Fairytale of Doom

By CrimsonStarbird

Chapter Fifteen – A Conversation with the Furnishings

Natsu was halfway across the courtyard when he felt it.

He stopped in his tracks, all uncomfortable thoughts of his argument with Gray banished from his mind at once. (Not that the argument itself was what made him uncomfortable. 'Disagreeing with Gray' was his normal state of being, after all. But the fact that he had been defending Zeref against Gray had left him feeling a bit unsure of himself, and in desperate need of a distraction.)

Back in Magnolia, he would barely have noticed the faint taste of energy on his tongue, but in the silence of this world, he detected it at once.

Magic.

It shouldn't have been possible. There was no magic here.

But a dragon's senses were never wrong, and Natsu trusted the age-old heat in his blood more than anything. He knew what magic felt like, and in a world so very mundane, surely he could track where it was coming from… and it seemed to be originating from that old, decrepit guard tower over there.

He was halfway towards it when he paused.

Zeref would want to know about this, wouldn't he?

Well, who cared about him? Not Natsu, that was for sure.

Then again, out of the two of them, Natsu wasn't the one known for being a genius of magic. The power he could detect wasn't familiar to him, and if either of them could untangle what it was for…

With a growl of frustration at the conclusion common sense was pointing him towards – a vivid reminder of why he normally ignored it – Natsu went to find Zeref.

Which was easier said than done. Natsu's irritation level was rising with every step on this reluctant path that wasn't paying off. Zeref wasn't in the throne room, the council chamber, the ballroom, or the dungeons, and that was all the places Natsu knew how to find in this stupid palace.

Where the hell was he? At this rate, the enigmatic source of magic would disappear again!

Out of patience now, and cursing Zeref without even bothering to lower his voice, Natsu abandoned his search and headed off to investigate the tower alone – only to run into Zeref coming the other way.

"Where the hell have you been?" Natsu demanded.

This earned him a bemused look that he did not have the patience to deal with right now. "What's it to you?"

"Just answer the question, Zeref!" he spat.

"I am not sure why I have to account to you for my whereabouts, given that you continued to show no interest in seeking me out or speaking to me back in our own world even after I told you the truth about us," Zeref said coolly, and then shrugged, as if it didn't matter; he'd made the point purely to establish the moral high ground and there was no more to it than that. "As it happens, I was giving your two potential brides a tour of the palace."

"What? Why?"

Patiently, Zeref explained, "Because you snubbed them, Natsu, and as entertaining as it was, it does not do to alienate one's allies entirely."

"Allies," Natsu snorted. "I'll have to rethink being one of them if it means I get lumped in with the likes of them. What do you want with that creepy marriage-obsessed old woman, anyway? You said yourself that she was trying to overthrow you!"

"Friends close and enemies closer, Natsu," he murmured.

Natsu snorted again. "Yeah, just be sure you don't lose track of which is which."

An odd expression settled over Zeref's face then – not crafty, not patronizing, not hateful, and Natsu was momentarily thrown, not sure what else it could be. But all Zeref said was, "Why were you looking for me?"

"Oh, yeah – I felt magic. In the palace grounds."

"Magic? That is impossible. You must have been mistaken."

"I know what I sensed! I'm not stupid, you know – hard though it may be for you to accept that you don't actually know everything-"

"I am well aware of that, Natsu," Zeref replied, rubbing tiredly at his temples. "There is simply no way that I would have missed such a thing. I have been trying to detect some trace of magic ever since arriving here."

"You're not a Dragon Slayer," Natsu insisted. "And I wasn't preoccupied hanging out with people who are trying to stab me in the back."

Zeref gave a long-suffering sigh that made Natsu want to punch him in the face even more than normal. "Alright, fine. Where did you supposedly sense this magic from?"

"That tower behind you."

They both turned to look. It was a guard tower that appeared to have fallen out of use. Although it formed part of the outer wall of the grounds, it was in a poor state of repair. Perhaps, with a thick forest having grown up to the far side of the wall, the guards thought they no longer needed to keep watch for threats from that direction – or maybe the foliage simply made it impractical.

From inside the grounds, there was a single door at the bottom of the tower, which looked firmly shut, and a single window at the top, although there would no doubt be more pointing outwards. It did not give off any sign of habitation, let alone any miracle that shouldn't have existed in this world.

"The magic has stopped now," Natsu said unnecessarily.

"…Right."

"This is all your fault." Natsu's anger fired up at once at the sound of that dismissal. "I should've just gone to investigate on my own while I had the chance. But I thought you'd actually want to know, so I spent ages looking for you, and now I've missed my chance, and you're not even sorry about it."

Natsu strode past him without a second glance and kicked the door at the bottom of the tower. It was locked. Cursing, he hopped backwards, clutching his foot.

"Give me your keys," he snapped at Zeref.

Zeref handed over the keyring on which they'd found the key to free Gray. He folded his arms, watching without comment as Natsu tried key after key without luck.

"None of them fit," Natsu concluded, shoving the keys back into Zeref's hand. "That's suspicious as hell."

"Hardly. There must be hundreds of doors in this place, and no one can carry that many keys around with them. There is no reason why a set which unlocks the cells would also unlock guard turrets in an entirely separate part of the castle – especially when the guard turret in question is clearly no longer used."

"Then find someone who does have the key, and order them to open this damn door!"

Zeref did not move. "Natsu…"

"You don't believe me, do you?" Natsu realized. "I went out of my way to tell you, to try and help you, and you don't even believe me!"

"Natsu-"

"I stood up for you!" the Dragon Slayer interrupted furiously. "Gray was accusing you, and I defended you! I even knocked him out so that he couldn't run off and attack you! Gray! He's my friend, my rival; he's like a brother to me, and I hurt him to protect you!"

There was a moment of silence.

"Of course," Zeref pointed out, "I actually am your brother."

"No," Natsu positively snarled. "You are an enemy of my guild, who I have a temporary truce with while we're stuck in a strange land. If you want any more than that, you have to earn it, the way Gray and every single member of my guild did. Blood means nothing when you won't even trust me about something so trivial!"

"It is not that I don't trust you, Natsu, only that logically, you are more likely to be mistaken than I."

"Don't you wanna find the evidence and prove that you're right, then?" Natsu dared. "Get someone to open this door already!"

Again, Zeref didn't respond immediately, and Natsu was on the verge of punching some human decency into him – a tried and tested method in Fairy Tail – when Zeref finally spoke. "That may not be wise. If someone in the palace is trying to conceal magic from us, then asking questions may alert them to the fact that we know more than we ought."

"So," Natsu spat, "you're telling me to do nothing?"

"No, I'm telling you to break the door down."

Natsu blinked. "Break it down? What are you, a barbarian?"

"Just trying to get into the Fairy Tail spirit."

"Well, if you can't see that breaking the door down would be even less subtle than asking a servant to unlock it, you're too hopeless even for Fairy Tail."

"Fair point," Zeref mused, drumming his fingertips on his upper arm. "Do you have another suggestion, then?"

Natsu pointed to the opening at the top of the tower. "Simple. We climb."

"Climb," Zeref echoed flatly. "Natsu, that is a flat stone wall."

"I'm not talking about the wall, duh. Look at the trees on the far side. We can climb that huge one there, and then jump from the branch in through the window!"

"…That's a giant tree, Natsu, not a ladder."

"People climb trees all the time!"

"Not ones that big. It's definitely not climbable without magic."

"Of course it is! You've got hands, haven't you?"

"Yes, and they're not going anywhere near that tree."

The two of them stared at each other. In that instant, they seemed further apart than they were as mortal enemies.

"You're scared, aren't you?" Natsu dared.

"No," Zeref said quickly. Too quickly.

"You are! The great and terrible Black Mage doesn't like heights!"

"I have absolutely no problem with heights," Zeref refuted him peevishly. "What I have a problem with is clinging to the side of a tree like some primitive monkey with nothing but my own physical strength keeping me from falling."

"Physical strength, of which you have none, because you are useless without magic," Natsu snickered. Zeref glowered at him, but didn't refute it. "Look, climbing trees is really not as hard as you're making it out to be."

"But there are no proper handholds!"

"There are branches."

"They're far too far apart!"

"Hardly. You just have to stretch a bit."

"If you fall from that height without magic, you could die!"

"I'd sprain my ankle at worst. Seriously, Zeref, what is wrong with you? A child could do this with me. Are you telling me you never climbed trees as a kid?"

Zeref fixed him with an icy glare that, surprisingly, wasn't frightening at all. "No, Natsu, I spent my entire childhood in libraries and magical research labs trying to find some way of bringing you back to life."

"Well, better late than never," Natsu told him cheerfully. "Come on, up we go."

He led them out of the main gate and round to the far side of the crumbling tower. As he had suspected, the trees formed a perfect natural scaffolding up the side of the old stone. They really should have cut this forest back once it started encroaching upon the palace walls. It was probably a fairytale thing. Maybe pixies lived in it or something.

From a leaping start, Natsu bounded from bough to bough, easily identifying a safe path through the leafy network. After all this talk of politics and marriage, it was actually quite freeing to be active again, nothing but his own strength against the environment.

"I don't suppose," Zeref called up to him, after an awkward half-minute of not bothering to try at all, "that once you've got in, you could open the door for me from the inside?"

Natsu rolled his eyes and kept climbing.

It wasn't long before he had edged his way along the bough that ran closest to the tower and swung himself through the opening. There were stairs up and stairs down in the dark throat of the tower, rotting wooden things that looked distinctly less safe than the simple climb up the outside.

"Natsu?" Zeref persisted, almost pleading; maybe the distance was weakening his voice, or maybe something else was softening it. "Are you going to let me in, or-?"

Natsu stuck his head back out the window. "There's good news and bad news," he shouted back. "The door's not locked – it's jammed. The ceiling has partially collapsed, blocking it. I can't get you in that way."

"…And the good news?"

Natsu grinned down at him. "There's a rope. Now you have no excuses not to do the climb."

Zeref, it turned out, had not been exaggerating his inability to climb. Or, in fact, to undertake any kind of physical exertion. It didn't take long for Natsu to realize it would be quicker for him to just pull Zeref up, though it took a while longer for him to stop laughing and convince the other to tie the rope around himself and hold on.

"You really are hopeless," Natsu sniggered; the shoe was on the other foot now, and he had no qualms about kicking a villain while he was down. "No wonder I beat you so easily when we fought back in my world."

"Don't be ridiculous, Natsu," Zeref sniffed, as haughtily as one could while dangling on the end of a rope. "I wasn't even trying in that battle."

"Sure you weren't."

"Do you honestly think, if I were trying to win, that I would take you on myself in a physical battle? I know it's difficult for you, Natsu, but please at least try and use your brain."

It didn't bother Natsu the way it would have done when he first found himself stuck here with his estranged brother. It was hard to be annoyed by anything Zeref said when he could choose to let the rope slip through his straining hands at any moment. Instead, he found himself inquiring, "What would you have done, then, if you were fighting me for real?"

A sigh drifted up to Natsu's window, lighter than Zeref, but not by much. He was frail, almost birdlike, four hundred years old but still not fully grown. He didn't have the build of a fighter – not like everyone in the guild. Even the more intellectual types like Lucy and Levy couldn't avoid all the guild-wide brawls. But it seemed no one ever threw food at the emperor. No wonder he'd turned out so fussy.

"I had a million-man army with me," came the exasperated response. "I would have made you force your way through every single one of them before facing me. On the off-chance that you survived that – and the even slimmer chance that you had any magic remaining – I kept Invel with me for a reason. He is an exceptional ice mage, and not much of your strength would have to be depleted before he would be able to freeze your body, not to mention what he could do to your mind. You would never have reached me, Natsu, had I not desired to speak with you."

It had been stupid of him to charge at Zeref like that. Natsu already knew that, he wasn't an idiot; Zeref's words didn't sting the way they might have done if Gray or Gajeel had been smugly pointing it out. Though he'd had a plan to defeat Zeref – a plan that would have worked – he'd given no thought as to how to reach Zeref, short of declaring a challenge that in retrospect there had been no need for his opponent to accept. Natsu was rightfully proud of his own strength, but no one could beat that many grunts.

"Huh, classic villain, making your poor minions do all the hard work," Natsu responded easily. "Kinda figured you'd save your army the effort and just use your death magic."

There was a pause. Natsu hauled him up another half a foot.

"Mavis told you how my curse works, did she not?" A strange tone lingered in Zeref's voice, and Natsu couldn't place it well enough to do anything more than grunt an affirmation. "Then you must realize I would never be able to control my curse well enough to deliberately use it against you as a weapon."

Then, more softly: "Your life never stopped meaning something to me, Natsu."

There was silence, broken only by the odd scratch of hand on stone or bark, as the Dragon Slayer thought about how to respond to the man who had been stopped halfway through trying to annihilate Fairy Tail. Some scathing comment would have been appropriate, some vicious attack on his brother's lack of moral character, their non-existent relationship.

But all the angry words, he found, had already been said.

"You never came looking for me, though," he accused. "I wasn't exactly hard to find. Fairy Tail made headlines every other week, and a lot of that in recent times has been my fault. I can't believe that you didn't know where I was all these years, and yet the only time you bothered reaching out was with an army pointed at my guild."

"Yes," came the response, so quiet that Natsu couldn't be sure he hadn't imagined it. "I suppose I never did come to find you."

By now, he was high enough for Natsu to reach out, seize him by the back of his stupid billowing robes, and hoist him in through the window. The dreaded Black Mage collapsed to the floor and remained there, panting as if he'd run a marathon.

Without magic, Natsu thought, he wasn't a threat at all. In fact, it was almost endearing.

When Zeref had recovered (from the stress, presumably, since he hadn't put in any effort at all), they ascended the stairs. Natsu led the way carefully, clutching the thick banister for support as he tested for weaknesses in the rotting wood underfoot.

"No one can be using this staircase on a regular basis," Zeref pointed out unnecessarily. "It's too dangerous."

Natsu ground his teeth. He could see that. "I know I sensed something from up here!"

"Do you still sense it now?"

He ground his teeth again. Zeref knew full well that he didn't. That was why he sounded so damn patronizing.

"I know there was something," he repeated. "Maybe- maybe the magic I sensed was a spell to ruin the staircase so that we would think no one had been here!"

Natsu had been quite proud of this suggestion. Thinking outside the box wasn't normally his strong suit. In fact, there usually wasn't a box left by the time he'd brought his flames back under control.

But Zeref was still wearing that condescending expression. "You are clutching at straws, Natsu."

"But-"

"You said the door was sealed by fallen rocks. How would a person get in and out of this place?"

"Through the window," Natsu answered at once.

"Natsu, climbing up a massive tree in order to jump into a tower is not normal! And even if it was, do you think the guards in the other towers would never have noticed someone making regular trips up and down the wall of a supposedly abandoned tower?"

"Maybe they're rubbish guards!"

"…It's okay to admit you were mistaken, Natsu."

"But I wasn't! There's something at the top worth hiding, I know it!"

For a while, neither spoke, creeping up the fragile staircase in as close to silence as the rickety old thing could manage. Only after they emerged into a corridor of safe, solid stone did Zeref speak up again. "Natsu, it's not that I don't believe you-"

Natsu couldn't have moved faster if there had been fire at his feet. One hand slammed Zeref's shoulder back against the wall; the other covered his mouth. "Shh!"

To his surprise, Zeref didn't struggle against this rude manhandling, instead just giving Natsu a mildly annoyed look. Only an immortal could have considered that an appropriate response to an assault on his person. Then, when his human ears picked up what Natsu had already detected, even that annoyance melted away. After Natsu let him go, he didn't utter a word of complaint, just fell into place behind him as Natsu edged down the passageway with twice as much caution as before.

From the stone archway up ahead, there was a voice.

It sounded like hunched shoulders and moulting grey hair, bright red apples and smoke curling from the chimney of a gingerbread house.

But neither of them were familiar with modern fairytales, so they continued to creep forward in confusion.

Even for Natsu's dragon eyes, the darkness beyond was annoyingly thick. Cobwebs and shadows conspired to spin a veil of secrecy over the mysterious room; damp and mildew and the smell of old animal droppings plagued his nostrils. A single figure stood with its back to them. Although it looked humanoid, its body was entirely concealed by a hooded cloak. The hood in question seemed to be staring at something on the far well.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall," a high voice intoned. "Who is the fairest of them all?"

Natsu and Zeref exchanged glances. "…Is that person talking to their reflection?" Zeref whispered, sounding as baffled as Natsu felt.

There was a flash of green light and a mad, high cackle that chilled the fire inside him. Natsu couldn't stand and watch any longer. He pounced into the chamber – and into a face full of white smoke.

Startled, he reeled back, spluttering. Arms slashed savagely through the air in a vain attempt to disperse the smokescreen, but it was too late. The hooded figure had vanished.

No, that couldn't be right. There were no exits from the room except the staircase they had entered by. Smoke or no smoke, no one would have got between him and Zeref.

And yet there was no longer a hooded, cackling crone.

There was only the crumbling brick, the laughing shadows, and the curving bronze frame of a mirror, reflecting his frustration right back at him.

"Damn it," he growled. "They got away."

"I think it's safe to say that they aren't getting in and out the way we did," Zeref assessed.

He was right. There was still something bothering Natsu about the whole episode, though. Something he couldn't quite put his finger on… oh, yes, probably the way Zeref was reacting as though he hadn't spent the past several minutes insisting that there couldn't possibly be someone in the tower.

"I was still right, though, wasn't I?" Natsu challenged. "There was someone here!"

"Yes, Natsu, you were right," Zeref sighed. Catching Natsu still looking at him, he added, peevishly, "What are you waiting for? A prize?"

"How about an apology for not trusting me?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Given the circumstances, my scepticism was perfectly rational, even before we factor in that we are enemies, as you are always so keen to remind me. However," he continued, forestalling with a raised hand the angry words that were about to spew forth from Natsu's mouth, "you were right on this occasion, and I shall take that into account the next time you make an improbable claim. Satisfied?"

"No, not at all!"

"Well, you'll have to be, because it's all you're getting. Now, come on, we need to find the source of that magic."

Natsu glowered at him, but let it go. "It's gotta be the mirror," he grunted. "It's the only thing in here."

"A magic mirror?" Zeref echoed doubtfully.

"Sure. Why would that creep talk to a non-magical mirror?"

"I'm not sure logic is the main motivator for crazy cackling apparitions…"

"But it is for evil emperors?" Natsu shot back.

"Not a lot of the time, no," Zeref conceded. "Perhaps that's why I can see it clearer than you can. Nothing about this place makes any sense. A tower sealed shut, no footprints on the stairs, and a suspicious figure who somehow vanishes the moment we arrive…?"

"Well, whatever. There's definitely something fishy about that mirror."

"Hmm… well, mirrors are excellent conduits for magic to do with vision and perception. I've heard of them being used to reveal the true nature of those who look in them, to show glimpses of far-off places, and even to act as portals to other twisted universes-"

"Yeah, yeah, we can theorize from back in the palace. While we're here, let's actually investigate."

With its ornate frame and vast plane surface, the mirror belonged in the dressing-room of a queen, not a crumbling tower. So dark was the room that it did not reflect back walls and floor, but a perpetual pool of night. A small thrill ran through Natsu as he stepped before it… which quickly turned to disappointment as he saw a too-familiar scarf and pink hair staring back.

"Oh. It's just me." He turned left and right like he'd seen Lucy do in designer stores, hoping to glimpse something different, something magical, in his reflection. "Oi, Zeref, do I look any fairer to you?"

If he didn't know better, he'd have said that the noise Zeref made sounded mildly disgusted. "Why don't you try asking the mirror, like that figure did?"

"Okay: mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?"

Thunder cracked. Green light slashed through the veil of shadows, sinking into the bricks and flashing eerily from the mortar, as if they were trapped within the skeleton of some great beast. There was a face in the mirror and it wasn't Natsu's own – bone-white with empty black eyes, the void itself given a face.

"Zeref, look, it's working!" he called excitedly.

The face in the mirror twisted into a new form: a black dragon perched on top of a building, mighty wings outstretched, hellfire trailing from agape jaws.

A spectral voice intoned, "With jaws that rend and eyes that scare, Maleficent is the one most fair."

"Whoa, a dragon!" Natsu exclaimed, eyes shining.

Zeref made a strangled sound.

Natsu didn't appear to notice. "Look, Zeref, they still have dragons in this world! She looks totally different to Igneel, though. Those twisted horns are so cool. And bright green flames! I wonder what they taste like. Maybe she'll teach me how to breathe wicked flames like her!"

"…"

"We've gotta go find her! Hang on, is that a castle she's standing on, or the guildhall? Maybe she wants to join Fairy Tail! Can you imagine? A real live dragon in Team Natsu!"

"How is that the 'fairest of them all'?" Zeref burst out. "It's a dragon, for heaven's sake!"

"Hey! Dragons are awesome!"

"This is ridiculous! There's no way anyone would… oh, I see." Like a switch had been thrown, he calmed down at once. In fact, he was almost smiling as he turned back to the mirror in time to see the dragon blast a tower to smithereens. "That's what the mirror does."

"What?" Natsu asked suspiciously.

"Think about it. The mirror can't show us, objectively, who the fairest person in the land is, because beauty is entirely subjective. Not to mention, even the question put to the mirror is ambiguous. You could have been asking for the prettiest person in the land, but you could also have meant the most just."

"Or the most likely to run a tombola stall!"

"…Yes. So, it must look deeper than that. After all, it is a mirror; its purpose is not to show, but to reflect. What if it reveals that which fits the observer's opinion of true beauty? You saw a monster-"

"Dragons are cool!"

"-because you… well, let's say you have an uncommon approach towards relationships, and the concept of beauty or appeal or attractiveness means something different to you than it does to most people, doesn't it?"

"Huh. How'd the mirror know about that?"

"Magic," Zeref shrugged. "But if I ask the mirror…"

Zeref tailed off without finishing his sentence.

"You'll see what you think is the most beautiful?" Natsu finished for him.

Zeref said nothing.

"What would that be? All my friends dead? An empire of death and despair? The Fairy Tail guildhall in smouldering ruins? Because you might see that one anyway if we stay on my channel. That dragon's causing more destruction than me! She totally belongs in the guild."

"Don't be stupid, Natsu. Who would call those things fair?"

But the usual edge in his voice had dulled, breaking into scraps of rusty metal upon impact. It was so uncharacteristic that Natsu would have felt bad for feigning ignorance. "…Zeref? You okay?"

"…It's nothing. We've identified the mysterious source of magic; we should go."

"Aren't you gonna talk to the mirror?"

"I'll… do it later."

Natsu folded his arms. "You're gonna climb back up that tree by yourself, are you?"

Zeref swallowed. It seemed to take physical effort.

For the life of him, Natsu couldn't work out why he looked so scared.

"You're only going to see Mavis, right?" he guessed. Zeref's gaze jumped to his like a startled deer. He was reminded suddenly of the featherlike weight on the end of the rope, his great enemy so vulnerable it made him uncomfortable to watch, crusader that he was. "And, hang on, that will show us where Fairy Heart is! You, combined with this mirror's weird magic, is our ticket out of this world!"

"But…"

With a flash of insight, Natsu realized why Zeref was so reluctant. "You don't have to worry about revealing Fairy Heart's location in front of me," he laughed. "I already said I was gonna help you get it, remember? So we can all go home and I can kick your ass properly."

"That's not why-"

Natsu had already clamped his hands on Zeref's shoulders and steered him in front of the mirror. "Talk to the goddamn mirror, Zeref."

The mirror no longer showed a dark-scaled dragon. That otherworldly vision had gone, and in its place was something even stranger: the two of them stood together, Natsu's hands on his brother's shoulders supportively. There was no family resemblance to be seen, except perhaps for the way Zeref's eyes met Natsu's in the mirror, and then seemed to set and lock and burn away all hesitation.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall," he recited in a shaky voice. "Who is the fairest of them all?"

Once again, a spectral face loomed in place of their own. Thunder resounded from another world. Green lightning dived and rolled. The veil of reality parted to reveal an image of Mavis.

At first, Natsu thought the First Master was back in the crystal from which Cana had only recently freed her. But this wasn't the same lacrima that had kept Fairy Heart's power sealed all those years. It was not crystal, but glass; not cut roughly from the mountain, but artfully designed; not frantically trying to preserve life, but accepting and honouring death.

A coffin.

He heard Zeref's sharp intake of breath; felt him step forward, out of Natsu's grip. The Dragon Slayer wrenched his gaze away from the coffin to scan the background of the image, knowing Zeref wouldn't have the presence of mind for it, searching for some clue to give away the coffin's location. It looked like a basement, but those walls were oddly twisted, angles both acute and obtuse, the three spatial dimensions blending together. Behind a crooked tapestry, he could see something glowing- a secret door hanging slightly open- and through it, a rose-

"She's dead again," Zeref breathed, soft and tremulous and yet capturing all the emotion of the room. "In this world, without magic, she's- she's dead-"

Heedless to his anguish, the voice of the mirror resumed its sepulchral duty. "With a fairy's grace and- and- and-"

The image of the glass coffin wavered.

"A- a- a-"

The stutter became a violent crackle. Green sparks skittered across the wall as the mirror shook on its invisible hangings. All Natsu's instincts were screaming at him to get out before it exploded, but Zeref, that fool, without a single adventuring bone in his body, had stepped towards the malfunctioning mirror.

No longer did it show Mavis's coffin. It flickered between three images so rapidly that even Natsu had trouble distinguishing them: a figure stood before a closed castle gate; a sheathed sword half-buried in snow; a shield in the ashes of a guildhall in ruin. Person and sword and shield flashed over and over within a whirlpool of light and sound.

And then the mirror went dark, its surface a huge black void that showed nothing, not even their own reflections.

"What was that?" Natsu demanded.

Zeref seemed too shaken to respond.

"Because seriously, I know I'm awesome at destroying things, but you might be about to take the title here, because I don't think I've ever broken anything just by looking at it before…"

At this, Zeref appeared to come back to himself. "Don't be ridiculous, Natsu. The mirror broke because…" His voice faded, but his eyes were sharpening, returning a little more to the present with every heartbeat, just as Natsu had expected. "Oh, I see. Fairy Heart does not exist here in its original form. It must have been split into three separate components… the three forms of Great Fairy Magic that Mavis created: Fairy Glitter, Fairy Law, Fairy Sphere."

"Person, sword, shield," Natsu realized.

"My thoughts exactly. It seems that obtaining Fairy Heart and getting home will not be as straightforward as I thought. We will have to find all three components and bring them together with her body in order to escape from this world-"

A floorboard creaked behind them.

They both whirled round at once. Natsu's fist was already raised, expecting to see the cackling visage of that mysterious apparition, but there was no one there. Only shadows and darkness and-

There! It wasn't a person that had made the sound at all. Something small – something furry? – was vanishing down the stairwell.

"Stop!" he yelled, throwing himself after it.

"Natsu!" Zeref cried in concern, but Natsu ignored him. This was the one clue they had. He had to-

The sound of something snapping above him reached his sensitive ears. A wire? A trap?

At that moment, a tremor shook the tower. It seemed to persist above for several seconds after the walls and floor had stilled, groaning, crumbling… and then the first chunk of rock hit the floor beside him.

"Zeref, we're getting out of here!" Without waiting for an acknowledgement, Natsu grabbed his arm and sprinted across the shaking floor. The decrepit heap of stone abandoned all pretence at being a tower and collapsed into chaos around them.

Natsu took the rotting steps three at a time, bursting through the storm of rubble with Zeref half-stumbling, half-flying in his wake. As the window they had entered by came into view, he let go, sped up, and leapt, out through the window, out into the night and the air.

Wind billowed around him for one ineffectual moment, and then he slammed into the branch, feet then stomach then arms, and he seized it for dear life. It creaked but held, barely a whisper of distress compared to the deathcry of the tower… and as he scrambled towards the trunk, he realized that this was because the bough was only bearing the weight of one person, not two.

Zeref was gripping tightly to a window frame that was doing its best to hurl him off.

"Jump!" Natsu roared, over the symphony of destruction.

"People can't jump that far without magic!"

"…You literally just watched me do it!"

"I am not you, Natsu!"

"Don't I know it," he muttered. "Jump, already!"

The buckling staircase made the decision for him. No way up, no other way down, Zeref finally flung himself out into the gap.

In Natsu's defence, if Zeref had jumped at the same time he had, with the same running start, he'd probably have made it.

But no, he'd decided to stop and have a quick chat with gravity first, and as a result, he lacked the momentum needed to cross the gap.

His foot hit the very end of the branch, the thin bit Natsu had leapt over. It snapped. One flailing hand reached for the bough, missed, sailed futilely through the air – and stopped abruptly as Natsu seized his wrist.

He'd flung himself forward, face down onto the bough, as far along as he'd dared. The weight almost wrenched his arm out of its socket, but he bore it with a dragon's growl, sucking in air through clenched teeth as his mortal enemy dangled from the end of his hand.

"Hold on," he snarled. "Or else."

Wisely, Zeref kept his mouth shut as Natsu hauled him up enough for him to grip the branch with his other hand, and then get a leg over. Natsu shuffled towards the trunk – the more stable part – to give him space.

"Step where I step," he ordered, and began climbing down. Occasionally he shouted up an instruction, which Zeref followed without complaint. At least going down was easier than going up. Natsu, Zeref, and the last wall of the old tower all made it to the ground at the same time.

"You," Natsu panted, as the rubble groaned and stretched into its new shape, "would make a useless guild mage. There's no point being able to immediately identify how the mysterious magic mirror works if you die before escaping from the dungeon."

"If I ever joined a guild, Natsu, it wouldn't be in a world without magic," Zeref told him primly. He brushed dust from his sleeves with the air of a man who had managed to escape on his own. "That was no accident. That was a trap."

"Figured that one out for myself, thanks."

"But who was it who tried to kill us?"

"That's obvious, isn't it?" Natsu snorted. "We already know that Tremaine woman is trying to overthrow you."

"Mad laughter and smoke tricks are hardly Lady Tremaine's style," Zeref frowned.

"Yeah, so it's perfect. No one would suspect her."

Zeref shook his head. "She's trying to take over the kingdom by arranged marriage, remember? We're looking for some sort of cackling crone in a cloak."

"No, I don't think we are," Natsu argued. "I realized what was bugging me about that figure. It had no smell. I could smell damp, I could smell mildew, I could smell signs of animal habitation, I could smell you, but I couldn't smell another person."

"Maybe your Dragon Slayer senses don't work as well here as you think. We both saw another person-"

"But we didn't, did we?" Natsu retorted. A dragon's senses were never wrong – he had been right about the magic, and he was right about this, too. His faith gave his arguments certainty. "We saw a cloak, but not who was wearing it; we heard a voice, but it never spoke to us, it just recited the magic words and then laughed creepily. What if it was just a cloak on a wire, rigged up to lure us in and then trigger the trap? Destroying the tower would have got rid of the evidence, too."

From the troubled frown on Zeref's face, Natsu was expecting him to contest this inspired theory, but he simply drummed his fingers on his upper arm. "You saw something at the end, didn't you? What was it?"

"Not sure. Some sort of animal."

"An animal may well have been able to get in and out of that tower. However, training one well enough to set up a trap like that is another matter entirely."

Natsu shrugged. "There could be magic animals in this world. Have you seen anyone round here with a pet?"

"…I don't believe I have. I shall keep an eye out, but I suspect anyone clever enough to orchestrate such an elaborate trap for the two of us knows better than to bring their familiar into my presence."

"They can't be that smart," Natsu countered. "The magic of the mirror may have lured us into their trap, but not only did we survive it, we also discovered information about the components of Fairy Heart."

After a moment, Zeref nodded. "True. We can consider how we can best use said information tomorrow. For now… ah."

"What?"

"I have just remembered, I do not currently have a bedroom. Your friend Gray is recovering in my royal chambers."

"Well, don't look at me. You're not having my bed."

They stared at each other.

"It's your fault my room is occupied," Zeref pointed out.

"You're the bloody king! Get the servants to make you up another room!"

"I could," he pondered, "but it's very possible that someone in this castle just tried to kill me, and until I know who that is…"

Natsu snarked, "What happened to you having a castle full of armed guards to deploy on me at any given moment? Now you're wanting me to protect you from your own army!"

Zeref said nothing. Too proud to admit it, too sensible to lie.

"Oh, fine," Natsu grunted. "You can sleep on the sofa in my room. You're not having any of my fancy pillows, though."

"I'm sure I'll cope without them."

With one final glance at the ruins of the tower, Natsu began picking his way through the gloom, back to the part of the castle he knew.

A soft voice in the darkness. "Natsu?"

"What?"

"Thank you."

"Yeah, well, try not to blunder into danger again tonight, because I don't feel like bailing you out again," Natsu said gruffly. "Tomorrow, we're gonna track down the missing pieces of Fairy Heart and get the hell out of this place."

A/N: Because it's not a proper fairytale-based story until someone misquotes 'Snow White.'

Seriously though, no chapter in this story has given me as much grief as this one. The number of times I have rewritten it... I just hope the final version was enjoyable enough to make it worth it. The brothers have finally had a chance to bond over a mini adventure, and maybe picked up some important plot details (and a few unanswered questions...) in the process.

(If you're looking for proper Snow White related humour, I cannot recommend highly enough the Magic Mirror sketch from John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme (Season 5, Episode 1, around 5 mins in). John Finnemore at his absolute best. The mirror's little rhymes in this chapter are a nod to that.) ~CS