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Fracturing Skies v2

DGM 791-204

Dark Souls AU

Arc 1 The First Change

Chapter 5 Power of the Flame

Fracturing Skies

Conversation Guide

Note here that I am keeping the overall guide the same as the rest of the Fracturing Skies stories.

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Normal text.

Thinking.*feelings*

/*instincts*/

"Spoken out loud."

'Magic Weapon speaking. *feelings*'

'White Zangetsu speaking. (the true Zangetsu) *feelings*' This will also be how Soul Eater Weapons communicate with their wielder when in Weapon form.

'Old Man Zangetsu speaking. *feelings*' This will also be how Soul Eater Weapons communicate their feelings via their wavelengths. Meisters can communicate mentally with their Weapons in this manner as well.

'Junior's personas speaking when inside his mind. *feelings*' (I'll get into this in the story, but any 'voice' that is not in control but is inside his mind speaks this way. I'll tag each voice in a way so you all can understand what is going on, but there aren't enough bold/underline/italics combinations to make 49 separate ways of writing and this site doesn't allow for different fonts. Sorry)

'Werewolf 'mind' speaking.'

"Speaking a different language, but it is written in English."

Mental communication outside an imprint. *feelings*

Essence ribbon/Spirit ribbon sensing. *feelings*

'Essence Aura/Spiritual Pressure sensing. *feelings*'

"Imprint communication. *feelings*"

"Pack Link. *feelings*"

I think they are thinking this with their face. Also used for telepathic glimpses of information, like when one individual reads another's mind.

"Recalling what someone else said."

I am dwelling on what happened. *I am dwelling on how I felt.*

"I am recalling what I said."

I am recalling something I read to myself. Blood Memories are written this way. Recalling rumors I heard. *feelings from Blood Memories*

"I am reiterating what I read or heard about out loud. Blood Memories are talked about out loud this way. Rumors are shared this way." (rumors)

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION/ANNOUNCEMENTS

*"speaking through a communication device (NOT like nonverbal communication or announcements over an intercom"*

/copied words to pull the reader to the next scene, oftentimes used when having flashbacks that can distract from a current event. /

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Without further adieu, I do NOT own Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Avatar, Yu Yu Hakusho, Soul Eater, D Gray Man, nor anything in the Stargate universe (books, movies, and tv shows included). I do NOT own the world of Dark Souls, nor anything therein.

I ONLY own the characters from Chronicles of Seraphia, as well as my own twists to each of the original characters and timelines, and any OCs I add.

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I am marking this story with M for Mature.

There will be swearing, suicidal thoughts, torture and extreme blood and gore and other MATURE themes. This is NOT a complete list, just a heads up on some of the more common things in this particular story. There is a REASON that it is being marked M for MATURE. If you are squeamish, easily triggered, hate certain types of stories, etc. then you should MOVE ON.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

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ARC 1: THE FIRST CHANGE

CHAPTER 5: POWER OF THE FLAME

D GRAY MAN AU/DARK SOULS AU

Timeline: 791-204

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Lavi eyed them skeptically, weighing whether he thought they were telling the truth or not. He saw nothing but sincerity in Allen's eyes. How he knew that, he wasn't sure. A nagging instinct, perhaps? Or maybe it was just a lost memory rising to the surface. He wasn't sure, couldn't say for certain, but he chose to believe them, for now. The only person that had been outwardly hostile was Kanda and even though Nea had frightened him earlier, he recalled that the other boy hadn't actually raised a weapon against him. And Lenalee was currently watching him with a hopeful look tempered by what he imagined was a healthy dose of reality based on what he had seen thus far. She was seemingly optimistic but not overly so.

Therefore, he chose to believe they were being sincere, and he could only hope that he wasn't misplacing his trust.

For a moment, all they did was stand around and stare at each other, Lavi using the moment to size everyone up. He wondered how long he had known them, if he would ever regain those memories, but decided to discard that worry as unhelpful. It wouldn't do him any good to fret. Would that cause him to forget more that he couldn't afford to? Could the very act of trying too hard push him into going hollow? It concerned him, ultimately not knowing what would happen, so he would just have to have faith that it would all work out in the end.

He choked on a snort of amusement. Somehow, the idea of putting 'faith' in his situation was funny.

Lenalee eyed him curiously while Kanda busied himself with staring out over the dead bodies. Lavi didn't know why he chose to do that. It wasn't like those hollows would be getting up anytime soon.

"I think we should link ourselves again, since it's the first time this cycle," Allen suggested, the phrase he used making Lavi crinkle his forehead in confusion.

"What do you mean by 'link'? And you've mentioned a cycle before. What does that mean?" Lavi asked, voicing his questions.

"All in good time," Nea replied, gold and silver eyes twinkling with amusement.

Kanda growled, "Tch, let's get this over with," and stalked over so that he was standing around the small flame in the center of the otherwise empty room. Lenalee joined him with a faint smile gracing her face. Lavi looked at Allen and Nea expectantly.

Grabbing Lavi's hand with a gentle touch and interlacing the digits, Allen lifted their linked fingers toward the flame. Lenalee and Kanda moved simultaneously, joining them in the action. While part of him wanted to pull away, another deeper facet was overly curious about what they were doing. He felt the heat of the fire lick his skin, threatening to burn him. Then, he felt his and Allen's hands pass through the rising embers, power washing over them as a result.

For a moment, Lavi's vision swam. When it cleared, he noticed that Kanda and Lenalee were already leaving the room, launching themselves at a group of hollows that were suddenly outside. Blinking rapidly to clear his blurry sight, Lavi noted how the dead hollows littering the ground had been replaced with fresh reinforcements, as if nothing had been slaughtered before. He shook his head, wondering how long he had been incoherent and concluded that it couldn't have been that long with how Kanda and Lenalee were moving.

Simply put, it hadn't nearly been long enough for the hollows to dispose of the dead, scrub the splattered blood from the stone, and replace them with equal numbers (not that he particularly believed that they would do that; they didn't seem that smart). So, what was going on?

His question must have appeared on his face because Allen elaborated, "Interacting with the flame in an area…resets the hollows." He gestured to the world beyond, and Lavi suddenly realized that one of the white-haired boy's hands was wrapped around his elbow, supporting him until he stopped swaying. He hadn't noticed how unsteady he was, but the feeling was quickly retreating. "The flame undoes any damage done to us, but it also does the same to any enemy we had previously slain—with a few minor exceptions." Lavi rolled his right shoulder, no longer feeling the pull where he had been stabbed.

"Bit of a double-edged sword then, huh?" Lavi commented, gently pulling his arm from Allen's grasp. He stepped around the fire and tentatively glanced out the room's entrance, seeing Kanda and Lenalee on the landing below shredding their would-be attackers, the piles of corpses surrounding them growing by the second.

"It has its uses," Nea replied.

Lavi glanced back to look at him but couldn't read the other boy's expression. Swallowing the sudden unease that he felt tighten his stomach, he turned his attention back outside and cautiously crossed the planks to the building where the hollow archers had once stood. Nea followed. Glancing around, Lavi noted that Kanda hadn't shot and killed the hollow bombers on the scaffolding to the left, and since they made no effort to approach, he dismissed them as being immediately dangerous.

Nodding to himself for his conclusion, since he didn't think that Kanda would have left a threat unchallenged based on how he had behaved thus far, he turned and asked Allen, "What kinds of hollows does the flame not bring back?"

He had asked Allen, but it was Nea that answered, "Not all enemies here are hollows. I won't bore you with the specifics, but certain stronger enemies don't respawn when the flame is activated. We'll tell you when we run across one like that."

Lavi gritted his teeth, frustrated with the non-answer, but he supposed that if he didn't want to go 'hollow', he would have to bear with it for a while. It was irritating, more than anything, to so desire for his memories to return but be unable to do anything to call them.

It wasn't long before Kanda and Lenalee joined them at the landing, but before Kanda could pull out a bow and shoot the hollows on the scaffolding, Lenalee handed one to Lavi.

"Here," she offered, handing a nondescript bow to him. "Having a means to attack from a range is helpful here."

Lavi took a bundle of arrows that she handed him next as he asked, "Why would that be?" He had watched Kanda and Lenalee fight hordes of hollows in the thick of it while Kanda had only ever used a bow once: for the hollow bombers overlooking the next path.

"Don't be a moron," Kanda snapped, glaring at him.

Lavi rolled his eyes (although the right one was hidden by an eyepatch) and tried not to snarl back. If Kanda was this abrasive all the time, he wondered how many times they had brawled. It was hard not to fire back at him. He was so easy to rile up.

A memory flashed before his eyes in response.

"Do not call me that!" Lavi couldn't help himself. He rolled on the ground in a fit of laughter. It had taken him a while to learn the Japanese man's name, the swordfighter insisting on being called by his family name instead of his given. Lavi knew that part of it was culturally ingrained even if the rest was simply a quirk of his easy to anger fellow Undead.

Fighting wouldn't have done anything more than give them unnecessary injuries and force them to use the Fire to heal, undoing their progress at the same time. Therefore, he chose to make everything a joke, ignoring how the innocence katana, Mugen, was angled dangerously toward his throat. Lavi knew the other man was all bark and no bite, even if Kanda didn't seem to hold back his deadly swings with his sword.

Beside them, Nea smirked.

Lavi blinked, eyes flitting between Kanda and Nea, before he smiled wide. He knew the vision he had seen was a memory. It felt too right, too accurate and fitting for how he thought and categorized the world for it to be anything but. Holding the bow and settling the quiver on his left hip, he commented playfully, "I didn't know you cared so much, Yu."

Kanda's retaliatory strike was fast, but Lavi was already dancing out of the way, chuckling at the other man's reaction while keeping an eye on his footing so that he didn't careen off the building and into the void. A death that pathetic was not how he wanted it all to end.

"Do not call me that!" Kanda snarled. Lavi's chuckles devolved into hysterical laughter as a wrong step sent him face first into the remains of the three hollow archers. The swordsman hovered menacingly above him, the sword Lavi recognized as Mugen from his memory aimed with deadly purpose toward his throat. Lavi laughed harder, and the more he laughed, the lighter he felt, like a heavy weight that had settled itself over his chest since he woke up was starting to lift. He felt real hope for the first time. He remembered something.

If he remembered one thing, then it was possible that all his memories were still in his mind somewhere, right?

Lenalee sighed, sounding exasperated, "Of course, the first thing you remember is Kanda's name." She offered him a hand, ignoring how he was now covered in blood. He hesitated before she gripped the wrist of the hand not currently hanging onto the bow that she had given him and pulled him to his feet, ignoring the sticky red mess with what appeared to be practiced ease. He supposed that if their lives were like this all the time that he had probably learned to dismiss it before, too.

He had time to learn it again.

He offered Lenalee a quirky smile as Kanda sheathed Mugen with an irritated grumble. Beside them, Nea grinned, saying, "It was because of you that I discovered how enjoyable Kanda is to irritate. He does the same to Allen all the time. It felt right to give him a piece of his own medicine."

Kanda rolled his eyes, folding his arms across his chest, probably in an effort to keep himself from using his hands to strangle someone. "Just hurry up and shoot the damned hollows, Rabbit."

Lavi didn't let Kanda's nickname of him affect him as he raised the gifted weapon and released arrows until the bomb throwers were dead. He wasn't as good a shot as the swordsman (there were a few arrows that missed by a lot), but he put that down to lack of practice. If bows were as important as Lenalee had made them seem, he had a feeling that he would be getting a lot of practice.

They moved down the narrow bridge and into the room he had been in when he had stupidly gotten into Nea's face, the one with a locked door that wouldn't open. But this time, Lavi was in the lead, tense as he held his hammer in front of him with a two-handed grip that was slick with sweat. Silently, the redhead hoped that that wouldn't affect the pyromancer's glove fitted on his left palm. Kanda and Lenalee hung back, giving himself and Allen room to maneuver.

He wasn't sure if their distant presence was reassuring or pressuring. He had the distinct feeling that he had to learn (relearn, technically) how to fight and that there was both the expectation that he would fumble a few times and the belief that he would run back towards the pair hanging heavily in the air. Part of him wanted to reassure them (Lenalee and Allen more so than Kanda) that he would learn just fine and be alright, but another facet clung to the understanding that he would take a few licks before he got the hang of it. He wasn't necessarily looking forward to the pain, but he had a feeling that he would learn to ignore it.

Now, he thought that he understood what Nea had meant by the respawning hollows having a use. He just hoped that he didn't get himself killed before he learned something.

He remembered seeing four dead hollows in the room at the end of the bridge, but somehow, that fact didn't prepare him for the eventuality of facing four enemies at once. Allen was hanging back about midway across the bridge, probably not to crowd him too much though the other boy hadn't said anything.

The four humanoids shifted their blank gazes as he crossed the threshold of the room, pitch black eyes settling on him with a mad hunger. He eyed them warily, debating how he wanted to handle them. The bridge entered the room at an angle, almost making it diamond-shaped if one looked at it from his vantage point. One hollow wearing rags for armor with a small, round wooden shield and a dagger was in the righthand corner. Two hollows wearing nothing but thin strips of cloth to protect their non-existent modesty bore daggers and stood in front of the door that wouldn't open directly in front of him, although their lanky frames kept him from fully seeing it. And to his left was a hollow wearing decrepit armor with a diamond-shaped metal shield and a sword.

They all stared at him and didn't make a move towards him, but he had the distinct feeling that if he did anything at all, they would all lunge for him at once. Therefore, which should he strike down first? Subtly switching stances, he freed his left hand so that he could use the fire magic that Allen had taught him. He didn't have a shield, which left his only option being to hit them hard and fast. Frowning, he took a deep breath to prepare himself, then darted in, heading right first.

His hammer was light in his hands, vibrating in his palm, but it still hit with more force than he had expected, knocking the little shield aside with a single strike. A second attack flattened the hollow to the floor. The two naked (mostly naked, anyways) hollows were quick to rush him, though, daggers pulled back for a devastating attack. He spun on one heel, noting that the other shield hollow was acting more conservative, and used his pyromancer's flame to blast both dagger wielders with Combustion. They collapsed in a tangle of limbs, the smell of burnt flesh gracing his nose. Wrinkling his nostrils at the odor, he watched the other hollow slowly amble closer.

The other hollow hid behind its shield, cautiously circling him. At least, he thought that it was caution, but there was no intelligent light in his foe's eyes. Briefly, he wondered how much of it was muscle memory on their part and how much of the person they had been remained. Ultimately, it didn't matter, but it was a curiosity that was steadily growing the more he watched it stalk him. Eventually, though, it got either impatient or thought it had seen an opening because it reared back to stab him, and with a burst of inspiration, he knocked the blade aside before blasting it with Combustion.

Flailing, the hollow collapsed, dead.

Behind him, Allen started clapping with a slow cadence, making Lavi flinch and spin to face him. After a heart-stopping moment, Lavi released his tension, lowering his weapons in the process. He was wound tighter than the drawstring on the bow Lenalee had given him. He hadn't realized how tense he was until Allen inadvertently revealed it.

"I forgot how good you were at parrying," Nea commented thoughtfully, abruptly ending Allen's clapping. The sound echoed over the buildings below, which Lavi thought partially didn't exist due to Allen's earlier explanation. It was hard to know which were simple mirages and which still existed. It all looked the same to his eyes.

He shrugged, asking, "Am I?" feeling the blood spray from the hollows he had killed (plus the bit from his tumble into the corpses of the three dead archers earlier) cool on his body, stiffening the fabric of his clothes. A dark green cloak covered a rough spun short-sleeve shirt, a sharp contrast to the bright orange (and now speckled with crimson) scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. His pants had it worse, the cloth hardening around the knees, but it wasn't too cumbersome to work with.

"Looked impressive to me," Lenalee chimed in, startling him. He hadn't seen her behind Allen and Nea.

"Tch, I've seen better," Kanda retorted, his dark eyes not settling anywhere near Lavi's face.

Nea rolled his eyes before Allen stepped closer to Lavi and asked, "Shall we keep going?"

Feeling that he was settled after the fight, Lavi nodded and replied, "Sure."

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AUTHOR'S NOTES:

I'm getting a couple weeks off, so I may end up writing a little bit more for each of the stories. Dunno, yet.

Next one to be posted in will be the Bloodborne story.

Thank you to everyone that follows/favorites my stories! I really appreciate it!