Fire, Blood and Stars

Chapter 32

Lyon surveyed his council room from his throne of ice. A few days earlier, it gave him a feeling of power. All these people were helping him so that he could kill the monster. They supported him, and believed in him.

Now, it felt like he was a fugitive in the witness box. You see, he was going to explain how Deliora was not going to be killed.

"So", he started, "I met Deliora's parents."

Murmurs started breaking out throughout the room. One man asked, "My Lord, do you need our help in holding them off while you battle the beast?"

Lyon snorted. "Well, one of them has the superpowered magic called Mother's Love that was enough to defeat Voldemort in Harry Potter, the father could kill us all with a thought, and no, that is not an exaggeration, the uncle could vaporize us all with pure firepower and/or suck us dry of all our blood, the uncle's friend, who used to be my classmate, uses the same magic as me and is a lot scarier, and they also have another demon with them. Oh, and a cat. So, if we try that, we are all dead."

"Then what are we going to do, my liege?" asked a short man who apparently had control over a lost magic, the Arc of Time.

Lyon smiled brightly. "We're going to resurrect Ur!"

The time wizard immediately broke out into a coughing fit. Lyon generously handed him a glass. Yes, it was empty, and made of ice, but it was a glass, nonetheless. And ice was just another form of water, wasn't it?

On the other end of the island, Gray realized that his being late didn't matter, because there was nothing to be late for. Deliora would take just as much time to unfreeze as it- he would have even if Gray had been absent.

Natsu and Lucy were... somewhere. Erza was on the boat with her friends, and had politely suggested that he could leave and let them catch up. Or kiss. Probably kiss. And Zeref and Mavis, well, he was just trying not to look at what they were doing- wait, how? Was that even anatomically possible- HE WAS LOOKING AWAY. They had no sense of privacy! And what they were doing shouldn't be physically possible!

Mavis giggled as she ate another grape using her elbow. Accepting the unspoken challenge, Zeref maneuvered his grape from behind his ear to his mouth with a combination of facial muscles and gravity. Everything was possible with practice, and Zeref had had centuries of it.

Suddenly, they heard an explosion.

A minute ago, Natsu and Lucy had been sitting side-by-side, holding hands. Natsu had leaned in several times, but he still hadn't kissed her. Lucy was wondering whether it was on purpose or not.

Did she want him to? Sure, she wanted him to kiss her, but anything more? Lucy didn't feel comfortable with anything more yet, which was why she had asked about mating seasons. She had read enough books about dragons and werewolves to know that mating seasons typically ended with, well, mating.

She trusted him, and knew he wouldn't try anything she didn't want. More accurately, she was genre-savvy enough to know it.

Lucy was lost in thought when they both heard an explosion from another part of the island.

A minute earlier, Jellal had been telling everyone exactly what had happened.

"And that's what happened. So, guys, Erza isn't evil, got it? And I, uh, I don't think I'm evil, but I don't know."

He looked uneasily at them. They looked at him with blank faces, betraying nothing.

Then they all, sans Erza, lunged at him, magic circles lighting up, with evil grins that told him they were going to enjoy this.