Without waiting for an answer, Erza spun around and sprinted back into the caves. With weapons orbiting her in the air, she felt stronger than she ever had.
She cut through guards and even the occasional staff-wielding mage, but she didn't know exactly where to go since there were several punishment rooms. She headed for the nearest one on her route.
Soon she'd scrambled up the rocks and into the cave. A few guards stood in her way, but some bolted the moment they saw her, and the rest were easy enough to drop with her floating weapons.
"Jellal!" With a mix of hurt and relief, Erza swept aside the last of the guards, then cut the ropes binding her friend. "It's over! My brother's plan worked! We just need to get Elian free, and then we can all leave..."
The boy raised dazed eyes toward her.
"Simon got hurt. And Grandpa Rob... he protected me. There were a lot of casualties too... But we won! Come on, we'll be free soon!"
"E-Erza..." Jellal rose on unsteady legs and collapsed against her, but she managed to hold him up. "We're not running anymore."
"...What?"
In answer to Erza's confusion, Jellal suddenly pulled her into a tight grip.
"Because real freedom... it's right here."
He released her and walked toward the exit of the punishment room.
"Jel...lal, what are you talking about?" The redhead's voice carried her bewilderment. "We have to go! We'll get Elian, and then—"
"Erza, freedom isn't something that exists in this world."
"?!"
"I understand that now... What we should be fighting for isn't some fleeting 'freedom.'" Jellal's face darkened. "What I'm after is real freedom... Zeref's world."
Jellal's gaze drifted to the guards lying nearby.
"I can understand, even if just a little, what they feel. They tried to resurrect Zeref in this world. But they're just pathetic believers who couldn't even sense their Lord's presence. Their hatred wasn't enough."
He walked over to one of the guards and pressed his boot down on the man's head.
"Isn't that right...?" he asked.
"Agh!" the guard grunted.
"I'll take their tower, finish the R-System, and resurrect Zeref."
"W-what happened to you? I don't understand what you're saying." Erza began to shake. The person standing in front of her felt like a complete stranger.
"Die, you useless piece of trash!" Jellal drove his boot down hard, and the guard's head split open like a watermelon.
Erza froze, a silent scream trapped behind the hands she'd clapped over her mouth.
At that, the other guards, some of whom had apparently been playing dead, began to stir.
"Wait... Please, stop..." one of them started to beg, but with a single wave of Jellal's hand, an invisible force slammed him into the wall with such violence that what remained was little more than a bloody smear. Jellal had awakened his magic.
"Heh." The boy kept sweeping his arm, crushing guards like flies.
"Stop! Jellal!" Erza tried to reach him.
"Stop? Don't you hate these people?"
"I... I do hate them... But still!"
"Useless," Jellal said coldly. "You'll never feel Zeref the way I do!"
With those words, he telekinetically crushed another guard, and Erza turned away.
"Ha-ha-ha-ha!" his laughter rang out.
"No, Jellal, pull yourself together. I'm sure it's because of what they did to you here, you're not thinking straight right now, you don't under—"
"The torture doesn't matter to me! Because that's exactly when he appeared to me!" Jellal turned to face her. "Erza... let's finish the R-System together... No, the Tower of Heaven. Together. And then we'll resurrect Zeref."
"Stop talking nonsense! We're getting Elian and we're all leaving together!"
Jellal's face twisted. He thrust his arm toward Erza, and a battering ram of force energy tore out from nowhere, sending the girl flying. The redhead was blasted toward the cave exit and then fell outside, hitting the ground below near the slave carts and tools.
"Get out," said Jellal, coming to stand at the cave's edge. "If you want to leave so badly, then go. Alone."
"Alone?" Erza asked, her body beginning to shake again as she got to her feet.
"I'll keep the others. I need people who can finish building the Tower of Heaven." He started picking his way down the rocks to the ground below. "Oh, don't worry. I'm nothing like those mindless wretches. The slaves will become workers, with clothes, food, and rest. Ruling people through fear alone is inefficient."
"Are you out of your mind?!" Erza cried. "Everyone on the ship is waiting for us! They're not coming back here to work!"
"They misunderstood." Jellal spread his hands. "We were never told why we were building. I'll give them a reason! They'll work for the glory of the Great Mage Zeref!"
"Jellal... Please, open your eyes...!"
In answer to her plea, Jellal simply extended his hand and pinched his fingers together like a vise. An invisible, suffocating grip yanked Erza off the ground.
"It hurts... Stop..."
"I don't need you anymore. But I'll spare your life, because I value what you did, clearing the path to me. You can leave the island and go chase your fleeting freedom."
"Jellal..."
"I trust you understand that you have to keep the tower a secret. If the Magic Council finds out, it's all over. If we're discovered, I'll have to eliminate every trace of evidence, and everyone working here. You must never come back. If you're ever seen here again, I'll start killing... Let's see... First will be the one you mention so often. Your precious little brother..."
"Jellal..." Tears began sliding down Erza's face again.
"That's your precious freedom! Carrying the weight of everyone you love, Erza!"
Jellal moved to do something with his magic. Then he stopped.
In that one moment, something shifted in the world.
A chill ran down his spine, and his heart clenched.
The air seemed to drop ten degrees, and his nostrils filled with a phantom smell of blood.
There, at his back, the boy felt the gaze of a monster, one that had killed tens of thousands by its own hand.
Elian's POV. Shortly before.
My head was swimming.
The dark mage who'd been kind enough to introduce himself as Erik had turned out to be not the walking disgrace most people around here were, but a perfectly functional moral catastrophe.
He'd brought a fresh, clean set of instruments and gotten to work carefully painting my back in bloody lines.
Not a single pathetic sound of pain came out of me. I could have endured it. But I chose not to bother, cutting the pain signals off entirely instead. My soul energy was running critically low, but my control was more than sufficient for something that minor.
That didn't mean the torture left no consequences. My child's body poured sweat from the wounds, my muscles kept contracting involuntarily, and my teeth clenched themselves as my mind fought to stay out of the merciful void.
But none of that came close to what it felt like to have my pride ground into the dirt.
I'm stuck enduring the abuse of some pathetic little sorcerer. What a joke. There was a time when entire armies fell to their knees and fled at the sight of me, a God. Every one of those soldiers could cut down hundreds of ordinary men, but their minds broke from sheer terror when I did nothing more than release my Bloodlust. And now... with these scraps of energy... I can't even frighten a normal grown adult, let alone tear this thing they call a "mage" apart with my bare hands...
Erik continued, carving lines around the scar Varick had left. He was adding to it, completing it, like a canvas.
And finally, when he'd finished with my back, he walked around and stood in front of me.
"So how do you feel?" he asked with an almost cheerful lilt, like the whole process had left him inspired. "You have no idea how beautifully I carved you up. A piece of meat like you, you could almost lay out on a table, what a picture that'd make!"
My exhausted body could only manage to lift its head and stare at this bastard with pure hatred.
"But there's one last touch!" Erik reached for a small scalpel. "You don't exactly need both eyes, you'll work just fine with one. And it'll make a great example! Now that's what I call inspired thinking, right?!"
I said nothing.
"Let's begin..."
The scalpel touched my eyelid.
All it took was ten years of rest, and I'm too weak. In a more pitiful position than this worthless... No. I know how I ended up here. Genuinely unlucky circumstances. The source truly hadn't awakened yet. Soul energy is still insufficient. But... this bastard... this much humiliation...
The world in my right eye went dark. That, however, was the least of my concerns.
Rage was flooding my mind.
I swear before myself: the moment I get the chance, I will turn this piece of filth's life into Hell on Earth without a second's hesitation. The suffering will drive him insane. Drowning in his own blood, he'll beg for death!!!
"And that's it, we're done!" Erik, casual as ever, held my removed eye up to the one that remained.
The hatred peaked, and something like darkness began to churn in my chest.
I wanted to say something sharp, but a strange sensation cut through my thoughts.
It was as though something in my chest finally clicked into place. Then my awareness expanded, not the way Sphere Vision expanded it, but through something that didn't so much let you see as let you feel, like reaching out with invisible fingers.
The moment I sensed every object in the room, something else came with it: an image of the magic inside me, seething red with fury.
Knives, scalpels, forceps, nails, everything else, it all rose into the air behind Erik, then drove itself into his back.
"What the—" The man hadn't seen it coming. In an instant, he was bristling with metal like a pincushion. His legs buckled, and he crashed to his knees. "A-a mage?!"
A bloodthirsty grin split my face as power flooded through my body.
"Yes... This energy... There's so much more of it!"
More magic than I'd hoped? Not by orders of magnitude. But it'll be more than enough to get out of here...
My arms tensed, and with a sharp crack of snapping rope, I landed on my feet.
"Master Erik!" two guards stationed at the entrance screamed, and immediately charged me with raised swords.
But when they brought their blades down, the descending steel shifted mid-arc, twisting their wrists along with it. Both men crumpled to the floor on either side of me. The swords were already in my hands, and I drove them through both guards with enough force to pin the bodies to the stone beneath them. They convulsed in their death throes, but I had more pressing things on my mind.
"Yes, so much more!" I said with something close to delight, then pivoted and drove my boot into Erik, who'd been in the middle of trying to cast a spell.
Ribs cracked. He was dragged along the floor a couple of meters as the darkness forming in front of his outstretched hand dissolved.
"First bone," I said, walking slowly toward the mage and picking up my own eye from where it lay near him. "The human body has around two hundred and six, give or take. Don't worry, we're not going to break too many of the others."
My hand ignited with silver flame, sterilizing the organ. Then several silver tendrils erupted from my empty socket, slowly drawing the eye back into place. This was my soul manifesting in the physical world, not magic.
There was a horrible wet squelch. In under a minute, everything that could be reconnected was, held together by soul energy. The eye wouldn't die, but it would take considerable effort to get it seeing again, and I suspected even longer to sync it with my Ethernano.
I turned my gaze downward.
The grin on my face grew hungrier as terror crept across Erik's face. My tyrannical Bloodlust bore down on him, amplified several times over by the magic now coursing through me, and the circumstances made it so crushing that the man nearly dropped dead from cardiac arrest right there.
"You people have no idea how to torture someone. But as a qualified physician among other things," I raised my hand and a scalpel flew into my palm, "allow me to demonstrate exactly how much pain the human body can sustain... while staying conscious."
I grabbed Erik by the front of his clothes and hauled him up with my other hand.
A second later, the punishment room filled with screaming.
Some time after that, three guards burst through the entrance.
"The girl, Master Erik! She's taken out everyone—"
They stopped dead.
Before them was their current leader, nailed through both palms to the wall. He looked like something that only vaguely resembled a human being, sliced beyond recognition, barely still twitching through its convulsions.
"I think that's enough of that," I said, turning away from my small indulgence. "What are you standing there for?!"
I hadn't even moved, but an assortment of bladed objects had already found their way to the three men's throats.
"He's like that girl!" one of them squeaked.
"Just with fewer weapons..." added the second.
"Quiet, you two! Sir mage..." The third immediately changed his tune and began singing like a canary. "A redheaded girl, roughly your age, started a slave revolt! She seemed to be leading them! The slaves broke through to the ships in one sector, while the girl doubled back and started taking apart the guards at the other punishment room! Your peer should be in there right now, a boy with blue hair and a tattoo!"
"Understood," I said, and nodded.
"I can take you there, sir mage! Just please, spare us—"
"That won't be necessary."
All three throats were cut.
"...Kill... me..." came a hoarse, halting plea from Erik behind me.
"Still no. You've got about another half hour of dying to do. And don't worry, nobody's going to come save you. Bye now."
Without looking back, I moved through the caves toward the girl, who, according to my soul sight, was somewhere within fifty meters. As I made my way through the tunnels, my soul's gaze showed me Erza talking with Jellal. And I didn't like what I was hearing.
I broke into a run. But I only made it in time, barely.
When I saw that little bastard choking my sister with his magic, the darkness that rose in my chest was greater than anything I'd felt while being tortured or losing my eye.
"That's your precious freedom! Carrying the weight of everyone you love, Erza!" was the last thing I heard from Jellal before I let my Bloodlust off its leash.
The air began to drop, and my nose filled with that phantom smell of blood, just like in the old world.
Same location. Third person.
Standing at the cave's edge, Elian looked down at Jellal. Erza had fallen the moment the blue-haired boy lost control of his magic.
"You're going to resurrect Zeref? Kill us if Erza comes back?"
Jellal turned at the words. He looked up at Elian, and something in his gut seized with terror as the world around him seemed to dim and a towering silhouette with a single red eye loomed over him. Jellal was no ancient dark mage. In that moment, he understood with complete clarity that he was still just a frightened child.
"You sniveling little brat... Just another worthless obstacle in my way. The death I give you will be so long and so agonizing that your mind will drown in envy of the dead. You'll curse the day you were born!"
The words had barely left him before Elian seized several sharp objects nearby with his will and sent them flying at Jellal from multiple directions. Jellal spun his hands at the last second, and his spell deflected the weapons, scattering them wide.
"No! I won't die!" Jellal thrust his hand toward Elian and snapped his fingers, intending to fling him away.
But the redhead had read the gesture and was already moving. A fraction of a second ahead of the magic, Elian pushed Ethernano through his leg muscles for an explosive burst and threw himself sideways.
Jellal's telekinetic grip closed on empty air, kicking up nothing but a spray of rock dust. For just a moment, shock crossed the boy's face. He clearly hadn't expected anyone to dodge his power.
Jellal uses gestures to direct his magic, Elian registered instantly.
Without breaking momentum, he cut toward Jellal, angling off the direct line of sight. His magic, which needed neither gestures nor words, reached into the surroundings. A heavy chunk of stone silently lifted from the ground behind Jellal and slammed into his back with full force.
"Agh!" Jellal staggered and instinctively spun toward the blow, losing sight of Elian.
That moment was all it took. Closing the distance, the redhead launched himself at him.
Catching the movement from the corner of his eye, Jellal panicked and threw his arm out, unleashing a compressed wave of telekinesis.
He managed to knock Elian sideways, but the redhead, ignoring the wind knocked from his lungs, got his hands around Jellal's outstretched left arm at the last second in a death grip. The force slammed his body into the air and hurled him backward with tremendous power. But Elian didn't let go, locking his fingers around the forearm like a vise.
His grip began to slip. The blood from wounds left by the torturers, on both of them, worked against him. The slick warmth gave way before he could hold on.
Pushing his magic to full, Jellal finally wrenched his opponent loose and sent him flying like a ragdoll. But it cost him.
There was a crack from the air between them.
"A-A-A-A-A-A!" Jellal screamed, staring at his own hand, now twisted at the wrist at an angle that made the stomach turn. The phantom agony radiating from Elian's aura was bleeding into reality, feeding the fear that was already eating through him.
Clutching his broken arm, Jellal looked out to where the redhead had landed, and what little composure remained shattered completely.
From a cloud of dust, in a faint gray glow, something was rising. Slow and deliberate, like a vampire climbing out of a coffin. A ten-year-old boy's lacerated body, right shoulder and knee visibly dislocated from the impact. But under that gray light of the Awakened Soul, the joints rolled back into place with a nauseating, wet crunch. The single eye, burning red in the dark, fixed itself on Jellal and pulled him toward something bottomless.
"D-don't come any closer!" Jellal's voice cracked. His whole body was shaking, hysteria swamping his thoughts.
"Did that hurt?" Lit again by that bloody aura, Elian slowly spread his arms wide, savoring the fear. "Not enough. I want to feel your bones break under my hands."
"N-N-NOOOO!" Jellal screamed. Every trace of his earlier confidence was gone.
He thrust his good arm up and hauled a dozen large rocks into the air around him, then spun and rained them down on Elian.
Elian dropped into a tight, compact stance in the same instant, arms pulled in close. His will threw up an invisible telekinetic barrier. It couldn't stop everything since Jellal's magic outclassed his by orders of magnitude, but it bled off the kinetic force. The rocks pounded into him and left bruises. No broken bones.
In the middle of the barrage, Elian peeled a wide iron lamp bracket from the tower wall nearby and sent it at Jellal's temple from the side. Jellal barely caught it in time and deflected it with an invisible shield.
"That won't work again!" he shrieked.
He was wrong. The lamp was a distraction. A brutally sharp stone skipping in low and fast drove straight into his left ankle. Jellal howled and went down on his back.
Elian moved. Crossing the distance in predatory strides, he threw himself at the fallen boy, going for the throat.
Jellal screamed and surged out another wave of raw telekinetic force. It hurled the redhead up and back, but not before Elian's fingers raked across his ribs and left bloody furrows down his side from the nails.
This time Elian was launched high. Jellal, teeth clenched against the pain, scrambled onto all fours. Only to watch in rising panic as the other boy reached the ground, tucked into a professional roll, absorbed the momentum through his shoulder, and came up without a single break in stride, already running back toward him.
"KYAAAAAAAA!" Jellal shot to his feet and ran, screaming outright with animal terror.
His face was a mask of pure panic. For all his crushing magical power, he was still a child. A broken boy who had no idea how to use that raw strength in an actual fight. One thought hammered through his skull: if that red-eyed monster got hands on him, one hit, and it was over.
Jellal's insides burned. Every part of him screamed to put as much distance as possible between himself and that red light, that suffocating smell of blood, that pressure boring into his brain like a screw.
"Stop, you worm!" Elian roared at his back. "You can't run forever!"
"Zeref... save me! Please!" Jellal sobbed as he ran.
"I have been watching you..." A majestic voice, one that a person in their right mind might have called extraordinarily haughty and cutting, spoke inside his head. "Very well. Since you are my most devoted follower on this cursed island, I will grant your wish."
The red tattoo beneath Jellal's eye blazed with sudden crimson light. Then his body jerked like a marionette yanked by its strings, spinning him around hard, one arm shooting forward.
That was the exact moment Elian reached him. A palm dense with Ethernano, layered for impact, flashed across Jellal's face. Fingers that could tear through muscle sliced across his throat. Jellal choked on the burning pain against his skin. A few more centimeters, just a few, and Jellal's last sensation would have been his own airway collapsing as Elian tore out his larynx.
But today, fate, and one remarkably quick-thinking Zeref, was on the blue-haired boy's side.
Guided by a will not his own, Jellal's magic focused into a crushing telekinetic grip.
Invisible vise-jaws locked around Elian's body. A second grip swept out and snagged Erza where she stood frozen, having watched the entire fight in shock.
With one last hysterical shriek, Jellal flung his arm out and hurled them both into the cold night sea with everything he had. As far as his magic could possibly throw. Far enough that the waves would carry them away, and this nightmare would never, ever come back into his life.
At that same moment, a girl of about fifteen, dark-haired, stood on a ledge of the tower above it all. She watched two red specks vanish beyond the horizon, and sighed.
"Just a child... a terrifying one, but still."
Staring at that horizon, her thoughts drifted to her own path. To her mother, once so loved, taken from her by the world. And to Zeref, whose magic could turn back time to the moment her mother was still alive. To when she herself had been small, and everything could have been undone, life started fresh.
Then her thoughts slowly shifted to the two who'd disappeared.
Either way, the world is full of monsters. The girl has tremendous potential. But by the time she grows into it, everything will already be decided. As for the boy, even less to worry about. Nature didn't exactly bless him with any great gift for magic.
She turned her measured gaze down to Jellal below, who had collapsed and pulled his knees to his chest, rocking and sobbing in great, ugly waves.
Ultear smiled.
Well... I suppose that's how children are supposed to behave... Either way, my choice was the right one. Someone with enough will to lead, but not enough to resist my hypnosis or the darkness. A readiness to sacrifice comrades? Outstanding quality. Hysteria and instability under torture? Even better, he almost broke on his own. And now that I've helped him through that clumsy little confrontation, Jellal will hang on my every word.
She was visibly pleased with herself for playing this particular gullible little fool like a fiddle, appearing to him in Zeref's image.
Then she thought again of the other one. The one who'd looked at her as though he'd already met death face to face, and who'd had that stubborn, grinding need to survive and kill his enemy. Not like a bull, not even like a cockroach. Like a cockroach that very much intended to take everyone else down with it.
...Yes. Unlike that willful little pest, Jellal is far better suited. Both in magical potential and personality. A perfect puppet for the Magic Council and for building the Tower of Heaven.
Ultear turned and dissolved silently into the shadows.
Elian Scarlet's POV.
Not exactly by choice, I hit the water and shortly surfaced.
Without wasting a second, my body started moving, swimming toward Erza. Before long I'd gotten her head up onto my collarbone and let out a slow breath. She was unconscious, and I was worried about her drowning.
Powerful little brat, I thought, thinking of Jellal, whose magic had outclassed mine by more than a fair margin. But as a fighter overall... congratulations, you've just lived out the fantasy of being an axe murderer chasing a child.
Well. Cold sea. But with enough energy, thanks to the magic that had awakened in me, to stay warm and tread water for days. Here we are. Technically, this is what I wanted, with some very significant caveats.
The current was pulling us north. With Erza held against me in a comfortable enough position, I could just wait.
My energy was pretty shot, and going back made no sense. Unfortunately, I was too weak to fight Jellal again once he'd recovered and stopped using his magic like an impulsive disaster with no aim. I'd have to put that particular problem on the back burner.
Besides, while my Ethernano-based sensory ability was still swamped with noise after awakening, I could already read the rough strength of other people's magical containers.
The image of a dark-haired girl flashed through my mind, one I'd caught only a single glance of through soul sight. And judging by the transformation of Jellal's tattoo, she'd likely given him a hand there at the end.
She was stronger than the brat. A lot stronger. And honestly... I genuinely did feel for Simon and the others who'd survived. But going back would be completely pointless. Right now I needed to spend what little strength I had on staying afloat in the current.
We drifted for around two days. Erza stayed unconscious the whole time, and all I managed behind her was keeping us both warm.
Eventually, I dragged us both onto a beach and dropped down beside her. Lying on sand that was doing its best to stab me with every grain, listening to seagulls screaming their heads off, I thought through how not to starve. The smart move was to sleep and rebuild my strength, then actually do something about our situation with what I'd recovered.
Hours passed. My awareness came back, not because I'd slept enough, but because I felt movement nearby.
The smile came to my face on its own.
"Good morning, sweetheart. Evening, rather."
"Li...an?" Erza pushed herself up on her hands, and was presented with me in all my glory.
Covered in cuts, crusted with salt, freshly sitting up.
Tears immediately spilled from Erza's eyes as everything from the last few days seemed to come rushing back at once.
"Lian..." she crawled over and buried her face against my chest, crying. "I couldn't... I couldn't protect you...! I couldn't protect Jellal or Simon... Grandpa Rob died...! Because of me...!"
"Hey, hey." I wrapped my arms around her, ignoring the protest from my back. "Don't take on more than you can carry. Nothing's ever easy... but the way I remember it, you rallied the slaves and swept through a whole lot of those bastards. I can feel strength in you. And that strength is exactly what we have, so that when something in life isn't right, we can change it."
A minute later, Erza's crying slowly quieted. She looked up at me from below, eyes that were resolute and vulnerable at the same time.
"I'm going to get stronger. So that this never... never happens again. So I can protect... you, and all our friends. I won't let anyone take you away again. Never."
Those words did something to me. I just held her a little tighter.
"Speaking of Rob. He was a Fairy Tail mage," I said after a moment.
"Are we going there...?"
"The old man said they live like one big family. We've had enough darkness for one lifetime. So why the hell not?"