Edit: Hindsight is 20/20, I forgot to add a part for Wendy.
You'd think, 23 chapters in, I'd learn how to beta-read my own stuff here lol.
"A Fire protected them!" Lucy gasped.
"And not just any Fire! Look at those marks!" Erza added. "She's a Champion!"
"Now we're talking!" Gray laughed.
"Emri!" Igneel boomed, "Explain yourself!"
"I'm not going to fight a war waged on a lie, Igneel!" she argued, "My job is to do the right thing, and that's what I'm going to do!"
"Why you-! I hope you understand what this treason means for you!" Igneel threatened.
"And I hope that you understand that, as your Champion, I AM NOT EXPENDABLE!" Emri launched herself into the sky, using her magic as a boost, slamming directly into Natsu, then throwing him around like a ragdoll.
"Focus on me, Fire King!" Irene snarled, slashing the King's shoulder and chest with her claws.
"Gah! There will be nothing left of you when I'm done here!" he charged her, piercing his claws into her chest and sinking his fangs into her neck. He was violently wrenched off by Belserion.
"You stand no chance against the both of us!" Belserion snapped his jaws at the King.
Atlas slammed into his stomach, sneaking up on him from underneath. "Then allow me to even the odds!"
"Belserion! Dispose of that sorry flaming corpse! I'll deal with their sorry scrap of a King!" Irene stated. "I'll make sure everyone remembers this hubris as his downfall!"
"Same goes for you!" the two rival Royals charged for each other, latching their talons and slamming their heads together with equally defiant roars.
"Emberious!" Emri called.
"Following your lead, sis!" her twin stated, flying up above the battlefield, before summoning large orbs of fire and launching them down like meteors. Any Fire they hit were almost immediately put out of commission.
"Now that's what I'm talking about!" Strongjaw laughed.
"All of you!" Emri spoke to the Dragons on the ground. "I know you can still help! Raise your wings and fly! RAISE YOUR TALONS AND FIGHT!" Magic shot out of her to emphasize her battle cry.
Gajeel roared, followed by Erik and Laxus. Wendy flared her wings, using her magic to enchant the others. "Stronger and faster! Let's go!"
"Alright! Let's do this!" Sting launched into the air, followed by Rogue.
Several Fires backed away from Emri, obviously uncomfortable.
"Even your Champion turned against you," Belserion said, "What should that say about you?"
"What it says is that we'll just make a new one!" Atlas snarled as the two collided.
"Go ahead and try! That'll be a riot to watch!" Belserion smirked.
To emphasize his point, Emri was flying around erratically, flames roaring from her back and embers flying off of her wings, tearing down Fires left and right. The ones crazy enough to try their luck fighting her, that is.
xXxOxXx
"Amris, Juvia, to me!" Oceanum said, landing on the ground. Once the two were by her side, she ordered, "Create rain! We can dampen the Fires' power with the water!" as she flared her fins and wings.
"What about the Fires fighting on our side?" Juvia asked.
"Look at them! You think a little water is going to stop them?" Amris demanded, flaring her own fins. "Besides! It'll put the others at a disadvantage and give our Dragons leverage!"
"Right," Juvia nodded, raising her arms.
Thick clouds formed overhead, heavy with water that wasted no time in falling fast. Not only did it slow down the Fires and weaken their magic, it also cleared the smoke from the air.
What nobody expected, however, was the lightning crackling around the clouds.
"Nice touch, Laxus!" Erik said. The Lightning shook his head, "That's not my doing! Ilumina?"
She shook her head, "Not mine either. It looks like dad's magic!"
"What?"
Sure enough, large spears of lightning shot down from the clouds, striking multiple Fires. Emri and Emberious had to scramble to avoid them, but Natsu wasn't so lucky.
"Dad?!" Ilumina called.
Tormenta dove down from where he had been hidden above the clouds, "You called?" he asked.
"What are you doing here?" Laxus demanded.
"You gave me a lot to think about when you left," he admitted. "Even this old dog needs to learn a few new tricks, I suppose."
"Well, it's good that you came to your senses," Ilumina nuzzled him, "Now, we have a war to win!"
"If there's one thing I know, it's how to fight a war!" Tormenta raised his head and let out a deep bellow. More Lightnings shots down from the clouds. "We are your team! Nobody is going to fight a battle on their own!" Tormenta announced.
"Haha! Let's do this thing then!" Laxus shouted.
"This is your home, so we're following your lead!" Ilumina said.
"Half of you, guard the barrier! The other half, take out as many Fires as you can!"
"Laxus!"
He turned, watching as Freed flew up next to him with Bickslow and Evergreen on his back. "Only you could've done something as insane as this!" Evergreen stated.
"But we are happy to have you back, man!" Bickslow exclaimed.
"We're here for you through everything!" Freed stated, "Let's do this together, like always!"
"Like always," Laxus nodded.
xXxOxXx
Wendy whirled, using her magic to summon powerful gusts of wind to push Fires away from her. Unfortunately, the constant use of magic was starting to take its toll.
She heavily gasped for air as she pushed herself forward. Her muscles burned. She wasn't built for fighting and it showed.
However, as she kept going, she felt herself growing oddly lighter, as if flying was becoming increasingly easier.
That was weird. It certainly wasn't her magic, as, for one, she didn't cast it, and two, she couldn't cast it on herself anyway.
A blur of white zoomed past her peripheral. It was Windrider.
"Huh? What are you doing here?" Wendy asked, relieved to see her sister, but confused as to why she was here.
"Mother explained everything and I knew I couldn't just let you go alone," Windrider explained. "Sherria is here too! She's helping to enchant the humans' Dragons! And I'm here to help keep you flying."
"You really didn't have to-" Wendy was cut off, "Don't bother with that martyr stuff, sister! Skies help others!"
Wendy smiled and nodded, "Let's finish this!"
"Let's!" Winderider agreed.
xXxOxXx
Erik weaved through the Fires, trying to avoid a certain Prince.
"Why can you Poisons just stay down?!" Ignia hissed.
Erik scoffed, "Why can't you?!" he shot back.
"I'm going to rip you to shreds!" Ignia threatened, attempting to grab Erik's tail. The Poison kept swerving and weaving to avoid him.
Erik turned, trying to get a better look at the Fire Prince, only to watch in shock as bright red magic erupted from his back, melting through his wing membranes. Ignia let out an agonized shriek as his damaged wings failed to keep him in the air.
"You have no idea how long I've been wanting to do that, you sorry smoke breather!" a familiar voice shouted.
"Cobra?" he asked. Sure enough, the larger Prince was flying overhead, his hood flared. He opened his mouth and let out an angry hissing-roar.
Four other Poisons–Vipress, Pythos, Aspis, and Cubellios–flew out from somewhere behind him.
"You guys actually came for this!" Erik exclaimed.
"We weren't going to just leave you to fight these things on your own!" Pythos said, "That'd just be missing out on the fun!"
"Poisons have to stick together," Cubellios said.
"And you'll always have your family by your side," Vipress assured.
"So let's do this thing together!" Aspis happily twirled as she flew around them.
The three siblings dove down towards the ground. Erik perked up slightly when he saw someone waving to him.
"Erik! Down here!" Macbeth called. Erik landed, then ran to his group of friends. Macbeth and Sorano wrapped their arms around his neck as he happily rumbled.
"We were worried you wouldn't come back.." Sorano cried quietly.
"I promised I would come back one day. I just wish it wasn't under such dire circumstances.." Erik huffed.
"These aren't dire, man!" Sawyer assured him, "We can handle this together!"
"Let us help you!" Richard said. "We've grown strong since our last meeting! We can help, oh yeah!"
"So are these the human friends you always told us about?" Aspis asked, moving closer to examine them.
"Yeah.. Friends who I don't want getting killed, so let's not," Erik said. "We can handle it."
"And so can we," Macbeth didn't give Erik the chance to keep refusing before climbing onto his back, "It'll be just like racing, right?"
"This is nothing like the races.." Erik huffed, shaking off the rain.
"I see nothing wrong with it! Hop on, humans!" Pythos bowed, lowering his wings. Sawyer laughed, then climbed on.
Aspis grabbed onto Sorano, tossing her onto her back, "Let's do this thing!"
"Aghh!" Emberious landed nearby. Fortunately, he was unharmed, as shown by him getting up and shaking himself off.
"Are you okay?" Aspis ran to his side. He nodded, "This rain is killing me.. I've never fought in such situations before.."
"You're one of the Fires on our side, right?" Sorano asked, "Can you help us?"
"We need to handle the Royals first. Most of them have already backed off because of Emri. But if we take care of the Royals, the rest will likely be too scared to keep fighting," he explained.
"Leave Ignia to me!" Cobra flew over them, "He's owed a lot of years of payback!"
"And I can.. hopefully.. handle Zeref," Emberious said. "You guys need to keep the others off our backs," he said, following Cobra into the fight.
"You heard the Fire! Let's get moving! Hold on!" Pythos took off into the air, with Aspis close behind.
"I'll help from the ground! My magic is earth based," Richard explained.
"It's too dangerous to be on the ground," Erik said.
"Not anymore! With the efforts everyone is going through, it's a lot safer! I promise, I'll be fine!"
"You better be! If any of you die after I just got back, I'm going to hold it against all of you for a long time after this!" Erik stated, then took off.
xXxOxXx
Nash darted along the ground, trying to avoid Fires chasing him. He wasn't the best fighter of his siblings, so he was serving more as a distraction than a fighter.
"Come on, you can do better than that!" he taunted, leaping out of the way right as two Fires charged for him, causing them to collide with each other, "Now that's just sad!"
"I'm going to melt your scales, you Iron punk!" one of them shouted, before clamping his jaws on Nash's wing and using it to slam him against the ground. The Iron's wing bent in an unnatural shape and he yelped.
"Shit.." he grimaced. His siblings were directly in the fight overhead so they were too far away to help if he called, so there was only one thing he could do.
He stood–his injured wing falling limp by his side–and roared defiantly as the Fire went to attack.
A big grey blur slammed into the Fire, violently pushing him to the ground before promptly ripping his throat out. Upon closer inspection, Nash realized it was Metalicana.
"Dad?"
"Hello, brat," he said. "Never say I never did anything for you."
"What made you come with us?"
"I may be hard on you, but no Dragon is allowed to push around my dragonets, understand?"
"Aww, so you do care," Nash grinned cheekily.
"Watch it, brat," Metalicana snapped at him. "It's about time I taught you how to fight, so let's go."
"Holy shit, dad?!" Gajeel exclaimed when he spotted the larger Iron.
"Gihi," Metalicana smirked.
"Forget about him for a second, what the hell is that?" Strongjaw pointed.
A long, white blur was dancing around in the sky, doing the same thing Nash had just been doing, but far more efficiently.
"It's Albumis!" Sting exclaimed, "Rogue, look!"
"You can do better than that, can't you?" she giggled. "My grandmother is faster than that! Talk about being as dumb as a pile of rocks, am I right?"
"Annoying pest!"
"Real creative! I've heard far more insulting things! Come on, guys, you're supposed to have the advantage here!"
The Fires chasing her found themselves trapped in bubbles of shadow, which exploded with the same magic and knocked them out of the fight. More of them continued to form around them, either capturing Dragons or hovering nearby, and continued to explode like large bombs.
Rogue turned his head, spotting Umbris standing on the barrier with her wings flared. He laughed, "We're getting more and more Dragons on our side!"
xXxOxXx
"I hope you have a good explanation for this, Emberious!" Zeref shouted as the two flew around each other. "You dare fight on behalf of a murderer?!"
"I fight on behalf of my sister!" Emberious stated, aggressively slamming his head against Zeref's.
"I'll make you pay for this!" Zeref threatened.
"As you've been saying since we've started!" Emberious shot back.
xXxOxXx
Erik flew with Macbeth on his back. The resilient human stood, using his magic to deflect flames shot their way, redirecting them back towards the Dragons in question.
"How does it feel to have to defend against your own attacks?" he taunted.
"I like to think it feels great," a familiar voice hissed. Macbeth paled.
Incineration's face shot out of the flames, his jaws latching onto Erik's hind leg as he threw the Poison to the ground–causing Macbeth to fly off, before landing next to him, "Did you miss me?" he taunted.
"Who's that?" Aspis asked, flying alongside Pythos.
"The Fire that destroyed our old home.." Sorano said, sounding sick.
"Well, if there's anything we Poisons are good at, it's pushing back against aggressors! What do you say we get some payback?" Pythos asked.
"Hell yeah!" Sawyer found his nerve and shouted.
The two Poisons dove towards the Fire, combining their roaring poisonous breaths into one larger attack that knocked the Fire over.
He cried out as it burned his scales, then snarled, "More of you?!"
The two of them landed, then stalked around him, similarly to the Rock they had fought not too long ago.
"We're not the scared kids you faced last time!" Macbeth pushed himself up. "We're not going to run from you!"
"Your Tamed isn't here to save you, and nobody will notice your corpses missing!" Incernation ran towards the young man. The ground around him softened, rising up around him and sucking him in. "What the-?!"
Sorano scrambled for her keys, pulling out a golden one, "Open, Gate of the Ram: Aries!" she cried, summoning the sheep-like Spirit.
"W-what do you need?" the meek Spirit asked. Sorano pointed, "Whatever you can do against that thing!"
Incineration partially pulled his body from the ground, but didn't get far until Aries's Wool Bomb engulfed his body, "What is this stuff?! Why can't I move?!"
"Of course! A Celestial Spirit can hold him back!" Richard exclaimed.
"And with your magic in the mix, he's stuck!" Sorano grinned.
"Which leaves him at our mercy!" Sawyer growled.
"You little pests!" Incineration bellowed as a harsh glow rose from his mouth. Erik covered the others with his wings, protecting them from the flames.
Aspis and Pythos climbed onto Incineration, using the fact that he's stuck to their advantage in order to claw and bite him, injecting poison into his body. Incineration hissed and growled, before shooting magic from his body to knock them off and burn through the wool.
Angrily, he pulled himself from the ground and raised his winged talons, then slammed them down on the ground. Everyone ducked out of the way to avoid being crushed, but the force sent them tumbling head over heels.
"Umph!" Macbeth grunted as he hit the ground, "Ugh, this isn't any easier than it was last time.."
Erik growled, pushing himself up and charging Incineration. He latched their talons together and pushed. Incineration pushed back, "I don't know why you fight so much for a bunch of dumb little humans. The worthless pests serve nothing for our world!"
"They're my friends, and I'm going to make you regret hurting them!" Erik snapped.
"I'll never regret killing such useless creatures! Nor will I regret killing apologists like you!"
Aspis and Pythos each joined Erik, pushing against Incineration on either side of their brother.
"What do you hope to achieve by this little game?!" the Fire laughed.
Erik didn't answer, he just gave on last hearty shove…
…and pushed Incineration into a large, collapsed tree trunk, which pierced clean through the Fire's chest.
He gasped and glanced down at it as it dripped blood, and his head slowly lolled back. His shaky breathing didn't last long afterwards.
"Is it over?" Macbeth asked.
"It's over," Erik said.
xXxOxXx
Quit running from me!" Emri shouted, chasing after Natsu. The two of them were illuminated by the glow of the barrier.
"I'm not going to fight you! We're supposed to be friends, aren't we?!" Natsu called back to her.
"The humans are supposed to be your friends too! Why are you here making them suffer?!" Emri demanded, shooting a burst of flame. It missed and struck the barrier instead, making her wince when she saw the faint blue change to a far angrier red as it flickered.
"It didn't have to come to this!" Natsu insisted.
"If you would just listen to me for a minute, you'd feel very stupid for this!" Emri stated, "It wasn't Irene who killed Her Majesty!"
"Then who was it?! And how would you know?!"
"The Irene that fled the Kingdom didn't feel real!"
"And I know her better than you do!" Natsu turned to face her.
"Look at her eyes! They were blue when she fled, but they're not blue now! Could she always do that?" Emri asked.
"No.." Natsu admitted, "But that's besides the point, Emri. What else could it have been if she was faked?"
"I don't know," Emri admitted, "But we're not going to find out through war and violence and death. Just look at what's happening to the Dragons you didn't come here for!" she gestured to the charred and scarred battleground, "And look at what's happening to our own Dragons!"
"And don't even get us started on all the people who got hurt or killed!" Erza hovered behind Natsu. He whirled around at her voice.
Gray was standing with his Ice Cannon braced against his shoulder. Lucy stood with Sagittarius with their bows drawn.
"Don't make any sort of mistake, man," Gray stated. "We're not afraid to escalate this if we have to."
"Please, stand down! We don't want to hurt you," Lucy pleaded. Natsu swallowed thickly, "I don't want to hurt you guys either, but-"
"But nothing!" Lucy shouted, causing him to flinch, "You came here knowing what this would mean! You came here knowing innocent people and Dragons would die! But you have the chance to stop this! I'm begging you to take it."
"We have the chance to fix everything," Emri said. "We'll find who actually killed Her Majesty. We'll find who stole the eggs. We'll find them. But we can't do that while fighting this war."
Natsu sighed heavily, then ran a talon down his face, "You all seem so sure.."
"We are sure," Lucy said.
"My mom isn't a murderer, Natsu.." Erza said quietly.
"I don't know.." he admitted, "But-"
A loud, ear-splitting shriek cut him off. All of them whirled up to try and find the source.
The sound seemed to rattle all of the fighting Dragons, as most of them stopped to look around as well.
"What… was that..?" Emberious asked slowly. Zeref shrugged, equally unnerved.
"What kind of Dragon makes such an awful sound?" Belserion asked.
"None of mine.." Igneel said.
"Whatever it was, it has everyone on edge," Irene said.
"More Dragons coming to the aid of the Tamed?" Atlas inquired. Igneel shook his head, "No. This doesn't feel right. Do you feel that tension?"
"The sudden spike in magic is intense…" Belserion said.
Everyone looked up at the storm clouds summoned by Juvia and the Waters. A dark shadow flew over it, just barely seen.
Then, all of a sudden, a large, pitch black Dragon shot down through it.
And all Natsu could do was watch as the surrounding Fires, as well as the other element Ferals, all panicked and tried to escape. The only answer he got to this mystery Dragon was the sound of someone's fearful cry.
"IT'S ACNOLOGIA!"