I do not own Fairy Tail.

A new Lucy

Chapter Sixteen – Zelena the Soul Collector

For a whole month after meeting my wolf spirit for the first time, I was training and training hard. He taught me about my new magic and since then I had had no more problems with loss of vision and such. Laxus had been with me the entire time, cheering me on when I wanted to give up, massaging me when I was sore and holding me when I was crying from exhaustion.

But it wasn´t only hardships, I learned four new attacks, three of them offensive and one of them a visual one.

We were on our last day of training before Lupus deemed me capable of wielding my wolf magic and today it was just the two of us since Laxus was busy at the guild, doing paperwork and talking to the rest of the raijinshuu before we left for Tenrou island. Gajeel and Lily would be going with us but not the raijinshuu, they would be going after the dark guild mage assassins that had come after me two more times since the incident where Laxus house was burned down.

The assassins had been handled without much trouble though but eventually they would be more successful and we wanted to stop them before that. So Freed, Bickslow and Evergreen would be taking Gray and Erza and try to wipe out the assassins that the guild master Manto kept sending after me.

"Focus Lucy-chan, the enemy won´t be idle why you are lost in thought. Attack me!" Lupus demanded before running towards me, fists raised and ready to pound on me.

"Sonic Howling!" I shouted and aimed at Lupus as the air in front of me became blurred as sound waves ripped through the air until it hit Lupus who failed to dodge it. Sonic howling was my second strongest wolf magic attack and the victim of that attack had their ear drums broken from the strong sound waves. That caused the victim to temporarily lose their hearing and become disoriented as well as experiencing a loss of balance thus weakening the victim for a follow up attack.

"Claw Slash!" Was the next attack of my choice and I lunged forward, my nails having extended into claws that were sharp as razors and hard as steel. My claws caught his bare chest and red lines appeared instantly freezing me in place as I stared in horror at the damage I just caused him.

"Oh god Lupus I´m so sorry! I didn´t mean to really hurt you…" I told him sincerely while trying to see how deep the cuts were.

"No need for apologies Lucy-chan, at least I can be certain that you know how to handle our magic now." He reassured me and straightened up totally unhindered by the deep claw marks across his chest and the blood that trickled down his well-defined abs only to be soaked up by the waistline of his pants.

"Yeah but still… I hate it when you guys get hurt." I told him and looked down at the ground beneath my feet.

"And we know that Lucy-chan, but we heal fast once we´re back in the spirit world and since we know how much you care about all of us we don´t mind taking damage if it means that you won´t have to." He said to me while pulling me in for a hug. I wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him back fiercely while at the same time being careful of the claw wounds on his chest. I didn´t even care that I got his blood all over me.

"Just remember to only use the blood frenzy spell if things are really desperate. It´s the strongest wolf magic spell you can master and I want you to only use it if absolutely necessary. Do you understand me Lucy-chan?" He held me at arm's length and looked into my eyes, the sincerity in his intense orbs conveying the seriousness of what he was telling me.

"I understand, I will only use that spell in emergency situations." I promised him and he smiled at me before telling me goodbye as he started to fade back into the celestial spirit world. When I was alone in the small clearing that I had done my training in I collected my things and headed back towards Gajeel´s house where we had been staying since Laxus house was destroyed. The raijinshuu had offered to house us as well but Gajeel´s guest room had an attached bathroom and Levy was after all my best friend so…

The house was empty when I got there, Levy, Lily and Gajeel having already left for the guild as well. I took a quick shower and dressed in a pair of olive shorts and a black tank top before grabbing an apple to chew on as I walked to the guild as well.

When I entered through the guild doors I immediately had to duck an incoming chair, it seems like the guild brawls wasn´t depending on Natsu to happen after all…

I weaved my way through the big hall and went up the stairs to the second floor where Laxus and the raijinshuu where talking. Since there were no seats left I simply sat down in Laxus lap and felt his arms snake around my waist to hold me in place.

"Are you all packed and ready for this afternoon?" He asked me and buried his nose in my hair, inhaling my scent.

"Yep everything is packed and Virgo is holding on to all of our packs in the spirit world until we need them." I told him and shivered as he pressed a kiss to the sensitive spot behind my ear. I turned my eyes to the other three sitting at the table with us and asked them.

"Please be careful while on your mission guys, I don´t want anything to happen to you…" They only smiled at me and Evergreen reassured me.

"We´ll be careful Lucy, I promise. But we won´t let them get away with threatening your life either, we´re gonna bring them down." She sported a slightly sadistic grin at the end of the sentence and I made a mental note to not make her angry at me, ever.

The hours until Laxus, Gajeel, Lily and I had to leave passed by really quickly, Laxus and I had lunch with the raijinshuu before leaving them and meeting up with Gajeel and Levy on the first floor.

"Hey guys where´s Lily?" I asked them as Laxus and I joined them at the table in the corner that the two always shared.

"He forgot something at home but he´ll be back soon." Gajeel said and threw the last piece of iron on his plate in his mouth.

"I´m gonna miss you all so much! Please be careful and come home soon." Levy said and hugged Gajeel´s arm fiercely with both of her own.

"Of course we´ll be careful and we´ll do our best to hurry home again." I told her and she nodded with a small smile playing on her lips.

"Tch don´t worry so much shrimp, I´ll be with them so what can go wrong?" Gajeel said confidently and gave her his signature smirk. But Levy only slapped his arm lightly and told him.

"Don´t get overconfident now Gajeel, just be careful will you? I don´t know what I´d do if you didn´t come back to me…" Gajeel´s smirk changed into a genuine smile and his eyes softened as he looked down at the petite blue haired young woman next to him and he promised her.

"I swear I will be careful to shrimp, I´ll see you when we get back." And with that he stood up, me and Laxus mirroring him and when we exited the guild Pantherlily came flying with a small packet in his hands that was quickly being taken to the rest of our luggage by Virgo as we all headed towards the train station.

Laxus got us all tickets and soon we boarded the train to Hargeon where we would switch to travel with boat to reach Tenrou Island. As soon as the train started moving both Laxus and Gajeel were practically unreachable, Laxus lost in his music with his eyes closed and Gajeel taking a nap leaning against the window.

Pantherlily and I spent the trip playing cards to pass the time until it was time to wake up the two dragon slayers to exit the train. As soon as we stepped onto the platform something strange yet familiar in a way happened. A feeling washed over me like I needed to be somewhere else and I felt a strange pulling sensation in the direction of the beach that reminded me of the time when I found Draco´s key.

I turned to the direction where the key who was calling me were located and started to walk as if in a trance, not hearing my companion's questions regarding where I was going or what I was doing. When I reached the beach I turned right, away from the city and continued walking for an undeterminable amount of time until I reached a cave. The cave was dark and smelled of the ocean but I entered it anyway, the two dragon slayers and one exceed following me, having realized that asking me questions would get them nowhere and having come to the conclusion to just follow me to see where I was heading.

Soon the cave started closing in on us though and after another few minutes Laxus and Gajeel had to stop since they couldn´t fit anymore. I was crawling on all fours through a narrow passage and even though I felt the cave walls scraping my skin it didn´t hurt since the key that was pulling me in where hidden somewhere right in front of me and the pulling sensation was numbing out everything else. Only Pantherlily was still following me since he was small enough to fit through the passage with me.

The walls suddenly widened again and I found myself in a small circular space, in the middle of the area a skeleton was splayed out in the sand, skeletal fingers clutching something tightly in one hand. The pulling sensation suddenly stopped and all of my senses were returned to me, I felt the sting of a few scrapes I had gotten while crawling through the narrow passage and my feet were a little tired from how far I had walked.

I looked behind me and saw Pantherlily standing there, watching me carefully for a moment before he asked me.

"Did a key draw you here? Like what happened when you found Draco?"

"Yeah…" I nodded my head and turned back around to watch the skeleton before me, I would take a guess and say that the key was probably what the skeleton was holding on to so tightly even in death and I hesitantly inched closer until I could reach out and touch the skeleton.

"I wonder how he or she got here…" Pantherlily mused out loud as he walked forward to stand beside me. I reached out towards the key but hesitated for a few moments before prying the skeletal fingers lose and withdrawing the key from their grasp.

I turned the key over in my hand and looked at it, the key was completely black and made from onyx, the symbol engraved on it identifying it as another animal kingdom key, the key of the snake, Serpens. I was briefly considering to contract with my new spirit right then and there but then I realized that Laxus was probably climbing the walls with anxiety by now since he didn´t know what was happening. So I pocketed the key and followed Pantherlily back through the passage until it widened.

As soon as I was standing up again I was being crushed against a familiar chest. I reached around him and patted him on the back while telling him.

"Sorry about that, a key was calling out to me and when they do I kind of have to find them… It´s another animal kingdom key and I´m going to contract with it as soon as we get out of this cave."

"Tch, whatever, let´s just get going, I´m getting hungry…" Gajeel grumbled and turned around to lead the way out again. It took about ten minutes of walking before we were back on the beach again. I could tell that Gajeel´s patience was running low so I turned to him and Pantherlily and asked them.

"Why don´t you take Pantherlily and go back to Hargeon, get us all some rooms for the night while we finish up here? We´ll follow you as soon as I have contracted with Serpens." Gajeel gave me a nod and a two second smile before turning his back on us and walking back towards the town with Pantherlily in tow. I turned around to face Laxus and asked him a little sheepishly.

"You don´t mind waiting for me do you?" In response he actually rolled his eyes at me before sitting down in the sand without a word. The message was clear even without words. I grabbed the key from my pocket and held it out in front of me as I chanted.

"I am linked to the path to the world of Celestial Spirits, now! O spirit, answer my call and pass through the gate! Open! Gate of the snake, Serpens!"

Appearing before me was a man so thin that you would probably be able to count his ribs if they hadn´t been hidden underneath a black button down shirt that hung off his thin frame. He also wore black skinny jeans that were practically painted on to his stick thin legs. His feet were covered in black combat boots and his black hair hid his eyes from view and reached the middle of his shoulder blades.

"Hello Master, I am pleased to be of service to you." He greeted me with a voice that was so rough that I wondered if he smoked two packets of cigarettes a day.

"Please don´t call me Master Serpens, Lucy is just fine. What kind of magic do you use and when are you available?"

"I use poison magic, my magic will of course not harm yourself or your allies and I can be called upon to check your food for poison and to make poison and antidotes for your every need. I am unavailable every second Tuesday but otherwise I am at your beck and call."

"Thank you Serpens, it will be great working with you, you can go back now if you want." He bowed his head and kissed the knuckles of my right hand before doing just that and I turned around feeling a little nervous about what Laxus would think about that.

But Laxus only smiled when he saw that I was genuinely nervous about his reaction and smiled at me before pulling me down to sit in his lap. He pressed a kiss to my temple and told me.

"Your spirits don´t count as threats according to my dragon instincts, even my inner dragon realize that the relationships you have with your spirits is something completely unique. He was an odd one though, doesn´t anybody feed the man?" The question was completely serious and I couldn´t help but to burst out laughing at him.

"Hey why are you laughing? I´m serious here!" He complained which only made me laugh harder. Eventually he gave in and laughed with me and when our laughter died out we just sat together in the sand for a while, making out. That is, until he got a mischievous gleam in his eyes and stood up with me in his arms and began running towards the ocean.

"NO LAXUS DON´T YOU DARE!" I shouted at him but he ignored me and threw me into the ocean anyway. I shrieked as I hit the water, it was freezing! And when I came back up, sputtering and coughing, I glared at Laxus only to see him bent over with his hands on his knees, laughing so hard that he was crying. His laughter was contagious and soon I was laughing as well despite looking like a drowned cat and freezing my ass off.

I walked out of the ocean with my arms wrapped around me, shivering with cold and stopping in front of Laxus, telling him.

"You better hope that Gajeel has gotten us someplace to stay when we get back to Hargeon because if I can´t get into a hot bath the moment we get back I am going to skin you alive and use your flesh as a blanket." He paled at the threat but then seemed to realize just how cold I actually was and took off his fur coat to wrap it around my shoulders.

"I didn´t realize that the water was that cold… I´m sorry Lucy." He apologized and pulled me onto his back so that he was warming me from the front and his coat was warming me from the back as he started the walk back.

"It´s okay, I´m not really mad at you. I just really don´t have time to get sick right now." I explained and rested my head on his shoulder, letting out a small, content sigh.

I must have fallen asleep while he walked because when I opened my eyes again I was lying on top of a bed with Laxus fur coat still keeping me warm. I sat up and looked around the standard hotel room for Laxus and Gajeel but couldn´t see either one of them. Pantherlily was sitting on the couch and watching a movie on the television lacrima though and he looked over at me when he heard me move.

"How long have I been sleeping? And where are Laxus and Gajeel?" I asked him and stretched my back, noticing that someone (probably Laxus) had changed my clothes while I slept; leaving me in a pair of my pajama pants and a t-shirt that was too big on me.

"Laxus came back with you about 45 minutes ago, he changed you into dry clothes and then he and Gajeel went out to get us some food so they should be back any moment now." I nodded and quickly decided that my bath could wait a little longer since my stomach grumbled when Pantherlily mentioned food. Pantherlily only looked at me from the corner of his eye before focusing on the movie again as I visited the bathroom to use the facilities and to fix the birds nest that had become my hair.

Ten minutes later the guys came back with enough Chinese food to feed a small army and after eating way more than what was healthy for my waistline I finally got my bath before going to sleep next to Laxus in one of the two beds. Tomorrow we would get on the boat that would take us to Tenrou Island where we would hopefully find the key we were searching for.

When noon rolled around the next morning we had just gotten our first sights of Tenrou Island and thirty minutes after that we were standing on the island.

"Does anyone know where we should go now? Do you feel a pull in any direction Bunny-girl?" Gajeel asked. I shook my head no and answered.

"No but I´m thinking that it might be a good idea to start at the center of the island where the magic is the strongest and if that doesn´t give us any leads we could go to Mavis grave."

"Sounds like a plan, let´s go." Laxus decided and started walking. As we walked I could feel the magical pressure increase the closer we got to the center and it wasn´t long before the steadily increasing pressure made even walking difficult. But when I thought I wasn´t going to be able to take it the pressure disappeared as if I had walked through an invisible wall of some kind. I could tell from the facial expressions of my companions that they felt the same relief that I did.

I looked up at the giant tree that protected us from dying while on the island and suddenly felt very small, the key was nowhere to be seen though, not that I had actually expected it to be that easy… I sent a silent wish to god or whoever was listening that we would actually find the key so that I could help Natsu and Lisanna get back to normal.

Almost as soon as my silent prayer had ended I felt the same pulling sensation as I had before and I smiled before following the path that had been drawn into my mind. It seemed as if the spirit in question had heard my prayer and deemed me worthy of her key.

I could hear the others follow me as I walked closer to the base of the tree, amongst the giant roots that rose from the ground a small hole was visible, only wide enough to accommodate someone of my own small stature. I peered into the darkness before sinking to all fours and crawling into the hole. I only had to endure the small, dark space for a few moments before I came out in a large hall hidden underneath the tree.

And on a pedestal in the center of the hall laid the key, just waiting for me to find it.

"Found it! I´ll be right out!" I called out so that the others wouldn´t worry about me without taking my eyes off the beautiful key. The key was see-through and looked like it was made of glass even though I knew that a key would never be made from something that could break so easily.

When I removed the key from its resting place a gentle feeling and warmth flooded me and I could only stare at the key, feeling slightly overwhelmed. What kind of spirit was this?

I climbed back out to the others and showed them the key before holding the key out in front of me and chanting.

"I am linked to the path to the world of Celestial Spirits, now! O spirit, answer my call and pass through the gate! Open! Gate of the Soul Collector, Zelena!"

I held my breath as the golden light appeared and from the light stepped a stunningly beautiful woman. She was about my own height and had black, wavy hair that cascaded down her back all the way down to her hips. Her womanly curves were no less than my own as well and she was dressed in a form-fitting silvery-white shimmering dress that reached her knees and had a slit that reached almost all the way up to her hip on the left side as well as a halter top that left her back bare. She wore no jewelry except for a thin silver chain that disappeared down into her cleavage.

When I finally made eye contact with my new spirit I let out the breath I hadn´t been aware that I was holding. Her eyes were two different colors but no less beautiful because of that. One eye were a stunning crimson with a golden ring closest to the iris and the other were a clashing ice blue and lime green in a similar fashion.

"Hello my celestial princess, I am glad that you were the one to finally acquire my key."

"Hello Zelena it´s good to meet you! Might I ask how you know about me though?" All of the tension and nervousness I held in my body disappeared once she talked to me, she had a lilting voice and it was kind of soothing to just listen to her.

"The spirit king speaks very well of you, Lucy Heartfilia." Was Zelena´s only answer paired with a smile.

"I see. Well either way it´s very nice to meet you. I was told by Draco that you could help me unlock my second origin, I need it so that I can do a unison raid with him to help out two of my guild mates whose magic has been poisoned." I explained to her, hoping that she would help me. I had a feeling that this was one spirit that I would not make a contract with…

"I can do that yes but it will not be a pleasant experience I´m afraid… I keep wondering if I have displeased you in some way since you have yet to ask me form a contract with you?"

"No it´s nothing like that Zelena! I just didn´t get the feeling that you actually wanted to form a contract with me and I would never force any spirit into working with me if they didn´t want to." I explained to her and she nodded and gave me a serene smile before speaking.

"You´re right, I would not have accepted a contract with you, I just wanted to make sure that you really are the right person for my services. If you really are sure that you want me to unlock your second origin I can do it now if you want? You better be sure though because it will be painful and you will probably be knocked out for a few days afterwards."

I glanced at the two dragon slayers that were with me but neither of them showed any signs of what they wanted me to do. They were leaving this decision completely up to me. I focused on Zelena again and told her.

"Let´s do this."

Zelena only gave me another serene smile and placed her palm against my forehead, at first nothing happened which confused me, but then a magic circle appeared between her palm and my forehead and a searing, burning pain erupted in all of my nerve endings at the same time.

Luckily I blacked out after only a few moments of agony but the torment didn´t stop because of that. No, it continued into unconsciousness in the form of mental torture by showing me the movie that was my life with all of my painful memories high lightened for me to enjoy.

But when I woke up back at the guild three days later I felt no pain.

I felt strong.

AN: Hey guys! I just wanted to let you know that I probably won´t have time to update again until the beginning of January. I´m going to celebrate christmas with my family and then I´m going away for a few days to visit my cousin. I wish you all a happy holidays!

Love C