"Oh? It's unlike you to be spoiling for a fight, Invel."
"I am hardly spoiling for it," Invel retorted sharply. "However, backing down now would only reinforce the fallacy that he deserves any say in who Cana or I choose to date, so I will not. I have a point to make, and make it I shall." There was a proud moment of silence. "If you wanted to help, Your Majesty, you could always go to the front lines and not return until you've done as much damage to their forces as this man has done to ours."
He didn't think his emperor would take kindly to the suggestion – it was more a last-ditch attempt to stop him from witnessing what was bound to be an embarrassing struggle against Fairy Tail's strongest mage – but he simply shrugged. "Very well. Do not, however, forget your promise to me. You must remain capable of leading this army, in case I am not."
"I haven't forgotten, Your Majesty."
"Then I will leave this matter up to you."
He vanished in a twist of space, leaving them with a split-second of peace – before Gildarts charged again.
Hargeon wasn't a battlefield.
Laxus had seen battlefields before. He had grappled with demons in the wastelands they called home; he had flown low as a bolt of lightning over the rain-drenched devastation of Tenrou Island; he himself had transformed Magnolia ever so briefly into a kingdom of hate and envy, until the once-fair city had resembled the twisted ruin his own heart had been at the time.
That was what he had been expecting at Hargeon Port: angry clashes of weapon against weapon, blood in the water and fire in the sky, the guilds and soldiers of Fiore locked in a bitter naval siege with the invading fleet.
But there was no battlefield.
Hargeon was empty.
And not empty in the way Magnolia had been empty when the air fleet arrived – with the civilians evacuated and the mages lying in wait to surprise and entrap their enemies. That silence had thrummed with excitement and a stillness just waiting to be broken.
Hargeon was empty in a way Laxus had never felt before. As a Dragon Slayer, he heard what others missed. When the ordinary rhythm of life was stripped away, he heard the scuttling of the rats in the sewers below, the drumbeat of footsteps which thought themselves ghostlike, the whisper of secrets unheard, the flow of air around birds swooping overhead. The silence others heard was nothing but an ignorant human fiction. His eyes caught the tiniest of motions; his nose could unpick the history of a place from a single breath.
When he stood in the centre of Hargeon and inhaled deeply, ignoring the searing pain as the Magic Barrier Particles in his lungs were agitated into motion, he smelled… nothing.
As if no one lived here, and no one ever had.
Hargeon was empty, of sound and touch and life.
It seemed he was not the only one who had noticed. At the front of their party, Jellal slowly lowered his hood and glanced around, as if he thought all the citizens had been hiding behind the fabric filling his peripheral vision. He had no need to hide his face here. There was no one around to recognize him.
"I thought Lamia Scale and Mermaid Heel were supposed to be here," he commented. "Where is everyone?"
Meanwhile, Erza had her sword in one hand and their communications lacrima in the other. "I can't get through to Mira. I'm worried that something might have happened at the guildhall."
"Either that, or something has happened to us," Freed pointed out darkly. "We couldn't contact the Hargeon division from Mira's lacrima in the guildhall, remember? What if the enemy has done something to this entire area that blocks communications?"
"What enemy?" Evergreen sniffed. "Can you see any Alvarez troops?"
Quietly, Jellal said, "If they were able to get rid of our allied guilds so quickly, what reason would they have to stick around? The Alvarez army could be halfway to Magnolia by now."
"But we took the shortest route," Erza argued, brow furrowed. "We'd have noticed if we'd walked past an entire army… wouldn't we?"
As this turned into a heated discussion of all the routes the invaders could have taken out of Hargeon, Laxus took several steps away from the group and tried to put them out of his mind. Easier said than done, when he could feel Freed's attention upon him, no matter how hard he was trying to pretend he was fully engaged in the discussion. Laxus was used to that by now – he had been for years – but over the past few weeks, it had become a hundred times worse, as though Freed genuinely thought Laxus would collapse the moment he took his eyes off him.
Not for the first time, Laxus found himself cursing Lucy's decision to reveal his weakness in front of his team. He wasn't fragile. He didn't need babysitting. Yet with every day that had passed with them no closer to finding a cure for his condition, Freed seemed to become more and more certain that he did.
He shouldn't have had to put his foot down as their leader just to get himself included on this expedition to Hargeon.
He pushed away those angry thoughts, pushed away the patronizing concern he could feel from the main group, and closed his eyes. Despite the poison in his body, he once more inhaled as deeply as he dared, and focussed on what he could feel from Hargeon.
Or, rather, what he couldn't feel.
The others had it wrong. Mermaid Heel and Lamia Scale hadn't lost the fight, because there hadn't been a fight here to lose. If there was, he'd have heard the hungry yowls of steel echoing between the walls, and tasted the tang of satisfaction as its thirst was slaked with blood. Hell, the port was only evacuated a day ago. There should have been layer upon layer of rich scents impressed into the cobbled street… but Hargeon was empty.
He couldn't smell death.
He couldn't smell life, either.
And then, suddenly, he could.
It was the scent of pine needles woven with the sunset, the stretching of green shoots from the shadows to the sky, the sigh of death in hidden hollows.
He felt the looming presence of the forest, and in the nothingness of Hargeon – if this was even Hargeon at all – the anomaly of it shrieked loud.
"Scatter!" Laxus bellowed.
His team did so at once, with the others only a heartbeat behind them. Even those who weren't used to taking instructions from him couldn't deny the urgency of the moment.
The road below them exploded.
Fire forced its way up through the cobbles, hurling clumps of stone and earth after the diving mages. Heat flared on Laxus's tongue. He could feel his lungs burning in response – adrenaline only helped the poison in his system to circulate – but no one who didn't already know he was injured would have guessed it from the way he plunged into the smoky haze. A lightning-enveloped fist smacked into the wall of an abandoned house, inches from the face of a stranger.
Dressed in earthen colours, muscular and tall, he was the embodiment of the twilight-soaked soil Laxus could smell. Tiny bursts of magic popped and crackled around him like the sparks of a forest fire. He reeked of power – and yet there was also something hollow about it, as if it was no more real than the empty port. If Hargeon had been properly alive, this man would barely have been worth noticing.
"Azuma?" a shocked voice asked: Erza. She stepped up next to Laxus, the tip of her blade hovering close to the stranger's chin. "I thought you died on Tenrou Island."
Azuma only smiled. "Show me your power once again, Erza Titania." Another explosion burst at his feet, forcing Erza and Laxus to jump backwards. Barely had they landed, however, when alien roots burst up through the fire-cracked flagstones, coiling around their ankles.
Laxus tried instinctively to shift into his lightning form. Agony blazed through him at once. The Magic Barrier Particles laughed at the idea of turning the physical body they had already claimed for themselves into pure magic. He must have briefly blacked out from the pain, because the next thing he knew with any clarity, Erza's sword was cleaving through the roots and they were both tumbling free.
Erza landed gracefully, already raising a huge two-handed blade to block Azuma's punch. Inwardly grateful that Azuma was more interested in her than him – and despising the fact that he had something to be grateful for – Laxus staggered slowly back to his feet.
Only to come face to face with a man he had hoped to never see again.
Hades loomed over him, his single eye bright with scorn and curiosity. "What interesting magic this is," he remarked, considering first his own body, then letting his gaze rove across the battles between the living and the dead beginning to break out across Hargeon. "I am a ghost, and yet I am real. While I rather resent my memory being used in this way…" His gaze focussed once more on Laxus, amused by the Dragon Slayer's snarl. "…I would certainly not turn down an opportunity to punish the young fool who defied me upon Tenrou Island."
Just for a moment, Laxus felt the same anticipation as Hades did.
His allies thought he was fragile. Someone to be protected. Someone who should have stayed in the guildhall, where it was safe, rather than being sent to the front lines alongside their actual competent mages. This was the perfect opportunity to crush an opponent he hadn't been able to beat alone the first time – to take revenge for his past and his present, and in doing so, seize the chance to prove that he was still a force to be reckoned with in Fairy Tail.
Then Hades lashed out with his magical chain, and all hope evaporated.
Laxus knew all too well that his contaminated body wasn't capable of dodging it, but even as he threw a bolt of lightning at it – which crackled harmlessly along the chain without slowing it – he knew the tactic of deflection and defence he had used against Lucy wasn't going to work against Hades.
Then Freed was there, catching the spiked chain in one demonic hand.
Saved by a friend. What a surprise. Laxus wanted to laugh at the predictability of his own worthlessness.
For a moment, Freed and Hades grappled, darkness-enhanced strength against darkness-enhanced strength. Losing patience, Hades snapped a word like a gunshot and a blast of violet energy drove straight into Freed's transformed hide. That word became a chant in a language which should have been lost to man, and every twisted syllable brought another violet circle of magic into existence around a struggling Freed.
Before Hades could unleash the spell, however, a streak of heavenly light cut through it. Magic circles shattered like glass. Blazing with energy, Jellal struck Hades hard enough to catapult him a good thirty metres down the road.
Jellal strode after him, and the divine light which seared a red-glowing streak into the road as he walked had nothing on the burning in his eyes.
"I have waited a long time to meet the man who played such games with Ultear and myself," he spat, as Hades struggled to right himself in the rubble. "It is a shame that I no longer permit myself to be motivated by revenge. I shall have to hope that your futile attempt to harm my comrades just now justifies what I am about to do to you."
As their battle began in earnest, Laxus turned away, a vain attempt to suppress the bitterness rising up inside him. That should have been him standing up to Hades. But for this accursed injury, his thanks for trying to save a village of innocents when his own survival had already been beyond reproach, it would have been him.
The centre of Hargeon was finally displaying the chaos that the expedition had expected to find there from the start. There was no sign of the hostile army or the guilds sent to fight them – there were only ghosts, springing out of nowhere one after another, but that was more than enough to engage the Fairy Tail mages' attention. Some of the ghosts Laxus recognised, and others he didn't. It was clear, however, that every one of the battles was personal.
He wondered if he'd be able to help, the way he was now.
He wondered if they'd even want any help.
That was when he saw him.
The shaggy-maned, bestial demon stood atop a parish church.
The one who brought his fists down to launch whirlwinds indiscriminately into the mass of Fairy Tail mages.
The only one uninterested in fighting one-on-one, for his intended opponent was no longer a match for him.
Laxus crossed the battlefield so quickly that it was only the lack of pain in his magical core that reassured him he hadn't done it as a bolt of lightning. "Fight me!" he howled. Clasping his hands together, he swung them like a titan's hammer, the thunderous force of the storm behind them.
Tempester jumped clear a moment before the building disintegrated, and landed in front of the still-imploding ruins with ease. He regarded Laxus without interest. "Who are you? Should I care?"
"You will," Laxus vowed. Deep inhalations tended to set off the Magic Barrier Particles in his lungs, but even without proper preparation, his Lightning Dragon's Roar still packed one hell of a punch. The resurrected demon was flung into the rubble of the church. Shivers of electricity wormed their way through the debris.
Laxus knew he should be careful. He knew he should be thinking about the long-term effects on his body rather than the short-term satisfaction of landing a punch. Deeper still, he knew that they were wasting time fighting ghosts in an empty city while the real Alvarez army eluded them.
But with the creature responsible for his pain right in front of him, Laxus found that he just didn't care.
Lightning sparked at his feet. Magnetic fields clenched like a gauntlet of pure force around his fist as he punched the fallen demon. Rubble burst outwards from the destroyed church like the black blood spraying from the creature's mouth – and then, before Laxus could react, the demon blew out the breath of the hurricane and his physical body became a twister.
Fierce winds whipped Laxus off his feet, toyed with him, and then tired of him. He was catapulted down the street, further away from the other battles. He tried to spring back to his feet. His still-spinning head thought this was an amusing idea, and he was still trying not to throw up when a bear-like paw appeared out of the wind, slashing across his cheek.
It stung – both his face and his pride. He had already beaten this demon twice – and the second time, he had dying rapidly from Magic Barrier Particle exposure, rather than the slow draining Porlyusica's remedy had since reduced it to. How could he be struggling now?
He tried to kick at his enemy, but the twister caught his foot and pirouetted him into the nearest building. Nothing else for it, then. The magic of the lacrima in his chest resonated with the charged particles all around him. He drew that energy into him, inhaling deep, preparing to put everything he had into one last devastating roar.
Pain exploded through his body. It would have hurt less if someone had set off a nail bomb within his lungs. Black contamination flared through his bloodstream, like pins and needles, if the pins were adamantine shards and the needles coated in nerve agent. The stench of his own blood filled his nostrils.
Even the demon reverted to his usual furry form, watching Laxus double over in pain with more interest than he had afforded the Dragon Slayer's attacks. "We've fought before, haven't we? You're already dying from my curse."
Laxus spat something he would not have repeated in polite company. It tasted like blood.
"Still," continued the demon, unperturbed, "since I appear to be back in the world of the living, I suppose I might as well speed up the process."
"You try it," Laxus snarled.
The muscled demon contemplated him for a moment, then shrugged, and drew back his fist.
Only to be slammed into the ground by a much bigger fist.
Bigger than he was, in fact: a titanic hand which squished the demon into the ground with one almighty blow.
Perhaps unusually, the massive fist wasn't connected to an equally massive giant, let alone a god of magic. In fact, it was supported by a rather spindly arm, far too thin and far too long, protruding from behind the nearest building. The person attached to the other end of the arm was hidden from sight, but there was only one man Laxus had ever met with magic like that.
"What are you doing here, old man?" he demanded.
The fist shrunk back to normal size, disappeared behind the wall, and did not reappear.
Laxus was still waiting for an answer when the sound of footsteps pattering off into the distance reached his ears.
"What…?" Laxus rounded the corner just in time to see a diminutive figure vanish down a side alley. "Gramps! Wait!"
His draconic hearing confirmed that his grandfather had no intention of waiting.
Perplexed, Laxus lurched after him. "Gramps!" he tried again. "Why didn't you tell us you were back from Alvarez? We've been looking for you!"
Only footsteps, and Laxus hurrying after.
His lungs were burning – his body was discovering new ways to torment him with every step – but each time he caught a glimpse of the white fur lining that familiar Wizard Saint jacket, the pain seemed to matter a little bit less. Maybe it was hypocritical of him to give chase, since it hadn't been all that long ago that Laxus himself had been running away from Fairy Tail. He hadn't thought they would accept him so easily, if they found out what was happening to him. He had made a mistake in battle, and now it was destroying him. He had wanted to hide his shame from the world.
And all of a sudden, he knew why his grandfather was running away.
Hadn't Makarov made the greatest mistake of all, one whole year ago?
Laxus shouted, at the top of his lungs, "I FORGIVE YOU!"
Makarov jerked to a halt. In an empty street in an empty port city, he stood completely frozen, still with his back to his grandson. Laxus let his pace slow, easing the pressure on his lungs, but he kept moving forward, determined not to let him slip away again.
"I forgive you," he repeated. "I understand now why you disbanded the guild. At first, I thought that you were using the guild for your own agenda, and how was that any different to what I did in the Battle of Fairy Tail? But I was only thinking of myself back then, whereas you went to Alvarez for all of us. You went to fight so that we wouldn't have to. And yeah, you shouldn't have done that. The guild doesn't belong to you, and you don't have the right to take it off us without explanation. But I know you were only trying to do the right thing. And everyone else does, too. We have all forgiven you for it a hundred times over."
The Guild Master's shoulders were shaking. Laxus was almost close enough now to reach out and touch him.
Gently, Laxus said, "So, don't be afraid to come back to the guild. No one blames you for anything. You have no idea how relieved everyone will be to hear that you made it back from Alvarez alive."
"I didn't," Makarov whispered.
"What?"
At last, he turned to face his grandson, and his eyes were full of tears. "I didn't make it back alive," said he. "I died, Laxus. I'm just another one of Neinhart's ghosts."
I died, Laxus.
Three short words, flipping Laxus's world on its head more effectively than any twister his demonic foe could conjure.
The rage and the passion which had sustained him through the battle with Tempester evaporated, and in the sudden dizzying absence of atmospheric pressure, Laxus stared at his grandfather and said, stupidly, "But you're here."
"I'm not. Not really." The irritation Laxus had been half-expecting – that irritation he hadn't realized he was so fond of until he had been exiled from the guild – was absent from Makarov's tearful face. There was nothing but gentleness to be found there. It was that, more than anything, which brought home the sheer wrongness of the situation.
Softly, Makarov continued, "You must have worked out by now what Neinhart's magic does. It gives a physical form – a temporary life – to one's deceased enemies, fuelled by their lingering desire for revenge."
"But you're- you're not my enemy! Tempester- and Hades- they're my enemies, not-!"
The cracking of his voice matched the cracking of the glass in his grandfather's eyes as more tears began to leak through the gaps.
Gruffly, Makarov explained, "The animosity in our past allows me to take form. The bonds of our present allow me to retain my own mind. I can help you, Laxus. But as soon as this magic ends, I'll be gone once more."
"No!" Laxus insisted, taking a step backwards. "No. This isn't happening. You're not-"
"This isn't the time to be stubborn, Laxus!" Makarov burst out. "This is the time to be strong! Your guild needs you!"
Laxus gave him a desperate look. "I don't know how you're expecting me to beat Zeref when I can't even handle one demon I've already defeated twice-!"
"It wasn't Zeref who killed me, Laxus," came the steady response. "He let me and Lucy go. I don't think he really wants this, any of it. It was Acnologia who attacked us as we were leaving Alvarez. He destroyed our airship, killed me, and…"
"Lucy?" Laxus asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer.
"I don't know," Makarov admitted.
"She's not… here, is she?" The glance Laxus threw over his shoulder was almost nervous, as if he was afraid he might see her battling her former guildmates.
His grandfather shook his head. "I find it hard to imagine that Lucy has ever hated anyone enough to trigger Neinhart's magic, so her absence tells us nothing. However, she is also more resilient than I ever gave her credit for. I have to believe that she survived – that she's still out there somewhere, fighting to get home. I have to believe that all my children will make it through this, so that I can face my fate with courage!"
He seized the front of his grandson's coat, fearsome despite his tears, always their Guild Master, even from the world beyond. "That's why I had to disband the guild – not because I wanted to protect it, but because you were all so much more important to me than the guild itself! So, please… promise me you won't stop fighting…"
Numbly, Laxus nodded. He had no choice. Never mind the empty city, the army of hostile memories, their disrupted communications, the bloodthirsty empire looming over them, the slow unravelling of his own body – he had to smile and be strong for his grandfather, one last time.
The old man's hands trembled, but he did not let go, did not step away. "I'm so proud of you, Laxus. My biggest regret is not having told you that more often when you were growing up… but somehow, despite all my mistakes, you've become a great man."
Laxus's words all came out at once: "We don't have to kill Neinhart. We don't have to end his magic. If we captured him, we could force him to keep it going, to keep you here-"
"Don't ruin it, Laxus," his grandfather scolded him gruffly, and for a moment, they could both pretend things were how they used to be. "It's time for me to go. I will deal with the man foolish enough to believe that those who were once enemies could never find love again. The rest is up to you and the guild. Make me proud one last time, my grandson."
Laxus's breath had shuddered often through his lungs in recent weeks, but this time, the pain it carried wasn't his at all. He couldn't speak, but he thought he didn't need to. It was always the words they didn't say that had shaped their relationship the most.
At last, Makarov released him and stepped away. With one final glance at his grandson – one last memory to take with him on his next great journey – he closed his eyes and brought his hands together in front of his chest, one palm hovering over the other as light was born between them; the last spell of the greatest Master Fairy Tail had ever known.
"Go," he commanded. "Laxus! Go!"
Perhaps he didn't want Laxus to have to watch. Perhaps he didn't want to spend his final moments with the person he would regret leaving behind the most. It didn't matter, because for the first and final time, Laxus followed his instructions without complaint.
The sacred light of Fairy Law swept across the city, and as the dazzling brilliance of it burnt away the ghosts of evil and filled those who would always stand against them with courage, the spark in the heart of the man who had given them back their hope faded to nothing.
Fairy Law at full power.
Neinhart's manifestations were pale copies of the originals when it came to magic power, but the source of Fairy Law's strength had never been magic, but heart.
As Laxus returned to the centre where the battles had been raging, he saw Fairy Tail mages everywhere falling back in awe as their opponents disintegrated like the nightmares they were. Darkness returned to darkness. Fear returned to the past, where it belonged.
"Laxus!" Freed shouted, waving him over. "Did you cast Fairy Law?"
A terse shake of his head. "It wasn't me."
Erza's eyes widened. "The Master? Is he here?"
"Not any more," Laxus said shortly.
A heavy silence settled upon the group, tucking in its wings in preparation for nightfall. Everyone understood. No one seemed to know what to say. Laxus hadn't known, either; it made him feel strangely better about it.
After a moment, Freed's hand gently touched his shoulder. "Laxus-"
"There's no time," he said sharply, pulling away. "We have to press forward. Acnologia is on the move. What's the point in beating Alvarez if it leaves him free to pick us off one by one, like he did with Gramps?"
His shout resounded in the silence.
Erza's grip tightened around the hilt of her sword – she had sheathed it upon Fairy Law's descent, but she hadn't got as far as removing her hand from it. "Agreed, but we cannot abandon Hargeon either. If those spectres were the only threat here, why is the city still silent?"
Laxus opened his mouth to retaliate, then closed it again. She had a point. The silence was more than atmospheric; it hadn't been created when his grandfather had faded from this world. The city had been empty when they had first set foot in it, and it was still empty now. He was not the only one whose gaze turned outwards, scouring their surroundings by unspoken consent for an enemy who had escaped the glare of Fairy Law.
"How observant of you, Miss Scarlet."
Every one of them flinched at the voice – not just because it was strange or mocking or sudden, but because it had come from the air right in front of them. The air where they had all been looking. The air where not a single one of them had seen an enemy mage, despite the fact that there was one so very clearly there, smiling surprisingly politely for a man with a skull tattooed onto his forehead.
He continued, "Or perhaps I should say, how unobservant of you. My name is Jacob of the Spriggan Twelve, and I'm afraid that's my port city you've so rudely barged into."
Before he had even finished speaking, Erza was in her Black Wing Armour, seven stars were alight in the heavens, Freed was halfway through inscribing arcane words into thin air – but Jacob's smile didn't lessen as he brought his hands together in one definitive clap.
It was as if the pantomime backdrop of a city had fallen away. The real Hargeon wasn't empty after all. It was packed with Alvarez soldiers.
There were thousands of them, tens of thousands; more in one go than the allies had beaten in their entire lives put together. Every street leading away from the square where they had fought was drowned in black and silver. Perfectly still. Perfectly poised. Like machines ready to spring into action.
The smell – of so many human bodies, yes, but also of the dominance they soaked in and the horrid glee as their patience paid off – hit Laxus all at once. The sound, too. The veil of silence was torn, and the shuffle of nearby feet overlapped with the march of distant ones to overload his mind with the sheer scale of their predicament.
And mixed in with the sounds of an army preparing to crush its foes were distraught, exhausted cries: the last useless shouts of warning from the captured members of their allied guilds, only allowed to reach them now that it was too late.
Horrified, Laxus glanced back at the man who had so effortlessly done this – only to see him wave with one hand while drawing a foot-long knife from a hidden sheath with the other, slowly vanishing from sight and smell and sound as he did so.
An enemy they could not detect. Their allies already defeated; the leaders of the Fiorean troops taken hostage; their men routed. An endless tide of soldiers ready to wear them down like the relentless waves would annihilate the sturdiest sentinel of stone – and who knew how many more were out there, still lurking beneath a shroud of sensory mist? Who knew how many had already passed through the fallen city and were marching unhindered on Magnolia?
Freed was the first to react. A flick of his sword brought a circle of violet writing into being around them. If those runes weren't capable of keeping out an invisible assassin they had no means of detecting, they'd be dead before the first Alvarez soldier stepped forward.
Erza Requipped her Adamantine Armour without a word. It didn't need to be spoken out loud. This wasn't about victory, it was about survival. This whole war was about survival; they just hadn't realized it until that moment.
The last of the warmth Fairy Law had left in their souls was snuffed out just like that.
Fairy Tail was powerful, and its mages courageous beyond compare, but impossible odds were impossible odds.
As the first magical barrage from the soldiers hit Freed's shields, Erza turned to Laxus. "Go. You should be able to circumvent the Alvarez blockade easily if you use your lightning form."
Thoughts of pursuing Acnologia and avenging his grandfather rose up in Laxus's mind, and then crashed back down again. "No. I'm not abandoning you here."
"Laxus," Erza repeated, still calmly. "Hargeon was a trap and we walked into it. The battle here is as good as lost. We are outnumbered, and we are no match for that assassin's powers; we cannot win, we can only delay their victory. There is no point in all of us falling here, when you can still make a difference elsewhere. Our communications are jammed – someone has to tell Mira and the others what's going on, and ensure that they are ready for when the Alvarez army breaks through here and advances upon the guildhall."
As much as he feared it, he knew she was right. This was not like any battle they had fought before. Hargeon was lost no matter how many mages they threw at it, but perhaps they could still win elsewhere.
Erza had already taken his hesitation as agreement and moved on. "Jellal. You go too."
"But-"
"There are things more important than a strategic port or an intact guildhall," she vowed, and even those who knew her well were startled by the force of it. "The war is about more than our battle here. If I could return to the guild myself, I would, but as I do not have the power of transportation, you will have to leave Hargeon to me. I will delay our enemies here for as long as I can. Now go!"
Just for a moment, the impossible wave of soldiers looming over them seemed to vanish. There was only Erza, utterly unbreakable in her defiance. Their old Master may be gone, and their elected Master missing in action, but that had not left them leaderless nor alone.
Laxus and Jellal exchanged glances, neither of them able to argue with her.
"Survive, Erza," Jellal murmured, and he took to the sky.
Archers took aim the moment he left the protection of Freed's runic wall, only for Evergreen and Bickslow to launch a machine-gun assault upon their ranks. After how often they'd fought together, it was second nature for Freed to make his barrier permeable to their magic. A heartbeat later, with a dull thud of sound, Jellal went supersonic and was gone.
Laxus shifted forms. This time, the transition was effortless. The pain he was braced for never hit, leaving him weightless in a world of electromagnetic fields. No response came from the Magic Barrier Particles that had delighted in impeding his efforts up to now – and he realized, then, that he had not felt them since Fairy Law had swept across the port. One last gift from a life turned to magic. One last chance to make a difference for the guild that had done so much for him.
Elsewhere in the domain of chaos, with smoke above and blood below and furnaces churning out sound and madness on all sides, no one noticed Zeref materializing in the middle of the battlefield.
The Fiorean side didn't care about anyone who wasn't boasting the symbol of the empire, and the Alvarez side didn't care about anyone who wasn't attacking them. Only the highest ranks of the Alvarez army would recognize their elusive emperor on sight, and only the Fairy Tail mages had received reliable descriptions of his appearance from those who had met him; in the midst of battle, no one had time to spend puzzling over a man who looked so young, unarmed, harmless.
He wasn't harmless, though.
As he picked his way between groups of struggling combatants, his gaze ran over the enormous swathe of destruction Gildarts had carved through his troops – not to mention through the very ground those troops had been standing on. They had already been funnelled into a valley by the steadily retreating defenders, and that valley had now acquired a second valley running through its centre. As far as the eye could see, Alvarez soldiers were digging themselves out of landslides, trying to salvage their crushed war machines, and struggling to reunite with comrades scattered by one almighty blow.
What he planned would be a lot more permanent.
He took a deep breath, thick with the sweat and steel of the battlefield, and reached for his magic. Darkness wound its way around his fingers. Around his heart. Calming it. Slowing it. Numbing it.
All around him, a million lives rushed, sometimes ebbing, sometimes flowing, but always striving to keep hold of the spark that made them real.
The next slow exhalation seemed to restart the beating of his heart, and he let the death magic disperse without using it.
He didn't know why he was finding this so hard.
He had done it before, after all. Four hundred years ago, he had brought to the kingdom called Carligne the systematic slaughter of every man, woman, and child with the misfortune to have been born there. The land had been scoured so thoroughly with death magic that a hundred years had passed before any living creature dared to venture back there.
And these weren't civilians standing before him – they were soldiers, and this was war. Many of them would be dead by the end of the day anyway. It could almost be considered merciful.
Yet he could not bring himself to see mercy in a magic which cut straight through armour and determination and courage alike, stopping hearts and snuffing out souls with utter impunity.
If there was one good thing about war, it was that it wasn't that.
People were beginning to notice him now, to wonder at the stranger who stood in the middle of the battlefield with trembling hands. Soon he would have to either defend himself or admit to his immortality.
He wondered why he couldn't just do it. Just kill them. He was going to obliterate their army and seize control of their kingdom anyway. He was set on this path. He didn't care how many the Twelve killed as they carried out his bidding; he had told them to do as much damage as possible during the first wave so that the kingdom would cower before them.
And yet… he just couldn't.
It wasn't consideration for the lives around him which stayed his hand. If it was, they would all be dead by now anyway.
It was, perhaps, consideration for another life: his own.
Because, four hundred years ago, he'd massacred an entire kingdom after he'd lost Anna, and it had only made him feel worse.
And to Lucy, four hundred years later, the most important thing hadn't been the fact that he'd done it in his grief all those years ago, but the fact that he'd been so horrified when she'd asked if he intended to do it again.
It was, to her, a sign that he could learn from his mistakes.
He wasn't so sure he could, given how his life seemed to be a cycle of repeating them, but whether it was true or not, it didn't change the fact that he didn't want to do this.
There were other ways to win.
Alvarez's victory wasn't in doubt either way. It didn't matter whether he brutally cut down enemy soldiers with his own awful magic or let things play out as they were, let mortals continue to fight mortals, let war be- well, perhaps not fair, but not a place where the worst part of his soul could gain a foothold, either.
He could go to the front of the army instead, and help his generals identify and counter the traps the retreating enemies had set up. That sounded almost like a game. Perhaps that was what Invel had meant when he had advised him to go elsewhere and help – strategy was what he did best, after all, and it wasn't a leader's job to fight foot soldiers personally, no matter how efficiently he could cut through them.
It wouldn't change anything. Fairy Tail would still be obliterated, and Fiore would still be conquered, all by his hand. But it didn't mean he'd have to relive the fall of Carligne in order to do it.
He let his trembling hands fall back to his sides – and a shadow fell across him.
At first, he thought with a horrific lurch that his own magic had broken loose. But all around him, soldiers on both sides were looking upwards, their own battles forgotten, for what waited in the sky was far, far worse.
The Black Dragon of the Apocalypse opened his maw and unleashed a torrent of light upon the battlefield.
Zeref didn't bother shielding. The world went white, and then black, and then white again. The earth burned straight through his shoes to the freshly healed soles of his feet; the air was still too hot to breathe, so he went without. All around him lay the charred corpses of soldiers, enemies and allies alike, their lives stolen in an instant by someone with more resolve than he.
He could not see another living creature in any direction, only smoke and ghosts.
Overhead, the dragon circled once, observing his handiwork, and then pulled into a dive. His wings fanned out close to the ground, releasing an enormous pulse of air that stank of burnt flesh, and then he touched down in front of Zeref.
For a moment, the enormous dragon seemed to smirk as he gazed down upon a mage small even by human standards. Then he folded his wings, and his whole body folded with it; scales, tail, and wings withdrew until only a wild human being was left.
In him, Zeref saw everything that had gone wrong, and he spat, "What do you want?"
Acnologia reached into a pocket and tossed something towards him.
It landed in the mud with a clink of metal, a gleam of gold and blood.
Lucy's celestial keys lay at his feet.