VERiTY (Fairy Tail Fanfic)

46. Otherworldly Blue

AN: I didn't expect to be writing a Mystogan POV, but Mystogan snatched this chapter away from Eir and decided to give himself a flashback. Like... okay then... 

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Mystogan knows a man in an iron mask.

He's seen him around the palace, twice or thrice, taken in chains from here to there. He knows that there are four of them (one might have been a woman, he supposed, but he could never be too sure,) and Byard brings them to different points of the palace for an important purpose.

Mystogan never learns what they're around for, or why they are bound (enslaved, perhaps.) But just once– just once, outside the palace, during an expedition away from his father– Mystogan approached the soldier with the 'Air' designation, eager to learn more.

And he remembered how brightly, how furiously those blue eyes burned.

The way it took his breath away, and despite those chains, he immediately engulfed Mystogan's entire figure in a rupturing tornado, each wisp of air a blade that shredded through his clothes, his skin, his bones–

–if Pantherlily hadn't been passing by at that very moment, he would've died that day.

(He never learns how Air was punished, but at the time, he had better things to worry about, like Pantherlily's exile from Extalia, his father's new plan, and his eventual decision to move to Earthland to suppress the Anima.)

He's had nightmares, since, of a cold, unforgiving blizzard, a silent promise to drag him down to hell one day.

That fear was imprinted on him, even now, so many years later. He knew that Air– and the other three, those soldiers– lived in perpetual agony, and the more he thought of them, the more he vowed to one day overthrow his own father.

One day, he wanted to set them free.

(If they didn't kill him first.)

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Mystogan certainly didn't expect a meteor to crash right through his campsite today.

At first, he despaired over his ruined supplies. Those were hard to get in Earthland, since he didn't have their currency, he was too young to be trusted with jobs without entering a guild, (which, he should, but he didn't exactly have that time and commitment to do so since he needed to travel to find Anima,) and those had been a very price-heavy investment. Its lifespan did not live up to the expense, but he doesn't think anyone expected it to need to sustain a meteorite attack, so...

...But wait, the thing that fell was a human.

And then Mystogan panicked, because humans were not supposed to go flying like that, the leg is broken, why is this human alive, what is wrong with Earthland, and what is he going to do about dinner?

"Uhm... are you okay?" he asks.

Almost immediately after a quick inspection of his own wounds, the white-haired man turns to Mystogan– and scrutinizes him, up and down– as if Mystogan was the injured person among them.

And suddenly, Mystogan finds himself a little self-conscious.

When he travelled with Wendy, they did it mostly alone. But now that he thought about it– his face tattoo might be a problem.