Getting to the rocky terrain where the Strauss siblings had carried out their mission was no trouble at all.
They'd been sent there to deal with a massive beast, and its scent, along with the scent of all three mages, still lingered in the area.
I found the spot where Lisanna's trail went cold and examined the area. No major bloodstains. After sweeping the whole territory in a wide arc, I found no significant amounts of human blood anywhere.
Sure, plenty of fatal wounds bleed internally and leave no trace outside the body. But given how deeply strange the circumstances were, I couldn't afford to dismiss the possibility that the victim, Lisanna, had walked away with nothing worse than a few cuts and bruises.
I worked the area like a bloodhound, moving in expanding circles, hunting for anything useful. No trace of whoever might have used Spatial Magic to snatch the girl, that was my working theory. I even checked underground, scanning the exit routes below the surface. Nothing. Only the last pass, from above, gave me anything at all.
Mages who can actually fly are rare. By this point, my container and skills were enough to keep me airborne for a few minutes. That's what finally did it. I caught a barely-there trace of magic, scattered thin across a vast stretch of sky.
"Like something dragged something somewhere across a huge area. Weird. But that explains why the trace is spread out over such a wide ring, with nothing left at the center," I said, hovering high above the ground, and took a slow breath. "Yeah... That's Spatial Magic. Wait. I've felt this before!"
Done with the scene, and with some grim suspicions quietly taking root in my head, I teleported back to the guild hall. And rather than jumping to conclusions, I decided to talk things through with someone who actually knew a thing or two about magic, and about life in general.
"Old man, are you still capable of coherent thought?" I asked, stepping into Makarov's office. Personally, I'd never been close to Lisanna, and her death hadn't hit me that hard. As for how the elder Dreyar was holding up, not well. The third keg of beer was already open in his office, and dark bags had settled under his eyes. I wouldn't go so far as to say he'd grieve a grandchild's loss just as deeply, but it'd be somewhere in the same ballpark. He really does care about his guild's mages.
"Sober as a judge. Hic," he said, setting his mug down on the desk under my skeptical look. "Did you find Lisanna's body?"
"No luck. Looks like she was genuinely transported by Spatial Magic. The only lead I have is that I've felt similar magic before, from a Fairy Tail mage. Mystogan."
I didn't beat around the bush; I just laid it out straight. Makarov's face had already been dark, but in that moment it went at least twice as dark. The old man hunched in on himself, opening and closing his fists. Pain, disappointment, and a grim resolve wrestling with a desperate unwillingness to believe, all of it flickered across his face at once.
"Are you certain this is his doing...?" the old man asked, his voice like something out of a grave.
"Most likely..."
Late that evening, after talking with the Guild Master, I left the building. Makarov and I had worked through all the circumstances and landed on some conclusions. Now I finally had time to swing by and check on Mirajane and Elfman.
I got a status update from Erza when I ran into her at the entrance. The lights inside were still on.
"Still bad," the redhead said simply.
I got a closer look at the Strauss siblings' condition.
"Why do they have lumps on their heads?" I asked.
"They weren't eating. They are now," Erza replied.
"Good..." I nodded carefully, then stepped inside. Erza pulled the doors shut behind us. "I couldn't find Lisanna's body."
That was my answer to a question nobody had asked, and the white-haired brother and sister, sitting hunched at the table in the corner, only slumped further into their misery. Erza shot me a look that said, loud and clear, that I could've lied a little, softened the blow somehow.
"That said, and I can lie as naturally as I breathe, but I'll be straight with you. I'm ninety percent sure Elfman didn't kill her."
I dragged over a chair and dropped into it.
"What?" Elfman lifted his head. "But I remember... I threw her. With my own hands."
"I found no bloodstains. Mirajane, do you remember Lisanna being fatally wounded?"
A deep, struggling look of thought settled over Mirajane's face.
"N-no... She was bruised. But then she disappeared in a white light..."
Something clicked into place in my head, confirming a conclusion I'd already been forming. And after that, I made a decision: time to replace those miserable expressions with something else. I didn't like it when people close to me sat drowning in depression. So I was going to pull them out of it. Fast, like a boot to the backside.
"No point dragging this out. I found traces of Spatial Magic at the scene. And what matters most, I've felt that same kind of magic before, from a Fairy Tail mage. Mystogan."
Silence dropped over the room. But with every passing second, as the words sank in and the meaning hit, the atmosphere started heating up. Fast.
Mirajane's dull blue eyes flooded red in an instant, her pupils stretching into something demonic. Rage contorted her face.
And then an explosion tore through our ears as her magical pressure tore the house apart. Literally.
I managed to teleport everyone else clear in time, so nobody got hurt. Though we were all pretty tough mages regardless and probably wouldn't have taken much damage. Especially Erza.
"Where is he?! I'm going to kill Mystogan!!!" Mira landed in front of us, clawing her way out of the rubble in her Satan Soul form. Her expression was, to put it gently, not friendly.
"You said you didn't want to use that power anymore... That you couldn't..." Erza said, visibly confused. It was clearly something from a conversation they'd had in private.
"Let's not rush into anything, Mirajane," I tried to reason with her.
"Tell me where he is!"
"I don't know!"
The situation was spiraling, and nothing good was going to come of it. Fortunately, a new voice cut through.
"Elian's right," Makarov's voice reached us from nearby, pulling Mira, and the rest of us, up short. "Right now you're in the kind of state where you'd kill first and ask questions later."
"What do you know, old man?! She's my—"
"Elian and Erza will go after Mystogan, and Cana will help them track him down. You stay here," the old man said, his tone leaving no room for argument.
Needless to say, Mirajane was not thrilled with that decision. That goes without saying.
Magnolia, already jolted awake by the blast of released magical energy, got treated to several more explosions as one The Demon resisted her capture. In the end, it took two other S-Class mages and a Wizard Saint to bring her down.
Elfman, having just been told he hadn't actually killed his sister, was somewhere between conscious and catatonic. He was quietly led away to stay with his other sister under the Guild Master's watch, so neither of them could do anything stupid.
Erza and I, after checking in with Cana about the whereabouts of a certain individual, climbed into our expensive magic vehicle and headed in the right direction.
"They looked like they'd died too," Erza started, a little while into the drive. She had the wheel. I was going through records of Mystogan's completed missions, trying to build a picture of what kind of person he was, what he went for, what that told me about his capabilities. "Mira kept saying it was her demonic power's fault. That it was the reason she became a mage in the first place, and that it's what led her brother and sister into disaster. And Elfman, you heard him, was convinced he'd killed Lisanna. I spent so long trying to find the right words, trying to convince them neither of them was to blame. They clearly never wanted this. But it was like they couldn't hear me."
"Sounds like they really did love her, if something like this could hit them this hard," I said, flipping through a few more sheets of paper, and sighed. "But it turns out to be more complicated than it looked. Maybe that's for the best."
"What do you mean?"
"Better to have someone to hate than to hate yourself. At least that way, we get to keep Mira and Elfman alive."
"This Mystogan... Do you think he's actually capable of killing a guildmate?"
"I doubt it, but nothing's off the table. You know how he operates. Walks in, puts everyone he can to sleep, picks up a job, and disappears. That kind of antisocial streak doesn't exactly foster guild camaraderie. Maybe to him, we're not guildmates at all."
Erza's grip tightened on the wheel without a word.
We drove through the whole night. We took turns and managed to get about four hours of sleep each. Not that it was strictly necessary, with bodies as trained as ours I could've gone without sleep for days. But why burn energy when you can save it?
By morning, we'd reached a city a fair distance from Magnolia. We headed to the client to get a fix on our target's location. When the heavyset man spoke with Makarov over a lacrima, the information came fast: the robed figure known as Mystogan had arrived two days prior around noon, and today he was supposed to be checking caves to the south. The reason, as it happened, was that the client's nephew had been swallowed by a spider, and our guildmate was now combing the caves trying to dig a family heirloom pendant out of the creature's guts or wherever it had ended up.
The location matched what Cana had found in her cards. With the details in hand, we set off on the short trip beyond the settlement, and I picked up a trail. The client mentioned Mystogan had left town in his fog form, but he hadn't stayed like that the whole way, which meant we could follow. A couple hours of trekking through forests and over rocks later, we found our target inside one of the caves, exactly where we expected.
Before us stood a mage wrapped head to toe in layers of cloth, only his eyes visible, several staves hanging at his back.
"No spiders in here either," I observed, as the three of us came face to face in one of the passageways. "What's your connection to Lisanna's death?"
I went straight for the throat, no preamble.
The mage, who had only just noticed the approaching light and then us, looked genuinely, sincerely baffled.
"Uh... You're from Fairy Tail too, aren't you? What are you doing here? Who's Lisanna?"
Erza and I exchanged a glance.
"Mirajane's sister," Erza clarified.
"Oh. She died... I'm sorry. Wait, how am I involved?!" the guy finally caught on.
We looked at each other again, and this time I just shook my head. This Mystogan was probably the only person in Fairy Tail who might only know the S-Class mages by name. And my gesture said plainly: he's not lying.
"You're in an ugly spot, kid. Lisanna vanished in a white flash, and the area around where she disappeared was laced with dispersed Spatial Magic, the same kind that's in your staves."
"Anima..." the mage whispered, like he couldn't quite bring himself to believe it. "He's really started taking more than just this world's magic..."
"You're going to answer our questions."
So he did. And to cut to what actually mattered: Lisanna had been kidnapped, or accidentally pulled, into the world of Edolas by that world's king, Faust. The mechanism was an artifact called Anima.
Edolas was a parallel world, a mirror of our own, but with some major differences. For one thing, there were no human mages there; they used magic through artifacts instead. As for why Faust was using Anima, Edolas was running out of magic, and the king was stealing it from Earthland through the artifact. Anima opened a portal in the sky and siphoned energy through it.
"On top of that, there are reflections of people from this world living over there. You might know my counterpart, but I'm just someone who happens to look like him," the young man said, reaching up to the cloth covering his face as we sat listening on the cave floor. He pulled it down.
"You?!" Erza gasped.
"That's not him," I said. "His magic feels completely different, and our Jellal is a very powerful mage. The scent is different too. The way he carries himself, different."
What we saw was a head of blue hair and a tattoo near the eye. He was the Edolas version of Jellal. His soul was different too, so yeah, definitely not the same person. Though even I was a little thrown. Maybe if I'd been more curious earlier and for some reason decided to look under the hood of some random cloaked guy using Soul Vision, I'd have figured this out sooner. But I never had the urge.
"This is hard to wrap my head around..." Erza said slowly.
"My father, Faust... I've hated his tyrannical ideas since I was a child. These raids, he just wants to expand his power. Believe me, what he cares about is control, not his people. Panther Lily and I used to walk through the villages outside the capital and see how people actually lived out there... And it made me sick. So a few years ago, I jumped into an Anima portal, and now I've been sealing the rifts from this side."
"You're not that different from our Jellal, actually. At least, not from how he used to be," I noted the streak of justice running through this guy. "Ours turned out to be rotten. But that's beside the point. So Anima took Lisanna, and it's all because of this Faust from Edolas?"
"That's how it looks," the young man nodded, and I turned to Erza. From her expression, she believed him. And I wasn't picking up any deception either.
"It tracks," I said, lowering my head, still a bit skeptical. "No offense, but this is serious business. To be absolutely certain you're not lying, I'm going to run a short debrief on your background, recent events, all of it. And since you're clearly a private person, don't worry: what you tell us goes no further than a small circle, us, Makarov, and Mira and Elfman."
"That's... fair."
Trust but verify, as they say. Mystogan turned out to be a decent guy, which surprised both me and Erza. Usually how it goes is: someone tries to kill you for pocket change, then bends over backwards to convince you that deep down they're actually good, and if circumstances had only been different, they never would've done it. And those fifty bodies behind them? Not greed, every single one of them was forced on them, filed under proper paperwork. In short, it was genuinely nice to be wrong. Erza and I even helped him finish the job, and then the four of us headed back to Magnolia together.
Makarov had been given a rough heads-up about Mystogan in advance, so when we walked into the guild hall, nothing went sideways. The otherworldly mage's artifact began doing its thing, and our guildmates started dropping off to sleep one by one, as usual. When we made it to the bar counter, we were greeted by Makarov perched on top of it, Mira sitting under a glass in her shrunken Demon form, and Elfman passed out alongside her. So, nothing unusual, really.
"Feeling better?" I asked the white-haired girl. She answered by flicking her tail irritably, sitting cross-legged under her magical cage.
"Yes," she clipped out, then fixed Mystogan with a sharp stare. "Talk. I want every detail."
We all settled in. I touched Elfman's shoulder and he stirred awake. Makarov covered his mouth.
"Yaaawn. Cana ran the cards again before you got back, and it turns out Mira actually has a chance of being reunited with Lisanna. Which means she's alive," the old man announced, then turned to Mystogan. "We're listening, kid."
And he started telling it all again from the top. Though this time he kept getting cut off or hurried along by one particular white-haired individual who hadn't been let out from under the glass. For the prevention of injuries and widespread property damage, so to speak.
"God. Does that bastard Faust even have any idea what Elfman and I went through?" Mirajane slammed her fist against the floor in front of her. "When I find him, I'm going to tear him apart!"
"Uh... yeah," Mystogan answered, with no idea what else to say. His father was being threatened with a slow death. He clearly wasn't Faust's biggest fan, but not quite to that degree.
"But we have a chance to get her back," Elfman said, his voice low and steady. "Right?"
"You can only reach Edolas through Anima. But you can't—"
"Where does it open next? Tell me!" Mira demanded again.
"Let the man finish," I said, then gave the floor back to Mystogan.
"Mages from this world can't use magic in Edolas. And my father has an army. Even if we forced our way through a portal, we'd be completely helpless," he laid out the logical case for why charging into an entire parallel world with a handful of people was a terrible idea, at least right now. "And on top of that, there's a divine race in Edolas, the Exceeds, that keeps the whole world terrified."
"A race of what?" Mira said, confused. Mystogan pointed at Happy, who was snoozing on the floor. "Those flying cats are gods over there?!"
"Their queen," the blue-haired young man corrected. "She's a great prophetess. Even if she can't read the fates of people from this world... she'll almost certainly know the moment we set foot in Edolas."
"So we need serious preparation," Makarov concluded. "We can't risk everyone if we don't have a real shot."
"Agreed. I'm still working on a way to let your mages use magic over there. It might take years... But when the time comes, we'll have a window to bring Lisanna back to Earthland."
"Years? Years?! You think I'm just going to sit around and wait?! My sister was stolen, and what, I'm supposed to just park myself here while you tinker away at your little project?!"
"Training would be the better use of your time," Mystogan said with a shrug.
"Train, get stronger! Why does everyone keep telling me that?!" Mira started spiraling, then her gaze landed on me. "No, actually, it's only been you two. Elian, this Mystogan is just as much of a smartass as you are! You're both always studying something! And you both keep calling me weak! Even though I'm stronger than both of you!"
Listening to this teenage meltdown, Erza reached out, grabbed the glass, and pulled it toward herself.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" Mirajane snapped, then froze when she saw the soft, almost maternal smile on her "rival's" face.
"You were crying over Lisanna for hours. But here's The Demon, back in full force... Don't you think that's a little much?" Erza said. "A real The Demon wouldn't show this much worry and tenderness. So why put on the act? Why go back to behaving like a little brat?"
Mirajane's face went through a full cycle, white, then red, then whiter, as she listened. Hearing this from Erza, of all people, and given everything she'd already shown her... Mira might have just experienced the most thorough embarrassment of her entire life. I gave my sister a respectful nod; making someone blush that hard took a skill that rivaled my own.
"We'll take you as you are. The kind version, too," Erza finished.
To be fair, the white-haired girl didn't normally act this insufferably. Given what she'd just been through, it was understandable.
As for Erza herself, I was certain that after all of this, her relationship with Mirajane was going to shift toward something warmer. Whether Mira liked it or not. And honestly, it already had. From the moment Mira let her guard down, she was already losing the battle, so yeah.
"You don't have to pretend, Mira," Elfman decided to add his two cents. Bad call.
"Shut up! I'll act however I want!"
"Yeah, that's exactly what we're saying," Erza continued.
Mira went red again, crossed her arms, and turned away from all of us. Apparently she'd decided we didn't exist.
"We'll talk at home," she muttered to Elfman, not turning around. Then she went quiet again.
"About the home you destroyed..." the boy pointed out. The girl went even redder, still not answering.
"Getting back to Edolas," I steered the conversation back where it belonged. "Here's what we decide: we table this until we're stronger, and until Mystogan develops a way for us to use magic over there. Personally, I'll be putting extra focus into my own research so I can open a passage to that world myself, without relying on anyone else's artifact. Depending on a tool that's in someone else's hands is just bad strategy."
Mystogan nodded at that. Faust could simply destroy his own Anima at the worst possible moment, or portal us somewhere completely unfavorable.
Makarov added his own piece:
"Beyond that... Fairy Tail takes care of its own. Our goal isn't just getting Lisanna back. We'll help bring your father down, too."
"Master..." the blue-haired young man said quietly, visibly moved.
"We handle everything at once," Erza confirmed.
"Yeah! We'll all get stronger and twist them into knots!" Elfman declared, suddenly warrior-fierce. Hours after learning he hadn't actually killed his sister, and now fully convinced of it, he'd bounced back completely from that guilt-ridden shell of himself. "By the time we head into Edolas, my biceps will be bigger than my head! Or I'm not a MAN!"
"Pfft. Biceps bigger than your head," Mirajane scoffed. "Who even wants a guy built like that? Elfman, drop the ridiculous promise and just say you'll do everything you can to bring Lisanna home."
"Real men don't back down from what they want!" the guy announced with complete sincerity. "And yes, I'll give it everything I've got!"
Another scoff from Mirajane, still not turning to face us.
"You're all talk. Go find yourself a girlfriend first."
"Don't throw stones in a glass house," I said, sliding the glass with Mira inside over to my side of the table, talking over her indignant protests. "Months will pass... Maybe years. But we will get Lisanna out of Edolas, and we will bring Faust down."
"Yeah..." Mira managed, pulling together whatever small reserves of calm she had left and dropping the yelling. "Just wait, little sis... We're coming. We will absolutely come for you.