After what felt like hours but was probably about half an hour at most, Terra left Lucy hanging from the wall gasping with tears running down her face. Not knowing how much longer she had until the next person sent to torture, Lucy knew she had to act now. Taking in a few more deep, rough breaths Lucy lifted head and looked around the dingy and damp room, The room was bare apart from the magic cancelling chains holding her against the wall. Lucy thought about her option for a moment before realising that she didn't need her magic to get out of the chains. In fact, she didn't really need strength either. Well, maybe a little.
Sucking in a couple more deep breaths, Lucy prepared herself for what she was about to do. The injured blonde adjusted her fingers to clasp around each of her thumbs. Counting to three under her breath she put as much pressure as she could on her right thumb until the bone snapped inwards with loud crack. She bit her lip until it bled in an attempt to stop from screaming, only a small whine escaping her lips. Lucy gasped and let go of the injured thumb before roughly pulling her hand through the cuffs, catching her broken appendage against it when she pulled herself free. This time, she didn't count. Knowing that her left hand was weaker than her right, Lucy grasped her fingers that surrounded her left thumb and added more pressure, snapping the left thumb with a more gruesome sound than the first.
Forcing the second hand out of the cuffs was more difficult due to the sheer pain that Lucy was in and her body instinctively did not want to cause itself more pain. She forced herself to yank her hand free with gritted teeth before she was finally free. As she stood there in the middle of the horrible little room, Lucy realised that was the end of her plan. With no keys and no knowledge of an escape route, Lucy's chance of leaving the dark guilds building diminished. Realising that she had almost left the building without her keys made guilt flood through the girl. She thought about all of her spirits and the things that they do for her and she was ready to leave them in this horrible place all because she was scared. She was a coward and the only way she could make amends for what she had almost done was to find her keys and apologize. The question was, where were they?
Usually if she was in danger and wasn't able to use her keys her strongest spirit would use his own magic power to come and fight with her. This time however, he hadn't come. Maybe he was hurt by her trying to leave without her celestial friends. She couldn't blame him for that, it was a pretty heartless act. Lucy began to fall through a wormhole of destructive thoughts, fretting over losing her spirits that she classes as her family. The more she thought about them the more frantic she became until she started to push magic into the thoughts. She thought about Loke and his charm that seemed to work on every girl apart from herself. She thought Aquarius and her waves of rage who would inevitably be furious that Lucy had once again lost her key. She thought about Gemini, Taurus, Scorpio, Aries, Capricorn, Sagittarius, Cancer and Virgo. She even began to think about her silvers keys like Plue and Lyra.
While Lucy thought about the spirits she loved so dearly, Leo finally broke through. The room filled with blinding light and Lucy looked around in awe. The light faded and just behind Lucy stood the leader of the zodiacs. Before Lucy could turn to look at him, she lost her balance and fell backwards. Her most loyal spirit caught her and held her until she was once again steady on her feet.
"Used up a bit too much magic power there my love." Loke said grinning and pushing his glasses up his nose with his middle finger.
"Loke!" the lion spirit shushed the excited celestial mage before she blew their cover. Lucy spoke again, this time in a quieter voice. "How are you here?"
"Because of you. Something about this place was blocking me but you pushed your magic power through to our world and allowed me to appear. You're stronger than you think Lucy." Loke said seriously, Lucy blanched at the spirit's out of character behavior. Her friend stepped closer to her and examined some of her wounds with a deep frown on his face. Lucy could see the beginnings of guilt beginning to form so she took a step back and shook her head at him.
"No. Don't look like that. You didn't chose not to help so it's not your fault. Come on, I need to find my keys." Lucy started to walk and talk in a hushed tone before stopping and turning the Loke. "You said that I helped to get you here by lending you some of my magic power right?" Lucy questioned resulting in Loke nodding his head. " Okay, so how did I do that without your key?"
There was a pause and Loke looked around the empty room at anything other than Lucy. Lucy crossed her arms and tapped her foot at the lion spirit before he looked at her and crumbled.
"So, this probably isn't the time to tell you about the fact that you are getting more powerful and about the new stuff that we are collectively going to teach you so I'm just going to say… Lucy awesome?" he said. Lucy stood in front of him for a moment with her mouth wide open before closing it with her hand, nodding slightly and turning to towards the door.
"So, ignoring that… can you help me find my keys?" Lucy pondered.
"Of course milady" the spirit said bowing. Lucy rolled her eyes but said nothing, instead reaching out for the door handle with shaking hands. Loke stepped towards her and nudged her hand away from the door slightly, gripping the door handle himself. Lucy sent him a thankful look and peeked around him and out of the door when Loke started to open it. At first the door opened silently but then once it opened slightly it opened the rest of the way with a loud creak. The pair looked at each other in panic and stood still for amount. Just as they thought the coast was clear a man and a woman poked their heads around the corner of the hallway. The man opened his mouth, clearly about to alert someone about Lucy escaping when Loke rushed forward and punched the two using Regulus. The two guards flew backwards and slammed into the nearby wall.
"Okay, someone definitely heard that. We'd better go." Lucy said, reminding Loke of the ultimate goal. Loke took off down the hallway, Lucy following closely behind. Every now and then the lion spirit would have to stop and fight while Lucy did her best to assist by using hand to hand contact. Eventually they arrived at the big double doors that Lucy had seen during her first escape attempt. Loke looked back at Lucy and noticed her chewing her lip. Her turned around fully and grasped hold of her hands, giving the girl a piercing look. Lucy blanched and tried to pull back but the lion spirit wouldn't let her.
"It'll be fine Lucy. Lets go kick some ass." Loke spoke softly. Lucy nodded and stepped towards the doors and pushed them open. Loke pushed her behind him when the doors had opened. A crowd of mages stood in the hall staring at them. Nobody moved and the room was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. That was until Loke growled and rushed at the crowd.
"Regulus Gatling Impact!" Loke yelled as he threw himself at multiple mages. Lucy knew that she wasn't going to stand around a let Loke fight, she was going to get some of her own revenge.
"Lucy Kick!" The two were locked in battle, Lucy dodging magic attacks and relying on punching and kicking her enemies whereas Loke was taking out as many mages as he could. Lucy dodged another attack and in doing so she noticed her whip laying by a regal looking chair on a podium of sorts. She lurched towards the chair and managed to grab her whip just as a searing pain hit her in the shoulder. She turned quickly and saw a wizard grinning at her with lightning flickering around his palms. Lucy laughed, causing the man to frown at her and tilt his head slightly in confusion.
"Please! I've been struck by Laxus's lightning. Yours is nothing!" With that, Lucy activated Fleuve D'étoiles and sent the man flying. Lucy slashed and cut at people with her whip, trying to get some of the mages off of Loke's back. Next to her, something began to glow in a large box that seemed to be locked. Lucy took down another made before turning to the box and hacked at it with Fleuve D'étoiles. When the lock broke Lucy flung the box open and saw her precious keys. She reached to take them when she was hit with a wave of bricks and was thrown backwards across the hall, slamming into the wall on the other side.
"Lucy!" Loke called, turning his back on some of the enemies to check on his key holder. This turned out to be a mistake as they sent a multitude of attacks at the lion spirit, injuring him greatly and forced him to go back to the spirit world with a scream of pain.
"Loke..." Lucy said through gritted teeth. Her head span as she looked around the room to see than everyone had stopped fighting and stood looking in the opposite direction to her. Three mages walked through the crowd towards the injured blonde girl and the crowds gaze followed them. Lucy's eyes began to focus and she saw the first man that tortured her, Terra and another man that she didn't know the name of. The three stopped in front of her and paused. Terra bent down and looked at Lucy for a moment before throwing her head backwards and laughing maniacally. Lucy watched the woman in horror. The laughter cut off quite quickly and Terra went back to staring into Lucy's eyes.
"What's with you and trying to escape? Face it, your gunna die in here." The woman said, grinning at Lucy. "Oh, you can thank Tsuchi for your...flight." Terra laughed at her own joke whilst pointing at the man that Lucy had no recognised. She then pointed towards the fear mage that Lucy had encountered earlier. "You've already met Kyōfu. He's a treat, right?" Fear flood Lucy's body and she looked at Kyōfu who was grinning at her. Seriously, what was with everyone grinning when they were causing her pain? The fear stopped consuming her as quickly as it began when the double doors were hurled open. There, in the doorway, stood the person that Lucy most wanted to see. Natsu.
"LUUUCCYYYYY!"
Hi guys. I'm so sorry for posting so late. I've had a lot going on recently so I haven't had the time to write. Finally though, I managed to write a chapter and this one is a bit longer than usual. Thank you for sticking with me and I will be quicker with the next chapter. See you next time!