Chapter Three- Fear
Sharp pain shoots up from my toes to my ankles and all the way to my knee cap. My fingers come in contact with a hard polished surface and I feel dust collect underneath my fingernails.
I had felt nothing but the strong wind as I fell. I had felt strangely trapped in such a humongous place—the floor and the deep-cut walls surrounding me and being able to see nothing expect the brownish-black and jagged surfaces of the rocks when the sunlight fell on them, panic took over me.
As I looked up, the floor seemed to become distant and my breath came out in short ragged gasps in fear. I didn't know how to escape this feeling until I landed hard on my feet.
I look down. My lips part in surprise. I stand on a long, yellowish-white platform. It stretches out far behind me and far in front of me, and the width cannot be more than twenty inches. I don't see how it is fixed—the sunlight is less here—but I am deep inside and there are no more platforms to my sides.
"Uh, hello?" I croak. My voice breaks with lack of water and sleep for hours. "Where's my test?"
Bad choice of words. My test appears in front of me as soon as I finish saying the words.
It's not a monster. It's not Dark Magic. It's Gray Fullbuster.
"Gray?" I move forward. "Are we supposed to be in the same—" My words are cut off as Gray moves forward swiftly and ice erupts from his fingers and form pointed ice stalagmites around me.
My hands are frozen.
I look closely at him. Then I notice his face is blank. His deep blue eyes have no emotion except a strange monotonous look.
"Gray, what's wrong with you?" A breath hitches in fear. Was he being controlled?
A voice whispers to me; "Kill him."
"What?"
It doesn't whisper in my head. It resonates all around the chasm. Like an order.
"Kill him. No hesitation."
All of a sudden, I see that Gray's Fairy Tail insignia is intact on his chest. If it is really him, how is he still marked? Zeref would never allow it.
Then it hits me. Oh. I am supposed to kill without hesitation. This is not caution, like Zeref said. No wonder my fear of killing Gray is the Gray I have always seen. My vision of him is always with that insignia. I have never seen devoid of it.
"Kill him."
Not real, I tell myself. I don't have time. I channel as much power I can. My keys are still on my waist. But I cannot order my spirits to kill anyone, real or magic. So I channel a bit of power from very key, and I open my eyes as I feel my little power surge to my fingertips. Erza had taught me this way of magic, to channel it all and shoot.
But I hesitate. I know the amount of magic I am about to throw at the Gray who is not moving forward with his ice. And in the second my hands shake, his swords cut my shoulder. I let out a cry of anger and shoot.
My power is drained, both from my keys as well as my additional quota. Gray disintegrates from the blast of Celestial Magic and the next second the platform does too. I fall again, but this time I close my eyes and only open them when I reach the rocky ground. My shoulder still aches and my hip does too as I land hard when I reach.
The people next to me stand huddled. This place is a wide area of grey and black stones, with doors that are gilded with gold on each side. I wait as all the other mages land on the ground.
Finally, Zeref appears. He didn't fall, but came gracefully in a standing position. I glare at his back as he turns to roughly pull up Yukino, who was injured. "Get up."
Gray stands next to me, but I can't look at him.
"Lucy," he says. "Your shoulder. That's ice magic…"
"Shut up," I say gently.
Zeref then turns to us. He examines each of us and his eyes linger on two people. One is a girl from Mermaid Heel. The other girl is me.
He approaches me first. I can't see his eyes, but I think he looks at my shoulder. "You hesitated."
I stare him down. "For a second."
"Do you think you are fit to be here then? Or did you forget the rules?"
"I am fit to be here because I'm not dead yet."
"I could help you with that," he says dangerously in my ear, getting angrier and softer. Only Gray next to me can hear his words.
"Go right ahead. Zeref."
Gray lets out a small gasp. Zeref's fingers close around my wrist in an iron-grip and I don't try to break free, His fingers hurt me though.
"Why did you hesitate?" he hisses.
"Because I'm not you. I care." He understands what I mean. He must know which fear I faced.
His grip loosens and I step away from him, disgusted.
"I have my eye on you," he warns me. His tone is filled with hatred and it surprises me even more. I have done nothing to him. Or is it my stubborn behaviour? In that case, I can't wait to torture him with my verbal skills further.
He moves to the boy next to me. I recognize Hibiki, from the Trimens. He is not glamorous and smirking as always. I can see his eyes are cold and his face is slack, but I can't figure out much in the dimness.
"You would hesitate to protect Tartarus?" Zeref asks him.
I begin to think of a million ways that Hibiki could have faced his fears. Perhaps it was the fact that he is forced to fight against the other guild outside Fiore and fight for Tartarus and the Alliance.
"Answer me."
Hibiki tilts his chin up. "Yes."
"Why?"
"You don't own me. This isn't a guild, it's a stupid bunch of people who want to bring chaos into the world. I see no reason to fight for it."
It takes a second for Zeref to simply thrust two fingers forwards and a jet of black erupts towards Hibiki. Hibiki moves faster than one should with this less magic power and tried to kick Zeref backwards so that he is physically as well as magically devoid.
Sadly, Zeref brushes him away to the floor. Hibiki probably glares up at him, I can see his eyes flash, but Zeref moves away from him.
He doesn't kill Hibiki.
Lastly, he moves towards Yukino. My eyes are frozen wide open in fear now, and my wish to sleep has evaporated. My shoulder still aches—I look at it closely to notice the ice shards buried right into my skin. I need to ask Gray to heal it, or Wendy. I have no experience with ice magic.
Yukino cowers in fear as he approaches. He carries a strange aura around himself, as if he should be feared. That aura rubs me off in the wrong way and instills irritation yet awe in me.
"You failed completely," Zeref says to her. They are too far to hear properly, but I shift closer.
Failed completely? As in, we hesitated yet passed. Yukino perhaps, refused to do anything at all.
"I—can't—" she started to whimper.
Zeref brought his hand down on her face, or side. I cannot see. She lets out a small cry of pain. "Stop being a coward!"
"Why did you refuse to kill her?" Zeref hisses, lifting her up by the throat. I am so disturbed to see her this way, cowering and weak instead of proud and strong, the Yukino I know.
"I can't."
I recognize the next move of Zeref as a death blow. I had seen one of his guild deliver the same blow towards Levy.
Time stops. Or Yukino stops. Her body becomes rigid and her form becomes encased in black until I realize he is killing her.
"Stop it!"
The key falls forward and Loke's Regulus forms a golden shield around Yukino and Zeref. I don't even realize when I screamed and took my key out, but Loke sensed my distress and appeared even before I summoned for him.
Yukino crumples to the ground, but her chest rises and falls, which means she is alive. Why does Zeref try to kill Yukino but now us? Why would he spare us just because we try to fight against him?
Gray pushes my arms behind myself and pulls me back as Zeref turns to me. Loke disappears as the last of my magic power gives up. I feel drained and my key would have clattered to the ground if Gray hadn't latched it onto the hold as quickly as I wanted him to.
Zeref doesn't move closer to me, but he whispers two words. "Learn sacrifice." Then he whips around and pushes the first two people in the front to enter one of the doors.
"Lucy," Gray mutters, as we wait. "Are you insane?"
"Why…" I mumble without enthusiasm. I am too focused on Zeref and too concentrated on my anger at him to pay attention to Gray.
"Ever since we came here you'll all for hurtling into a death wish," he accuses. "Shut up and lie low."
Wendy looks at me from behind Gray's arm. Her blue eyes are filled with panic. I remember she said something about Levy's message to me, and I hope I can talk to her about it.
"What did you tell him?" I mouth at her.
"That the guild kicked me out," she whispers. I nod. My shoulder throbs in sync with my head.
Then Zeref turns to us and gestures towards me, Gray, Wendy and someone else I can't see. "Go in." he points towards one of the stone doors.
I bite back the words I want to shout at him and follow after him. He stops in the middle of the floor and I simply push into the first door in front of me.
I don't know what I expected. Perhaps hard beds, like the Fairy Tail infirmary. Or sections.
There is a barren black space in front of us, compressed into what can be called a un-geometrical room. There are stones and rocks on each side and the black soil annoys me.
"Behold." I say. "A guild."
"You don't say," a nasal, high-pitched female voice replies. I turn to see Sherry of Lamia Scale. Her shocking hair colour should have caught my eye, but it is tied down, hiding most of her face, and is filled with dirt.
"Sherry?" Gray enquires.
She looks at Gray. The door behind us is still open and Wendy cannot push it back, so I push against it and close it instead. We are now in an underground barren, rocky place with no sunlight and no privacy, training to become superheroes of the dark army and bring chaos into the world. Lovely. Every girl's dream come true.
Sherry turns as soon as she meets his eyes. I don't understand it.
"Well…are we going to sleep here?" Wendy breaks the silence.
"It's impossible," I mutter.
"No, wait. Had an idea," Gray says.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Then he collides his left fist into his right palm and commands; "Ice make; Floor."
Over the left corner of this place, a steady and thick sheet of ice frosts the edges of the rocks. Then it creeps up and finally when it finds plane ground it spreads quicker than blinking and forms a twisted ice floor.
Gray manipulates it further and the ice rises above the uneven ground and fixes with frost to the sides of the walls. The sides turn to water and then ice again as they curl in, forming an ice floor which could hold a human due to the curled edges, hanging above the floor.
He repeats the magic, and in a long fifteen minutes—he starts to become weary as he finishes the second ice sheet—four ice floors stretch from rocky wall to rocky wall. One stretches in an off direction to avoid the door.
"Wow," I breathe. "You're wonderful. And a lifesaver."
Gray manages a weak smirk. "Sit on it."
I haul myself up on one of the ice-made beds and it doesn't feel as cold as it should. Sure, it's uncomfortable, but it's something.
"Won't it melt?" Wendy asks.
"I've been practicing, it won't."
"Won't we get frostbite?" I ask.
Gray glares at me and I laugh. Of course not.
I am already feeling drowsy again and I vaguely wonder how Gray managed to keep his long white and blue jacket still on, considering his stripping habits. Like Lyon Vastia, his practically-brother.
Which reminds me. "Who else came from Lamia Scale, Sherry?" I question the girl
The ice gives off a faint glow and all four together form a greyish-white light. I can see Sherry's drawn face and her sad eyes. Unlike her.
"Lyon," she says at last.
Gray immediately looks up. He has a childish feud with Lyon because of Juvia, but here I think that is discarded.
"Man, I didn't see him…" he says.
Sherry finally covers her mouth with her fingers and gulps out, "You can't see him, Gray."
I have a bad feeling about what she is about to say, but I keep my mouth shut as Gray becomes confused.
"Why not?"
"Because he's not here anymore."
"Wha—? You just said—"
"I mean he's dead, Gray!" Sherry cries at him. "You can't see him, because he's dead! Zeref…after you jumped…Lyon refused and…"
She stops the next sob and her eyes harden in fury. She turns away and goes to the farthest and first ice floor and heaves herself on it.
I look at Gray, horrified.
He blinks at Sherry for a minute. Then he sits down on the middle ice and outs his head between his hands. His raven hair covers his eyes, and he doesn't make a sound or cry out in anger. He is crying, I know. But he simply sits there.
I can't comfort him. What should I say? I'm sorry? He was a good person? He died bravely? He was saved from fighting? Gray had been a good friend?
I think all these, but words don't always have meaning. They don't heal one. I move away to the last ice sheet and collapse on to it. My backs stings but I ignore the cold.
Wendy looks at all of us. Tears stream down her face as I watch her from under my elbow. She's finally broken down.
I sigh and then open my arms towards her. She hiccups as she climbs next to me and I put an arm around her waist.
But right now, it's impossible for me to sleep. Wendy stops sobbing as she sinks into sleep, and even though I feel like doing the same, my eyes won't close.
I frown as I feel something poking me in the side. I look down to see a paper stashes against the belt Wendy is wearing, half hidden by the cloak.
My fingers pry it off and I open it. The familiar handwriting is Levy's.
'Sabertooth. Shadow and Light. Slayers. Ask Lucy. Control.'
It is obvious Levy scribbled this for her own information, but she must have given it to Wendy to pass it on to me during the battle. I don't remember seeing her until the time she…
I block the image.
But how was Sabertooth, a part of the Alliance, going to help us rebel? Then I look closely at the words again.
Shadow and Light. Slayers. Dragon Slayers?
Natsu, all fired up as he joked, running towards the two of them with Gajeel at the Grand Magic Games fills my mind.
There were only two such Dragon Slayers who had these two elements.
Sting and Rogue.
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