I do not own Fairy Tail or Desna's Pradesh Family.

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"Oh, Virgo, thankyousomuch!" Lucy cried in relief, crushing said spirit into a hug as she sat up in the deep tunnel the spirit had hastily dragged her into. Only to stop the embrace quickly when her injuries reminded her of her presence. She hissed in pain and clutched her ribs.

Though the darkness of the spirit-made cavern didn't allow for Lucy to see anything, she imagined Virgo doing some attempt at a bow in the cramped area as she heard her stoic voice, "You're welcome, Princess. Will you punish me for not coming sooner?"

"No, no… Virgo you came just in time. I was so worried they'd get your key when I requipped it. I'm so sorry for risking you like that!" Lucy apologized profusely. She felt terrible for doing it but connecting to Virgo's key so she could come out on her own power was the only thing she could think of. Not only to save herself, but she had to get Master help quickly…

"Master…" Lucy whispered in horror.

Her pulse jumped, and she fought for breath past the pain of what she knew were broken ribs, frantically grasping Virgo's arms and shaking her vigorously (which, in all reality, was pretty pathetic. Her strength was basically non-existent.

"Shit, Virgo. Master. We need to get him out. Who knows what they'll do to him now that I'm gone! I know he said he couldn't lie to me but I don't trust that! What if he was lying, it's not like bad guys are known for their freaking honest, holy shit, we have to go back. Virgo, where are we? How long have we been gone. Do you think-"

"Princess!" Virgo shouted, even going so far as to clamp a hand over Lucy's mouth to stop her incessant ranting. She pulled back quickly once Lucy whimpered in pain - she'd disturbed the horribly painful injury on Lucy's face.

"I apologize, Princess. Please punish me, but I took the liberty of moving Master Makarov before I got to you. It is why it took so long to save you." Virgo said, grimacing at the thought of having caused her keyholder pain.

Lucy nearly collapsed in relief. Finally taking a moment to really breathe and process the situation. It had been one hell of a day and she just needed to stop and think.

'So, the facts…' she thought to herself, trying to sort through the information she'd gathered through the haze adrenaline, fear, and despair she'd been in for the last several hours.

First, some random ass dark guild that called themselves "Fallen Star" (she snorted internally. Not only was it a stupid name for a guild, she took offense to anything referencing her beloved night sky when it didn't deserve to. She'd make them pay for that, too) attacked Fairy Tail, at their most vulnerable time, to kidnap her. Not exactly an original plot, but them having inside information was fucking unacceptable (oh, she'd definitely figure out who is behind that particular issue). They'd… They'd killed her nakama… (she sobbed, cursing her injured ribs when it caused her to nearly black out) … they'd killed her team… Her Natsu… (despair washed over her very being. She fought through the pain. She couldn't just give up. She owed it to her lost friends to make the bastards pay for what they'd done) just to get back at her mom for something obviously years in the past? Hell, they'd killed their own goddamn teammate just to accomplish it…

And there was this stupid curse they kept mentioning, something to do with her mom? They needed her as a sacrifice (though, clearly, they had to have a backup plan for that. The state her body was in told her that her staying alive had dropped a few pegs on their priority list). But they'd definitely mentioned sacrificing her at one point… Before Makarov came storming in-

Wait.

Master Makarov.

One, he needed medical attention. Now.

Two, he wasn't in the guild hall when she was taken. And yet, he came looking for her. Holy shit. Happy got to him!

She found herself suddenly overwhelmed with hope. If Happy and Romeo made it to the camp, and Makarov made it here…. Yes! That had to be right! The rest of her family had made it home!

She practically wrestled with the side of her consciousness that wanted to hope that Natsu, Mira, and all the others had been saved. She didn't want to get her hopes up, she really was rarely 'Lucky' Lucy Heartfilia, but her stupid heart couldn't seem to let go of the idea that maybe, just maybe, half her family wasn't lying dead.

Lucy brought her fist to her mouth and bit at her knuckle. She couldn't sit on her ass anymore, she had to get moving or everything her spirits had done to help her would be for nothing. The pain radiating through the cut on her face and from the teeth digging into her knuckle brought her out of her thoughts.

She looked up into the expectant face of her faithful maid spirit. Thankfully, her eye (she wasn't really even sure at this point if she had more than one…) had adjusted just enough to make out her features, "Princess?"

Lucy did a poor impression of a smile - really, who would have thought just making fucking facial expressions would be this hard? - and addressed her spirit, "I can feel you, Virgo. I know you don't have much time left that you can hold yourself out here, and I don't have any magic to spare. I need you to- Fuck!"

Lucy was cut off as she felt the earth around her shift. Ever since she'd connected to Virgo's Star Dress, she was able to feel the changes in the ground and earth around her more keenly even when she wasn't using magic. Suddenly, she remembered one pretty significant detail about the fight earlier that she'd completely forgotten about.

"Virgo, Shoeless was a fucking earth-make mage! Where are we?"

The pink-haired spirit narrowed her eyes at a spot above her, "I shall take care of it, Princess. We are still technically in the clearing, just below it. Very far below it, though she shouldn't be a problem for me to-"

"No, Virgo," Lucy stated calmly, "I need you to help Master. You don't have enough magic to take on a strong mage and still get Master and I to safety, and we both know it,"

Virgo looked down, her stoic expression fading to one of almost… shame.

"Don't do that. You've helped me more than you could possible know. But now I need you to help Makarov."

Lucy could tell that her attentive spirit was about to protest, but cut her off, "Virgo, please. Please. Master will die without help soon, and they will most definitely find me and get me out of the ground, and we know that I still have things they want. Master is a sitting duck out there and if they find him who knows what will happen? No. I won't let that happen, not after everything he's done for me."

Lucy forced her sluggish stores of magic to cooperate, and requipped Capricorn's key. He was the only other spirit that could appear on his own power.

Virgo, seeing what her master was doing, quickly expanded their little pocket of earth to accommodate the large goat spirit. As soon as there was enough space, golden light illuminated the area as Capricorn appeared at Virgo's side with a bow.

"Lady Lucy," he greeted formally. He and all of Lucy's other spirits had been watching from the celestial world, extremely worried and hoping against hope that she would survive. As such, he knew she was about to take a huge risk with her own life and he hated it. He understood it, but he hated it.

"Capricorn," Lucy sighed out, "Thank you for coming."

The goat spirit simply nodded at her sadly, "I will always come when you require my assistance, Lady Lucy. Until your last day…"

Silence hung in the air briefly as all three tried to ignore the fact that her last day may very well be this day.

"Right!" Lucy started once more in a cheery voice that was obviously false, and still a bit clipped as her ribs were actively trying to kill her, "So, here's the plan-"

"You would like Virgo to tunnel me to Master Makarov, then tunnel us both as far from the clearing as possible before she runs out of magic, then pull us up to the surface. You'd like me to then take Makarov to the guild for healing as quickly as possible, and if you are still living at that point, you would like me to send a group here to assist you. Is that correct?"

Lucy smiled at her close friend. "Yes. Though, please, don't tell anyone what has happened here. I don't need them worried. And if you get the chance to send help," she cleared her throat, "If you get the chance, please. Talk only to Laxus. I don't know who to trust, apart from him."

Both spirits nodded at her, but didn't move.

Movement in the earth to their left caught the attention of Virgo and Lucy.

"Go, now… and thank you. I love you both," She said, frantic as she felt the earth-make mage getting closer.

Capricorn and Virgo patted her head lightly before departing so quickly her eyes didn't catch the movement. Virgo had closed the tunnel she made behind her, ensuring they wouldn't be followed as they went on their mission to save the Master of Fairy Tail.

Lucy had only moments to spare as she quickly stored both Virgo and Capricorn's keys the only place she could think to hide them, as she needed to be in contact with them for them to be on Earthland… her cleavage.

At least that bastard Alec seemed to value keeping her private bits, well… private. Thank Mavis for small favors.

"That was pretty clever, Heartfilia," Alec said, punctuating his statement with another kick to her injured ribs. Lucy wasn't even sure it was fair to call them broken at this point. She was sure shattered was the more accurate descriptor.

'Why didn't I escape when I had the chance, again…?' she spoke to herself internally.

She wasn't expecting an answer.

'Because, my dear Princess,' a broken voice sounded in her head, 'You're too selfless for your own good, and you chose to save Makarov instead of yourself.'

….. Wait. What the fuck?

'Loke?! What the fuck?'

Lucy screamed out in pain as another painful blow landed on her person. This time it was her broken leg, at least she thought so. The pain was radiating really everywhere, so it was getting hard to pinpoint.

She was pretty sure Alec had asked her to requip her keys again. She decided that her only response would be something bitter and antagonizing, and that a response such as that wouldn't result in anything good for her. Silence seemed the slightly less painful option.

"You stupid bitch! Terra, hold her down again, will you. We've got to step it up again, we are running out of time!"

Lucy smirked evilly to herself. She was certain her facial expression didn't change, as any movement of her facial muscles at the moment resulted in severe, debilitating pain, but the chibi-version of herself that lived in her brain was downright smug. Because while her plan to escape didn't actually result in her getting away, there was the unexpected, yet very happy (for Lucy) side effect that their poor earth-make mage was drained. There weren't many human mages alive that could work earth the way that Virgo could, and that bitch wasn't one of them. It cost her a hell of a lot of magic tunneling down again and again searching for Lucy, and then refilling the earth as they came back up empty handed. Virgo wasn't joking when she said they were very deep in the ground.

'I am glad to see you can still see the bright side in the middle of all this horror, Princess. This new connection is rather cool, don't you think?' Well, now she was certain it was Loke.

In the back of her mind, she acknowledged that Alec was doing something, once again, to cause her pain, but at this point she was so full of pain it was practically numb. She was half-dead, and so she retreated into her subconscious. If she was going to die, at least she could do it while conversing with her closest spirit.

'What is this, Loke?' Damn, even her mental voice sounded tired.

Loke's mental voice came back at her, extremely emotional but she could tell he tried to hide it, 'It seems our contract and our soul-link has strengthened to the point of being able to communicate telepathically. Very few mages have reached that level of trust with any spirit, and normally it requires constant power to maintain, so even fewer have had the power to maintain such a connection for long.'

Lucy felt some kind of pain happening somewhere on her body. Vaguely, she wondered if it was an organ. Everything else had been hurting before, it stands to reason they'd moved on to her organs. At this point though, she didn't see anything around her - stuck in the back of her brain as her writer's mind conjured up a chibi-version of Loke to speak with her own chibi-version-mind-avatar Lucy. Alec's voice filtered through to her, but she honestly couldn't make out real words. Oh well.

'Uh, Loke? I'm not really supplying power right now. Nor am I capable of doing so-Fuck!'

Chibi-Mind-Avatar Loke flinched, as a pain sharp enough to get through Lucy's mental barriers hit her. Seemed he was back to hurting her face this time. Hopefully he was just hitting her, and not gouging out her injured eye. If it was still there. She really didn't want to try to pull off an eye patch.

'Fuck… Okay… Breathe…. Okay. Anyway. Why isn't my power draining if it's supposed to cost something to speak with you like this?'

Chibi-Loke gave a pained smile, 'Ah, well, you know how the King is. You know you're his favorite. He's supplying the power for this little chat. Since… You know…'

'Since it's likely our last conversation, you mean?'

There was that flinch again. She heard what sounded like a sob coming from Loke. Her mental Chibi-Loke looked heartbroken.

Lucy was going to respond and try to comfort him, when suddenly she was pulled from her chibi-centric mind palace by a sudden, intense, white-hot pain in the left side of her abdomen.

"FUCK!" she yelled. She knew that one was out loud, based on the pain in her face from forming words.

"There you are. Thought we lost you for a moment. Listen, you stupid fucking blonde, this is your last chance. I'll fucking take my chances trying to find the keys later if you don't requip them right fucking now."

Ordinarily, Lucy would feel victorious at the defeated, angry look in her torturer's eye. Now though, she felt true fear, as while he was yelling his demands at her prone form, his sword was literally lodged halfway through her abdomen, shooting unbelievable levels of pain radiating through her whole body.

Fear or not, she wouldn't go quietly.

"I will never, ever, do what you're asking of me, you dumb as shit, cock-gobbling twat! Get that through you're pathetic fucking brain!"

She knew it was coming, but when the blade slowly inched forward in her body, she found herself wishing for death. The edges of her vision began swimming.

She didn't regret antagonizing the man. He wasn't going to do anything besides murder her at this point anyway, and pain? She could deal with pain. It might fucking kill her before he did, but she could deal with it. She did regret, just a little, that her poisonous, snarky as hell brother figure wouldn't get to hear her wonderfully colorful insults in the end.

"Guess that's that, then, Heartfilia," the man looked down at her disdainfully, though if she looked closely at him she could see hints of grudging admiration in his gaze, "I guess this technically means you win," he states coldly as he removes his sword from where it impaled her abdomen, and hovers it over her heart, underneath the exposed Mark of Aquarius resting on her collarbone.

'Looks like Stache Face was right, Loke. Tell him thanks for me. Do me one more favor…?'

'Anything, Lucy,' Loke's despairing voice rang in her head.

'If you see Erik again, make sure to tell him how fucking witty I was today. He'll be so proud…"

The last of Lucy's consciousness left her as she saw the sword begin its descent into her heart. She didn't hear Loke's choked mental laugh, nor his whispered, "I promise…"