The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Firesign, Part 1

-Dance Below the Gallows Tree-

Irene's nose twitched.

There weren't many people whose sense of smell would be reduced by being transformed into a fox, but an experienced Dragon Slayer – especially one who had spent over four centuries actually living as a dragon – was one of them. The scents were dull and earthy to her vulpine senses; her nose was too sensitive to the least important things.

Regardless, she was sure she recognized that scent.

Irene didn't spend much time in Vistarion. She was His Majesty's blade, his to wield until the moment her debt was repaid, which she had long since come to accept would not be achieved in this lifetime. When he had no need of a weapon, she was free to do as she wished – which, for her, meant travelling, training, or studying in isolation. She had no interest in making friends. Indeed, the only friendship she'd cherished in as long as she could remember, born between a lonely not-quite-dragon and a man who'd been captivated by the mystery of her existence, had shattered when she'd failed to uphold her end of their bargain.

Still, just because she didn't consider herself friends with her fellow members of the Spriggan Twelve didn't mean they were strangers to her, and that was why the scent she'd picked up caught her attention.

If His Majesty had commenced the invasion, it wasn't unexpected for one of the Twelve to be in Fiore, but why here, in this godforsaken forest? Why not fighting the enemies of the empire in Magnolia or Crocus?

She had picked up the scent of the Dragon Slayer she was looking for, Rogue, easily enough, but she would be a fool to overlook this opportunity. After a moment's deliberation, she slipped through the trees on the trail of the new scent. It took her away from the great dead oak and deeper into the overgrown forest, becoming fresher, rawer, even as the general small of life became stronger the further she travelled from that grove of death.

Before her loomed the mouth of a cave. The scent trail led into it, though she no longer needed it – she was so close now that she could hear its owner's footsteps. The fox followed them inside, scampering to catch up.

Announcing her presence went against her vulpine instincts, but not her draconic ones, and she called out commandingly, "Dimaria!"

She saw the warrior freeze, hand flashing to her sword and remaining there, belying the relaxed, almost lazy grin she turned towards Irene. "Oh look, a talking fox," Dimaria drawled. "How quaint."

"Dimaria. This is excellent timing. I require your assistance."

"Sorry, I'm not in the habit of helping woodland creatures. Go find yourself a fairy-tale princess."

"No, it is I – Irene Belserion."

Dimaria blinked. "You're a lot furrier than I remember."

The fox gave a flick of her tail. "That is why I am asking for your assistance in recovering my body."

"I see," Dimaria said. "Sorry, I'm in the middle of something. Maybe later."

That was not the response Irene had been expecting from an ally. "I find it hard to believe that what you are doing is more important than assisting me, especially when every moment I spend as a fox is a moment I am not fighting for Alvarez in this war."

Dimaria just shrugged. "That's up to you. It has nothing to do with my task."

"But can your task not wait? Once I am restored, I shall be able to assist you in turn."

"The thing is, though," Dimaria countered coolly, "I don't think you will assist me. So no, sorry. You can just keep being a little woodland critter."

For a predator, foxes weren't particularly good at looking angry, but the crimson aura of Irene's magic – weakened but far from negated by acting through an animal body – would have to be enough to threaten her. "Do not forget who I am, Dimaria. What is this task that you have deemed more important than doing the best thing for us both and for Alvarez?"

Dimaria considered this, one finger tapping on the cross-guard of her sword. "I am defeating the enemies of our nation, of course. Starting with the Shadow Dragon Slayer hiding in this cave."

The fox's eyes narrowed further. "I am afraid I cannot allow that. Perhaps you are unaware, but the Dragon Slayers of Fiore are important to His Majesty, and it would not do to kill them without his express permission, war or otherwise."

Dimaria gave a long, musical sigh, more befitting the fairy-tale princess she insisted she wasn't than the Valkyrie she was. "Ah, why did it have to be you? How much bad luck can I have in a single week? First, His Majesty leaves Ajeel to be torn apart by the Dragon of the Apocalypse, and now I get you of all people blundering into the path of my revenge: a master enchantress with a life debt to the very man I want to see suffer."

"Suffer? Dimaria, what are you planning-?"

"No, you don't get to know that," she shrugged. "Just die quietly, would you?"

What happened next took a bit of piecing together, as battles against a woman who could stop time always did.

One moment, Dimaria was facing down Irene in the dark tunnel, sword sheathed, calm as anything.

The next moment, the darkness was ablaze with energy. Out of nowhere, there were suddenly cracks in a rocky floor which had survived the press of Acnologia's feet. A halo of fire had appeared – but not around the mage who controlled time, but around the fox, its deadly light reflecting from the shards of Dimaria's shattered sword.

Dimaria herself was slammed into the tunnel wall hard enough to send tremors racing off into the darkness.

Could Irene prevent Dimaria from stopping time? No.

Could she enchant her own fur to have the strength of diamond and the explosive capability of a firebomb the moment Dimaria had begun to show her hostility, a shield which would trigger when she was hit, thereby shattering the sword intended to behead her and hurting Dimaria enough to break her hold over the world outside time?

Well, Irene hadn't been sure until she'd tried it, but it turned out that she could.

Astonished that anyone had managed to harm her within her own private world, Dimaria was slow to recover from the backlash of her own magic, and the fox was upon her.

Claws scraped at her cheeks. Teeth snapped so close to her neck. Fur slipped like satin through her frantic grasp and then became a whirlwind of feral force once more. Dimaria swiped blindly with her broken blade – and as luck would have it, she scored a blow upon the fox's unguarded flank.

Batted across the cave as a bloodied ball of fur, Irene's claws scrabbled for purchase before her opponent could bend time once more. Balls of crimson light, enchantments of death and force impressed into the very air, materialized in front of her-

"What's going on here?"

This new voice paused the battle as effectively as any time magic. Out of the depths of the cave staggered a dazed Dragon Slayer. One hand was on his bandaged chest and the other was relying on the wall for support, but although his steps were uneven, his gaze was sharpening every second as it took in the sight before him.

Irene's tail swished back and forth, a metronome timing the deployment of her protective enchantments. Dimaria's gaze did not leave the crouching predator for an instant.

Neither of them deigned to answer Rogue, who watched this silent showdown between woman and fox with deepening confusion.

"Dimaria, is that you?" he persisted. "Did Zeref send you?"

It was the wrong thing to say. Dimaria's face turned livid.

Irene recognized that warning sign, even as Rogue continued to implore Dimaria as though they were friends. "Run, boy!" she commanded, bounding forward and unleashing her arrows of light as she did so. "Into the shadows while you still can! Find Sting!"

It was those last words which got a reaction. He had no reason to trust her – though, bizarrely, he seemed to have some reason to trust Dimaria – but the name of his friend got through to him, and he sank silently into the cave's shadows. Dimaria's irritation jarred through the tunnel as she struck the wall with her broken sword. If she stopped time now, all she'd be doing was locking him into a state where he was untouchable to her.

Not that that stopped her from doing it anyway, if the sudden disconnect in Irene's perception was anything to go by.

Dimaria's frustrated yell – dissolving in a blaze of energy from the earth – gave Irene enough to start piecing together what had happened. Dimaria had had to stop time to avoid the air-arrow enchantments Irene had launched at her while she was distracted by Rogue's disappearance. Having learnt from last time, she wasn't about to attack Irene directly, but Irene was still one step ahead. This time, even as Irene had been putting together the fox-fire attacks, she'd been layering enchantments not into herself, but into the earth around her opponent.

And when Dimaria moved in frozen time, a safe, simple, step to the side, the stone had turned to raw blinding energy beneath her.

"You're no match for me, even when I'm trapped in this body," Irene stated coldly, as Dimaria – bruised and staggering from countless spontaneous wounds – shot her a look of pure hatred. "What are you hoping to achieve by attacking His Majesty's allies?"

"Achieve? Nothing, really. As long as I get to see the look on his face when he realizes he's lost the people he cares about, just like I did, I don't care what happens."

The fox's laugh came out as a bark. "His Majesty doesn't care about anyone."

Dimaria laughed too. "Where've you been, these past few weeks? He cares about some people a lot more than others, regardless of how faithfully they have served him. I thought you, of all people, would understand that, after everything you've done for him. You should be helping me."

"Acnologia wants the Dragon Slayers alive in the hope that he can understand the magic that is keeping them human," Irene stated. "By killing them, you will leave him with no choice but to try and force the answer out of His Majesty."

Far from being dismayed by the accusation, Dimaria picked up the thread lightly. "Who will never help him, once he sees that 'Acnologia' has killed his precious Dragon Slayers and the girl he claims to love." She tossed the broken blade to herself and caught it easily. "His Majesty loses what he loves, and Acnologia loses his only chance of getting what he wants. There'll be nothing but hate on both sides."

"So, you're provoking them into a fight."

"One His Majesty can't run away from, this time. Just like Ajeel couldn't run."

"You'd turn your back on all humanity, just for that?"

"No," Dimaria said idly, tossing the shattered blade once more. "His Majesty will win. He is immortal; he must break the Black Dragon eventually. Death is Acnologia's punishment. Living on without those he cares about is His Majesty's."

"Foolish girl. You will bring about no one's undoing but your own."

"We shall see."

It was harder for Irene to piece together what happened, this time.

It hurt too much to think.

Agonizing pain ripped through Irene's small body. How had Dimaria, wielding naught but a broken sword, cut through the defensive enchantments with which she had been silently reinforcing her fur since the battle had begun?

Distantly, Irene realized that the world had shifted around her… and then she understood. Dimaria hadn't broken her shields. No, she had endured the pain of the enchanted earth this time, and used her moment of stopped time to drag Irene into the path of her own detonating enchantments. Irene had put too much power into her offence. Her own spells ripped through her defences like paper.

Frantically, she tried to cancel her enchantments, but she was already too late.

Time skipped ahead another few seconds.

By the time the world started to turn again, the fox was dead.

Sting paced.

This was harder than it sounded, for a bunny rabbit. It was difficult enough to hop slowly, let alone dramatically. There was probably a way of moving as a rabbit that didn't make his body look like a paper boat bobbing up and down on a tempestuous ocean, but if so, he had yet to work it out.

If there was one small consolation, it was that fawns did 'subtle' about as well as rabbits did 'moody'. Wendy's attempts to surreptitiously shuffle close enough to block the tunnel exit every time Sting drew close to it would have made him laugh, if not for the severity of the situation.

Instead, he found himself snapping, "How can you be happy just hiding underneath this tree, when Rogue is out there being tortured by Acnologia and his little friends?"

"I know you're worried," Wendy replied, licking her little fawn nose nervously. "But Irene said we should stay here…"

"And you trust her?"

"She's helped us-"

"She works for Zeref, Wendy! The man who killed Yukino, left his own ally to be eaten by Acnologia, and is currently leading an enormous army against our kingdom to kill all our friends!"

"We don't know that-"

"Forget it. I'm not staying here while some stranger fights my battles for me. I'm going to find Rogue."

"Sting-!" Wendy shouted, but he was already running – well, hopping – between her spindly legs and out of the tunnel.

Daylight burst against his senses, and he drank it down eagerly. Beneath it, he could make out the distinctive smell of blood, plastered over the faint aura of death that radiated out from the tree. All his instincts, rabbit, dragon, and human alike, were screaming at him to get the hell out of this place. Behind, he could hear the scrabbling of four uncoordinated legs as Wendy attempted to follow him, but her words had no more chance of stopping him than his instincts. Paws to the ground, he ran on.

Against his better judgement, he had trusted Zeref, and where had that got them? No way was he trusting this fox-woman. He'd learnt his lesson. He'd do the rest on his own.

It was the sight of his own body that stopped him short.

It hung right where he'd left it, a prisoner of the dead tree itself. Branches clutched at his human wrists and ankles like the claws of a vengeful spirit. The air was as bereft of life and energy as everything else in this accursed place, and yet those gnarled limbs seemed to creak and sway, slowly, slowly drawn towards its prisoner's still-beating heart.

For how much longer it would be beating, Sting wasn't sure.

If not for the fact that he was fairly sure his human consciousness would vanish the moment his body died, he would have thought the man hanging there was a corpse.

Sting's body hung limply in the tree's embrace. His eyes were open, unseeing. His clothes were in tatters, but so was his skin, hanging from his body in great rolls. Raw red flesh oozed blood and puss. It hung in the air around him, a fine crimson mist of magic and agony and much, much worse.

The man – the torturer who had chosen to side with Acnologia – was humming to himself as the scalpel in his hand vanished, only to be replaced by something long, savage and serrated. With the tip of it, he lifted up a flap of skin and peered underneath. "Where are you hiding, little dragon seed? Come out, come out…"

It was only Sting's lack of familiarity with a rabbit's digestive system that stopped him from throwing up.

That, and his rage.

Rage in defence of himself, yes, but also against this human who committed such foul deeds with a bumbling smile on his face, who had thrown in his lot with the cruellest dragon of all – and who had the nerve to enjoy it.

Strength surged in Sting's hind legs. Four paws whipped away the ground beneath him as he focussed all his power and slammed into his enemy head-first.

The torturer staggered back a pace.

Sting bounced off, spinning, head over little rabbity feet. He hit the ground and lay there, gasping. Why didn't it work? What happened to his magic?

The torturer's footsteps shook the ground as he approached. "Hello there, little fellow. Are you lost?"

Groaning, Sting tried to get to his feet and fell back down again.

"I'm afraid I can't have you contaminating my workshop," the man continued, his voice no less pleasant than before. The only indication of the threat it held was the glint of light on the serrated blade which flicked towards the rabbit's neck.

"Sky Dragon's Roar!"

For a moment, Sting was treated to the surreal sight of a young fawn, legs splayed for stability, blasting a whirlwind out of her mouth – and then the torturer was thrown off him.

Sting pushed himself to his feet, glaring at Wendy not in thanks, but in accusation. "How can you use magic?"

"It's like talking. Don't think about it too much, and you'll be able to- ah!"

Taking advantage of her distraction, the torturer snapped his fingers and a solid bar of metal appeared between Wendy's front legs, cuffed to each of her shins. She jumped backwards – on animal instincts – and promptly toppled over sideways.

"Another meddling creature," their enemy frowned, waving his knife between the two of them as if unable to decide which of them to skin first.

"Sting!" Wendy shouted.

Alright, he got it, it was his fault they were in this mess. Anger rising, Sting closed his eyes. He tried to think about how it felt to use his magic. Never mind that he didn't have any arms to wield it with; all he needed right now was that sensation inside him, Weisslogia's legacy, and his desire to protect his pack-mates.

A bead of light appeared in front of his nose. He flexed his will and a blinding-white spear burst out of it, needle-thin. His aim was off without a hand to guide it – or any depth perception – and it merely grazed the man's shoulder as he jerked aside.

That was enough, though. Enough for the White Dragon's holy stigma to start spreading across his body, freezing him in his tracks.

Sting scampered over to Wendy, whose instinctive struggles against her bonds eased as he reminded her of her humanity. His White Dragon's Claw smashed through the bar in a single blow. "Now that's more like it," he grinned, as she climbed clumsily back to her feet. "I'll deal with this guy. Can you heal my human body before I bleed to death?"

With a determined nod, she scampered off. Sting was grinning as he turned back to the torturer – a grin which quickly disappeared. A rabbit's body, so it turned out, was not a particularly good conduit for powerful magic, and his enemy had already broken free of the stigma.

"I will grant you one of my favourite painful deaths!" he proclaimed. "Behold, the Iron Maiden!"

With a clap of his hands, the spiked metal coffin yawned around Sting like a deadly maw, its face sculpted into a smile as contorted as that of its creator. Then daylight was gone, and the doors slammed shut.

There was silence.

"Not even a scream?" the man tried hopefully.

The iron maiden burst apart in an explosion of pure energy. Sting dropped to the ground on all fours, amidst a rainstorm of iron spikes that his tiny body had slipped in between. "You might want to try a rabbit-sized one next time!"

The torturer glared. As Sting began running towards him, he clapped his hands again. Red light flared beneath the bunny's feet.

"If you're too small, I'll just make you bigger!" he announced. "My personal favourite, the Rack!"

Sting pulled his tiny paws straight out of the ropes before they could draw tight and kept running.

"Well, fine, have it your way! You can die by the Breaking Wheel instead!"

Sting found himself chained to a great wooden wheel, whereupon he shrugged and slipped easily out of the human-sized chains.

The torturer folded his arms. "How vexing. There appears to be a flaw in my beautiful magic. Why are all my torture devices designed for use on humans?"

With a powerful kick of Sting's hind legs, the wheel broke free of its restraints and smashed into the torturer with a satisfying crunch.

Sting jumped free and landed in the most battle-ready crouch a rabbit could manage. The torturer staggered backwards – and then, inexplicably, gave a yelp of surprise and fell over, clutching at his ankle. Sting scoured the surroundings for any sign of what had done the damage, but Wendy was busy repairing his mangled body, and there was no one else in sight.

He could hear someone, though.

A very familiar voice, which remarked, "Hey, I know you! I saw your ugly mugshot on the wall of our head office! You're with Avatar!"

"Do not speak that name," the torturer retorted. He had been so horribly cheerful as he'd cut Sting's body to pieces, and at last the darkness in his voice matched that of his soul. "Arlock promised me he would change things, so that my magic and my hobbies would be accepted in society. But he failed. Avatar was defeated, Arlock was killed, and the only people who are left are the fools who waste their time demanding slow, boring, pointless, political change that the Council will never give us. I will punish society myself… and it is the Dragon of the Apocalypse, not that failure of a Black Mage I once idolized, who will be the cause of that destruction!"

"Like hell!" that voice grunted. "You picked the wrong person to declare your illegal intent to! Everything you say will be used against you in court!"

"Gajeel?" Sting asked.

"…That you, Sting?"

"Yeah. Where are you? I can't see you anywhere!"

"I'm down here!"

Sting glanced wildly around, but couldn't see anything except a fawn biting through the branches holding his now slightly-less-mutilated body.

"Here!"

Atop one of the tree's twisted roots, there stood a dormouse. On its hind legs. Glaring at him with familiar red eyes.

Sting blinked. "You're a mouse."

Gajeel whacked him on the nose. "So? At least I'm not a big fuzzy lump, like some people."

"I'm still more intimidating than you!"

Sting did not like the look of the smirk creeping across that mouse's face. "Oh, really?" Just like that, the mouse twisted, and his tail of iron catapulted the rabbit towards their opponent.

The big fuzzy lump smacked him right across the face. He staggered backwards, arms flailing, and Gajeel darted forwards, beating his ankles with his iron tail.

This time, unfortunately, the torturer remained on his feet. A swipe of his jagged knife forced Sting to jump free. By luck or design, the torturer's foot came crashing down on top of the poor dormouse.

"Gajeel!" Sting yelled.

"Serves you right," gloated the torturer. "…Huh?"

Because his foot was inexplicably beginning to rise. Beneath it, a mouse of pure iron was stood on its hind legs, pushing back against the offending foot and, gradually, winning.

"Impossible!" the torturer blustered.

"That'll teach you to judge someone by their size," Gajeel panted. With that, the tiny dormouse flung his opponent across the dead earth. Sting watched, open-mouthed, as Gajeel launched himself after him with a cry of, "Hi-yah!"

Then Wendy called his name, and Sting scurried over to her in an instant. She had managed to cut his body out of the tree's vengeful grasp, and now he lay on soil soaked by his own blood, unconscious but also no longer bleeding out.

"Now, this is more like it!" Sting touched his paw triumphantly to his human cheek.

Nothing happened.

Sting patted his body with both front paws, as if a switch was hidden somewhere on his face and playing the drums with his cheeks was the best way to find it. "Wendy! Why aren't I switching back?"

Wendy bleated at him.

"Wendy?"

She leaned in and sniffed his human form, and he huffed in irritation. He knew he was filthy; he had just been tortured to within an inch of his life! She didn't have to rub it in! "Seriously, this isn't funny, Wendy."

She bleated again. Then, losing interest, she turned her back and trotted off into the woods.

"…Wendy? Gajeel?" Sting tried. There was no answer from either of them. "Uh oh…"

"Seems like there's only one critter still fighting," the torturer remarked happily. He took a step towards the rabbit, knife raised. The rabbit managed a half-hop backwards. "Maybe I should skin you while you're still alive, to make up for freeing my actual victim, hmm?"

"I think you've done enough damage."

Never before had Sting heard a quiet voice speak with so much authority – nor seen anything quite as satisfying as when Rogue materialized out of the shadows and punched the torturer in the face.

Ah, Sting missed having arms.

Still, the brief spike of envy was drowned by the flood of relief at seeing his partner alive and well. "Rogue!" he cried, delightedly.

Rogue turned to him – and then kept turning, his gaze coming to rest on the body lying in the dirt. "Sting…?" Then his murmur rose to a shout. "Sting! No- I can't be too late-"

"I'm right here, you nitwit," Sting huffed. "Can't you even recognize your own partner's voice?"

Unfortunately, Rogue had already sprinted over to Sting's human form, falling to his knees beside him. "Oh, no, no! I'm so sorry…"

"I'm. Right. Here." Sting ground out.

"It's okay, I've got you." Rogue pulled the unconscious body into his arms with immense care. It would have been sweet if it wasn't so frustrating. "I'm so sorry I'm late, but you're safe now, I promise-"

Sting punched him in the knee.

It probably hurt him more than it hurt the Dragon Slayer, but at least being hit by a bunny rabbit was enough to catch his attention. Or maybe it was the fluffiness that did it. Indeed, Rogue was staring at him like he'd never seen a rabbit before. "Hello…?"

"Rogue. It's me. I'm the rabbit."

"Sting?" his teammate blinked.

"In the fur."

Rogue stared at the talking rabbit. Then at Sting's unconscious body. Then back at the rabbit. "I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation for this," he said, in a voice that fooled no one.

'Perfectly good' wasn't how Sting would have described it, but it would have to do. "There's a woman around here somewhere called Irene. She switched our minds into animal bodies to protect us from being tortured by that guy."

To his surprise, Rogue nodded. "She must have been the fox."

"But something must have happened to her, which caused Wendy and Gajeel to switch back. I'm still a rabbit, because Wendy was the one who enchanted me, not Irene, but I don't understand why she hasn't cancelled the spell on me. We need to find her before Acnologia finds us."

Sting was expecting agreement from his teammate, if not outright mirth at his predicament, but a haunted look flashed across Rogue's face so suddenly that Sting thought he was going to slip into the shadows and never come out again. "Sting, I… I screwed up. Acnologia came to talk to me. He told me all he wanted was to put the fighting behind him, and to become human again like we are… and I believed him. I told him something I think I shouldn't have done. Now he's gone after Zeref, but Dimaria's plotting against him, and we've got to help the Dragon Slayers and stop Acnologia and-"

"Yeah, I know," Sting said shortly. "One step at a time, Rogue, or it's all going to fall apart around us."

"It's already falling apart around us."

"I know." The rabbit's nose twitched in a way that might have been rueful. "We just have to do what we can."

With a grim nod, Rogue scooped the rabbit up in his arms, and they carried on through the grove of death together.

Lucy recognized where she was at once, and yet, at the same time, she didn't.

She would never be able to forget the sacred grove in which Zeref had told her Anna's story: that haven outside time; that shelter from pain and fear; that beautiful place of memory and magic, blessed by the stars, wrapped in the arms of the last Aureum Oak to take root in the world of man, and watched over by the one laid to rest beneath it.

This was not that place.

Perhaps, geographically, it was. Perhaps, if their haven from that night was drawn upon a map of Fiore, as far as the laws of time and space would allow, there might indeed be some physical overlap between where she and Zeref had talked through the night and where she was now opening her eyes.

But that was all.

The sanctity of this place had left it when Anna had; when Zeref's words had set both him and her free. All the life and the beauty and the solace of it had been granted to Lucy in the form of the Aureum Oak acorn, which had hung around her neck ever since.

Bereft of the magic of the firmament, the grove should have been empty, harmless, ordinary.

And yet it seemed something had moved in when Anna had moved on.

Something dark. Something twisted. Something that shouldn't be, couldn't be, as if the Black Dragon's madness had infected the earth itself.

Since coming to know Zeref, and love him; since meeting his friends, good people, trustworthy people, who were even now tearing a merciless path through the kingdom she called home – Lucy had come to accept that good and evil were delicate things clumsily handled, jewels with a thousand colours reflecting from their thousand convoluted facets… but if there was ever such a thing as pure, objective evil, it was here, in this place, on this day.

There was also hope.

Hope, in the most peculiar form of a bored-looking Alvarez mage, her arms folded over her fur-lined cloak as she stared dispassionately at the bound Lucy.

"Thank goodness you're awake," Brandish remarked. "I was starting to think I would have to slap you before you came round, and I do not like the look of whatever your face has been dragged through."

It was only with great effort – and the contribution of the branches gripping her wrists – that Lucy resisted the urge to scrub her face. "What are you doing here?"

"Trying to find something to do that isn't fighting, and somewhere to do it that isn't within ten miles of Larcade."

"But what about the war? Didn't Zeref invade-?"

"Wars aren't really my kind of thing," she said blandly. "I think that's why His Majesty made me team up with Larcade, in the hope that he would be a good influence, but he actually wandered off before I did, so why should I bother staying? Especially now that I've discovered Fiore is a culinary paradise."

"…Right." Lucy wondered briefly if this was what concussion felt like.

"What are you doing, anyway? Why aren't you trying to talk some sense into His Majesty and put an end to this silly war before anyone expects me to actually fight someone?"

"I tried." Lucy closed her eyes as a sudden wave of exhaustion crashed over her. How long had it been since her ill-fated journey to Vistarion? Hours? Days? While she'd been unconscious, strung up in the branches of this dead tree like a puppet in a carpenter's shop window, had her friends – on both sides – been out there fighting, suffering, dying-? "I would try again if I could, and keep trying, but-"

Brandish dismissed this determination with a wave of her hand; just listening to it was tiring her out. "How'd you get here?"

"Acnologia attacked as we were leaving Vistarion. He- he killed the Master." Her voice trembled, unbidden. She wished Brandish had never come – that she could go back to drifting in the world between dreams and waking, where her biggest concern was the corruption of a tree, and all the dangerous memories were somewhere beyond her trailing fingers…

With a great effort, she bit that thought back. She continued, "Acnologia must have brought me here, though I don't know what I could possibly have that he wants."

"Me neither," Brandish shrugged. "Let's not find out." She stepped forwards and retrieved a knife from her belt, and Lucy's heart surged in panic, but Brandish merely began sawing at the branches binding her.

At first, Lucy was too surprised to speak. "But- you- aren't we enemies?"

"Nah. Having enemies is too much hassle. I'd make an exception for Acnologia after what he did, but since that would only serve to make the two of us allies right now, I don't think there's much-"

It was difficult to say what happened after that.

The world, for want of a better word, stuttered.

There was no continuous motion, no cause-and-consequence, no one thing leading logically to another.

There was normality. And then, suddenly, there was blood – a great crimson flare of it, erupting from Brandish's side. Her eyes opened wide in surprise. The knife tumbled from her hand, and she fell with it, crumpled on the ground.

"Brandish!" Lucy shrieked.

"Ma…ri…" she murmured, before her words cut off in a whimper of pain.

"Sorry, Randi." Dimaria didn't sound particularly sorry, though, as she stepped into the cage of branches. Her footsteps crunched on the dead leaves beneath, interspersed with the slow dripping of blood from her broken blade. "I can't have you freeing her."

"How could you do that?" Lucy screamed. "She's your friend!"

"She'll be fine," Dimaria drawled. "A wound like that won't keep her down for long. But she can't easily shrink it without crippling her own internal organs, so it will make her think twice about interfering until I've finished with you."

"Stop it, Mari," Brandish tried. "She's our ally; she's-"

"She's the reason why Ajeel died. She's the one who talked His Majesty into a fight we were never going to win, and then pushed him away right when we needed him most."

Brandish managed to force herself into a sitting position, one hand clutched to her side. "That's ridiculous, and you know it. We all wanted to fight Acnologia. You, me, and especially Ajeel. The fact that we failed wasn't anyone's fault but Acnologia's."

"And he'll pay too, eventually." Dimaria's voice was calm. Her eyes were not. "But only once His Majesty has suffered what I did when he left Ajeel to die."

"Please, Dimaria," Lucy said quietly. "Zeref has suffered enough."

"If he's still turning his back on those who have been nothing but loyal to him, then no, he's clearly not suffered enough to learn his lesson," she laughed.

"Just stop it," Brandish hissed. "Please."

"No."

"Then I'll make you stop, and we can talk about this once you've calmed down."

Idly, Dimaria watched her old friend raise one shaking hand towards her, and she smiled. "No, you won't."

The tragic play unfolding before Lucy suddenly skipped ahead again. No longer was Dimaria standing in front of her. Inexplicably, she was at the edge of the cage of branches, crimson-soaked blade outstretched, her back to the two of them as a wave of blood burst from Brandish's arm, shoulder to wrist. Brandish cried out and collapsed in on herself.

In that moment, Lucy understood several things at once – about enemies and friends; about wars and alliances; about time magic and World Magic, one with capitals and one without; about the rift in space and the emptiness at her hip where her keys should have hung; about the accursed tree sealing her power and the magic of scale and enormity that laughed at the concept of confinement.

Only one of those things was important.

This wasn't about the war, or Zeref, or Acnologia. Her enemy was getting hurt protecting her, and there was no way Lucy was going to let that stand.

"You're next," Dimaria stated.

The threat didn't bother Lucy nearly as much as the blood streaming down Brandish's arm.

As the grinding of Dimaria's teeth signalled the activation of her magic like the grating of the temporal axis along the spatial one, Lucy reached for the magic that lay outside the universe and wrenched it into reality.

She wasn't trying to stop time, like Zeref did. She didn't know how. It was World Magic, it was alien; the most complex mathematics ever developed could do little more than define what it wasn't.

But she remembered how insistent Zeref had been that Dimaria not use her magic as they fought Acnologia outside the rift in space, for fear of interference between World Magic and her own temporal powers… and that was all Lucy was aiming for.

There was light.

It was everywhere and nowhere. It cast no shadows because it had no source. There was no longer such a thing as depth or distance. The axes of space had been jolted ever so slightly out of alignment: Brandish was too close and Dimaria was too far away and gravity was listing the opposite way to the horizon and nothing dared to move, for fear of slipping through the cracks between the dimensions…

Then everything snapped back into place.

There was a thunder-crack of noise, a blistering pulse of compressed air. It ripped Lucy out of her prison – and her wrists and ankles out of their sockets, so it seemed – and flung Dimaria and Brandish back, head-over-heels.

At first, Lucy didn't want to breathe. Breathing meant moving and moving meant interacting with the world and finding that it wasn't where her eyes thought it was, realizing the horror of that broken moment in full.

But giving up was even less of an option. She welcomed the scorched air into her lungs, and after an instant of splitting pain, the world was solid.

Rolling, she bounded to her feet. The motion was deliberate; the pain was expected. Steamrollering it with her indomitable will, she directed a spark of that unearthly magic into her body. The ragged clothes she'd been wearing ever since her rampage through Vistarion shimmered and transformed into the battle-ready elegance of her Leo Star Dress. She strode to the far side of the grove, towards the two Alvarez mages.

Brandish watched bleakly from the ground, one hand pressed to her bleeding side. There was only one person she had ever witnessed breaking through Dimaria's time stop, and she could see something of him in the quiet aura of impossible power that thrummed around Lucy.

Dimaria was still trying to haul herself upright, fury sparking in her eyes. Perhaps she could sense that aura, too. Perhaps that was why she wouldn't quit.

"That's enough," Lucy stated.

"Never," Dimaria hissed, and she tried to stop time again.

Lucy was ready for it. Magic from the space beyond the spheres pulsed through her body. The world came apart in light and sound – revealing another world underneath, almost identical, except a little bit less real.

This time, she managed to remain on her feet; Keyless Star Dress had helped to channel the energy around her body. Dimaria was not so lucky. When she came to a stop, several metres further back, there were red burns stretching across her cheeks and neck, deepening in colour with every passing second. The pain rattled in her lungs, stoked the madness in her eyes.

Standing unharmed as the world she had broken settled back into place around her, Lucy spoke words that seemed to roar between the universes. "Stop it, Dimaria."

"Don't think," she snarled in response, "for one second that I can't summon the magic of Chronos in ordinary time!"

A flicker of power raced across Lucy's senses. It reminded her, just for a moment, of the crushing otherness that had loomed over the battlefield of Malva – but as she forced herself to stare right into it, the façade seemed to crumble.

Arlock's god had been all of fire magic at once; primordial and futuristic, wildfire and candleflame, the first spark of a novice mage and the volcanic fury that would rage long after all human life had expired. The infinite power at its source had allowed it.

The magic she sensed gathering around Dimaria may have been all of time, but it was all of time as perceived by one person, herself. Hers were the only emotions within it; her lifespan the only one it encompassed. Instead of godlike awe, Lucy only felt pity.

Faster and stronger than her injuries should have allowed, Dimaria slashed at Lucy with her broken sword. Lucy knocked it out of her hands with a single kick. As Dimaria staggered back, summoning a pulse of divine energy to her palm, Lucy let Leo's light magic condense around her own hand and swatted the blast aside.

"Please stop it, Dimaria," she repeated. "You're not my enemy."

"Everyone is my enemy!" Dimaria screamed, and another voice, an inhuman one, screamed it along with her.

"I don't want to fight you."

"Then stand there and let me kill you!" Green light flared around the warrior's hands, and she lunged at Lucy with everything she had.

Lucy dodged or deflected every single blow. Loke's strength was with her. Though his key may be broken, and his Gate sealed shut, they were still connected by a rift in the fabric of the universe – and by so much more.

She twisted out of the way of an attack, and before she had even reached the end of her turn, Cancer's twin swords were in her hands. The flat of one blade smacked Dimaria's wrist aside; the point of the other touched underneath her chin and came to a halt.

"Do it, then!" Dimaria howled.

"No." Stepping back, Lucy lowered the sword once again. "I won't kill you, and I won't fight you, either."

"If Brandish hadn't got here first, I'd have killed you!"

"I don't care! If we turn on each other, then Acnologia wins! Yukino and Ajeel will both have died for nothing!"

"We're already enemies!" Dimaria yelled back. "The invasion has begun! Our army is destroying yours even as we speak!"

Lucy sighed, letting both swords dissolve into starlight. "They don't have a choice. Alvarez fights because their emperor told them to; Fiore fights because their homeland is being threatened. But we, Dimaria – the two of us, we have a choice. We understand what all this is really about. We know that we only have one true enemy: Acnologia. We can choose to be better than this."

Lucy hadn't let her guard down when she sent her weapons away. When Dimaria struck again, she was ready, blocking punch after punch with forearms reinforced by celestial magic. The corrosion of time could not break the stars which shone eternal.

Failure did not stop Dimaria from punctuating every failed blow with a bitter word: "We tried working together with you! It was your fault that His Majesty turned his back on us, and Ajeel died!"

The hotter Dimaria's words got, the calmer Lucy seemed to become. "You keep saying 'he died' like that's the only thing that matters. Ajeel didn't just die, Dimaria. He sacrificed himself, and he did it for all of us – for you and me and everyone on board that airship. He himself instructed Invel to rescue me and Yukino as well as Brandish and your friends, because to him, the fact that we'd lost didn't make us any less of a team!"

"How dare you talk like you knew him?" Dimaria screamed, lashing out wildly. Lucy was fighting entirely defensively, even though the warrior's reckless swipes were leaving her wide open, had she wanted to strike back.

But it was Brandish who spoke. "It's not as though he was a difficult man to understand, was he, Mari?" Even distorted by pain, her voice was strong. "He died a hero. And he deserves to be remembered as a hero. Not as an excuse for you to drown your sorrow in blood and inflict pain upon those he died to protect."

Then, softly: "Mari. He was my friend too. That's why I'll stand with Lucy, against you."

Dimaria's assault finally lessened. She took a shaking step back, regarding Lucy with something akin to fear. "No- I won't allow- you won't-"

"I'm going to defeat Acnologia," Lucy stated. "I'm going to end this. I won't let Yukino and Ajeel's stories end with the obliteration of everything they died to protect. Instead, their sacrifices will become part of the story that leads to Acnologia's defeat. I will bring about the future they fought for. You're right; I never knew Ajeel the way you two do. But I will honour him, as a warrior and an ally. Ending this matters more than the war, Dimaria. Stand with me."

But before Dimaria could respond, something… strange happened.

Something for which Lucy struggled to find the words.

A voice purred, "Together or alone, you shall all die. It makes no difference to me."

Dimaria turned to look, but Lucy recognized that voice; she already knew what she would see. A wild-haired, wild-eyed not-man stood at the edge of the grove, the king of this place of death, fangs gleaming in the light of the breath attack he unleashed.

Lucy moved on instinct. The blast of energy struck her unprotected back directly… which meant that it didn't strike Dimaria, shielded by her body, by her very life.

It was all she could do. After all, there was only one kind of magic that she had ever seen deflect Acnologia's breath attack, and she didn't possess it.

Just like that, she died.

And Acnologia was laughing maniacally; Dimaria was screaming something too primal for words; Brandish was too stunned to move. There was blue-white light rising from the ground, and into the clearing burst the two figures Lucy would most want to see in her final moments: Natsu, Zeref, the first time they had ever been together, united by a shared, apocalyptic horror…

All of this happened.

And at the same time, none of it happened.

Lucy didn't live it, she saw it. A minute of her life happened in an instant, and hadn't yet happened at all.

Bewildered, she stared at Dimaria, mind turning with painful slowness through thoughts of time magic and visions of the future and why that magic felt so familiar, wondering if the Alvarez mage had an explanation…

Instead, Dimaria hissed, bitterly, "I hate you."

And time took a different path.

Lucy realized in an instant what she had to do. She was moving before Acnologia even announced his presence. "Together-" he started, before choking on his gloat, his eyes widening in shock.

She was Scorpio for speed, as she ran; Taurus for power, as she leapt; Ophiuchus for might, as she swept his two-handed sword down in a blow that would have beheaded any other man. The blade dug an inch into the half-formed scales of the arm Acnologia had instinctively raised to parry the blow.

The mightiest Dragon Slayer was still staring, dumbfounded, as she wrenched the blade free in a burst of blood and drove it towards his heart.

At the very last moment, he managed to jump backwards. The tip of the blade barely nicked his chest, deflected by the ever-hardening scales his magic was creating.

That was okay.

She had already changed again: Aquarius now, for sheer stubborn fury. The sword disappeared and a wave of liquid earth burst from her outstretched hands, hurling Acnologia backwards before he had found his footing. He bounced, tumbled, was brought forcibly to a halt by the cage of the great dead tree.

Somewhere over Lucy's shoulder, neither Brandish nor Dimaria were paying any attention to the fight. The latter lay unmoving on the ground, enveloped in a thick, distorting halo of magic – and the former was crouched beside her, screaming her name.

Lucy was to face the Dragon Slayer alone.

Except he wasn't a Dragon Slayer any more. He was growing, changing, unfurling his hate into two enormous wings. The branches strained around him and then ripped all at once, too great even for this place of death to contain.

Seen from the sky, he had been impressive. From the ground, he defied all comprehension: a huge, scaled monstrosity, the disaster to end all futures.

And hers was the future in his sights. "You have defied me too many times, Heartfilia child," he growled. "That ends now."

Grimly, Lucy shifted back to her Ophiuchus form and hefted her sword. "This is it, Yukino," she murmured. "Lend me your strength."

And then another roar resounded through the forest.

Rather than inspiring fear, it seemed to fill her with courage. There was something so familiar about it. It wasn't the herald of her death – it was the thunder of the stadium as Fairy Tail won the Grand Magic Games; it was the cheering that greeted her team as they returned victorious from another mission.

As Acnologia opened his mouth to strike, a crimson blur flashed across her vision. Something scaled and enormous and blazing like a ruby-red sun smashed into Acnologia.

Just for a moment, there were two dragons locked together: one as black as the night that follows the world's end, and one as red as the fires in which a new age will be forged.

Then she blinked and they were gone, hurtling through the forest in a vicious struggle for dominance, and Lucy could do nothing but stare after them in shock.

A single word drifted from her lips: "Igneel…?"

But it was impossible. Igneel was dead.

Wasn't he?

A/N: What better way to kick off the final battle than with Lucy being a badass? Thank you all so much for your support so far, and I hope you're as excited for the final battle as I am! Also, the wonderfully talented Ilit015 has done another two great drawings - one of Irene, Sting and Wendy in their animal forms, and one of a very irate (but still cute) dormouse-Gajeel being held in a jar by Acnologia. They're great fun so do check them out on deviantart! And see you all next week for an admittedly not very festive, but hopefully still dramatic instalment on Boxing Day! ~CS