Relentless

Chapter III: The final hurdle

"Wha, hah, just how long is it to that mountain you speak of, dad? And why am I carrying all the stuff you wanted to bring with you? It's heavy~!" Natsu complained through his rattling teeth, the cold was getting to him, as it would to any mortal up here, the tallest mountain in all of Fiore, The throat of the world! Acnologia was surprised on how long the pink haired boy would last in the severe lack oxygen at this altitude, but Natsu prevailed his expectations laid claim on the black dragons admiration, he may be the best pupil he ever had taken under his tutelage, while sometimes being insubordinate, Natsu was a real natural, his impressive determination to come out victorious in all circumstances, just like fighter, and everybody knew the world loved a fighter, who didn't give up no matter the what.

Currently they were on their way up the this treasonous mountain in order to train and meditate, peace of mind were a just as powerful tool to mage as mighty spells, after all it takes a peace full mind to even think about learning new spells. The narrow path was very small and slippery, Acnologia who was hovering carelessly at the side of Natsu who were struggling with the vast amount unnecessary equipment Acnologia had brought with them on the trip to the mountain, only individuals with dragon related magic could travel this mountain, violent current and wild blizzards hid in the misty mountain passes and could sweep up and led careless wanderers astray from their correct path. So all in all Natsu was carrying a twenty five kilo bag filled with rubbish, in a snow storm while being forced into walking up a mountain, yes, he was progressing well, he was quite the exceptional human, capable of great deeds. But the place they were headed would require Natsu to focus that much more, on top of the throat of the world there is an ancient site filled with a great deal of secrets and forgotten tomes, while it mostly was for Natsu's training, Acnologia had his own reasons for visiting that site, no humans had set for there for nearly 1100 years, The pink haired would be the first mortal to behold the ancient mysticism the site held.

Approximately six months ago when the pink haired boy was eight years old, Acnologia had tried to forcefully make Natsu enter dragon force, a unique ability available for dragon slayers, the result was far from desirable...Everything had backfired and Natsu nearly went berserk. But now, after some months of research Acnologia had found an answer to the enigma that was Natsu's inability to enter dragon force, as a matter of fact the black dragon king felt very stupid for not realizing this earlier. That blue mark on his right shoulder was the cause of it all, it was embedded with Natsu's late mothers magic, and the magic was the cause of all the failed attempts at entering dragon force had been foiled because the blue mark simply didn't let it happen. The mark had been programmed with not letting evil or malicious magic alike course through Natsu's body, so his mother thought that Acnologia's magic was evil? Fair enough, it was, and it was no secret. But when Natsu entered or tried to enter dragon force, he used his own chaos magic, and as long as his heart doesn't truly hold any evil or malicious intent his magic will be as innocent as a child, as the child he is. It is truly strange, yet logical at the same time, because When Acnologia had let his magic flow directly through the brat's magic circulation system, it had backfired, because the mark or the mother had detected that his magic was evil. Even though when Natsu was trying on his own it still didn't work when it should, the brat under normal circumstances should already have been learning the basics of the next level dragon slayer abilities. It seemed as if the mother didn't want her son to learn Acnologia's type of magic...anyhow the solution was clear, there is some remains of his mother's magic circulating around his body, preventing his cells to transform to the ones of a dragon, and therefore disabling the learning of dragon force. In the ancient site above the dragon slayers of old used to train their minds into utter calmness, there was a vial, a vial of an old, forgotten magical substance, called dragon tears, they were of course not real dragon tears but instead a special potion that was used to get inside the sub consciousness of the person that consumed the potion, by doing that Acnologia would get access to Natsu's mind, enabling Acnologia to find the disturbance in the pink haired boys magic.

But one might ask how the black dragon king would get transported into Natsu sub consciousness and not Natsu himself, the answer was simple, Acnologia just had to make some of his evil magic flow through the rosettes body again upon the potions consumption by the brat, in theory the mark would react to Acnologia's magic, as it is supposedly a bigger threat to the boy than good, the potion should instead get lured into believing that Acnologia's magic is Natsu's true magic and drag that magic into Natsu's sub consciousness instead of the rosettes own, thus making Acnologia get inside Natsu's head.

"Hey, I am still talking to you, yeah?" Natsu was still complaining about how tired or how extremely starved he was.

"Shut it kid, I am trying to think!" Natsu would have to cope with his hunger in some way or another, the food that Acnologia had packed would only last them if they began eating when they had arrived at the site. It was just a few hundred meters left as the initial compound was located somewhere hidden in the mountains midlands, and when they were inside, or rather, when Natsu was inside he would have to make his way up alone to the top from the inside. It wouldn't be easy, the initial venture from inside the site would probably take him around a day to complete and meet up with Acnologia at the summit, where he would drink the potion, in order for the dragon king to fix him up.

"I hate, snow and ice, it's so annoyingly cold and freezing!" Natsu said through his even more rattling teeth, lucky for him they had just arrived at the entrance of the ancient site where he would spend the remaining of his day scaling the dungeon. "Oi, Natsu, we are here!" The black dragon said while taking the big pack from Natsu. The rosette reacted just as expected; "Hey, that's my lunch you got there, give it back, now!" Balancing with one foot on the narrow, slippery ridge while flailing his hands towards the pack, trying in vain to lay claim on it. "Sorry brat, but I will be waiting at the top for you to appear, if you don't then this is good-bye, right, if its food you want then you better hurry up to the summit, or it may be all gone." Acnologia said while grinning teasingly at Natsu, flashing his razor like teeth, to the boy, who only got more frustrated with the whole situation he was in. "You can't do this to me, I haven't even had breakfast yet, This brat had so much stamina yet some mentioning of some food randomly disappearing would get him begging on his knees, was food simply what he had on is mind all the time? Why was food such a great deal to the pink haired boy? Acnologia would never know.

"Guess what kid?" Acnologia was tired of his whining on how he was going to starve in various ways inside the dungeon; therefore he decided to hasten his leave. "What? You wanna say something?" Natsu said sheepishly while looking kind of surprised that Acnologia hadn't left already. "I just did!" Acnologia then proceeded to fly off, while flapping his feather like wings to gain altitude. "Whoa, wait, no, you stupid overgrown lizard!" Why would he just leave like that? So heartless…Acnologia's booming laugh could be heard echoing through the mountain passes and various valleys. Natsu didn't have any choice but to find him inside the old dusty compound, if he didn't want to freeze to death outside were the violent snow currents raged.

With Acnologia out of the snowy picture, Natsu now stood alone in front of the two large iron doors guarding the site from the cold outside, it seemed peaceful, a bit to peaceful, it also smelled kind of strange too, it was probably incense, but nobody lived inside, probably…At least that's what Acnologia said earlier, that no human had set foot inside for over a millennia, well he would just have to step inside and find out. While stepping closer towards the towering iron doors, Natsu noticed two giant iron handles, they were probably there to open the humongous iron doors, upon closer look the doors were engraved with some weird pictures, they could also be some kind of markings, but there was no apparent way to distinguish the illustrations.

As the rosette wiped off some of the powdery snow that had settled down like some thin blanket over the iron doors. While taking a closer look on the weird illustrations Natsu felt a strange hum, a hum of power that stirred his insides and made his blood run cold, it felt as if his veins iced over and the circulation completely stopped. There was some sort 'thing' inside…but only time would tell exactly what.

It seemed carefully pulling at the big iron handles wouldn't make the doors budge, getting irritated at the two obstacles in front of him Natsu, he thought kicking the doors were a good idea…

At the mountain summit…

On top of a big rock formation sat the mighty dragon king in patiently in wait for his young student. The view was simply magnificent; the snow storms were several thousands of meters under the peak. The air was thin yet extremely pure, crystals of ice shimmered thanks to the sun dotted sky, but it was nonetheless cold, the mountains around the throat of the world were covered with a rug of trees, green, yellow, scarlet and orange, but their bare tops were scarfed and beribboned with snow. From carved rocky outcrops, waterfalls drifted like skeins of white lawn, and in the fields we could see the amber glint of rivers and the occasional mirror-like flash of a mountain lake.

For a normal mortal this kind of climate would be exhausting, the obvious lack of oxygen would make breathing tricky. At this kind of altitude the air pressure is at its lowest, the air moving upward from the sea level will expand, but for that to work energy is needed to move the surrounding oxygen molecules, thus leaving the air energy less at end of the process, the low energy levels in the air will leave the molecules in a much less mobile state and the lack of activity will leave them cold. But Acnologia who was a dragon didn't have to bother with small details like that, a dragons lungs is much more effective at drawing in oxygen. Natsu's lungs would have those characteristics too, if not only...Acnologia was extremely frustrated with this whole situation, that damnable mark had set them back six months in term of training, six months they would never gain back, however, if one would look at the bright side of it all, Natsu now was extremely potent with chaos magic, he knew the many ways of using his magic in his various body parts, fists, legs, head, elbows etc. But without dragon force he is an incomplete dragon slayer, dragon force is the base building up to the more advanced forms of dragon slaying, if Natsu can't master it, then he will be severely lacking in terms power to meet the conditions of Acnologia's plan. Let's just hope Natsu's hope Natsu's mother was co-operative…

Suddenly Acnologia felt an insanely small spike of dragon magic; it was very familiar, as Acnologia was very well acquainted with the other dragons and their various forms of magic. As he turned his head Acnologia saw a small orb of the familiar magic levitate towards him, it seemed pretty docile, and even so, one had to be careful with Gardeeny.

"State your business Gardeeny!" Now that Natsu was down in the dungeon making his way up towards the summit, the black dragon king could act and react freely, like he used to before he meet Natsu. Acnologia was far from pleased seeing that Grandeeny was her to squeeze some information out of him, she was rude fellow to be honest, always aiming for other dragons weak points during conversation, although one had to be brave to try that on the black dragon king.

"Oh please, is that how you greet a friend you haven't seen for...let's see here, hundreds of years." Acnologia would be damned to ever have called Grandeeny a friend, she was annoying, to say at least, her magic equally so, she has the best healing magic out of all dragons.

"I cannot help but to be suspicious at the fact that you are here even though you and all the other dragons are in constant hiding, isn't that so Grandeeny?" She was probably here to get information on the dragon kings student, the fact that he actually takes one still sounded mildly fishy.

"Don't be, I won't steal your little prodigy, however I would want to know what you are doing here?" Acnologia almost had forgot, this place was the place where the sky dragon priest called home, that site, or more elegantly called a temple, was were Krosis and his followers were gathered for a about a millennia ago, this would surely stir up some old wounds as wells as scars on Grandeeny's past. If she got to curious...

Acnologia didn't bother to answer; he only proceeded to answer with a menacing grin showing of his gleaming teeth to Grandeeny's little communication bubble.

"Okay, I take it, you are here to cleanse his magic!?" Oh, she wasn't that clueless after all these years? Well after all Grandeeny was one of the more deceptive types of dragons still alive, a well-known liar.

"Your curiosity amazes me, but pray tell, aren't you the one being rude? Here I am minding my own business and then then you suddenly decide to come and interrogate me? And on top of it all, you don't even bother to show up in person to ask the questions?" Acnologia's words were so filled with mockery they could be considered toxic, Acnologia had on several occasions been called the silver tongued dragon, but he only took it as a compliment, after all it only showed how much of a superior mind he had. Verbally mocking other dragons was fun...Especially prideful ones like Grandeeny and Igneel.

Please forgive my excessive rudeness, I only have one more question, why are you here on my territory, and why is your student roaming freely around the catacombs? Ah, I should have guessed, you want to rid him off, aren't you? After all the dead down there aren't really dead, so to speak..."

"Speaking of the devil, it seems that my student has woken someone from their eternal, Grandeeny?"The sky dragon had simply taken it too far...therefore she would pay!

Earlier, in the dungeon...

"Man, why are there so many cobwebs around every corner I pass?" The place was incredibly gloomy, probably due to extend period were little to no life existed here...But the place were decently lit, bonfires and torches adorned the walls, illuminating the vast illustrations around the place, similar to the iron doors. Upon entering the place Natsu had let himself have the pleasure of checking them out...As wells as adding some minor details to them, making them far more pretty, all though that thought came from the Natsu.

If one would concentrate they would see that the markings represented a man with a swirling ring of some sort of magic around him, there were other people illustrated on there as well, they were all bowing down to the magic man in the middle, looking back at the main man again it was clearly visible that he was wearing some really fancy clothes compared to the rest of the bunch, the illustration in stone wanted to make that fact clear, he also wore a crown, which represented administration and rule.

Having taken the liberty of grasping hold of a lone torch, Natsu now held it in front of him waving it in front of effectively burning the cobwebs. "WHA, I already have passed along this corridor? Why am I here again?" His sudden yell of surprise echoed through many hallways and corridors, his voice repeated itself...four times before dissipating into oblivion, how freaking large is this place?

"Damn it! At this rate I'll never...Whoa" He didn't get to finish his line of thought as the exiting sight of an untouched lever came across his now sparkling eyes. How the hell had he missed this fine piece of mystery? Right, if that damn lizard didn't refuse to share some of the food inside the pack earlier, maybe he wouldn't be too starved to think of anything but his constantly rumbling stomach...

Gently the rosettes fingers surrounded the lever; his hand was sweating with excitement while his eyes still remained in the weird sparkling state. Anyhow he didn't know if pulling the lever yet, was this something Acnologia would approve of...? Hah, screw that, Natsu was a person learned through doing stuff, and then he would learn his lesson.

With all his might Natsu pulled the lever, but not a corn of the ancient dust adorning the place was moved, everything was quiet, in an ear deafening way, not even the quietest of sounds of ongoing mechanisms was heard. Letting out a annoyed groan Natsu was just about to abandon the lever until suddenly there was vague sound of some stones grinding at each other, that must have been the mechanism, he only heard the faint sound because of Acnologia's Spartan ways of teaching different stuff, why would there be a need for violence when the black dragon thought stuff to him never really got to him? Natsu never thought of himself as stupid, he just took a longer time to process things...At least that's what Acnologia would mutter to himself during some of the training sessions.

The pink haired boy darted with haste towards were he thought the sound was coming from, if he wouldn't hurry the sound would most likely stop and then he would be lost again. A few minutes later the rosette was standing in front of area of the dungeon he didn't recognize, the wall had turned a one-eighty turn revealing a new secret passage, the same sort of aura was present in the passage, if only a tad gloomier, and the worst thing out of it all was that even more cobwebs were present in the new tunnel, however, there was also a new torch, as Natsu had accidentally dropped his old one back when he was pursuing the strange sound. The wind was being extremely louder than usual, one could say that the wind almost was howling, as Natsu proceeded to take one small step into the tunnel, the wind intensified greatly and a sudden gust of wind and dust pushed the unaware pink haired dragon slayer further into the passage, to the point where his whole body was beyond the entrance.

Just as Natsu had finished coughing and hacking out all of the old dust from his air ways, the previous seemingly innocent stone wall slammed shut and effectively closed him in. "HEY, open up! HEEY, I am serious, who the hell closed it? OPEN UP, DAMN IT!" Kicking and punching at the stone wall, trying futilely to barge it from the inside. Natsu wasn't the most patient one around, so one would expect him to take it to the next level within a matter of seconds, and that's exactly what he did...Chaos dragons: Coercion! As the rosette leveled his bare palm towards the stone barrier, a black magic circle with blue ancient dragon language runes inside it, but that wasn't the most gripping part, the crest of the black dragon king was embedded in the middle officially identifying Natsu as the Chaos dragon slayer. An immense amount of light blue magic started gathering at rapid speeds inside the rosettes palm only to strangely get more and more compressed together forming a tiny ball, but that was only the prelude to the initial attack, a mere second later the ball exploded and created a very powerful blast of air towards the stone formation ahead. The result however wasn't expected. Four light bluish green magic circles appeared and lit up the area, upon seeing this Natsu realized that he was stuck, this place wasn't normal at all, he kind of realized that back at the big iron doors, but now he just knew there was something further down that corridor, something with the intent to harm...

Another howl of wind hit his face, whipping his rose hair around like it has got a life of its own. The wind was no normal wind, these gusts were there to lure him further down the dark passage, Natsu knew that, yet he proceeded to travel deeper and deeper down the passage, well it wasn't like he had anywhere else to go. With brisk and equally firm steps towards the unknown that lurked in the thick darkness...waiting. After a good while of pacing forward relentlessly, the pink haired dragon slayer had reached the main chamber of the place, or so he thought, but it was most likely to be the master chamber because of the big monument like upstaging of the room, were a big coffin lied.

The room was probably the most well lit room, candles small and big, graced the site, illuminating the silver adorned markings on the coffin. The thing itself was made out of black steel, on the exterior the coffin was decorated with the same markings as the ones Natsu had studied earlier, but now they were much easier to see thanks to the expensive silver engraving, this person must have been really powerful, to have this whole temple dungeon place as a grave site. The most eye catching thing there would be the walls, they weren't really walls to even begin with and that was the creepiest part! There were bodies, no; corpses neatly placed on shelve like spaces carved out of the cold stony walls of the place. They had probably lied there for thousands of years, never once allowed to rest in peace, they had been cursed with immortality, sort of, and Natsu could feel it in his very bones.

They were dead, their bodies didn't function as normal living organisms should, as their hearts didn't beat, well at least Natsu couldn't hear them beating. The skin on their bones had dried to the point of crumbling and their muscles were entirely gone, only sinew and the tendons of their former bodies remained somewhat intact.

However they were watching him, with cover of shadow and death they observed silently, from their eternal slumber. Anyhow, Natsu didn't care in the slightest about that, what really piqued his interest was what was inside the big coffin with the ugly silver markings, slowly adjusting his angle so he was trekking on the correct way towards the steel coffin the rosettes excitement level started to rise rapidly, he had to make sure he remembered to thank Acnologia for bringing him here in the first place, the rose haired boy hadn't had this much fun since...forever! Without any care in the world Natsu placed his arms on the edge of the coffins heavy lid, making an effort in shoving the piece of nuisance away as quick as possible! He wanted to see what's inside already!

The lid quickly gave in to the strength Natsu possessed in his arms, for a nine year old he was quite strong. "AAAAAAAAAHH, w-what in the world, is that!?" His horror struck yell thundered in his eardrums, as it was quickly echoing around the place, what was inside the coffin was far beyond Natsu's guesses, the rosette thought it would be some treasure containing of gold and valuable gems, or an ancient tome, or something, but he didn't quite expect another one of those skinny corpses to rest inside, actually he really should have expected that there would be one inside, as coffins usually contained corpses...

But there was one cool thing about the corpse, even though it was similar to any other old and crumbled corpse, it looked vastly different. The clothing was torn but still quite respectable and inside the sockets on the head where a hollow emptiness should be, strange lavender light emitted. "Eh, quite the odd fellow" Natsu said out loud, as he felt like the ominous atmosphere would shatter along with the silence. Just when the thought of just leaving crossed Natsu's mind, a light caught his eye. Above the right shoulder of the skeleton was a key, or at least that's what Natsu's mind made out of it. "Guess I need it to get out of here" he reassured himself as he reached for it and felt a chill right above his elbow. He slowly, slowly twisted his head towards the face of the skeleton and to both his horror and amusement, his counterpart did the same.

As he once again felt the chill, which he had realized was the not so dead man's futile attempts to breath, he asked "Uhm, and who would you be?" This statement was answered with "Sky dragons: Piercing Roar". Before Natsu's mind could even comprehend what happened next and he could feel the granite wall be smashed into the back of his head. As Natsu attempted to stand once again, all skeletons in the catacombs had begun to rise. The overwhelming power of the roar had left the coffins with half of its surface visible, and the other half buried deep within the celling of the room. "I AM KROSIS, PRIEST OF GRANDEENY, and WHO DARES TO DISTURB MY ETERNAL REST!?" as the skeleton spoke, he destroyed all other skeletons in his path as he staggered towards Natsu. When the rosette's mind had cleared from the impact, Horace had already dragged his body across half of the rooms span.

"The one to disturb your sleep, huh?" As the summer days boy shot a challenging grin towards the pile of bones, a great deal of chaos dragon slayer magic started gathering around him, in a fierce aura that was starting to crumble the very earth under the rosette. "That would be me!"

"Sky dragons: Javelin!" A spear of the sharpest wind was produced and thrown at the boy at unbelievable speeds; the speed of wind magic was astounding. Having no time to dodge Natsu prepared his counter spell. "Chaos dragons: Barrier!" The hexagon shaped shield of the black dragon appeared and with relative ease repelled the javelin of wind. "Hah, your wind stick didn't even leave a scratch!" Celebrating in his new found victory over the sky dragon priests wind spear, Natsu was oblivious to the fact that Krosis was preparing yet another attack…

At the top of the mountain…

"What do you mean Acnologia?" Grandeeny was playing it cool headed, she knew all too well what the black dragon meant, but he wouldn't' have the pleasure of seeing her react in any way.

"Oh, come on now, Krosis? Your first student? Don't you remember?" Acnologia knew that the sky dragon was just trying to suppress her own memories; there was no way she could have forgotten.

Just as the two dragons conversation was getting deeper, they both felt an unnatural spike of massive amounts of magic, while it felt very familiar to the dragon kings own, it felt rather emotional, too emotional. Acnologia therefore drew the probable conclusion that Natsu was behind the immense amount of released magic, if one said that the magic was familiar to Acnologia it was no understatement, actually it could pass as an overstatement, the magic was his very own, and it was dragon force. The black dragon king felt a feeling of dread wash over him, slowly but surely, the feeling was growing stronger filling the dragons mind with bad thoughts. This wasn't a part of the plan! If there was one thing Acnologia really despised it were spontaneous happenings, the dragon king always planned in advance in order to have complete control over the situation at hand, this was sickening what could have happened?

But then it hit him, hit him hard. The emotions! They were the answer, Natsu was a rather emotional fellow, and those emotions would most likely have functioned as a catalyst for the pink haired boy to enter dragon force! But Acnologia wouldn't know for sure until the boy would arrive up at the summit, as thoughts like those started to fill the dragon kings head instead of those evil and self-loathing ones, Acnologia could finally feel relieved. Why he felt relieved was probably his disgusting bond toward the brats fault. It still seemed strange that the dragon king actually could feel something, feel emotions he thought he had abandoned an eternity ago; the thing was that Acnologia only felt this way when Natsu was around, it was hard to admit but the reason for that was the past, the time when Acnologia wasn't…

"Acnologia that's quite a dangerous type of dragon slayer magic you have thought the brat, it could potentially lead to his demise."

"Grandeeny, the thing that's currently on my mind is that my student just beat yours!" If the obvious lack of Krosis magical power being almost reduced to nothingness didn't convince the sky dragon, then the dragon king didn't know what would…

"It seems so, congratulations," Grandeeny didn't of course really mean to thank the black dragon, it was just common courtesy. "But please take the fact into consideration that Krosis was literally walking dust."

"Thank you, Grandeeny!" Now that the dragons little verbal spar was for the most part over, Acnologia could focus on more important matters, like how Natsu wouldn't need to drink the vial of dragon tears, it would serve much better as means to meet his mother in the future…

Acnologia felt kind of bad thinking back on how he had plotted to use it to get inside the summer boys psyche…Almost…

AN: And done, pairings are still being decided, please motivate why you would think for an example Lisanna would be perfect for Natsu. Please leave a line or two means the world to me!

Until next time!