Lisanna POV
We went into one of the small houses and rested for a while to recover energy, alongside recover after seeing all that blood.
We sat there in silence for a few minutes, before I looked over at Erza who appeared to have calmed down somewhat.
"Are you feeling better, Erza?" I broke the silence, and the redhead looked over to me.
"A bit," she answered, her voice quiet.
"Are you ready to talk about what happened?" I asked her.
"It's alright if you aren't ready," Wendy said quickly. "It looks like it's a very painful thing for you to think about, after all."
"That's because it is. But it'll only wind up hurting more if I keep it bottled up," Erza responded.
"So, does that mean you're gonna tell us?" Natsu asked.
"I am, but for you all to fully understand, I have to start from the beginning," she answered.
"Which is...?"
"Back when we caught up with the other me, when I told you all to go on ahead. I fought with her for a while, but the fight wasn't going anywhere," Erza explained, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. "I never intended to badly hurt her, but I put too much power behind one of my attacks, and..."
Erza trailed off, and we all looked at her for a few seconds, expecting her to continue but she didn't.
"You can keep going, Erza," Juvia encouraged her. "Like you said, this will only wind up hurting more if you keep it bottled up."
"I know...so as I was saying, I put too much power behind an attack, and I wound up delivering a deep wound to her chest," Erza continued telling us. "I knew that she was dying, and I tried to give her some sort of comfort before she passed away by cradling her in my arms."
I think I know where this is going...
"She told me a lot before she died, like how her name was Knight, where Yukino was, and about how everyone she loved was gone," she went on. "She died in my arms and turned into a small plushie."
We all stayed silent and didn't interrupt her.
"The feeling wasn't that bad at first, because I thought that she was reunited with her loved ones. That is, until Lisanna and Juvia left me with those four dream people," Erza spoke, her hands tensing in her folded lap. "They were friends of her's, and they had been searching the longest time for her."
I couldn't stop myself from feeling pity when I heard that.
"They asked me if I had seen her and I wound up crying, so they surrounded me in a big group hug to make me feel better. But I started hearing a voice in my head," Erza said, her voice becoming shaky. "It called them fake and wanted to hurt them. I tried to stop it but I blacked out."
"If you blacked out, then how do you know you did it?" Gajeel interrupted. "What if someone else came in while you were unconscious?"
"I know it was me because I could hear everything that was happening. I could hear them crying out in pain whenever I hit them," Erza said, her eyes wide and terrified as she stared into empty air. "I c-could hear them pleading with me to stop, throwing things at me, trying to run away...I heard a lot of things, but I couldn't see or feel anything."
"Dear Mavis..." Levy put a hand over her mouth in shock.
"When I had control over my body again, they were all dead and I could only stare in shock at what I did," Erza continued. "I'm not sure how long I stood there, but it was long enough for you all to find Levy and come to get me."
"...is that it?" I asked after a few seconds.
"Of course it is," she answered. "How could there be anymore?"
"I just wanted to be sure," I responded.
"Erza, you shouldn't feel bad," Natsu tried to reassure her. "They aren't real, so who says that you killed anyone?"
"It doesn't matter if they're real or not, they had lives so they weren't just imaginary people in a dream," she looked at pink haired man. "They were real enough to me and I killed them."
"Erza..."
"I killed five people, and it wasn't like they were monsters in disguise or something or even a dangerous enemy," her dark brown eyes shifted to the floor. "They were just people and I killed them."
None of us knew how to respond to that.
"I'm a murderer!" she shouted, sobs wracking her body.
We all sat there for a while, not knowing what to do until I got an idea. I stood up and walked over to Erza.
"Lisanna?" Gray asked, looking up at me. "What are you doing?"
I sat on my knees in front of Erza to be down at her level, before wrapping my arms around her in a comforting hug.
"What are you doing?" Gajeel asked, repeating the devil slayer's query. "Why are you hugging her?"
"Well, I don't know what to say so why not give her a hug?" I explained my reasoning behind the action. "She without a doubt needs one after what's happened, after all."
"You're right about that," Levy agreed.
Levy came over to Erza and I, getting down on her knees as well and hugging Erza as I did.
"Are you sure it's a good idea to give her a group hug?" Gray asked, clearly not sitting well with our actions. "I mean-"
"Juvia doesn't think that it's a very good idea to bring that up right now, Gray-sama," Juvia interrupted him. Holy shit Juvia just interrupted Gray it's the end of the world-
After saying that, Juvia came over to us and joined in on the hug.
One by one, we all hugged Erza, until Gajeel was the only one who wasn't in the group hug.
"Come on, Gajeel," Levy chided him. "Joining in on the group hug won't kill you."
"It might," he mummbled so Erza wouldn't hear.
"Don't be an asshole," Natsu scowled at him. "Come over here, metal head."
"Nope," he crossed his arms stubbornly.
"Gajeel, if you don't come over here, I'll tell them," Levy threatened.
"You wouldn't."
"Guys! Gajeel said that he-!"
"OKAY OKAY! You've made your point!"
Gajeel came over and very reluctantly joined in on the group hug.
"Does this make you feel any better?" I asked Erza after a few seconds.
"A little bit, but it's better than nothing...so thank you," she told us. "You can let go now."
We let her out of our group hug and stood up.
"It's no problem, Erza," I smiled at her. "We'd do anything for a friend."
"Which is a good thing. Anyways, come on. We've been here long enough," Erza replied. "We have to get moving before Paw comes after us."
"Then let's get going," said Gray.
We left the book town and continued down the mountain path that we had been following earlier. We walked down it until we came to the jagged mouth of a cave.
"Oh, don't tell me it's another maze!" Natsu sounded irritated.
"Alright, we won't tell you. But it's a maze," Gajeel snickered.
"Agh! Dammit!" Natsu shouted, frustrated. "Now we have to go through this one and two more on the way back!"
"Let's just get through this and worry about coming back through later," Erza spoke to him, before walking into the cave.
"We probably have nothing to worry about, though, because chances are we'll remember the way to go," Levy pointed out. "So, it won't take too long to get through the mountains."
"I hope you're right..." Natsu said, frowning.
It took quite a while to get through the maze, with it taking just as long as the first one we went through. But when we finally made it out of the nightmarish twists and turns and dead ends of the maze, the sight on the other side was anything but pleasant.
"How the hell is a place like this a personal paradise?" Gray questioned in disbelief.
The area was a large swamp with mossy, old wooden bridges connecting the spaces of land to each other, the area below dark, murky water. There were old looking trees covered in moss and bugs clustered on the land, and storm clouds blocked out the sun, casting a large shadow over everything.
Jars full of flickering fireflies hung from tree branches, the only shred of light in this moist, dark place. Rain was pouring down from the sky, creating a steady hum as droplets hit the trees. The drowsy buzz of swamp mosquitoes was like an echo of the quiet atmosphere.
"This isn't what it used to look like," Erza said softly, her eyes surveying the area.
"How do you know that?" Levy asked, looking at her.
"Knight did say that her home was a shadow of its former self, and judging by what those four told me, this is Knight's home. It was turned into this by monsters," Titania explained.
"So where do you think that they're being kept, then?" I asked. "Because I don't think Mira, Lucy, or anyone would find this place to be a paradise."
"I'm not sure, but my best guess would be that Paw most likely made a building that could be their personal paradise," Erza guessed. "Just like how she's done for the others."
"What do you mean by that?" Juvia asked, frowning at her.
"Seeing as Wendy and Yukino were both in the same area just in different buildings, it would seem like the buildings are more the personal paradises, and the areas that they're in are just areas," Erza stated. "Except for Levy, seeing as she was able to travel all over the book town by the looks of things."
"Actually, I wasn't. I was only allowed to go to my room in the museum or the reading room to read books with the four of them," Levy corrected. "And I think that you may be right, Erza."
"It does sound like she's right," Juvia agreed. "But then Paw must be paranoid about her victims finding out that this is a dream."
"I probably would be too if I was her," Gray shrugged. "I mean, the second that they found out it was a dream, they would wanna wake up. And Paw obviously doesn't want that to happen."
"Why are we standing around talking about this?" Natsu asked. "Let's go already."
Without waiting for a response, Natsu began to walk down the aged wooden bridge.
"And there he goes again," I couldn't help but sigh. "Going off on his own."
"He's done this sort of thing before?" Wendy looked at me.
"Yup," I confirmed. "But come on, we should follow him."
We began to follow Natsu down the bridge with the only noise being the sound of the rain, the creaking of the bridge, and crickets for a while until we heard something else.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"Are you real or are you another fake?"
"Who's that?" Levy whispered so we wouldn't be heard.
"You think that I'm going to answer a question from a fake like you?"
"I'm not fake, I'm real."
"I don't know about that other voice, but the first one sounds really familiar," Natsu didn't whisper.
"Yeah right, and I'm a freaking weakling with no magic."
"It would seem that your appearance is very deceiving, then."
"Burn..." Natsu pointed out, only to get elbowed by Erza. "Ack! What was that for?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Unless your brain is as small as it may seem, then I believe you should know."
"Now isn't the time to be making jokes," Erza scolded the fire wizard. "Now let's go, but everyone stay quiet."
We carefully made our way across the bridge, trying our best to not make it creak as we walked. The further that we went, the more that we saw.
"Why you..." we could see the silhouettes of two people in the fog. "You're gonna regret saying that."
We began to hear what sounded like sparking electricity.
"If you attack me, then I'll be forced to attack you back."
The shadow around the other silhouette grew in size.
I didn't understand what was going on until we reached the end of the wooden bridge and stepped onto a small patch of land, which is when we saw the who they were.
"What the-?" I was confused.
In front of us stood Laxus and Rogue, who appeared to be getting ready to attack each other. They hadn't noticed us yet.
"Shadow/Lightning Dragon's Ro-!" they both yelled in unison.
"Both of you STOP!" Erza barked as she ran in between the two of them.
They both stopped when they saw her. Laxus couldn't help but loudly cough due to having to cancel out his roar at the last second, while Rogue mimicked the blonde's action.
"What the hell? How many fakes are in this damn swamp?" Laxus demanded, noticing us as well.
"I don't know, but we aren't fakes. We're real people," Erza told them.
"And how do we know that you aren't lying?" Rogue narrowed his crimson eyes, suspicious of her.
"I'll tell you something that only someone from the real world would know," Erza looked at Laxus. "You're an S-Class mage from the Fairy Tail guild. You are in a team with Freed, Evergreen and Bickslow, and you're not a real dragon slayer as you just have a lacrima implant."
Erza then turned to look at Rogue.
"And you're from the Sabertooth guild. You have an exceed named Frosch, and you're a shadow dragon slayer who thought to have killed his dragon, later discovering that he was alive."
"Okay, so you are from the real world," Rogue didn't seem to suspect her anymore.
"But just because you guys are real, that doesn't mean that he's real," Laxus was still wary of Rogue.
"Trust me, he's real," Levy stepped in.
"And how do you know that?" Laxus asked, turning his attention to her.
"Because all of the fake we've encountered wore pajamas, and seeing as Rogue isn't in his pajamas and is acting like himself, he's real," Levy explained to him. "So you don't have to fight him."
"If you say so. But I'm watching you," Laxus crossed his arms, glaring back at Rogue.
"How did the two of you get here, though?" Levy asked them. "You obviously aren't victims, and you need a partner for the spell to work."
"No, you don't," Laxus told her. "I was able to get in here just fine by myself."
"But why did you come here?" Wendy spoke up.
"Because I figured that you could use the help. There's no way that I was just going to leave something like this to you all," the exceeds had obviously told Laxus what was going on.
"Speaking of the real world, how's Carla?" Wendy asked. "Is she okay?"
"She's fine. She's worried about you, but she's fine," Laxus informed the tiny dragon slayer. "Same goes for the other two cats, they're worried but fine."
"What about you, Rogue?" Erza looked at him. "Why are you in here?"
"The day before yesterday, Yukino went home early to sleep because she said she was really tired. The next morning, she wouldn't wake up no matter what we did," Rogue explained to us. "The day after that, Sting passed out while I was talking to him and we decided to get some help from you."
"So does that mean that there are other Sabertooth members here?" Wendy asked.
"No, I'm the only one that's here," Rogue answered. "The others stayed in the real world to take care of our bodies."
"Does anyone else have a bad feeling about that?" I asked with a frown. "I mean, it's Happy, Carla and Pantherlily alone with I assume is Minerva, Rufus, Orga, Frosch and Lector."
"Stop worrying, they aren't alone...the Raijinshuu are with them. And besides, they're in Fairy Tail," Laxus reassured me. "They won't stand a chance if they try something."
"I...I guess that's reassuring," I said uncertainly.
"So, what sorts of things have happened?" Rogue asked.
"We'll tell you while we're looking for the victims of the monster," Erza told the dark haired man. "Seeing as we're back to three victims now, we shouldn't waste time."
"Lead the way, then," Rogue said.
Erza started walking down the wooden bridge that led deeper into the swamp and we quickly followed after her, explaining everything to Laxus and Rogue as we went. However, we left out what Erza had done.
To anyone who had doubts about Yukino being real, there. As for why Yukino was called Star, I'd think that it was just a very accidental slip of the tongue by Paw and she just went with it.
Review plz?
