Chapter 65:

Unlike the rest of Bianca's workshop of horrors, this was truly a cave. The concrete gave way to stone floors slicked with mineral rich water. Stalactites and stalagmites jutted above and below like ancient, time-smoothed teeth as they entered the grand empty cavern. As Laxus lighted the place, they began to see the burned remains of candles but also virgin ones waiting untouched and yellowed in the darkness. There was a nonstop echo around them of drips and drops and tiny splashes as water filtered constantly around them. They lingered just in the entrance as Davian wrapped his hand, muttering fervently about how he should have known to bring more bandages.

"Blood, it's always blood. It can never be something painless…"

Davian glided to his side and the two peered around, neither very willing to forge brazenly into the dark. All at once he felt Davian stiffen beside him. The man turned and walked swiftly over to a bag sitting on the ground near a collection of unused candles. With a masterful lack of noise, he dipped down and lifted what looked to be a peach from its insides.

"Hungry again?" Laxus teased dryly and Davian smirked.

"As much as I do enjoy a sweet peach, these seem to be a bit overripe," Davian's voice was quiet and he turned over one of them to reveal the soft underside, heavy with juice and with a few small chunks missing, "These were left recently… not more than a few days."

"How can you tell?" Laxus crossed his arms and noticed that Davian hesitated slightly, "Stupid question."

Davian glanced over at him and Laxus noticed that his pupils were no longer recognizable slits. They were dilated and large, almost consuming the yellows of his irises, and perfect for seeing deep into the darkness where Laxus couldn't. His tongue flashed out.

"No… no, you just don't understand the information in front of you…" he muttered, rising and wiping some juice from the side of his hand, "Fresh peaches have a short counter life… only about three or four days before they begin to rot. We can determine by their state of decay that they've been sitting here for a few days. What's odd is that no one came back to get them."

Laxus shrugged, "Maybe they were going to come back and got held up?"

"Perhaps…" Davian conceded, "or maybe they left in a hurry."

"Anyone else been down here since the investigation?"

"Not that I am aware," he took a step and then stopped, glancing back over to Laxus. He spoke softly and calmly, his good hand on his blade, "I'm going to establish a perimeter."

"A… perimeter?" Laxus wrinkled his nose at him and Davian shrugged, unperturbed.

"This is uncharted territory. We need a safe space to return to. It will only take a moment," his figure warped and as soon as Laxus blinked he was gone completely.

Laxus growled, "Just leave me alone, then."

"I won't leave the room," his voice was warped, a mix of a whisper and a hiss, and hearing it made Laxus's skin prickle. He let out a tense sigh.

While he waited, Laxus gazed about him, trying to take in as much information as he could. At the end of the open space they were in, there was a blackness that receded seemingly forever. He moved forward, attempting to see anything that wasn't perpetual night before him. He could make out nothing. The inky pitch that stretched on was unlike anything he'd ever known. It wasn't temporary like the shadows of a room, waiting patiently the light of the sun to dash them away. This was a permanent darkness, physical and metaphysical all at once, and instead of waiting its turn to recede back into corners with the dawning of a new day it waited with baited breath, watching, and ready to reclaim the space that was accustomed to its cold grasp.

The longer Laxus stood alone, his light alone the only thing keeping him from being consumed by the lurking shadow, the more he became aware he was a trespasser here. There was a need between his shoulders, crawling with fingers long and pointed and pricking the flesh of his back and neck, that told him to leave. To stay was to arouse something slumbering here in the depths, something that dare not be disturbed. Again, he got the sense that he was being watched from the shadows.

Briefly, he wondered what he should do if they actually ran into someone. He hadn't thought they'd find recent activity and so hadn't been too thoughtful about whether he was planning to ask questions first or later. He supposed it would boil down to if they attacked him first or if Davian got in his way. His stomach bunched nervously as he thought of what they might find. He rubbed the coin in his pocket. He didn't want to get too hopeful lest he be dashed again, but this was something. Even if he didn't find definitive proof to get Gajeel out of prison, maybe he'd at least get a new direction.

He could always just go for Father himself…

Getting that sort of information, though, he only knew one person who could give it to him. From the words spoken by Davian himself, there would be only one way to get something useful and Laxus wasn't sure he could stomach it. His magic was frightening, he knew, and easily modified for things like torture. But he wasn't a sadistic man. To cause someone enough pain that they'd do anything to just be relieved from it… the thought alone made his stomach turn sour. No… he wasn't nearly desperate enough for that.

And what was worse, he was starting to grow attached to Davian. He was narcissistic, secretive and had a tendency to be obdurate, but in his heart he had kindness. He was helping Laxus despite his aversion to getting Gajeel out of jail. Laxus wasn't so thick headed to not realize, too, that he was directly going against Father's wishes. With the way he so feared and respected him, Laxus couldn't help but wonder what could have inspired Davian to take his side.

Or maybe Laxus was just thinking too much into it. It was Davian's job, after all, to get to the bottom of things. And as he had bragged, he was very goodat his job. Maybe that was all it took for him to travel miles out of his way with a man who routinely threatened his life to dig through dust and death to find something that may or may not even exist.

He glanced about him, trying to find some hint that Davian was still around somewhere. There was nothing, just stillness and the quiet dripping of ground water as it collected on the tips of stalactites and tumbled to the rock below. It was worrisome how undetectable he was. Fighting enemies he couldn't see or hear was something Laxus had yet to put a great amount of thought into. When his magical aura was strong and flowing around him, he was able to sense when Davian moved into it but now that he was calm and deactivated he couldn't. He couldwalk around fully ready for a fight, but his aura was so strong that he'd be sensed far sooner than he'd be able to sense his enemies. That wouldn't be a great thing either. He needed to think of something, lest he traipse into a den of Davians and never even realize they were there.

He sighed, thumbing at his coin.

Slowly, as he waited and pondered, the thought arose from something Gajeel had said. What about bioelectrical fields? Laxus was able to sense other lightning magics and like a thumbprint match their individuality to their casters. He even felt a sort of buzzin his body when he was near something that generated large amounts of electricity, could feel thunder pulse in his marrow when lightning struck close. Why couldn'the, then, sense bioelectricity? He supposed he'd never really tried, but also he was constantly surrounded by it, by his own, by his comrades, and anything that walked or moved or breathed. Like his own heartbeat, he was just numb to it, but that didn't mean he couldn't make himself aware.

He crossed his arms and set his feet to the ground. Taking in a deep breath, he closed his eyes, and just felt. At first, there was nothing. He was just standing there in the cool damp, breathing slowly and calmly as his heart pounded loud and steady in his chest. Then, as he searched for it, he started to become aware of… something. Energy, strong and startlingly precise, that zinged up and down his spine. It was so subtle that when he was surprised by it he immediately lost it and it took his full concentration to find it again, his own bioelectric field. The more he recognized it, concentrated on it, the more it stuck out to him that he'd ever missed it his entire life. It was everywhere; strong and fluid and extending out from him a few feet. It perpetuated everything about him, moved with him, lived and breathed with him. When he opened his eyes he saw nothing but he felt the field.

He was curious but, honestly, now was not the time. It had been a joke when he'd told Gajeel he could fry his entire nervous system but the more he thought about the implications the less he doubted that statement. Disrupting it wouldn't be able to do that, no, but it could cause him to have a heart attack. Actually charging it, putting magicinto it… that was a scary thought. He had no idea what that could do to him or his body. He could very easily end up the example of what not to do with Lightning Magic.

But that wasn't really what he needed to accomplish, was it? He didn't need to draw power from it. He just needed to recognize it in other forms. So that begged the question: could he see Davian now? Or at least sense his presence?

At a quick glance, he again saw nothing. He scanned the darkness, eyed the shadows where his light couldn't quite reach. There was no disturbance, no pulse, no breath. He set his jaw and huffed, once again closing his eyes and concentrating. With his agitation, the energy that radiated off of him became louder, dissonant, and he was blinded by it. He couldn't feel past his own field. He took a breath, steadied his mind and calmed, and tried again.

As he settled, he began to pick out… something. It wasn't bright or strong, but it was there…

And it was close… closer…

Moving… jittering… throbbing… like something… like something that wasn't right…

And somehow, as his own field brushed against it, he just knewinnately that it was furious…

It was ageless…

It was hungry…

"What are you doing?" Davian was before him and immediately Laxus felt he'd just been doused in freezing water. Davian's pupils were still dilated like a snake's, large and unsettling and dreadfully inhuman. He had a hand on his hip, his head cocked slightly to the side, and it took a moment for Laxus to realize he had spoken.

Laxus blinked, "Nothing… nothing. D'you find anything?"

He couldn't wrap his mind around what he'd felt. Had it come from Davian? It must have, unless there was something else in the room with them…

"Nothing of interest. No other signs of recent activity, anyway," Laxus noted the way he itched at his wrist. It seemed a nervous action, like maybe the skin was too tight, "Be on guard. Although I didn't see any other signs of recent activity, that doesn't mean someone isn't down here."

He turned to head deeper into the cave, "Stick close. The last thing we need to do is get separated."

…did he transform? Like Rut had? But, when he'd used his glamour with Laxus he hadn't changed. And this was far from the first time Laxus had felt something sinister coming from Davian. It was there in the train, when he'd received Oros's blessing, and when he'd witnessed Davian evoke the blood ritual…

"Aye, sir," Laxus muttered the words, eyeing Davian as he tensed in reaction to it, "Something we say back home."

"Interesting."

Sinister, Laxus thought bitterly, just what is Davian?

They walked cautiously into the darkness, Laxus never deviating his attention far from his companion as they were consumed by the cavern. The cave was strangely alive. Laxus had always thought them to be empty and dead, but here and there were pinkish salamanders lying in small pools or the occasional lizard that skittered into the darkness. Crickets and cockroaches sat in plain sight, along with a strange spider-like creature nearly the size of Laxus's hand that hunted them down quietly.

"What the hell is that?" Laxus growled as something black skittered into their path, frightened by their approach.

"I am a homicide detective, not an entomologist," his nose wrinkled as he regarded it and Laxus noticed he stepped pointedly away from it, "but if I had to wager a guess, some sort of cave spider."

"Not a fan of creepy crawlies?"

Davian flicked his tongue out in agitation, eyeing some stones in anticipation for something to scurry out from them, "Not at all."

"Makes sense… you probably had enough of them when you were like ten, right? Then moved on to eggs and real meat?"

Davian squinted at him, "Tell me, did you research lizard eating habits specifically to mock me or did you come by this knowledge organically?"

Laxus smirked, "Bix had a pet salamander growing up."

"Oh, so you're an expert, then," his voice dripped with sarcasm and he openly rolled his eyes, "Master of Salamanders?"

The phrase incited such an image in Laxus's mind, one of Natsu rather than that of the similarly named lizards prowling around in the shimmery shallow pools, and he found himself stifling a sharp laugh that would have otherwise echoed loudly around them. Davian jumped from him with wide eyes, open gazed fixed on him as he looked him up and down in dismay.

"It's wasn't that funny."

"Salamander is what a guildmate of mine goes by," he sucked in a breath through his teeth, simmering down. Davian scoffed.

"Salamander? Why do Wizards feel the need to use flashy aliases? It reeks of illicit activity."

"Salamander isn't a flashy name," Laxus hummed, "he could have done way worse."

"Oh? Like what? Kurogane?"

"It means Black Steel," Laxus simpered at him, "And he stopped goin' by that name when he left Phantom."

"As you've said before," he snuffed, casting his eyes up a wall glistening with condensation, "And you? What gaudy ti-… tle…"

The two men stopped. In the distance, barely touched by the light of Davian's flashlight, they could see where the path branched in two separate directions. Around the stones to the nearest entrance, Laxus could make out symbols and shapes that held striking similarity to Davian's tattoos. They both stood and listened as the water dripped around them. Tentatively, Laxus sniffed at the air. Amongst the moist and dirt, there was something hiding in the calm and clean of the cavern. Something that made the uneasiness Laxus had left in calm conversation break through to the surface of his mind once again.

Davian's hand was on his sabre and he took a gliding, silent stride forward. He glanced to Laxus and nodded to the darkness ahead of them, lowering his light to the ground and the creatures moving swiftly across it. With agonizing slowness they crept forward, one shaky step after another, all senses pointed ahead and ready. Davian flashed around the bend and his white beam cut the darkness. Again, the men became motionless and the world felt as if it were holding its breath as they followed the white line of light.

This cavern was small, nothing like the grand entrance they'd come into. On the far side of the room there was no wall, just a shelf that receded into darkness filled with pools of water that reflected like mirrors back at them. Rising from stone clearly hewn from the rock face around them, there was a large rectangular slab. Scattered around it were bits of melted candles, rotted fruits in jars and a bowl with a few, glistening gold coins. White cloth was draped across the dais, rising and falling in an unmistakable silhouette. A corpse, shrouded and with arms crossed, waited in quiet peace on the stone.

Davian began rolling up his sleeves.

"What in the hell do you think you're doing?" Laxus hissed, his voice hardly a whisper as Davian stepped forward.

"Investigating a possible crime scene?" Davian's voice bounced around them, undeterred by reverence or solemnity or anything that should have been there. Laxus gritted his teeth.

"It's… it's…"

"It's dead," Davian stated matter-of-factly as he approached it, "If you cannot stomach it, wait there."

Laxus swallowed and bunched his fists. The first step was uneasy but each one after that he tried to convince himself wasn't so bad. Davian's fingers were curling around the lip of the fabric as he made it up the two rough steps, large eyes flickered over to him before returning to their task. Slowly, gently, he eased the fabric down and revealed the shriveled face beneath. Mouth agape as her last breaths had been in horror, blind foggy eyes beseeching at something in the darkness, and black, silky hair fanning out around her, she looked equally terrified and terrifying. Laxus could feel the blood leaving his face as he began to pick out sharp teeth and the bits of flesh around her throat that curled back, exposing nicked ivory bone beneath.

"Aeleora…" the word was a gentle hum on Davian's lips as he slipped the white cloth down farther, exposing clawed hands and pristine white jacket. Laxus drew his eyes up to Davian, startled to see not the sour touch of grief but a shallow indifference that stretched his face long, "She looks so human, doesn't she?"

To Laxus she didn't. There was no way the teeth or the hands could ever be something for him to see as human, but when he remembered Davian and the way he looked when angry, she seemed far more human than he.

"She hated it, you know. She thought it absolutely dreadful to take so much after her mother. She wanted badly to have Father's approval, his attention…" he spoke with the sort of aged reflectiveness Laxus expected from Gramps, the air of someone who knew better but let others strike their own paths nonetheless, "We all want that which we do not have, don't we?"

Laxus didn't know what to say. Standing there over Bianca's remains with her half-brother just a couple feet away, all of the malice and hate and dread he'd felt towards the woman seemed almost wrong. The despicable creature she had become, the horrible things she had done in life, none of these were what Davian knew her as. He only knew the girl, the growing teenager blossoming into cold and cruel woman, who's pursuit for her father's affection turned her into the monster Laxus had been familiar with. He wanted to pity her, to pity Davian for the family he'd been grown with, but the trepidation of his close proximity to a corpse kept him from truly feeling. He felt dank and voiceless like the cave around them, wet and crawling with spiders.

"I'm sorry… for your loss."

Davian pulled himself slowly away, shaking his head dismissively as he reached back for the cloth. He returned the covering and glanced down to the offerings on the floor all around her. He cleared his throat and picked up his tone, shaking of the melancholy like the remains of cobwebs on his shoulders. Laxus could only watch in sordid silence.

"Truly, I'm not sad. The woman was… well she was mad. I wasn't really surprised when I got the news. I'd heard she'd been in undesirable company, it was really only a matter of time…" he tugged at his gloves, looking around him, "What a mess, isn't this? Someone put effort into honoring her but they clearly had no idea what they were doing. She's not even facing north, is she? Ah… well, perhaps she is. I didn't figure we would be buried in the crypts, you know, being halfbloods and all. But truly I didn't expect…"

"Davian," he stopped at hearing Laxus speak and he seemed to brace himself, "it's ok… to grieve."

He turned slowly, looking at Laxus with a guarded expression and lips set in a hard line, "…she did terrible things, Laxus… but of course you know that, don't you? You were having a panic attack earlier, you know, at just the memory. It bothers you, doesn't it? Seeing her here, surrounded by candles and offerings as if she were some saint to be glorified?"

"I'm bothered by being near a dead person, Davian," Laxus stated firmly, looking him square on, "She was your sister. What she did doesn't mean you can't grieve the fact she's gone."

Davian watched him for a time before he turned his back to him, leaving Laxus in near complete darkness as he took the light with him, "Clearly there's nothing of interest here. We should press on."

Laxus hurried after him, fleeing the darkness and what slept within it as much as he was trying to catch up to Davian. He muttered a rude remark about Davian leaving him in the dark but the later didn't acknowledge him in the slightest. He made his displeasure known with a short snarl.

The other fork led them to a small pocket with the tunnel continuing on the other end and greeted them with an odor that Laxus was faintly familiar with but couldn't place. The mystery wasn't long left unsolved, though, as Davian's light flashed across the grit and settled upon a collection of smooth stones and what looked to be bits of tanned cloth. They approached and Laxus was able to make out a similar pattern among two large, ivory spheres. Two pitted holes and rows of smiling teeth grinned in the darkness.

"Holy hell…" Laxus growled, stopped in a few feet away where the ground began to slope into a hastily made pit, "Is this… a cemetery?"

"No," Davian dragged out the word, deep in thought as he was speaking, "These two were not buried in the same fashion as Aeleora. There is no marker or offerings…"

Davian slid into the trench, the lip of which stood nearly at his hips. Gingerly, he began picking through the dirt.

"How can you do that?" Laxus grimaced as the Major bent over one of the skulls and with a gentle hand tipped it back.

"The shock of it all never got to me, I suppose. It always fascinated me more than it horrified me," he hummed, squatting down with his elbows on his knees, "For instance, how did these two die?"

"Can you tell?" Laxus took a step closer, his face still twisted in disgust as Davian began running his fingers over the bones.

"Surprisingly, yes. These slashes here on the cervical vertebrae are indicative of a laceration to the throat…" he followed the trail of bones, tugging free a few long bones and pulling fragments of something from them. He straightened and turned it over in his hands, "…if I had to wager a guess, these two were bound and executed, probably not here."

"Shit…"

"Even the dead have a way of speaking, don't they?" Davian muttered as he sifted through bones and ribbons of cloth, "Your scientist-doctors… were they men?"

"Yeah."

"This could very well be them, then."

Laxus shook his head slowly, trying to dredge up memories from the past, "There were three…"

Davian glanced back down to the remains, pulling again at soiled bits of fabric and searching the decay, "These do appear to be scrubs. I don't see any indication of a third… possibly he was buried somewhere else or a part of the execution of these two."

"You don't know anything about this?" Laxus prompted, furrowing his brow, "Weren't you the one who destroyed the evidence?"

"I wasn't aware there were any other people involved, just the Phantom Risers…" Davian grunted as he pulled himself out of the pit, dusting off his pants as he straightened, "Even Aeleora's body being here I wasn't privy to. I simply removed her memory from the minds of the cadets who handled her body. She never saw the autopsy table. I'd left her remains to become one with the earth."

"Someone moved her here?"

"So it would seem," he turned his light further down the tunnel, "It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to assume whoever assassinated your doctors is the same who moved her remains here… one of my kind."

"Makes sense…" Laxus growled, "How do we know they're not skulking around?"

Davian paused, his eyes flickering to the side as he thought about his answer before saying it, "I would know."

Laxus wrinkled his nose in a snarl, "Your lizard-dar not going off?"

Davian rolled his eyes, "I can sense when others of my kind are near… typically."

"Typically?" Laxus snapped ruefully.

"Says the man who can't sense us at all."

"Oh, I'm finding a way," Laxus growled tersely.

"You'll certainly have to let me know when you've perfected it. I'd love to prove you incompetent."

"Cocky bastard."

Davian grinned cheekily, "Only when it's merited, I assure you."

He swung his light around the cave walls. Their feet echoed through the empty space. Laxus opened his mouth to make some witty remark but the smell that assaulted him made him clamp it back shut again. His stomach turned and even Davian seemed affected by it, putting a hand to his nose to stave off the odor. They trained their attentions ahead, to where the tunnel gave way to another massive opening. As the odor grew, Laxus found himself stopping short for a moment. The terror from that day, the disgust, the psychological toll, it was all surmounting and he wanted to wretch. The only thing that stopped him was the sudden ring in the air as Davian drew his sabre.

Laxus focused his gaze on the beam of light, on the shadow that broke it in half. In the middle of the large cavern, drenched in white light, was a slumped form with a long, serpentine tail.

Laxus charged his lighting, "What was that about being able to sense your kind?"

Author's Notes:

Hello! Hello!

I'm back and well rested to turn out some more content for you guys!

I stayed at a haunted hotel guys! It was so spooky!

Happy Monday and I wish you a wonderful week, lovely beans!