Fairytale of Doom
By CrimsonStarbird
Chapter Two – Maleficent's Bad Day
Maleficent was not having a good day.
Which was somewhat ironic, since anyone entering the little woodland cottage at that moment would have been forgiven for thinking all Maleficent's dreams had just come true.
After all, the fair Princess Aurora, the kingdom's Sleeping Beauty, on this her sixteenth birthday, was lying comatose on the floor at her feet.
Maleficent had dreamed of this moment every day for the last sixteen years. Oh, she'd have preferred the girl dead, of course, but those meddlesome Good Fairies had weakened her curse to be one of eternal slumber instead. And over the years, Maleficent had come to see that weakening as a blessing. Perhaps she had been too hasty, all those years ago, when she had plumped straight for death as a consequence. It was too quick, too conclusive. Eternal sleep, now, that was just as final as death, but the fact that it was theoretically reversible would give that foolish prince hope, and hope was the most delicious form of torture.
In fact, she was just deciding what to put in the hamper to send to Merryweather as a thank-you gift when she'd opened the door to the cottage and seen Princess Aurora unconscious on the floor.
It should have been a most welcome sight.
Except there were no spindles anywhere.
Nothing that could have triggered her exquisitely beautiful sleeping curse.
There were bottles, though. Lots and lots of bottles. Some tall, some fat, some uncorked, some smashed. Some were lined neatly up on the dresser, while some were sprawled across the floor in solidarity with the princess.
The only thing they had in common was that they were all empty.
"What," Maleficent uttered, "is this?"
From his perch atop the cabinet, her familiar Diablo gave a sympathetic caw. Then another, and another, until it seemed the sinister raven was coughing, black eyes glimmering wetly. For once, Maleficent didn't reprimand him. The fumes were enough to make even her feel dizzy.
Gathering the folds of her robe to her mouth and nose, she stepped delicately over the princess's body. Her foot nudged a bottle; it clinked up against another with a drunken wobble of light.
In the corner of the room, Flora was slumped in a chair. Maleficent tensed – Good Fairies were so irritating to deal with – but the red-clad fairy did not stir at the intrusion. A closer look revealed the reason: each hand was wrapped tenderly around the neck of an empty wine bottle.
Low rasping snores were coming from under the table. Grimacing, Maleficent lifted one corner of the tablecloth to reveal the green fairy, Fauna, snoozing on a bed of shot glasses, like a dragon curled up with her hoard.
Letting the cloth fall again, Maleficent sought out the final fairy. Merryweather was sitting on the counter – although 'sitting' was a rather generous term, as she certainly wouldn't be doing it without the faithful support of the wall and the cabinet. In her hand she clutched the stem of a martini glass, filled with some dubious pink liquid. This she regarded with some suspicion, before slurring, "Make… make it blue."
The cocktail turned blue.
Heartened, Merryweather raised the glass to Maleficent in a toast, drained it in one, and promptly passed out on the counter.
It was barely even mid-afternoon.
Maleficent had no words.
From atop the cabinet, Diablo gave her a caw of askance.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" Maleficent hissed back. "Sixteen years I've searched for the princess, and now that I've finally found her, with only hours left to enact my curse before the sun goes down, she's… she's like this!"
Diablo made a sharp jabbing motion with his wing, then cocked his head, cawing.
"No, no, no," Maleficent snapped. "The terms of the curse are very clear. She will prick her finger, not her finger will be pricked. It won't work if I stab her with the spindle. Now, if she were awake, I could trick her into fulfilling the conditions of the curse… but how am I to do that when she's in an alcohol-induced coma?"
Diablo croaked out another suggestion.
"Of course not," Maleficent seethed. "My magic can only wreak wicked deeds upon the land. Curing alcohol poisoning falls some way out of my purview!"
There was a pause, and Diablo fluttered his wings in something of a shrug.
"Perhaps," she murmured. "Perhaps I do nothing. She may carry the Blessing of the Fairies, but she is only one of three."
Her familiar gave a curious caw.
"I had hoped to snatch the first from her with my curse and then use her as bait to steal the others from the forces of goodness… but perhaps I should pursue the other two first." She snapped the stem of a still-sticky wine glass beneath her heel, and her mouth twisted into a horrid sneer. "I will leave the good princess to pickle in her vices, and fetch the other two myself, before our guests have a chance to regroup. After all… even if she does wake up, she won't get far with the hangover she has coming."
Diablo let out a squawk that might have been laughter and swooped down to perch on his mistress's shoulder. "See you soon, my Sleeping Beauty," Maleficent smirked. In a swirl of her night-black cloak, she was gone.
Laxus wasn't having a particularly good day either.
First, the Raijinshuu had gone and landed themselves in hospital in a rash display of heroism. To think that he was supposed to be the reckless one! Their injuries had hung over him like a ghoul hitching a ride on his shoulders; their sacrifices put yet more pressure on the outcome of a war where the stakes had already been high enough.
He'd avenged them, though. He'd beaten the Machias of the Spriggan Twelve that had hurt them, even though every spark he'd summoned had expended a little more of the electricity that powered his heartbeats and every strike he'd landed had invited death a little further into his body. As if that wasn't enough, he'd then been flung straight into a battle against the ghost of Hades, no assistance, no support, no acknowledgement for his win.
Next thing he knew, someone had dropped Fiore and superglued it back together in the wrong shape, and he'd ended up entirely alone in the middle of a desert.
He was almost glad when, shortly after, a wave of golden light had ground the mockery of his homeland back into dust, and he'd opened his eyes to find himself here.
Wherever here was.
At first glance, it looked like he was back in the Fairy Tail guildhall. After the chaos of the last few minutes, however, he was not so quick to trust his surroundings. The more his eyes roamed, with the sensitivity of a Dragon Slayer and the suspicion of a man who had just fought two gruelling battles back to back, the more he started to notice the anomalies.
The guildhall – the real guildhall – was not made from this thick, impressive stone. Rather, it was built out of the cheapest wood money could buy. Gramps had been choosing pragmatism over appearances ever since Natsu and the other troublemakers had come into their own. They'd painted over the wood in bright and welcoming colours in an attempt to make the place feel more homely, but it was no match for the enormous tapestries which enveloped those stone walls in comfort. Each one portrayed a moment from the guild's recent history – their victory in the Grand Magic Games, their triumph over the demons of Tartaros, the rescue of Gramps from Alvarez – captured in a medium that the guild could never have afforded.
Fabric crests in bold primary colours fluttered down the length of the main hall, half of them bearing Fairy Tail's mark and half of them with emblems he'd never seen before, not even amongst the other guilds of Fiore. Six huge fires roared in six well-fed grates. Above the largest one, a polished shield as blue as the unexplored ocean quartered by a cross of silver was hung with pride.
It looked as though someone had attempted to recreate the Fairy Tail guildhall in the great hall of a castle. An old castle, of which only two varieties still existed in Fiore: the ones through which tourists were herded, and the ones which occasionally cropped up on guild Request Boards because some monster had moved in.
This was neither. It was both old and new, medieval in style yet bustling with life. The wooden tables wouldn't have been out of place in the real guildhall, assembled into one long line as they often would be for parties, but someone had appropriated them for grander purposes. Rather than an array of finger food, most of which would end up on the floor as soon as the inevitable brawl broke out, the tables bore a feast fit for a king – or perhaps several kings. Succulent roast hogs gleamed as brightly as the golden goblets in the firelight; rich wine flowed freely from bottle to chalice in the hands of near-invisible servants.
Around this table sat two dozen people. Wealth dripped from the earlobes of the ladies and glistened on the fingers of the gentlemen. Fur shawls and ermine-trimmed cloaks remained despite the generous heat of the fireplaces, for their purpose had never been the warmth of their owners, but the display of their riches. A scan of their faces confirmed what their clothes had already told him: none of these people were members of Fairy Tail.
Laxus himself was sat near the centre of the table. Next to him was a portly man wearing a large golden crown, and next to him was a thin man wearing an even larger crown, yet for all the blatant one-upmanship, the laughter that passed between the two as they clinked goblets was genuine.
In fact, the whole room was bright and warm, and Laxus thought that the fires had little to do with it.
Which begged the question: why on earth had the enemy sent him to this bizarre parody of his guildhall? Why not a pit of crocodiles, or the inside of a volcano – or even just left him where Universe One had landed him, the middle of some godforsaken desert?
It felt like he'd skipped the rest of the war and gone straight to the victory party. In fact, when he closed his eyes and let the atmosphere wash over him, he could almost believe he was in the real guildhall. It was bright and warm; there was laughter like he'd not truly heard since Gramps had disbanded the guild a year ago. Laughter that hadn't returned when Fairy Tail had. Laughter that told him everything was going to be okay again.
It was so easy to just sink into it. He'd done enough, hadn't he? He'd played his part; he'd avenged his teammates and taken out one of the Spriggan Twelve. Someone else could deal with the others.
It was fine, just fine, for him to take a step back and rest for a while…
A jolt of electricity whipped up his arm.
His eyes shot open. The six great fires were gone; gloom reared in the empty firepits. The hall was dead and cold. Only the table and its feast remained as they were – but without the firelight, the roast hogs were shadowy crouching creatures, and the ornate chalices were tributes buried alongside some dead ruler.
All around him, the kings and princes and nobles lay still and silent. Just moments ago – or at least, he hoped it had only been moments, but the heartbeat thundering in his ears wasn't so sure – they had been laughing, drinking, cheering. Now they slumped in their chairs like broken puppets.
Laxus stood suddenly. The last of his drowsiness fell beneath the trampling hooves of alarm. He kicked his chair away and stepped back from the table, almost tripping over the sword hanging from his waist as he did so.
Why was he wearing a sword?
A high, cold purr of a voice rang through the hollowness of the hall. "This is why I always prefer curses to enchantments. You may have to jump through the hoops to get a curse to activate, but once you do, it's infallible. Enchantments, though… they can be resisted."
This last word became a hiss that slithered down his spine.
Try as he might, Laxus could find no trace of the speaker in the gloom. "Show yourself!" he commanded.
A green fire burst to life in the largest firepit, beneath the blue-and-silver shield. The brighter it burned, the colder the room became, until in a crack of winter, like the roof caving beneath the weight of snow, the blaze flared and faded to reveal a woman.
There was nothing human about her. Her skin was ghostlight-green, her eyes a sickly yellow, and the flowing cloak that enveloped her was pitch black, trimmed with ragged purple. She was a bruise in the fabric of reality; she was twisted, she was wrong, and she revelled in it, stepping out of the fireplace with total self-assurance, holding herself as tall as once had the kings who now slept like lambs under her enchantment.
Laxus had fought many villains in his time, but never had he met one who radiated such joyful evil.
"Who are you?" Laxus growled. If she was one of the Spriggan Twelve – and with an aura like that, how could she not be? – he needed a name to cross off the list of the defeated once he beat her, shattered this illusory castle-guildhall hybrid, and returned to Fairy Tail.
"Why, they call me Maleficent." She gave a chilling smile. "And I know who you are, princeling. You're the one who is going to bring me the Blessing of the Fairies."
Blessing of the Fairies? What was that; another secret of the guild that Gramps had never told him about? Bitterness curled in Laxus's stomach.
Not that he was going to let her know that he didn't have a clue what she was talking about. He'd done it against his father, when Ivan had been after Lumen Histoire; he could do it against Alvarez, too. "You're not getting anything from me."
"Oh, we'll see about that."
She spread her arms wide and emerald flames flared up behind her. The shadows roiled and twisted in their sickly light – and then they weren't shadows at all, but vines. Monstrous thorny things, they grew at an incredible rate, churning through the flagstones like paper. The ceiling trembled, and Laxus knew there were even more of them crawling over the outside of the fake guildhall, imposing a hundred years of neglect in a handful of seconds.
Then, tendrils twitching, thorns slicing blade-like through the air, they came for him.
They were met with an expression of pure disdain. Laxus raised his hand to fry them out of existence.
But not a single spark flew from his fingertips.
A thorny vine lashed at him and he jumped backwards, pure instinct keeping him moving while his thoughts reeled in the void where his magic should have been.
Maleficent's high cackle filled the air. Laxus gritted his teeth and tried to dredge up a trickle of the power that had once raged rampant within him. Nothing.
Nothing! How could there be nothing? No thrumming of the dragon lacrima beneath his skin; no static crackling in his footprints or electric fields bending to his will. He had only just got his full power back, snatched from the jaws of the Magic Barrier Particles that had been draining his life and reputation for the last year, and now this?
He dodged another attack, using nothing but muscles and sinew when he should have been able to flash between them as a vector of energy. His feet felt clumsy on the floor, weighed down not only by his physical form, but by the dread of his realization.
Then he remembered. There had been a spark of electricity. Just one; a flash that had awoken him when he'd been on the verge of falling under Maleficent's enchantment.
How had that happened? As he wove between the vines, he forced himself to replay those few hazy moments. He had been sat at the long table, drifting into sleep, when… when his hand had slipped from the table and nudged the sword he did not recall putting on.
That was the key. It had to be.
He seized the hilt of the sword and pulled.
It didn't move an inch.
"Seriously?" he exclaimed. His eyes flashed with indignation and sheer disbelief. With both hands now, he grasped the sword, pulling like his life depended on it… to no avail.
The magic sword hanging innocuously from his belt was well and truly stuck in its scabbard.
No, Laxus was not having a good day.
In fact, he had had quite enough of this.
Maleficent's cackling hit fever pitch. Laxus vaulted over the feast table, seizing a carving knife as he flew, and then turned and let it fly in one smooth motion. It sank into Maleficent's bony arm.
Her laughter cut off in a cry of pain. "Why, you little pest!"
A second knife had already found its way into Laxus's hand. Furious that he had been reduced to this, he broke into a run, ducking, diving, relentless through the thorns. He broke out of the storm in a roll, sprung to his feet, and thrust the carving knife into the villain's heart.
It bounced off.
The thrown knife had pierced her flesh, but this one failed to do so, and as he struck again, the reason became clear. She had no flesh. Not any more. Only scales, materializing out of the violet nightfall of her cloak.
Laxus backed away, hissing a wordless curse through his teeth as a dragon took form before him. Lightning Dragon Slayer magic would have really come in handy about now, but no; all he had was a knife used for carving a hog roast, and a mysterious sword that couldn't be drawn and thus was about as useful as a prosthetic tail.
He flung the knife anyway. It revolved once in the air, but his aim was off; it bounced harmlessly from the scales a good inch to the side of her wicked yellow eye.
Then green fire swirled between her ravenous teeth, and Laxus flung himself aside.
The fireball blasted a hole in the wall behind him. Smoke and ash filled the air, and he threw his arm over his mouth as he stumbled on, trying not to breathe any in. Wherever those emerald flames touched, the stone turned black and mangled, melted and re-solidified in a grotesque parody of medieval architecture.
What now? He could go for another knife, but he didn't have much hope of being able to slay a dragon with cutlery.
The flash of hungry light on blue metal caught his eye. In the pile of smoking debris from Maleficent's last attack, he thought he saw the corner of that strange silver-crossed shield that had hung above the firepit, the only thing still intact from the blast. If it had survived her flames, it must surely have been well-crafted – perhaps even magical.
Well, it was the best idea he had. When the fire rained down again, he went for it. He flung himself behind the shield where it sat half-buried by the slag and made himself as small as he could. Green flames surged above him, around him, but somehow, miraculously, none of them touched him. The air he sucked in was cool. When he reached out, curious, the back of the shield was stone-cold beneath his fingers, and he was cold too, even though the flagstones around him began to ripple from the heat.
At last, the barrage came to an end. For a moment, just a moment, smoke obscured the rearing dragon. Laxus tried to lift the shield, but it wouldn't move. No surprises there. It was probably welded to the floor by now.
There was nothing else for it. He abandoned the shield… and slipped out through the hole Maleficent had made in the wall.
He didn't particularly want to run away.
But he had to be realistic, and while he may have overcome impossible odds in the past with the power of the dragon of lightning in his hands, he'd certainly never done it with naught but a prank sword. He had no idea where he was, where anyone else was, or what the hell was going on. On top of that, the thought of dying for a reason he didn't even understand was just too much to bear.
So, run he did.
With any luck, he'd find someone who could explain what was happening before another monster of myth tried to murder him.
In the ruined hall of the castle, Maleficent leaned heavily on her staff, her face twisted into a snarl. Though she was no longer in dragon form, an observer would have been forgiven for thinking they could see unholy green fire still gleaming between her jaws.
A clatter of pebbles caught her attention. A cat was picking its way through the debris. Its light footsteps carried the nonchalance of all felines, crossing the uneven swirls of barely re-solidified stone with perfect balance. Even from a distance, it was clear that its grey fur was thick and luxurious, its fluffy tail swishing like a superstar's feather boa. Though it did not have the look of a hunter, it moved at ease through the smoky destruction; it held itself like a deity amongst the carrion.
There it sat beside the half-buried shield, and it spoke. "Look at you, going out all guns blazing on the first encounter. Were you that determined to get a head start on the rest of us?"
Maleficent drew herself up haughtily and did not dignify the taunt with a response.
The cat blinked once, its yellow-green eyes frighteningly similar to Maleficent's own. "Admit it, Maleficent. Your opening gambit failed. You tried to do too much too quickly, before you understood the true nature of what you were up against, or what you sought to obtain."
Still, Maleficent said nothing. With a flutter of wings, Diablo descended from his hiding place in the rafters and perched atop his mistress's staff, glaring at the cat in solidarity.
"Oh, don't look at me like that," it chuckled, in a most un-cat-like manner. "I'm not only here to gloat. I'm here to offer you a deal. A partnership, if you will."
"I have told you before, and I will tell you again," Maleficent sniffed, flicking an invisible speck of dirt from the flowing folds of her cloak. "Fairies do not form partnerships with mere mortals."
The cat's tail flicked, no more offended than it already was from having to stand in this horrid place. "A mere mortal I may be, but I have seen terrible truths in the Magic Mirror. Truths I would be willing to share with you, if you put aside your futile quest to seize magics beyond even your comprehension as if this were some sort of race, and agree to work together."
"Bah!" the evil fairy cried. "You only want this magic for yourself, and I am not such a fool as to hand over my advantages without a fight. I will obtain the Blessings of the Fairies. I advise you to stick to your little games of human politics, and leave great magic to those who deserve it."
"Very well," the cat yawned, unconcerned, in that voice that wasn't its own. "I look forward to seeing how many times you'll fail before you come crawling back."
A/N: No prizes for guessing who Sleeping Beauty is...
Incidentally, some of the characters are cast into fairytales for straightforward reasons, whereas some of them are for meaningful plot / character development reasons (and indeed the characters themselves won't understand why they've been put into those roles until a fair way through their character arcs). The other half of their corresponding canon pair is then cast by default.
However, sometimes the casting is just because I really want Maleficent to be in the story, which means someone's gotta be Sleeping Beauty and someone's gotta be Prince Phillip...
No, I don't ship Cana and Laxus at all (I'm not sure many people do) but they both need to be in the story for other reasons, which is why they're one of the 'pairs' here. The fact that they're *not* a couple back in the real world is important for the story. The others are all proper canon pairs though, promise! ~CS