Fairy Tail: Swallow the Fire

 

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The young girl shoved herself out of the embrace of her mother, slight worry and fear evident on her face. She expected to die, but the figure before her was acting like something else entirely had just happened making more questions appear in her mind by the second.

 

Why do you look different? What is this place? What is going on? Did you kill everyone? Why? What? How? 

 

Questions poured out of her panicked expression the moment they popped up, all the while her mother just stood there and observed her daughter with a solemn expression and tired smile. One of her six hands reached out and landed on the younger’s shoulders making her snap back to reality.

 

“Because you’re weak.”

 

That one sentence pushed the girl over an invisible edge. It was a reassurance of the thoughts that were plaguing her earlier, and that reassurance was exactly what would cause events to trigger beyond what Empusa could have ever imagined.

 

Lyssa instantly began to shake as tears slowly began to form over the edge of her widened eyes. The mother completely ignored the sudden shift in demeanour, using the moment of silence to continue while circling her daughter.

 

“You’re weak. I was weak. Your father was weak. All of us, every single member of the Ifriti line and those associated with us were too weak. Mard Geer and the abominations under his control hunted us down out of fear for my creation, my mistake. It was a mistake I deeply regret, and I will do anything to correct my foolishness.

 

You see, I thought that they could be communicated with. I thought that if our kind was slowly weakening in strength with each generation, the technology they possess could help remove the human blood within us. That they could make us full demons again, and that all they needed would have been something to trade for access to this technology. But all that did was paint a target on our backs, so I had to figure out how to remove that weakness myself. And in death, I did. I found a way to make us whole again!”

 

“W-What are you talking about?”

 

When Empusa turned her attention to her daughter, she did so with a face splitting, toothy and narrowed eyes that locked onto Lyssa’s trembling hands.

 

“Why, what do you mean? You’re currently going through the demonization process right now!”

 

As Captain Tatsuo neared the location of the guards that were running towards the gate, a large eruption of violet flame erupted near the gate. The sudden inferno levelled several city blocks in its spontaneous combustion, sending three sets of charred skeletons flying through the air. Tatsuo narrowed his eyes at the corpses before running faster with renewed vigour. 

 

“Normal humans can’t use magic that is fundamental to another race’s nature, you see. For us, the devils of the Ifriti clan, that's fire devil magic, these lavender purple flames that have illuminated such a wondrous night. But thanks to that bald fool I enslaved, I learned how to enchant that magic into people, but doing this instils into their body something called a demonic seed that would eventually overwrite their human nature and make them into fully fledged demons. I attempted to accelerate the process that this seed would hatch whenever I possessed the people around us, but the body fought back against it too much, treating it like a cancer instead and causing them all to die.”

 

The captain approached the raging inferno and got a good look at the source. He had planned to try and attack the demon right then and there, but what seemed to be the source of the fire made him pause. Everyone else he had seen almost immediately began to suffer a tortuous death the moment the demon-possessed them, but the figure in the middle wasn’t dying at all. They weren’t reacting at all. They just stood there in a trance as their body began to change.

 

“But you, my beautiful daughter,” Empusa said as she lifted her daughter's hands with one set of arms and grasped her face with another, holding her shoulders with the last two of the six arms, “You already have demonic genes. They only need the right nourishment to grow and make you into what you really are.”

 

The three bore witness to the changes that had started to occur to her physiology. 

 

Black diamond-shaped marks had formed on the back of her hands and forearms, transitioning into a thick line that went up her upper arm and turned into a ring that wrapped around her upper arm in a series of rings. The flesh of her fingers and forearms themselves had also turned into an inky black that slowly crept further and further up her arms.

 

Her legs had also begun a similar transformation, as the nails on her limbs had begun to thicken and lengthen slowly darkening in colour as they became sharp claws and talons that could easily rend flesh from bone. 

 

The change had earned mixed reactions from all. Lyssa only started to panic more as the uncertainty of what was going on made her feel more and more powerless. Empusa smiled with villainous glee as the fruits of her plans began to ripen. Tatsuo felt his accelerated heart slowly start to calm down as the stability of the transformation differed from the rest and gave him the slimmest hope that at least someone might overcome the demon’s influence.

 

“See? The humanity in you is weaker than your real self. It bends so easily to the influence of demonic will. It knows it's inferior. It knows that it's holding you back, that its what held all of us back,” Empusa said with a mellow and motherly voice that contrasted her twisted facial expressions. She bent down and kissed her daughter’s forehead and smiled when she felt the small buddings of horns on the girl’s forehead.

 

‘Good. She isn’t fighting it. She’s letting it happen.’

 

“But removing that human influence in our bodies wasn’t enough. Our bodies are one thing, but they can be strengthened so much more with our souls. And we demons can strengthen our souls by consuming the souls of others. Even someone who only has a small percentage of demonic genes can consume the souls of others and even turn the souls of our kind into a form of power through Take Over magic. 

 

But Satan Soul mages are cowards! They cling to their humanity but use our powers freely, hunting us and consuming us with the guises of our kind! They’re just as heinous as the damned Etherious are, claiming to be us and using us when they are nothing but mockeries! Pale imitations!” 

 

The towering demoness stopped to take a deep breath before resuming again with only a slim amount of her previous composure.

 

“But this ability, this gift, is what enabled me to take advantage of the yearly festival this city celebrated with! So many weak souls flying around made it so easy for us to consume them before I consumed the rest of our family.”

 

“Wait! S-So the reason the festival…”

 

“Tsk! Yes, unfortunately, the gods seemed to have banned the souls from coming here after we consumed the few dozen thousand last year. But no matter, they weren’t the grand prize!” The six giant wings flexed outwards as she forced Lyssa to recognize the drastic transformation she had gone through. “That demon that these fools feared? Aetna was our ancestor, and after I ate him it gave me so much more power! This transformation was unprecedented, but oh so welcome! I can only wonder what this power would feel like in the flesh instead of just the soul. A sensation that you, my precious, beautiful daughter, will get to experience.”

 

“W-What are you talking about? What do you mea-AGH!”

 

Magic began to build up in Empusa’s fingers as she moved them from her daughter’s cheeks and onto her temples. The sheer heat from the spell began to burn her to a depth she couldn’t comprehend.

 

“Fire Devil Forbidden Arts: Mind Brand.”

 

Through the pain of the magic, Lyssa struggled to rationalize the knowledge she had learned. 

 

She was losing her humanity on a genetic level with each passing second, but who cares if being a demon just makes her stronger? It's not like being human holds any significance, anyway.

 

And her mother, her family at large, had devoured the spirits of everyone’s ancestors. But they did it to grow stronger, and… it's not like the dead needed their souls, right? There was nothing wrong with that choice.

 

And Mard Geer, the Etherious that killed her family, is a name she won’t ever forget. After all, the Etherious at large were creations of Zeref. They were just another reason to hate him, but now…she has the name of one of them.

 

These were the last thoughts she had before her will was burned away from her, becoming nothing but clay for her mother to mould as she saw fit.

 

“Your life will be long and arduous, my child. I fully know the path I’m sending you on, and I apologise for that. But it must be done, and whether or not you follow it is a different question but please, just listen to me for now,” Empusa said as she embraced her daughter whose eyes were now bereft of light, nothing but a doll to be influenced and commanded so long as the caster, Empusa, remained. “You will encounter opposition. You must burn them. You must destroy any and all who would defy your pursuit of strength. Test yourself time and time again until no one can stop you. Let your hatred consume the world and give you strength. Fight the strong until you become the definition of strong.”

 

Outside the soul realm, the still demonizing Lyssa turned her attention to the nearest object of strength. Her captain and master, Tatsuo. The captain watched as her eyes turned into a pool of silent rage as they locked onto him. 

 

His guard was immediately raised, but he was still slightly surprised when his pupil moved with a speed he had never seen from her before, her entire body turning into purple flames as she rushed him head-on with the intent to stab him with her claws. Tatsuo raised his sword and easily blocked the strike with the blade, the sound of the hard claws and enchanted blade creating a metallic ring the moment they connected.

 

Inside the soulscape, the pair of hands Empusa had on Lyssa’s shoulders moved up to grasp the back of her head. The pitch-black hands started to be engulfed with glowing golden water as another spell penetrated the girl’s mind. 

 

“Paradise Accords.”

 

Knowledge of various powers began to flow into the girl’s head. Fire Devil techniques being amongst the most common, the intricacies of higher tier transformation magic were revealed, but the forefront of them all was the knowledge of the curses that killed the Ifriti line.

 

“The Eight Curses of Purgatorio. My gift, and the malediction, that I pass unto you. The heights of my knowledge and my second greatest creation,” Empusa said with a smile.

 

“The waters of Paradise. The reward for overcoming one’s sins. Within their golden glow memories are laid bare. They can be destroyed, healed, changed, and just as I am doing now, given.”

 

Tatsuo and Lyssa battled, with Lyssa being on the backfoot the entire time. As she was in that moment, she was operating purely on instinct and not using the techniques she had painstakingly drilled into her by her current opponent. But Tatsuo didn’t want to hurt her. He could tell that there was no cruelty in her actions, much like the version of the demon he had seen prior.

 

There was no sadistic laughter. There was no behaviour he could identify with the demon from earlier nor the girl he had trained. This meant, for him, that there was hope, hope that whatever conflict he could not see would result in Lyssa’s victory.

 

“C’mon, girl. Snap out of it already! Infernal Gout!”

 

He quickly flicked his wrist, the small motion doing nothing to express the magnitude of the wave of flame that shot towards the young girl. To his chagrin, an explosion of green flame parted the fire before detonating on the ground. 

 

That small ball of flame instantaneously spread across the entirety of the city, instantly killing any who might have been hiding in the recesses of the city in a flash of coppery flame. The captain tried to extinguish it, but the fire refused to yield to his magic and even seemed to grow more and more as they devoured the ethernano present in the environment.

 

“Lust, a curse with a wild flame as uncontrollable to those who are consumed by the sin. Impractical, unless destruction is the goal. These jade flames will yield to no one, not even you after you conjure them. All you will be able to do is create and erase them, and they will last forever. Even if you die, these accursed flames will remain.”

 

The two fighters resumed fighting again, Tatsuo raising the sword for it to consume an incoming purple gout of flame before shooting it back at her. He had expected her to dodge it, or even try and consume it if his assumptions about her transformation were right. But instead, she stuck out her hand, the purple flames warping around her as she remained visibly untouched by the attack.

 

“The test of those who suffer from Gluttony is being unable to reach that which they want. No matter how close they get to their object of obsession, an infinite amount of space will sit between them. No matter how much force your opponent can use against you, if your cursed power is even half as strong as their magic power they will never touch you.”

 

Tatsuo leapt up onto some untouched debris so he could further observe the strange powers Lyssa was beginning to showcase, but Lyssa raised her foot and slammed it back onto the ground. The moment her foot made an impact with the earth, tremors began to shake the mountain range and forced the unburned ruins of the buildings to collapse into the copper-green flames below. That move forced Tatsuo to jump up into the air and hover with the aid of his flame, only to have to fight against the now airborne Lyssa who had leathery bat-like wings emerging from her back.

 

“Greed can be beneficial to those who can balance its temptations. It can lead to prosperity and wealth, but too much greed can destroy you and too little can give you nothing. Just as it is important to balance ambition, your foes must balance themselves lest the tremors of this curse shatter their equilibrium.”

 

Seeing that a ranged fight wasn’t going to go in his favour for long the captain tried to get in close and restrain the girl, an attempt meant to take her out of the skies and back onto the ground. However, he wasn’t used to fighting in the air and the young demon seemed to fly faster and faster with each passing second.

 

“Those who spend their life doing nothing are afflicted with the sin of Sloth, and their punishment is an abundance of energy. This curse will give you a resurgence of vigour, allowing you to fight endlessly at your peak so long as you have curse energy to spare.”

 

Tatsuo hovered in the air with his hands at the ready, grabbing the demon by the wrist just as she tried to attack him again enabling the captain to rocket the two of them back to the ground. The girl turned around with fury in her eyes, opening up her mouth and attempting to blind her opponent as she released a thick black and purple smog.

 

“Wrath is as blinding as it is toxic. Those who are cursed with wrath must walk through a thick smog of anti-magic particles so thick that not even light may penetrate its smoke.”

 

The captain immediately recognized the smog’s components and hastily reinforced the heat barrier that was surrounding him. The second they crashed into the ground near where the compound used to be he raised his sword again, the eyes of the blade glowing again as he shouted.

 

“Feast, Taima-nai Kiga!”

 

The toxic fog and green flames that had started to incinerate the remnants of their home began to be devoured by the blade. Only about half of the flames could be absorbed before the girl started to writhe around in preparation to attack once more, forcing the captain to swing the blade towards the sky and release every ounce of power his weapon had absorbed into the atmosphere.

 

“But just as blinding as Wrath is the Envy that can be harboured towards others. Seeking what others have can blind a person to what they hold. Their eyes would be sewn up by weaves made of their sin, and those who aren’t blinded may see all. With Envy, you may blind your foes or see them no matter where they are.”

 

The black smog soared once again and quickly enveloped the area, blinding both of the fighters at the same time. While Tatsuo once again focused on creating a barrier to protect himself from the toxic anti-magic bane particles Lyssa activated a second curse to find her foe no matter where he was within the smog.

 

The captain felt an immense strain on his barrier each time a fist clashed with it, Lyssa punching him from every possible position and combining her punches with the quakes of the Greed curse. 

 

The people who were evacuated stood a few miles from the mountains and heard nothing but boom after boom after boom with sweat dripping down their faces from fear. Akihiko and Mia worked with the rest of the guard and enchanters to protect the people from the immense heat and divert it into the ocean behind them, but the heat only kept rising around them and making few even start to fear death as the sand outside their area began to shine, pieces of glass slowly forming within the sand.

 

“Pride is the heaviest sin, and often the greatest folly of man. It is the basis on which all other sins rest, as either its shattered presence haunts or its abundance elevates those it affects. Its weight may easily humble those unable to bear it, unwillingly lowering their heads. But their pride may be shattered as it's contested with your own, making them feel the gravity of your will with every strike.”

 

Lyssa circled and attacked the protection Tatsuo created for himself, her claws and fists testing his armour like an eagle trying to pry open an armadillo’s shell. The captain himself just stood there, his eyes closed with his hands held aloft to his side with his sword held within the sash around his waist. Waiting.

 

“That is all the knowledge I can give you, my child. My last gift, to atone for the suffering my foolishness has caused you and our kin, to give you the strength that you may need to make it far in this world full of strife, is myself,” the mother said with regret in her voice. “All I ask is that when the time comes for you to face the imposters of Tartaros, you make them scream in agony. Take the last step into becoming a creature of darkness and consume the wretched soul of your mother.”

 

In the same instant that the captain struck forward towards the charging figure of Lyssa, the girl began to take into herself the power of her mother’s soul and the souls she had devoured. The captain’s fist slammed into the girl’s ribcage, sending her flying backwards with a collapsed ribcage as the shockwave dispersed the toxic cloud around him. 

 

She had landed in the courtyard where Allaheargh’s Test still burns, the remnants of Aetna’s power it had absorbed still keeping it alight. The captain looked towards the crater as the sound of creaking and breaking bones met his ears, what hope he had of Lyssa overcoming the possession dwindling as he saw her begin to transform even more.

 

Her height grew, coming close to matching his own while her horns began to grow even more, curling backwards around her head. The black ink covering her hands began to harden, turning into iron-hard scales. Growth began to emerge underneath her arms as a second set of arms grew in place beneath the first, and with them came a new set of muscles within her abdomen that flexed with newfound strength.

 

Her hair had begun to pale, becoming as white as snow as it rose around her and swayed with the new aura of strength that radiated off of her. A line began to rip its way down the middle of her forehead, it opened up to reveal a purple eye with a pitch-black sclera. 

 

The figure of the thirteen-year-old girl had quickly grown to match him in terms of physique and physical power, and likely even surpass him. What was in front of him looked nothing like the girl he had taken in as his apprentice.

 

“Come on, lass! Show me a sign that you’re still in there…”

 

The demon had begun to rise up from her knees and stood at her full height, dense muscle mass flexing as she, for the first time, made any noise. A deep and husky chuckle filled with psychotic mirth.

 

“What’s wrong, old man? You’re quivering! Afraid that the student has surpassed the master? I never left!” Lyssa showed her mentor a face-splitting smile that showed razor-sharp teeth meant to break through bone. At the same time, she released her own magical pressure onto Tatsuo which had enough heat to make him sweat.

 

And that made him fucking ecstatic.

 

The previous despair he had vanished nearly instantly as he matched her with a grin equally psychotic. She was cocky, just as she had always been when she made a new breakthrough. That confirmed for him that she was actually his student and not the demon that possessed her. All he had to do was do what he had always done when she got too cocky for her own good. 

 

Teach her a little humility.

 

“Old man? Old man!? I might be old but I can still kick your ass!” He grabbed his sword back from his waist and held it in his right hand at a level position with his chest, his left hand and foot positioned ahead of him. He released his own magical aura at its fullest, showing it was just slightly weaker than hers. 

 

That fact only made him smile more as he had felt that this would be the first fight he’d had fun with in a long time. “Ahahaha! Seems you really have grown a little, huh? But it appears that you’ve gotten a little stupid in the head and have forgotten to treat your elders with respect! Time for some tough love girl! Second Origin, Release!”

 

While his magic aura only increased slightly in comparison to what it was, the heat doubled. This time, Lyssa was the one sweating, deranged thoughts cycling through her head on repeat in a fit of insanity.

 

‘Hotter! Hotter! Hotter! I need to get hotter! I need to get stronger!’

 

The demoness took in a deep breath as the flames of the bonfire behind her flew into her mouth, becoming food that replenished her strength and temporarily made her flames as hot as the captain’s.

 

Grinning, the two battle-hungry morons charged at each other head-on, unknowingly creating a battle that would become part of history.

 

“Infernal Trampoline!” A red magic circle formed under the captain’s feet that exploded, sending the eighty-year-old man barrelling towards his pupil.

 

“Fire Devil’s Parade!” Lyssa’s entire body became comprised of a brilliant purple flame as she rushed towards Tatsuo in the form of a raging inferno.

 

The moment the two figures clashed the ground beneath them all but disintegrated into ash. The captain became a flurry of dancing strikes as he expertly spun around Lyssa, slashing away at her skin in an attempt to wear down her magic pool by forcing her to regenerate and using the increased range of his blade to control the fight as much as he could.

 

Lyssa just charged towards the blade, happily accepting each and every wound without care and used the opportunities to deliver heavy blows to the captain. She took full advantage of her new limbs to augment her martial arts by doubling the number of strikes she could do with her fists and elbows in quick succession, as well as opening up opportunities to strike with her knees and shins.

 

Slowly and surely, the much more experienced fighter began to create distance between himself and his opponent, body accruing several broken bones and bruises but his face still held the same smile as before.

 

‘When was the last time I got to let loose like this? Ah, that’s right. It was when you and I were younger and openly challenging gods to battle simply to prove our superiority, my old friend. This just makes me more eager to fight you again, August. I still have a score to settle!’

 

Lyssa on the other hand only grew more frustrated as it became increasingly harder to hit her opponent. Tatsuo was literally dancing around her, his movements flowed as if he were merely putting on a performance and cutting into her with surgical precision. 

 

She raised one of her hands into the air as a purple magic glyph formed on the ground in front of her before releasing an aggravated shout. “Fire Devil’s Carnival!”

 

A purple fire stake formed in her elevated hand that she stabbed into the glyph. All around her, flaming violet spikes shot out of the ground in every direction in an attempt to stab the sword-dancer. The captain just laughed as he masterfully swirled through the slowly vanishing spears before swinging the blade towards her from overhead.

 

She smiled as she managed to raise two of her arms up to block the blade with her scaled arms before grabbing the kriegsmesser with the other two arms. Without wasting a second she clamped her jaw around the lavender blade and ignored the pain the devil-slaying enchantment gave her. The large curved sword snapped like a twig under the strength of her jaw sending sharp pieces of shattered metal all around her.

 

The captain quickly let go of the destroyed blade before taking a quick step backwards, his eyes betraying his shock that made the demon smirk.

 

“Oh? What's wrong? Scared? Finally realized that a human is nothing to a demon?”

 

Venom dripped with every word she spoke, but all the captain did was shrug before suppressing his magic aura.

 

“Nah, lass. Just impressed. I defeated a fire god with the blade, y’know? He tried the same tactic, but once he realised he wasn’t going to win and admitted defeat. Learned quite a bit from him, too,” he said with a smirk. In his hands appeared a red ribbon that he used to tie up his hair into a bun. “And it's funny. He looked pretty similar to your new look, just with red skin. Requip.”

 

Two beautifully crafted scimitars appeared in his hands, both tinted red with masterfully crafted red handles. The spines of the blades were decorated with a blooming fire pattern that looked easily like flowers, but in contrast to the previous sword, they weren’t magical. They were just ordinary, yet masterfully crafted swords.

 

‘Hmph, I had wanted to use this technique exclusively against August, but it seems I’ve been left with no choice. So be it.’

 

“You see, we pyromancers usually only try and control the flame. Even in your case where you literally turn into flame, you haven’t become one with the element. I was fortunate enough to be able to learn how.”

 

“Are you going to spout some nonsense about dancing?”

 

“I’m going to spout some nonsense about dancing!” the captain said while pointing one of the swords towards her. “Chaotic, yet beautiful! Destructive, yet helpful! Being able to embody the dancing of flames is the ultimate form of pyromancy! And this is the ultimate dance to do so! Its name? The Tandava!”

 

With a heavy stomp that signalled the start of his dance, the captain vanished from Lyssa’s sight. Black blood started to quickly spray out of every surface of her body. Her scales were lived through like butter and the source became obvious as she followed the source of a destructive rhythm. 

 

The captain was a ways off, the rhythmic stomping of his feet creating the mock of a drum while the spinning blades sang through the air. Tatsuo was creating his own song with the dance, enjoying the rhythm of his own making.

 

“Destruction, passion, and energy. That is the core of the Tandava, that is the core of flame. Burn the destroyed and from its ashes build anew,” the rhythm stopped as he pointed the blades at his opponent, a sly smile on his bearded face. “So let's dance each other to ashes, aye?” 

 

He disappeared once again as he flashed in and out of focus in sync with the dance’s self-produced rhythm. The afterimages he left behind slowly morphed to look like a dancing flame as wound after wound emerged on Lyssa’s body. The wounds would be healed by violet flames that licked at her body, only to be wounded again in the same instant.

 

Lyssa was at a loss due to the speed he was producing, and that exasperation only grew as he and the blade started to ignite both himself and the ground he stepped on.

 

‘How is he doing this!? He isn’t even using magic!’

 

Within seconds the dance had spread the flames over the ruins of the entire village. What had remained quickly turned to dust.

 

“Ha! Surprised? I might as well finish what you started! It’ll make rebuilding easier without all the rubble!”

 

The orange flame shrouded his figure as Tatsuo became the embodiment of destruction in a flaming visage. Lyssa felt that her magic power had slowly been draining, and every time she tried to eat the flames the captain was producing through his dance to replenish it the flames would only injure her instead. Anything and everything the flames touched burned, no exceptions. None of the curses she tried to use to protect herself worked, not even Gluttony.

 

This dance, in Tatsuo’s hands, was destruction incarnate.

 

“Hng! Fuck it! If you want to dance, let's dance!” Lyssa abandoned any sense of self-preservation and decided to put every ounce of magic power she had left into one attack. She quickly fell into a handstand as her entire body became a violet flame once more, a large magic circle forming underneath her as she started to spin in place. “Fire Devil Secret Arts, Lavender Wrath: Ifrit Dance!”

 

The momentum of her spin grew in tandem with her size, by the time the spell reached its peak the violet tornado could be seen on the horizon for dozens of miles, and the purple glow it generated illuminated the horizon for hundreds more.

 

The attack was meant to suck in the flames the captain had created, but he only laughed as the infernal tornado spurred them on and ended up slowly consumed by them. 

 

“What did I say, lass!? Become one with them, don’t try to force them! Idjit…”

 

Within minutes the tornado was drained of all energy, revealing the demonic girl at the source of it all. Completely exhausted and drained of energy, left entirely to the mercy of the masterless flames around her. She was covered in wounds and tar-like blood. She couldn’t heal herself anymore. She couldn’t fight back anymore. She once again expected death.

 

But the orange flames that were consuming the village all vanished in an instant, the eerie silence left in their wake only enhanced the moonlit scenery of the grey ash that encompassed what was once her home. What was once a bastion of safety for her. What she helped to destroy.

 

Footsteps crunched in front of her kneeling form, and she’d have to be an idiot to not recognize it as the captain.

 

“Are you done with your temper tantrum?”

 

Tatsuo’s voice was calm but held a hotter flame stronger than any that was generated that night. Lyssa looked upwards just enough to see the two scimitars that he was holding, stained with her black blood and razor sharp.

 

“If you’re going to kill me, just be quick about it.”

 

The captain said nothing, only stepping closer and placing both blades on either side of her neck. The shape blades pressed in on her flesh, and one slice would have been all that was needed to slice her jugular and end her, and she accepted that fact, simply closing her eyes and accepting whatever fate occurred.

 

‘Just my luck…’

 

But the slice never came. The swords were pulled away and stabbed into the ash right beside her low-hanging head. Confused, she looked up towards the captain, only to see a familiar silver ring with a crimson lacrima hanging from a rope. 

 

“You dropped it when the fighting started, so I kept it safe from the heat. Never seen you without it before, so I figured it musta been important.”

 

That last thread that was holding her together broke in that instant. 

 

As she cautiously reached out to grab the last piece of Grandpa Rob she had to remember him by, tears flooded from her eyes as if a damn was destroyed. Once it was in her hands, she clasped it tightly to her chest, afraid to let it go, afraid to let it vanish, afraid that it might be an illusion.

 

‘Grandpa Rob…what have I done…?’

 

Her eyes locked onto her hands for the first time since the completion of her transformation, and she looked at them, really looked at them despite the blur of her vision and realized how stained they were. They were stained with ash that she created. They were stained with the lives and souls her mother destroyed. They were stained with pitch-black scales that marked that she had lost her humanity.

 

And she couldn’t stand it.

 

She couldn’t stand the strength she got from this transformation.

 

She couldn’t stand how she got this transformation.

 

She couldn’t stand the curses she got with the transformation.

 

She couldn’t stand the black blood that stained her insides that she got with the transformation.

 

Without her even realizing it, she had begun vomiting out of pure disgust. The only thing that stopped the vomiting was the choked sobs and angry screaming Two hands punching the ashen ground and two hands that clutched desperately to the prisoner’s cuff.

 

A firm hand pulled her back into a warm and comforting body, a body that she clung to as Tatsuo hugged her. And that’s how they sat for several minutes with no words being spoken. Just a grandfather comforting his granddaughter in a grey world filled with ash.

 

Tatsuo watched as the black eye on her forehead closed and vanished, along with the black markings and scales on her arms. Her height and physique shrunk as well until she looked like an average thirteen-year-old girl. The only things that stood out were the extra pair of arms and the horns, with the captain noticing that her hair had stayed stark white.

 

When Tatsuo felt that she had stopped crying and felt that she had fallen asleep, he fell back into the ashes still holding the girl in a hug.

 

‘Ugh. Maybe their all right. I might be getting too old for this shit. Bah, whatever. Imma take a nap and deal with…’ The captain’s thought process stopped for a second as he looked at the field of ash around him. ‘Yeah… never mind. I’m going to build a fishing hut and become a hermit. Everyone else can go fuck themselves. It’ll just be me and mah fish.’

 

Happy with his retirement plans, the captain nodded his head with a smile before closing his eyes and going to sleep himself. The moment Lyssa heard the old man’s snoring, she stood up out of his grasp and muttered a quiet “I’m sorry…” before running off, pain heavy in her heart.

 

The two clashing magic pressures could be felt all across the country of Fiore, plunging the country into the hottest heatwave it had ever experienced. The water of the lakes and the oceans that surrounded the peninsula began to steam. Fog encroached the country from every angle as a warm rain started to pour from the newly formed clouds that were fed by the steam.

 

Oak Town, Magnolia, Clover Town, and the port city of Hargeon were all the closest cities to Himura and watched as both the moon and horizon danced in the form of vibrant red and violet lights, both colours vying for dominance over the other.

 

The stories of the destruction of Himura, the unprecedented heatwave, the colourful moon, and the terrifying magical presence felt by the wizards of Phantom Lord, Fairy Tail, and Blue Pegasus gave the night its moniker.

 

The Violet Night.

 

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A/N: Sorry for the delay. As you read, this is much longer than my usual chapters and I wanted to cover as much ground within this chapter as I could. Probably not a good idea to pick a battle-shounen when I have very little experience writing fight scenes and I wanted this to be as good as I could.

 

For clarification, yes, when Tatsuo mentioned August he is talking about that August. And no, Lyssa won’t always be this powerful throughout the entire story. The late-stage demonization form (i.e. Midnight Third Eye form) is completely blood-hungry and only craves violence, and this is the most powerful form she can obtain through demonization alone. To attain this strength and not be insane will require years of training to control the form. 

 

The next few chapters will be small, and won’t be story-focused, but I heavily encourage you to read them as I will be creating a list with explanations about Lyss’s powers and everything I want expressly written for the sake of clarity, just so everyone has a solid idea of where Lyssa is at strength wise for the chapters in the coming arcs. It's something I plan to do for every major time skip or arc.

 

Anyway, thanks for reading and here's to many more chapters ahead.

 

Now…momma needs a drink after typing 4000 words in one sitting and theres a bottle of whiskey calling my name