The Fairy Slayer

Prologue - The Legendary Fairy Slayer

The job seemed simple when Sherry picked it from the request board. The reward was 300,000 jewel and all the team had to do was lift a spell on some castle ruins.

Lyon and Sherry were surprised when the old hag sent Jura with them, but standing in front of the ruins, staring at the swirling shell of dark magic surrounding the castle, her insistence suddenly made sense.

"So how do we break it?" Lyon asked.

"All it needs is a little love," Sherry sang.

"I doubt that'll help us in this situation," Lyon told her.

"This is old magic," Jura said. "It will take a lot of magic power to even have a hope of breaking it."

"It's that strong?" Sherry asked. This job was starting to lose its simplicity if Iron Rock Jura was concerned about breaking the spell.

"Let's do a combined attack and hit it with everything we've got," Lyon suggested.

Jura rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "That might just work."

"Here it goes," Lyon said. He got into his one-handed ice-make stance. "Ice Make Jaguar!"

"Marionette Attack!" Sherry's pet rat, Angelica, appeared and approached the wall, raising her paws to beat on it.

"Rumbling Mount Fuji!"

Jura's attack hit the shell with the full force of a wizard saint behind it, however the force from Jura's attack was absorbed into the shell, as were the forces exerted by Lyon's maker magic and Angelica.

Once the shell absorbed the three wizards' magic energy, small lights appeared randomly on the dome of swirling dark magic. Then the lights travelled from their locations around the dome like shooting stars, and stopped in front of the wizards; a design began to form.

The wizards from Lamia Scale were astonished to see the shape that formed. It was the emblem of Fairy Tail.

"I don't understand," Lyon said quietly. "What does this have to do with Fairy Tail?"

"The magic energy coming from the ruins doesn't feel malevolent, so it can't be anything evil," Sherry said. "It just feels...different."

"Whatever this has to do with Fairy Tail, I'm sure we'll find out in those ruins," Jura said as he began walking toward the shell.

He cautiously put his hand on the outer surface of the shell. It was smooth and strong; no wonder the other guilds had such a hard time taking it down. There were no imperfections as far as the wizard saint could tell, either physically or in the spell's casting.

The area around Jura's hand pulsed briefly and the shell dissolved almost instantly. There wasn't even a trace of the shell's magic left. It was like it hadn't even been there at all.

"That was unusual," Sherry said.

"That magic was unlike anything I've ever seen," Lyon said. "If it dissolved when Jura touched it, why did all the wizards who took the job before us fail?"

"I don't know, but I bet the answer's inside that castle," Jura said, walking toward the ruins. Lyon and Sherry followed him.

As they approached the castle, they could tell that it was more intact than they had expected, considering they couldn't see it well through the dome. Most of the main keep was intact, minus a few holes here and there. However, the walls that had once protected the castle were little more than a pile of stone blocks. In fact, the three wizards passed the twisted and mangled remains of the iron gate that once stood in the wall.

The strange thing about the castle, though, is that ten years ago it was a fully functioning outpost for the Magical Law Enforcement Unit.

From the information they gathered in town, the three wizards determined that there was some kind of attack at the castle. In a castle full of wizards, most of them had been drained of their magic power and knocked unconscious. A new base had been built at the other side of the neighboring town, but many of the wizards that had been involved in the attack couldn't remember much of what had happened. The resounding story across the board, however, was that Zereph had been involved.

Yet, as the wizards from Lamia Scale approached the castle keep, they could sense no residual black magic.

Surprisingly, the main doors into the castle were still intact and Jura opened them. They swung inward with a squeak.

The interior of the castle was dim, the only light was coming from random holes that had been blasted through the walls and the roof. Broken furniture and discarded weapons littered the stone floor of the keep.

Sherry picked up a torn piece of fabric, turning it to see part of the Magical Law Enforcement emblem. "What was it the survivors said about this place?" she asked.

"That they woke up outside the dome," Lyon said distantly. His attention was focused on a door at the other end of the room. A light was shining out from under the door.

With the others behind him, Lyon pushed the door open, ready for anything that might be lurking behind it.

In the center of the room was the source of the light and the strange magic power that created the dome. The source of the magic power that was emitting from the center of a pillar of energy was...

"A girl?" Lyon said in surprise.

A young woman was suspended within the column of light. Her long blonde, wavy hair floated about her; she would've looked serene if her body hadn't been so battered. Cuts and bruises marred every available surface of her skin and one of her legs appeared to be broken.

Through a particularly large rent in what was left of her white dress, a golden Fairy Tail emblem glinted in the light.

Lyon slowly walked toward the column of light the strange girl was suspended in. As he got closer, the light began to fade. The pillar shrank and the girl's body began floating down toward the floor.

Lyon moved to catch her and her body gently settled to rest in his outstretched arms as the light completely vanished. Her chest rose and fell in a gentle rhythm and Lyon could feel her heart beat where his hand rested gently on her side.

"I don't believe it," Jura said quietly, slightly awed.

"What?" Sherry asked, looking up at the wizard saint. "Who is she?"

"The Fairy Slayer, Evelynn Valkyrie."