Chapter Thirty-Five
Smiling Jack
They reached the outskirts of Loduhn just as night had fallen, with the last of the sunlight disappearing over the horizon quickly.
The whole place looked like it was straight out of a nightmarish fairy tale. The buildings were old gothically carved stone that looked two and three stories over the narrow streets. The roofs were all slanted and filled with broken slate tiles. It was a big town from the looks of it, though not quite as large as Magnolia, and instead of a grand cathedral in the centre of the city, there was a spire that looked over the city, reaching high into the sky.
"What did you say we were supposed to be doing here?" Lucy asked, a slight quiver in her voice as she took in the image of the town before her.
"I didn't. The job didn't specify, it just said that it wanted two mages," Natsu explained. He took loomed slightly disturbed by the town. "The last time I was here this place looked a whole lot nicer," he mumbled.
"When was the last time you were here?" Gray asked, looking on with a grim frown. The whole place gave him a bad feeling.
"Oh," Natsu said with a dumb look on his face, "Yeah, it was about fifty years ago." He nodded quickly, crossing his arms while he thought about what might have caused the town to change this vastly.
"You know, I used to be sweet on a girl from here," he reminisced as he started leading the way into the centre of the town. He reasoned that whoever the contact was, they'd find them there.
"Was there ever a time when you didn't seduce someone?" Lucy groaned, not enjoying the feeling of jealousy that sprang inside her.
"I could have tried my hand at everyone in the guild, but I haven't, so that's at least sixty or seventy people." He answered her without missing a beat.
"You're joking, right?" The Celestial mage stopped, staring at the back of the Dragon's head as he continued on.
"Would it make you feel better if I was?" Natsu asked as he continued away from them.
"Where are you going, we don't even know where this contact is?" Gray pointed out.
"I'll make my presence known, they'll come to me. Why don't you find the old inn, it's somewhere around here. I wonder if they still make that mead with juniper berries, yum yum." His voice faded as he walked down the narrow roads, unsure of where exactly he was going.
"I'm feeling slightly less safe without a Dragon watching us," Lucy whispered to Gray as the two of them walked down a different alley, wondering what an inn would even look like in this city.
"Sadly, that makes two of us, this whole place looks like a dark guild," Gray responded, doing nothing to help Lucy's growing fears.
"Let's just get this over with, you'd think that an inn would be somewhere near the middle, so let's try there." Gray reasoned, looking up to get a sense of where they were based on the looming tower.
There was an echoing clatter of stone above them, throwing the two on high alert, at least, more so than they already were.
"Who's there!" Gray yelled in a surprisingly mild voice, he wanted to address the problem but also didn't want to alert too many people if he could help it.
A figure dropped down from the shadows, seemingly pulling them alongside as it did. There was a muffled sound as feet touched down on the old cobblestone path.
The figure rose up, standing far taller than either Lucy or Gray. It was too dark in the alley to make out any real features about the person, but from what they could make out, they were incredibly slender, adorned with an old tattered suit that seemed to cling to the body like a jumpsuit.
"It's not often that we get visitors in this little town of ours," a sickeningly coarse voice said, a thick accent that Lucy had never heard in her life.
"I never get much pleasure from killing the morons that walk about the place, it's so refreshing finding some prey from the outside world, thank you!" the person beamed, flashing a deep grin of rotting yellow and black teeth. They could see a pair of eyes the same disgusting shade of yellow as the teeth, but there was something more unnerving than the unnatural colour to them, they were small, far too small for a human.
"Where are my manners?" it said, stepping back slightly and offering a bow so low that his crocked and broken nose almost touched the floor.
"They call me Smiling Jack, a pleasure to be making your acquaintance and murder!" he exited his bow with a step forward into the light, tipping the brim of an old dusty top hat at them.
Gray had fallen into a defensive stance, his hands already forming ice as the temperature around them rapidly dropped. Lucy already had a hand on the keys hooked around the loop on her waist.
"By all means, please go on, magic has no effect on one such as I, but it makes the chase all that more thrilling!" Smiling Jack leered as he pulled what looked like a straight razor out of a pocket.
It gleamed where it caught the light, showing them just how wicked sharp the edge was.
Gray rushed forward, thrusting out with his hands, a huge ice lance shooting out and looking like it had pierced their foe. Another second passed and the dim light played around the ice structure in the alley before it shattered into nothing.
True to his word, the magic had held no effect on him. "This is why I love killin' you mortals!" he said in delight, "I told you that ya magic has no effect on little old me, and yet you still try. That's the spirit boy, keep trying, it just makes your soul taste that much sweeter when me old faithful here glides along your throat!" Smiling Jack lunged forward but just as he'd been seconds away from launching that fatal swing at Lucy's throat, a hand had shot out from behind, grabbing the creature by the scruff of the neck and viciously launching him back.
"I thought I smelled something foul," Natsu's voice cut in.
"Oh my god, I have literally never been happier to see you," Gray said in what had become more of a whisper from the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
Smiling Jack recoiled as his body had been thrown into a heap by a pile of trash in the corner of the alley. His seemingly impossibly long limbs deftly recovered and before they knew it, he was up again, only this time he was cautiously staring at Natsu.
'It is an Etherious,' E.N.D. said in mild amusement. To them, an Etherious was just another creature that stood in their path, albeit they were almost infinitely stronger than most mortals and even most mages, but they were all still insignificant compared to the Fire Dragon King.
When it came down to it, it didn't matter if Natsu was a Dragon or not, he too stood at the peak of what it meant to be an Etherious. He was the Etherious, the King of the cursed spirits created by Zeref. The others didn't even come close.
"How dare you lay your hands on me, who d'ya think you are!?" Smiling Jack screeched, leering at the Dragon Slayer who didn't take his eyes off of him.
"I know what you are, I've killed creatures like you before," Natsu said, the normally light-hearted tone nonexistent.
"Natsu, what is this thing?" Lucy asked, her breath hitching the moment that Smiling Jack turned to look at her with his impossibly small eyes.
"For all intents and purposes, I suppose you would call it a Demon. It's a creature, one that was created a very long time ago by an old lost power." Natsu explained quickly, his eyes still firmly on his quarry.
"I am a creature of the night, and you are all going to be my latest masterpiece! The body parts will be strewn around this alley like ink on paper, it'll tell a story, one that only the truly gifted will understand and appreciate!" Smiling Jack snarled, bouncing forward and slicing rapidly at Natsu.
The blade whistled through the air, the gleaming edge flashing with each pass. Natsu caught the striking hand by the wrist, enveloping it with potent fire while he struck out with the other hand, jabbing Smiling Jack several times in the face.
He never let go of the hand with the razor in it, he just kept punching Smiling Jack and used the wrist as an anchor point, preventing him from escaping. With each moment, another punch found it's target, slowly reducing the creature in height as more and more damage was done.
Another punch, a broken nose. Another, the jaw snapped. Another excessively hard attack and bone splinters around it's left eye shattered out of the skin, blood rushing down it's face.
Natsu eventually let go, leaving a wrist with a deep black burn encircling it. The skin had been left as no more than a crispy char, his face a crumpled mess of blood and bone, one eye no longer visible under the pulp that had previously been his skin.
"Wh… What are you!?" Smiling Jack screeched through a horribly pained sob, reeling back into the shadows.
"Your worst nightmare," Natsu answered without missing a beat, "I am the man who can utterly destroy a disgustingly pitiful excuse for a Demon like you, now, before I incinerate every last trace of your existence, I have a question for you," he said, his tone changing mid-sentence.
Smiling Jack whimpered slightly but waited for a few seconds nonetheless.
"Who is in that tower, and what has happened to Loduhn? This used to be a… Well, it was never a nice place, but it was better than this shit hole." Natsu mused, a slight flicker of a smile crossing his lips.
"Th-The Stargazer," Smiling Jack said, his voice shaking from the pain of speaking through a severely shattered jaw.
"They call him the Stargazer, but nobody knows anything about him. All I know is that he's mad, and he's been trying to use this town to achieve his dream of reaching the stars, he turned this whole place into a dark guild to try and get what he wanted," Smiling Jack sneered. His voice, while still shaky, had begun to actively improve, his jaw was rebuilding, the flesh knitting itself back together.
"Dark guild town called it," Gray said behind them.
'It heals impressively fast,' E.N.D. said, his amusement even greater this time around.
"Careful now," Natsu held up a hand, stopping Smiling Jack from shuffling around on the ground too much, "I know that your body is healing itself while you entertain my questions, but if you make any sudden movements then I'll make it so that your body never heals." the Dragon Slayer warned.
His words didn't sink in though as Smiling Jack reared up and launched another volley of swipes with the pristine razor.
All they heard was Natsu sigh before he dodged to the side, throwing a gut-wrenching punch to Smiling Jack's ribs. They clearly heard half a dozen separate sounds of bones breaking, cracking, and snapping.
Smiling Jack flew against the side of the alleyway, bouncing off the wall and falling to the ground in a crumpled heap of broken bones and shattered confidence.
"Idiot," Natsu shook his head, picking up the razor and superheating it in his hands until it was misshapen and malformed. He left it on the ground next to the unconscious Etherious and motioned for Lucy and Gray to follow him.
"I think we need to have an audience with this Stargazer. Be very alert, there isn't anyone else like him around, but the people here could jump us and cause just as much of a problem," he said, falling back until they were walking together once more.
"Are you ok?" he asked them both openly. He'd silently put a gentle hand on the small of Lucy's back, the touch sending a wave of heat through her body, making her feel safe by his side once again.
"I am now," she whispered back, silently stepping closer to him as they walked toward the tower in the centre of the city.
They had no idea who the Stargazer was, or just how much of a threat he was going to be.
They were in for a cruel shock.
A/N: Old gothic victorian London styled setting, and a heavy influence from the old 'Spring-Heeled Jack' and Jack the Ripper style murderous stories, were what brought me to creating Loduhn and Smiling Jack.
I hope you're enjoying the feeling and flow of the story so far, I promise, there IS actually going to be a romance element to it all soon, beyond the flirting and occasional kiss. Near the end of this arc it all falls into one.
You won't get another chapter until probably the end of September as I'm going to be away.
Review?