One of the preparations for the trip was the creation of some tonics to prevent motion sickness. Arthur took one himself and gave one to Minerva before they left on Enif. It kept him alert and aware as they soared from Fiore to Minstrel and Era. Arthur found himself looking for Tenrou Island as they went. He didn’t expect to find anything, it was warded against discovery after all, but he had given some thought to how to use his Archive’s detection systems to find just that, so he figured it’d be good practice.

He couldn’t keep his Archive fully open while riding Enif, the pegasus went too fast and the magical connection would be stretched to its limit and snap. But he could keep a few of the rune-circuits upon his flesh. They recorded everything he could of the magical energies detected in the ride.

Minerva had her own training during the ride. Just to maintain a single hollow sphere of her territory for the entire ride, at the speed Enif was going. It was training for her territory armor; Enif wasn’t easy to ride. They had both tied themselves to the pegasus for a reason. It was like riding the whirlwind, one moving at supersonic speeds. Or Arthur assumed that it was supersonic, there was enough magic involved it became hard for him to tell. There wasn’t a shockwave hitting him, but Enif created a certain amount of shielding force around him when he flew, acting as a sort of windshield, cockpit, and deflector of bugs and particles. Still some of the wind could be felt, and it was a heavy, tearing force at these speeds.

Minerva didn’t succeed at keeping the sphere intact and in her hand the entire trip. He hadn’t expected her to make it in less than a half dozen, to be honest. A thin, spherical barrier wasn’t easy to maintain while having it move with your body, and it was harder at speeds. Still it was a step towards truly mastering Territory Armor and not merely covering herself in awkward barriers. The bubble had followed her. She’d maintained its structure. It wasn’t as hard as making it follow specific movements and shift its structure to follow them, but following your body plan was easier than creating a spherical bubble. She’d made it in five, and that really was rather impressive. Minerva might well be the genius with this magic that he had cheated his way into being.

One of the new council members had come in person to see him. He had fought Serena to a stand still, and he had survived the other worldly realm which had killed God Serena; apparently Draculos had fudged the truth of Serena’s death, and merely stated he had been found dead, presumably from battle against the Edolas forces in this realm where magic did not function normally. Arthur would have preferred the story to be that he was a traitor, but he had bowed his head to necessity; Draculos had worked personally with Serena on several occasions he could believe it, but Serena’s reputation was typically rather good, and with only Arthur’s word to go on they would simply view Arthur as a lying murderer.

Even as it was he wasn’t 100% trusted. He had saved Fiore, and Draculos had vouched for him. But he had aided and abetted the greatest criminal in the history of the Magic Council, and even if his current amnesia was confirmed many did not believe the story of possession. As his protector, Arthur was himself automatically suspect. At least too suspect to do what amounted to repair and security work on the heart of the council’s information database and collection system without direct, in person supervision.

“Arthur Lancelot, I presume. Quite the impressive beast. Is it a summoned familiar or something else?” The aged man asked. He was wizened with years, and his magical power was actually fairly weak. Still power wasn’t the same as skill, and Arthur suspected his skill and knowledge of magic were impressive. Just being near him his Archive was picking up interesting information.

“He’s a Celestial Spirit, and he is quite capable of communicating for himself. He’s not an object,” Arthur said.

“Notanobject.Theydon’tmovewellontheirown.Me?I’mthefastestthereis,” Enif said all in a single, run-on breath. Arthur would prefer not to keep him summoned that much longer; Enif continued to be a heavy drain, even if the trip across the sea and continent had been much more direct than the trip across the ocean - Enif hadn’t missed the continent twice this time - and a bit shorter even then.

“So it’s true you’re a celestial spirit mage. I’m surprised that a dragon slayer would bother with such a lesser form of magic,” the councilman said.

“I’d not really call it lesser. It provides a greater variety of benefits and the advantage of having autonomous allies is immense.”

“The dragon slayers I have known took pride in their superior magic; other forms can’t slay dragons after all.”

Arthur shrugged. “Different tools for different tasks.”

“A commendable philosophy. Allow me to show you what remains of the old database and surveillance system.”

Arthur was half out of it as he was introduced to the former councilman, Crawford Seam. A massive old man, over half a foot of height on Arthur, almost twice as wide, and with a beard tied into a fork and reaching down to cover his ribcage, he had apparently originally designed the system. He had retired in disgrace following the Tower of Heaven incident, but he had been asked to help with the repair and transfer of the system as much as possible.

Arthur had had a brief, but long and uncomfortable journey. Still when he opened his Archive the ex-councilman stiffened. “Impressive. I knew the magic had leaked to the outside world, but I never would have dreamt someone from Guiltina had learned it. Did your friends in the Oracion Seis teach it to you?”

“Did Brain teach it to you?” Arthur asked and the old man’s face blanched a bit. “Did he help design this system?” Arthur already knew the answer. MacBeth had mentioned it the evening before. Or at least Brain had claimed to have back doors which stopped it from properly working on them. It had been Cait Shelter, not the council which had given the guild alliance the information, and part of that was because Brain had known backdoors and magic to block detection from his time building the system.

MacBeth had told Arthur what he knew about those backdoors. It was less than Arthur would have liked.

“Where did you hear such a spurious rumor as that?” The man said.

Arthur paused for a few moments, trying to grasp for a lie. Something to throw the man off balance. He just didn’t like him. Besides he suspected he was the one who worked with Tartaros in the future. “Brain’s memories. I absorbed some of them when I killed him,” he said at last.

The man gave Arthur a look then. “Is that so? That must be such a burden. But he may have worked on it. I wouldn’t remember. He was a researcher before he had turned bad. I couldn’t tell you what all he had worked on.”

“Neither could I,” Arthur said. “Don’t remember much, except some of his work in the field that could be called Archive magic.:

“So that’s how you learned the magic?”

Arthur shook his head. “I knew a fair bit before coming here. It was still experimental in Guiltina but I’m something of a genius.” His imposter syndrome stirred a bit there; but that was his justification for being here to help fix the systems.

“Is that so? I’d love to pick your brain on the subject sometime.” The way the ex-council member said those words made Arthur’s skin crawl.

“Maybe we can have a discussion of it sometime when I’ve recovered from my journey,” Arthur said.

“Perhaps we will. Care to join me for dinner this evening?”

Arthur hesitated. He didn’t trust this man. They were a retired councilmember with Archive magic. One of those had shown up and they were not a good guy. Or were they being coerced and threatened? Arthur couldn’t remember. Didn’t they poison Erza and Fairy Tail?

“I think I should get settled in, and make sure that Minerva does as well, then I need to see to some things with my celestial spirits,” Arthur answered. “Maybe some other evening.”

“I will be looking forward to the opportunity. To dine with you that is.” Again Arthur felt his skin crawl.

Arthur had told the truth, though. He’d spent the day getting settled, giving Minerva a small lesson in shields, and talking with his spirits. He renegotiated his contract with Enif. Well not much negotiation took place other than a statement that he would in fact be more likely to summon the pegasus without the maximized output condition.

He’d obtained Enif’s allegiance. It put him back up to 400 points. He had a lot of options. He wasn’t going to spend the points just cause he had them burning a hole in his pocket, tempting as it was. Still he did make a short list of things that might be particularly useful. Curse Magic looked strong, but more so in future worlds than this one, and being able to draw power from human suffering might be too much of a temptation if he had it. He was tempted to feed the souls of his every enemy to a demon sword already, and he got far less for doing so. Magic Barrier Particle Body could be terrifying; a form that bolstered his magical power and strength, poisonous gas form, there was a lot to unpack there. Then there was the power of friendship perk; if he had friends that’d be worthwhile, but the bounty related to making friends still hadn’t unlocked. He wondered if it was something on his part or theirs. All of those options were expensive, though. Still they were the only perks he could still discount. Things that simply couldn’t be discounted but were tempting included another magic style. Enchantment magic might have the answer to stop dragonification. Takeover Satan Soul ought to provide him with a stepping stone to make takeover dragon soul and complete that bounty, which while a more selfish option would also let him possibly develop dragon antibodies of his own, and it should prove extremely useful against the demons of Tartaros if, when, he inevitably fought them. If the black blade, that brother, kin, clone, copy, or what have you of Stormbringer, counted as a demon like Stormbringer’s true form, he might gain untold power from takeover emulating its soul. Though that was a dangerous proposition with the tantalizing prospect of power it would offer. Could he be trusted not to eat souls if he made it easier and more beneficial simultaneously or would he find excuses to do so.

There was the perennial option as well; increase his magical power. He was rated Gildarts, high enough to be considered a weapon of mass destruction. He could destroy Era, right now, with one hand tied behind his back and it would take a literal army to have a chance at stopping him, or some truly spectacular individuals. He could probably count the number of people who could take him in a one-on-one fight on his fingers. With the Knight and a sword in hand he felt confident he could take on Gildarts. Even with just his shield. Draculos might beat him, but Draculos didn’t seem to believe he’d win a direct fight and so Arthur would believe him. On Ishgar that left Master Hades, Mard Geer, Zeref, and Acnologia. And if his black blade was capable enough it might only be Acnologia who was insurmountable. But Alvarez had others who could beat him, and Guiltina too. He didn’t dare fight Selene. But if his magic power was increased to the utmost? Irene and August might still be walls. Selene would still hold more power than him. But he’d be a real power player. It was an option at least, an one he suspected sooner or later he would take.

There was also still Edo Magic. Of all the perks he could have once discounted but which were no longer available to him it was the one that tempted him most. He could make a fully functional prosthetic hand with it. He could make magical items. He could make dragon slayer lacrima. It opened up possibilities without limit in this and future worlds.

Though on the topic of objects of power his purchase catalog included some tempting offers there. Angel Coins he could give to Sorano for a bounty; though it just seemed to give her the Angel Coins. He wasn’t sure what the gain was there. But it would help her grow and keep up in combat; and unlike the originals wouldn’t parasitically drain her life force. His own Anima Machine; he could build it with Edo Magic though this would save him a good deal of resources it was probably not worth it. A magical battleship; probably not worth it with his personal power at this point. A Magic Pet one tier below him in magical power… which ended with stating they could assume an attractive human form for reasons. That was too close to many unfortunate implications; he didn’t feel comfortable with lusting after Sorano because of the implied coercion of his position, a guaranteed to be eager to please you animal that was in human form. That just felt wrong. It’d be similar to a Celestial Spirit that he didn’t have to supply with magic though. Potentially useful, and the most potentially useful at that price tier.

The higher tier, though, included exceptional wealth, a version of the Dorma Anim, and the Books of Zeref. All three were tempting. Immense wealth could buy many resources. He could hire people to do most of his legwork and groundwork. The Dorma Anim was a powerful weapon, but he could steal the original; he still intended to. But for now it was encased in stone from where Edolas Fairy Tail had forced it to the ground and into a lava pit that Edolas Ultear had melted. Out right stealing it would be difficult at the moment and cause issues with Edolas and Selene. He’d wait for that at least for now.

The Books of Zeref might help him obtain an Etherious form. The power that should give him would be more than worth it; it might be a larger boost than buying his magic power higher. But on its own it’d merely teach him how to create them, the increased reward for doing it without the help of Tartarus. It was tempting still, magic to create demon hordes could be of use.

There was a still higher tier of superweapons. The orbital kill sat Etherion. The anti-magic saturation of Face. A nerfed version of Nirvana. 8 Dragon Lacrima, several of which overlapped with those he already had though these he’d be guaranteed to be able to implant without issue. None of these were that tempting. But there was the Eclipse Gate. Time travel. Time travel was a potent power, and a terrible one. He wasn’t sure he was paradox proof, but if he was the one doing the traveling he should be fine. Still it’d cost 400 points, and it’d require more magical power than even he possessed to fuel it. That was the rub. That and the moral imperative which said he couldn’t just retreat into the past and leave the world to Acnologia.

Well all of these could wait. He’d have more options once he defeated Grimoire Heart and made Minerva the S-Class threat she could be. Still it was good to have an idea of what he might want long term if only so he could have an idea what might get him out of hot water without being a long term waste.

In the morning it was time to start his Archive work. Well first he gave Minerva a little lesson plan on territory shields. He wasn’t merely giving her what information his Archive had recorded about his own spellcasting this time, but creating a lesson plan, giving some tips and advice, and failing to figure out how you go from basic beginner to expert. He’d feel guilty agreeing to teach her and then not actually seeing her stronger than she would have been under Jiemma. He still wasn’t finished when he had the rather extravagant meal the council had had provided for him; it was a much more sumptuous thing than in Crocus and he had to wonder if it was a change in his status, or if it was just that this was the standard for employees in Era, and they hadn’t told him to give him second class food.

He still wasn’t really sure how he should even be going about the lesson plan by the time he had finished breakfast. He was still working on that when the former councilman came to demand why he was 15 minutes late. Arthur was wasting not only his own time, but the councilman’s extremely valuable time.

Arthur went with what he had, delivering it to Minerva’s mind, and summoning Caelum with orders to test her shields at low power. In effect he set the spirit to stun. Then he went into the basement of the old council headquarters and began work.

“Isn’t that a little much? Even summoned at lowered specs, keeping a celestial spirit active indefinitely has to be straining when you’re doing work like this,” the councilman said as they began.

Arthur shrugged it off. “I can handle it. It’s not like running the archive needs much power.”

The old man harrumphed a little. “Maybe for a dinky one like yours, but I’d like to see you say that about my super-archive.” When he summoned the energy framework, Arthur felt almost like this had become a pointless dick measuring contest. It was that feeling more than tact that kept him from pointing out that before the black knight smashed his system his was bigger.

It was twelve minutes later that the councilman interrupted him again. “Drop your spatial magic, it’s making it hard to read what you’re actually doing.”

“I’m not dropping it without an order from the council,” Arthur stated. “I took out an assassins guild last week; better keep it up than get sniped.”

“Preposterous, who’d dare assassinate someone here. This is the central pillar of the magic council, no dark guild would dare to work here.”

“Tartarus would,” Arthur said. He didn’t see the choking face the man made. “Same with Grimoire Heart; they were the ones pulling Jellal’s strings after all. Wouldn’t have put it past the Oracion Seis. And with the chaos and disruption of the headquarters move any number might.”

“How am I supposed to watch over you to make sure you don’t do anything you shouldn’t be doing if you keep it up?”

“Get Gran Doma to tell me to shut it down, otherwise I’m keeping it up.”

“Why, why, you… You really are quite the character. You believe your power puts you above the law,” the old man growled.

“Gran Doma is the law, not you,” Arthur said. “And like I said if he gives the order I’ll do it.”

“Why why why…” The old man fumed for several minutes before leaving the room to perform a long distance contact spell with Gran Doma.

Arthur took this opportunity to fish around the system. It was ultimately a… Well he’d call it a derivation of Archive magic, but it seemed to be an older and less sophisticated form of Information magic. It really shouldn’t surprise him; Solid Script, the Dark Ecriture magic that the Thunder God Tribe guy used, the books of demons which Zeref wrote. While all of those were primarily language magic, language was just a medium for information. And this was much more rooted in rune script than Archive was. Though not everywhere. Its highest end functions were definitely rooted in Archive magic; though some of that had gone dead within the last month. After the Tower of Heaven incident.

“Now what are you doing?” the former council member began as he returned. Arthur cursed himself for not smelling the man coming. And then had the worrying realization he was relying on smell to detect people almost to the same level as hearing. His dragonification was progressing.

“Trying to find out how the system works,” Arthur said.

“Decrypting files,” the man bemoaned. “Those are high security files of the magic council.”

“I’m just doing my job. How about we both contact Gran Doma right now and ask him about it.”

“You weren’t supposed to touch anything delicate without me here. My job is to make sure you don’t go poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

Arthur fumed a bit. He didn’t like the man. To be fair he was inherently poisoned against Crawford because his job was to look over Arthur’s shoulder, and he was fairly certain he had helped Tartaros, but he didn’t know if that was because he was coerced or not.

Arthur sighed. “Sorry, I was just trying to get my job here done.”

“And Gran Doma said to shut off your armor if it’s interfering with my investigations,” Crawford fumed.

Arthur sighed and lowered his territory armor before summoning forth his Kochab star dress. “I assume this doesn’t interfere?”

“No, no, it does not,” Crawford said. “I really am sorry we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. Please, let me make it up to you. I really would like you to join me for dinner this evening after our day here is done.”

Arthur needed time to process what he had copied from the hidden files while Crawford was gone. And then to send them to Gran Doma. But out right telling him that he thought he was a traitor working with dark guilds for personal power and advancement was probably not a good idea.

“I’ll need to check on Minerva’s progress,” he said.

“Surely that can wait till after supper, or be done before. We could dine late if that’s necessary.”

Arthur continued to try and find some excuse to defer another night, but in the end he agreed to arrive for a late supper before continuing his work. He didn’t poke around in hidden files too much more, not with Crawford watching, but he did make note of them until he sighed and reported that he’d need to rebuild some of his Archive from the damage it had suffered in a battle, and would be doing that for the rest of the day.

“I… I really must pick your brains,” Crawford said after a period of watching Arthur work. “The way you work Archive magic is awe-inspiring if I were to be honest. Do you still have that summon active?”

“Yeah,” Arthur said with a little shrug.

“And the spirit dress?”

“Yeah.”

“Amazing. So much power and yet coupled with such skill. You could, should, be a true legend. I’m surprised we’ve never heard of you. Though you are so young. Still such a prodigy.”

Arthur couldn’t help but smile, at least until his imposter syndrome kicked in. Crawford seemed honestly amazed.

Eventually he’d been at it as long as he could stand to be at it. Even with a lunch break, and breaks to ‘get air’ he needed to stop. Crawford threw some shade on him for stopping after merely a 9 hour work day, but Arthur was mentally exhausted. And he still had work to do before supper.

He had downloaded much of the hidden data. Archive magic woven behind the Runic Code. It wasn’t Brain’s shut down for the detection system. Though it was related. It was Brain’s spy tap on the Council. He thought. It was hard to say for certain because of the damage the system had suffered; parts of the spell work was simply missing.

Arthur wondered if Crawford knew about it. Or he did until he realized it included blackmail information on Crawford.

Information that tracked his dealings with Tartaros and Grimoire Heart.

Arthur contacted Gran Doma immediately.

Gran Doma listened, even sending a thought projection as asked. But he refused to immediately act on what amounted to Arthur’s word. His thought projection did accompany Arthur to the basement. He was hard at work at something, his Archive going at full bore.

Crawford was startled by Gran Doma’s arrival. Still he didn’t interfere with opening the file. Nor with reading it until Gran Doma had him shut it off and authorized Arthur to find other such backdoors that Brain had left within the system. He’d not read much of it, but it was enough to verify it existed which meant that showing Crawford the rest would be dangerous.

Gran Doma couldn’t have a former council member seized without contacting the council, or without carefully going over the information and evidence against him. For the time being Arthur would have to continue as if everything was normal, but keep an eye on Crawford.

He was going to have dinner with the councilman. Once he could get him to leave the facility. Still Arthur had been given authority to access whatever information he needed or found, and Crawford had been directly told to assist him in “whatever way he finds necessary.” Crawford was no longer his keeper, and he’d earned an iota of trust from Gran Doma if not the council as a whole.

“If you showed me how you found the hidden code and accessed it, me and my super-archive could help you find more,” Crawford stated.

Arthur shook his head. “If Brain hid more than one thing, he’d have used different methods as a contingency. If finding one could let you find them all it’d be pretty useless to make them separate. What I’m looking for now is other vulnerabilities or flaws in the system. What I need from you is to go find Minerva and bring her here.”

“Wouldn’t she just be in the way?”

“She’s my apprentice; an apprentice’s job is to help.” Arthur really just wanted to keep Crawford from poking around in the system. Besides Minerva he could trust to act as hands and feet.

“So what exactly was it that you found?” Crawford asked as they sat down for dinner.

“Must we really talk about work while we eat? But I ultimately think it is of little consequence; it was an information tap used by a dead man. We don’t know how much of it he shared or with whom.”

“I see,” Crawford said gravely. “Well then I guess we should put such dark talk behind us, especially with the young lady present.” His eyes shot towards Minerva. “Though I am still interested in your magic. Take your defensive spell, for instance, I would have loved to have access to such a magic while I was in office as a council member. What kind of magic is it?”

“Spatial,” Arthur answered.

“No, no, no, I mean more specific than that.”

“Territory.” Arthur could watch Crawford’s hopes sag. “Oh, well then. That is a rather difficult style, one which few have the aptitude necessary to delve far into. I can see it, though, in the way it distorts things around you, but why does it make your hand black like that?” He looked pointedly at Arthur’s hand. It wasn’t his flesh and blood one, but the hand constructed of his dragon slayer magic.

Arthur let the magic fade, and he felt his whole body relax. He couldn’t make himself reform it at the moment, awkward as dining with only one hand was - he still wasn’t used to it - the stress of maintaining that spell all day had apparently gotten to him. It wasn’t exactly hard; if it was weightlifting and Arthur could lift a 100 lb dumb bell in one hand it was like lifting a 1 lb one, but it was like trying to walk around with it in your arm at full extension all day. His magical muscle was tired not from the intensity but the sheer duration. With his Territory Armor he had managed to feed it magic to sustain itself for minutes even hours at a time; if he was willing to pour enough magic in he could ‘cast’ it in the morning and keep it up. His hand was decidedly not like that. It might just be that he wasn't as skilled with his darkness magic, though he suspected it was linked to the sensory feedback and relative free range of motion. The other just followed the boundary of his body. This one had to be able to change at a thought.

“I lost the hand during the Crocus incident,” Arthur said solemnly. “I’m trying to replace it with my magic. Territory doesn’t work for it, so I’m using my dragon slayer magic. It can get dangerous without my armor up, though, as if I slip a bit it gets, er let’s say corrosive. It starts leaking energy.”

“Oh,” Crawford said, a shocked look on his face. Not for the first time today Arthur found himself wondering what was going on in the council member’s head. “They make prosthetics. Wouldn’t that be easier?”

“Two kings, and a magic tool maker have promised me ones, measured my stump and arm and everything, but it’s taking time.”

“And while you wait you’re learning something new with your magic. The ardor of youth. It’s a shame I’ve lost it,” Crawford said. “But here I am pestering you with questions on what, I must apologize, likely is a sore subject for you. I’d like to say that I am certain there’s something magical you’d like to learn from me, but I’m afraid given what you’ve already demonstrated despite my age, and what I had considered quite the expertise in the way of magic, but I fear you may have proven the lie to my pride.”

“Actually if you don’t mind me picking your brain on a matter. What do you know about Dragon Slayers?”

“I fear almost certainly less than you do.”

“Know anywhere in Ishgar where they have information on them, or the Dragon War which ended the age of dragons?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much on the subject, though I could point you towards some of the store houses of magical knowledge. I know of a surgeon who has implanted dragon slayer lacrima, perhaps he’d know more.”

“Could you give me his name and address?”

“I’ll have to look it up after our meal.”

As the evening wore on Arthur found himself actually enjoying talking with the old man. He knew that he had been in contact with all three of the top guilds in the Balam Alliance. He knew that he had ordered assassinations of his political enemies. That he had worked with the Tower of Heaven before Jellal had come into position as Zeref’s vessel. That he sold information to the Balam Alliance to protect them from legal authority and had gotten at least 3 undercover agents killed. At least according to Brain’s emergency blackmail.

But he was friendly, considerate, and a rather excellent host. When Minerva’s history came up, he even spent an hour in a discussion with her about the flaws of Jiemma’s philosophy, and how such an antisocial view did humanity as a whole a disservice. He hadn’t even flinched when Arthur asked him if he knew anything about etherious or devil slayer magic.

If Gran Doma hadn’t warned him even before coming down here to watch Crawford he could almost believe it was just lies which Brain had concocted. After all it merely told where the evidence was, it didn’t include it.

Well that and he remembered he was working with Tartaros in the future. But he couldn’t remember for sure why. It was possible they were already controlling and using him all the way back now. It was just as likely though that he was a horribly corrupt old man. Gran Domo would be sending a team to check out Brain’s supposed evidence.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

The next two days were less eventful. Arthur rebuilt his Archive while he worked. A lot of the data in the old database was damaged. Still Arthur did manage to reconnect it to the information tracking system, and get it properly downloading information into his Archive, automatically translating the script magic it was written in.

Crawford commended him, but kept asking if there had been any other secrets that had slipped past his careful watch on the Magic Council. Arthur of course told him no. It was completely true. He’d found a record of magical energy used by communication lacrima, and a record of messages sent; the two didn’t add up, it was almost like someone had scrubbed the record of messages sent. But that was weak evidence of anything at best.

He did find other things he was looking for. This was primarily a surveillance database. It didn’t keep records of people so much as events and locations that had been observed. It was, in theory, meant to track the activities of dark guilds to bring them to justice; in practice Brain had helped design it, and the Balam Alliance was well informed of its nature and how to circumvent it. It didn’t contain the information he hoped to get in Era about dragonification, the dragon wars, or anything of that sort. He made sure he took breaks in or near the library as often as he could stand so that his Archive could passively absorb such information, but it was slow going at best. Likewise it didn’t track individual children; he couldn’t find Yukina, Sting, or Rogue that way.

It didn’t stop Crawford from inviting him regularly for supper. They talked about magic, and it was quite civil and cordial. Arthur found himself relaxing enough to ask if Crawford knew anything about the demons of Zeref, and devil slayer magic, leading to an opening up of his purpose in Ishgar and search for a cure for dragonification. The resulting discussion of herbal possibilities there continued into the next day, and bled over into the Archive work.

Still on the fifth day, Arthur got the detection systems working well enough to actually begin his real job here. The aiming system for Etherion did possess means of detecting the flow of magical energy across the entire continent, but also what was equivalent to satellite imaging. Unfortunately the damage had left it far less precise than he had hoped, and the control system for it was almost completely down. He realized he’d need to build his Archive towards its pinnacle if he was going to use it to brute force the specialized magical tools that had been part of this system. Which was relatively grunt work to be honest; it required a repetitive use of magic, one with enough concentration needed to keep him from having long conversations in the middle but still it was less difficult and just required enough focus to make certain the magic was properly shaped.

He took regular breaks to practice his darkness magic - it was a change of pace if nothing else - to talk to Crawford, and to show Minerva what he was doing and how. The day was long, and ultimately rather boring. To find anything useful he’d need a much larger and more capable Archive. He even enlisted Crawford to help, letting the aged mage showcase the Super-Archive he was so proud of. Arthur learned less than Crawford, but having a second opinion on things was useful.

On the fifth day he found a record of Anima Events, it really was as simple as thinking to look for one. It wasn’t complete; it had been damaged, but it did include at least parts of the extra-thoroughly documented one where ‘unidentified objects escaped the spatial distortion’, what he presumed were the exceed eggs being dropped to Earthland. That, at least, gave him a list of places to start checking in Fiore that might have contained Sting and or Rogue nearly 7 years ago.

The sixth day came with news from the Thunderbolts. They had found Kobold’s Snout, and their mobile base Kobold’s Pit by good old fashioned investigative work. They were beginning to prepare for the attack, and wanted him to return. Gran Doma countermanned that order; Arthur’s current duties took priority, and this would be a chance for the Thunderbolts to show that they were a good program without their temporary commander. Arthur spent the evening fuming and ranting to Crawford about it, before venting with some rather destructive practice of his dragon slayer magic outside of Era.

The seventh day Arthur found himself having trouble focusing. He knew that Sorano and the others would be attacking Kobold’s Pit, but he didn’t know where or how. Doma had blocked communications between them specifically to stop Arthur from being told that information. It made it hard to focus. And he hated the idea that one of the team might die because the Magic Council hamstrung them.

Crawford noticed. He was most decidedly unaware of the Thunderbolts program; and given his connections with dark guilds Arthur knew that Crawford needed to stay most thoroughly unaware. The council recruiting a group of convict mages to hunt other dark guilds was a political landmine, and one which could threaten to start an all out war with the dark guilds if they felt sufficiently threatened. They had to know whether the Thunderbolts could work without Arthur before they went too far down that path and lost all deniability.

But being able to rationally accept the validity of Gran Doma’s position, didn’t make Arthur accept it emotionally and it didn’t help with the anxiety at all. Crawford was eager to lend an ear, though. Arthur lied a bit and said it was about Diabolos. He;d already told Crawford about their Dragonification, it didn’t add much to say he’d gotten a message that a team he was close to was going on a dangerous job without him.

Crawford tried to comfort him. It was one of those moments where Arthur had to remind himself that Crawford was probably in bed with Tartaros. Still he couldn’t work on his Archive construction like this.

“Crawford, would you be willing to guide me to that lacrima surgeon you told me about? I think I could use a walk, and some company to stop my brooding.”

Crawford hesitated, but after a few moments nodded his head. “I guess it would probably speed the project if you were at your best.”

“Just let me get my Archive doing some automated repair processes and we can lock this place down while we’re gone.” The truth was it was going to be running comparisons of records of spatial observations and the meetings Brain’s blackmail message had listed for Crawford meeting with Tartaros and Grimoire Heart to see what it could observe there.

Minerva was left to actually watch the database room, and ensure the magical knights kept the door locked.

Strictly speaking the surgeon was merely one who had done the surgery before, albeit only twice, and once was about 20 years ago. He did not ‘specialize’ in it. He gave Arthur a long discussion about how dangerous it was, and how expensive it would be, because of the sheer amount of skill it required.

He was still talking when Arthur got a distress message from Minerva through his Archive. It was a simple one word message: HELP.

Arthur’s territory surrounded him and an instant later he was in the database chamber. Or what was left of it. It had already been damaged, but the structural integrity was gone now. Arthur’s Archive was still standing, Minerva’s hands raised and spread, her territory formed in a wall between her and a man in his twenties. He had dark blonde hair, and some sort of feline or lupine ears on his head, a cat-like tail stretching out behind him. A flat, black nose adorned his face. Black marks surrounded his eyes and covered his forearms which darkened to pure black by his hands.

“You fucking bitch,” he said. “You think you can-” He paused, seeing Arthur’s arrival.

“Minerva, get out of here, I’ll handle him,” Arthur said, one hand motion activating his overclock, and another closing his Archive.

“You’ll handle me, mage?” the man said with a snarl. “I was holding back before. Trying to get the job done with minimal exposure. But if you’re gonna make me really fight for it.”

The mage flicked his hand a sphere of energy forming around Minerva. “Make one move and I’ll blow the girl up,” the mage said with a spreading, snarling smile. Arthur froze.

“Good boy, now,” the mage seemed to consider for a moment, before he opened his hand wide and pulled back his arm, grasping the air before slamming his hand forward. It was a more powerful explosion, one which would detonate the ground Arthur was standing on and send him flying. Minerva’s territory had blocked a blast that had destroyed the roof and walls of the basement chamber, creating a crater from the force. This one was larger and more powerful. But Arthur’s space spread out beneath him, creating a field between him and the ground, one which contained the explosion completely unharmed.

The mage’s face froze. “She dies then,” He said, detonating the sphere.

“And so do you,” Arthur said. Not because Minerva had just died; she’d been free before he’d shielded himself. He wasn’t sure where she’d gone, his Archive was too focused on the mage before him to have noted it, but she had teleported herself in an instant.

A sword, complete with crossguard, formed from Arthur’s stump, replacing his missing hand. In the same instant he warped beside the enemy, and swung the sword. An explosion blasted in Arthur’s face, his territory armor weathering the blast.

The mage landed on his feet. The sword had missed him due to the explosion. Minerva had not. Arthur could see her from this angle, her hands moving as her territory formed explosive sphere after explosive sphere.

“Minerva get out of here,” Arthur repeated.

“But I can help you,” She said.

“He’s already tried to take you hostage once.” And it wasn’t with magic. He wasn’t using ethernano. His Archive could register the explosion building, but only because it had created light and temperature. Though there had been a build up of some sort of energy, his Archive not knowing what it was, but still able to trace it; it was on the same spectrum as ethernano but different. Arthur had realized what they were; they weren’t human, they were an etherious.

“And failed,” Minerva reminded, as another explosion rocked the demon. Minerva was continuously barraging him with her explosive globes. It was enough to help keep him off balance, though it was not doing it on its own, Arthur’s space was slamming and battering against him, wrapping around him, and squeezing.

“He’s one of Zeref’s demons,” Arthur said.

Minerva’s explosions stopped. She was stunned by the statement. The demons of Zeref were almost myth. They had existed at some point and were, in theory, immortal, but the idea of one running around was something that would take a bit of time to process.

The demon, though, was transforming, his body twisting as it bulged out, transforming into a monstrous, beast-man form like some dusty blonde werewolf.

“You know since you’ve said that I can’t let the girl escape,” the demon said. “She’s got to die to make sure that our secrets stay secret.”

“Minerva, if you’re going to stay,” Arthur teleported in between her and the wolf-demon, a silver key appearing in his hand as he touched it to her forehead. Kochab’s star ‘dress’ appeared around her, bulky, blue, teddy bear themed powered armor shielding her. “You need something to keep you safe.”

“It’s hard to fight properly in this,” Minerva said.

“Stop yacking to each other and pay attention to me!” The demon of Zeref yelled as his clawed fingers glowed brightly trying to scratch through Arthur’s territory. They left explosive blasts in their wake. They couldn’t find purchase, though, and the explosions failed to penetrate the Territory shield.

Arthur was progressively not impressed by the demon. Still he didn’t want to fight him in a city. Curse power grew with suffering and negative emotion; if he played with the demon it would attack the city and who knew how many people it would kill.

Did he have a way to safely capture them? Did he want to buy Takeover to try and take over its power? Did he want to kill him with the black sword? Would he return to their cube to be reborn otherwise? Could he track Cube that way?

Arthur formed a sword of darkness dragon slayer magic, letting it shape from the stump where his primary hand once was. “Minerva, I’d let you use him to grow stronger, but there’d be too much collateral. Hit him as hard as you can,” Even as he spoke, though, there was a telepathic missive running through the Archive link.

Her territory explosions created a blinding mass of light as they concentrated in front of the demon. His own explosions roared against them, and Arthur’s spatial wall was buffeted by both.

But it was a distraction. Arthur plunged his sword into his shadow, and the demon’s shadow rose up to thrust through his back, pushing through his chest.

Suddenly a mass of wind struck, sending Arthur flying into one of the walls of what had once been the council’s database chamber; now it was really nothing more than a crater in the ground.

“Really, Jackal, letting a human push you into your true form, and then losing on top of it? Where is your dignity as a demon?” The new arrival asked, a powerfully built leonesque man. His face was almost partway to a lion’s, resembling a beast’s muzzle, his neck framed with a mane-like neckbeard.

“I didn’t lose, Tempester,” Jackal said as the werewolf-like demon rose to his feet. “He merely surprised me a-” Jackal cut off as a half-dozen blades of darkness shot up through his chest and torso out from his shadow, the same happening to the newly arrived Tempester. A half dozen explosive spheres then formed and detonated around them, a cloud of dust and dirt thrown up into the air from the explosion.

“Pathetic,” Minerva said. “These are demons of Zeref? I had thought their power was a legend of the apocalypse, this is…”

“They’re not beaten yet,” Arthur said. Jackal and Tempester both were pulling themselves off of his blades.

“We’ve destroyed the runic library, right?” Tempester asked, glancing about.

“Yeah, there’s just the Dragon Slayer to deal with,” Jackal growled.

“So I can go ahead and die?” Tempester didn’t wait for confirmation, but launched himself forward, his body half disappearing into whirling winds, turning halfway into a living cyclone as he drove towards Arthur.

Arthur’s roar stopped his charge before he could reach him, blasting the demon back even as it cut a deep ravine in the grounds which surrounded the ruins of the former magic council building.

“Stop forgetting about me!” Tempester screamed out as his claw struck Arthur in the head from the side. An explosion immediately followed, but Arthur rolled with the force of the blow, his darkness sword reforming to replace his missing hand. His armor had taken the explosion, none of the actual force of impact transferring through the barrier of his personal space that separated him solipsistically from reality outside.

“I would, if you mattered,” Arthur stabbed back, literally and figuratively, cutting off Jackal’s hand when he struck again.

Jackal howled out, cursing Arthur. Arthur grinned like a psycho, and said, “Hey look, now we’re both not left handed.”

“You picked the wrong opponents to mess with, human,” Tempester stated as he dropped to his knees and exploded into a dense black mist. His voice continued to ring out through the air expositorily, monologuing in grand villain style. “Humans can never defeat demons. These magic barrier particles will pollute the air, destroying…”

Arthur didn’t need the exposition. He remembered how they removed Laxus for the Tartaros arc. One of the demons blew himself up as Magic Barrier Particles, poisoning Laxus with magic deficiency, which was fatal to mages. The moment Arthur had seen the attack he had known how to answer it.

His darkness sword shot from his hand, firing out like an arrow into the heart of the mist before imploding. He’d never gotten to test it in a real situation, and if it looked like it was failing he’d copy Laxus and eat it to save Minerva, hopefully given Rogue could eat black things and it was black it’d not mess him up as badly. He should have enough magical power to survive and recover anyway; though he was forgetting that Laxus hadn’t managed to consume more than a small fraction and the town had still been destroyed. But it wasn’t necessary, the sphere of his magic at the center had survived and had become something else. It was a hole in reality, a hole to a dimension that was completely empty. Arthur called the spell his Dark Dominion Magic - All Consuming Void.

Rocks and rubble flew towards it. The wind screeched in a gale force. Arthur felt himself being pulled towards it. It wasn’t supposed to pull him, but the sheer wind force was doing so. Minerva’s heavy bear armor was slowing her drift, and she had doubled down, minimizing her profile to the wind, and grabbing the ground. Not that the ground was completely safe as pieces of it were breaking off. Arthur teleported himself to her side, and wrapped them both in his space, taking in the area around them both as his territory. It wasn’t keyed to his territory magic in particular, her own could have done the job, but the pull it radiated outwards wouldn’t affect the space of territory magic; the wind force could, but it was only the movable nature of his territory armor which had left it vulnerable to such.

Jackal awkwardly fought to stay standing, and when that failed to keep himself from tumbling backwards towards it. He caught the ground only for it to break under his own good claw, and the winds and consuming force of the hole itself. He released an explosion between himself and the hole, only for the hole to suck it in, the fires flowing into it. Arthur would have preferred to take him captive, but with the sheer mass of the anti-magic particles and the threat to the city if they spread - and his Archive-linked brain was telling him they would spread - was enough to make him risk ending the demon.

Not that Jackal was dying easy. Or more it was that the magic barrier particles were eating away at the spell that was consuming them. The sphere of darkness faltered and failed, the particles starting to flow outwards again. Jackal still stood, one arm and no hands, but given Tempester had become a disaster in the making by suicide bombing, and Jackal was an explosion specialist, Arthur found himself reforming his hand and firing it forth again, this time higher up.

Again the void formed, pulling the magic barrier particles - and everything else - towards it. Jackal’s legs swept in the air, and Arthur felt his arm rise. He was ending his spell, and dropping his territory field. It was like his very magic was being puppeteered by another.

Jackal hit the ground with a thud.

“Arthur, what’s happening?” Minerva asked, as the black smoke flowed towards them.

“Someone’s controlling my body,” Arthur said.

“That bastard. Look what he did to me,” Jackal began. “Make his death painful, Seilah.”

“His despair will be an amazing story,” A woman’s voice said. “One worthy of a demon once I have written his suffering. I cannot say that since Zeref himself I’ve encountered a human with so much power. Even now it is fighting me. A shame the will is so much weaker. Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Arthur found himself turning around to face a beautiful woman with the grace of an imperial courtesan, and the sort of figure you only saw in manga. Her hair was black as ebony, her skin white as snow, her lips red as blood. She made Sorano look plain, but there was a malice to her beauty that Sorano never had had, that even Selene didn’t match. She leaked sadism, it was cast in her features as she looked at him. She wasn’t completely human either, a pair of almost absurdly thick horns dominated the sides of her head, pushing off at ninety degree angles from above her - slightly lower than human - ears, and curving forward.

“I wonder, can the magical barrier particles penetrate your armor? Or what about the girl’s? I doubt it. Lower your armor.”

Arthur was trying to resist. Trying to stop himself, even as Jackal began to laugh with delight. “Make him die suffering.”

His territory armor was dismissed, the black fog gathering closer. His will wasn’t strong enough to break her control. His magical power wasn’t enough to stop it either. Maybe his archive could find some counter spell or anti-curse. But he feared he had to make a purchase.

He could increase his magic power. Maybe he’d be too strong for her if he did. He could get For My Friends, and hope that the surge of energy was enough to let him save Minerva. But he remembered the demon’s curse. Macro was the only form of mind control that never got beaten by the power of friendship and heroic willpower. When push came to shove, Juvia’s love for Gray overpowered the Spriggan’s, the White Out Magic failed to truly turn them against their guild mates. Macro had made Elfman almost kill Lisanna and blow up the guild hall with everyone in it.

Arthur remembered what had allowed it to be beaten as well. Takeover - Satan Soul. With his mind overclocked the decision was nearly instant. Even before she could give the next command he had made the purchase.

“Breathe deep so that she can watch you sicken and die until that armor you gave her falters and…”

Minerva’s arms and hands spread as she struck Seilah with a series of explosions. She’d already strained herself against Jackal, going full force upon him, but she was ready to do so again. She wouldn’t just stand by and watch this. She wasn’t so weak they could just ignore her and talk about her like she wasn’t there. She couldn’t let herself be that weak and worthless.

“Somebody wants to cut in line,” Jackal said as a magical symbol formed underneath Minerva’s feet. “Don’t worry I can handle her for you.” Even as he spoke he rushed forward, leaping towards her. He might not have his hands anymore, but a kick should knock her off of the landmine curse he’d formed. Not only would it go boom, but touching him would place another explosive curse into her armor directly.

“Idiot, she’s using-” Seilah didn’t finish as Jackal’s foot struck her in the sternum and his explosive landmine went off. Arthur barely raised his territory armor in time.

He could feel the Magical Barrier Particles affecting him. He hadn’t breathed many but his armor had dropped. They’d weaken his magic; possibly fatally. Still his armor weathered the explosion.

“What the hell?” Jackal asked as Seilah rose to her feet.

“Territory Magic, one of the great spatial magics,” Seilah said. “We have to be careful how we fight her. But I think we should just let him…” She stopped. Arthur had vanished entirely.

He rose out from Jackal’s shadow, bursting from the ground. The blade of darkness from his stump plunged into Jackal’s back, and his hand touched his head.

“Bad idea,” Jackal said. Arthur felt the curse building in his hand. “See the true nature of my curse is that anything that touches me I can make explode. And that includes your body.”

It didn’t happen. Jackal could feel something else in control of his curse power. Arthur had begun to use Takeover on him already. Arthur could feel Jackal’s power flowing into him, draining it from him through the hand on his head. He could feel Jackal’s will, mind, and very soul. And he could take it as his own. Reaching deep into Jackal’s being he wrenched his essence free.

“Go to hell,” Arthur said as he released Jackal’s head with his flesh hand only to pull the blade of darkness from his chest and plant it on his head squeezing tightly. He’d tasted the evil and malice of Jackal’s soul, feeling the pure pleasure he took in destruction, and it had disgusted him. He was a being who existed to cause mass havoc and mayhem; if an animal’s drives ultimately boiled down to attempts at optimization for maximal biological fitness, Jackal’s boiled down to attempts at optimization for maximal mass destruction.

It was viscerally disgusting, like bathing in a putrid oil-slick of pure… It wasn’t even hatred. It was just the urge to destroy. Arthur considered sparing him. Seeing if he could reform the demon for the bounty to do just that. He could turn Jackal into his puppet, control his actions, change his will, slowly maybe even re-write his soul. He could keep Jackal as a safely leashed pet dog. Re-writing his soul wouldn’t fulfill the bounty, but he could try and reform him without that. But…

Arthur raised his hand free, requipping his black sword and plunged it into Jackal’s chest. He’d uploaded Jackal’s mind into the Archive, and he’d already taken his power. He needed power to fight the Magical Barrier Particles which were even now filling the crater once more, and once they had they’d spread through Era, rolling out across it from the mesa that the council headquarters was built upon and down to the city.

Controlling Jackal would cost him power. Eating his soul would give him it. And having touched Jackal’s soul there was no hesitation against the latter.

Jackal fell to the ground, as Arthur’s head rose to look at Seilah.

The beautiful demon’s hand had moved to her throat, grasping a little at the ribbon around her neck. Her body shook in the loosely worn - and not really large enough for her chest - yukata wrapped around her body. “Why can’t I control you any more?”

“Because I possess the power to dominate demonic forces.” Arthur said as he shifted, turning into a form to match Jackal’s monstrous wolf-shape.

“Your story still cannot have a happy ending,” Seilah said. “Surrender and I will spare the girl, otherwise she’s as good as dead. You might have somehow escaped my curse, but I doubt she can do the same.” There was panic in her voice and on her face. Jackal might have been among the least of the nine demon gates, but he had still been one of the etherious created by Zeref’s own hand; a masterpiece of the maker. Takeover magic capable of taking over lesser demons was to be expected. But to takeover one of the etherious of Zeref was something that shook Seilah’s world view.

Minerva’s hand was tearing at the faceplate of her armor. “I… I… I can’t stop myself!” She shouted.

“Once my curse is in you, I can control you from whatever distance. I can make her kill herself whenever I desire, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.” Seilah’s tone was shaky as she spoke. Even from here she could feel his takeover magic. She felt herself not merely releasing the current command, but lifting her curse from Minerva entirely.

“No,” She said. “No. No. No. No.” Tears were rolling down her face as she dropped to her knees. Her curse was that of control and command, able to control and manipulate the living, the dead, and even mere objects. She was a storyteller. Her medium wasn’t text, but writing tragedies into life; and as Arthur reached into her soul and mind, copying her knowledge into his Archive he could feel her memories of the lives she had toyed with and ruined, the way she had orchestrated and directed the fall of moral individuals, and had manipulated individuals for the sheer sadistic pleasure of seeing people fall into ruin and the suffering those she had twisted created.

Arthur would review in horror her record of disaster later, and the many roots of destruction in this lifetime alone she had created. But in the moment he simply came to understand that if Jackal had been destructive force given will, she was tyranny, the petty urge to tear down others to make oneself feel better, and the anti-sympathy which took pleasure in the suffering of others.

He wanted to vomit as he shifted his body till it perfectly matched her own, down to the clothes she wore. He was putting on her being, her power, her curse, her everything. With the help of his Archive magic he could think like her, he could become her to the deepest fiber of his being. Only the missing hand and his hair style, locked in its nature by a bounty he had accepted, remained to tell that he was other than she.

“I own you now,” Arthur said in her voice, smiling her smile, as he leaned towards her. It wasn’t just her body. He was feeling her feelings to an extent. The sadistic glee at seeing her suffer It’d be easy to forget himself in his takeover magic and let it take him over. He could control it, that was part of being skilled in the magic. But it was something to remember when he tried to create takeover dragon soul.

Seilah stopped crying, her fear, shattered pride, and disgust at the violation of her mind and soul, all going quiet. Not because she’d gotten over it. Not because it had stopped being anything but monstrous to the extent Arthur understood why takeover - human soul was not a magic that people used. No. It was simply because Arthur had reached into her being and used his magic to twist something inside, taking over her will and soul and changing her programming so to speak and in the process willed her to stop feeling it and so she had.

Instead she nodded in a numb state. “So this is what it feels like to be copyrighted,” She stated in a distant, far off voice.

“Can you stop the Magical Barrier Particles?”

“My curse can control their movements, but the cloud is too large for me to stop it.”

“Help me stop it,” Arthur stated, raising his arm towards the sky and forming his darkness hand again. Or well claw. It would have been awkward to form his hand on what was a copy of Seilah’s arm. “Minerva, wrap yourself in your territory,” He casually commanded, as he launched his darkness claw like a giant robot’s fist, letting the claw implode into a hungry sphere of darkness, pulling everything else into it. He wrapped himself and Seilah in his territory, the magical barrier particles eating at the edges of it. And he continued to fire, each time his prosthetic hand of dragon slayer magic, forming the core of the “black hole” his spell created, and pulling everything in. The magic barrier particles actually resisted the spell’s tugging force, but they were carried with the air currents that it formed.

After the fifth sphere was launched, Arthur found himself falling to one knee, clutching at his chest as his lungs burned with pain. He’d only gotten a small amount of the particles, but they were eating away at his magical energy, deleting it from inside of himself and a mage’s ethernano tied to their life force. He couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to imitate Laxus and consume the entire cloud; not that Laxus had in the manga actually succeeded, as most of the cloud still swept over the town killing at least a hundred mages.

He didn’t dare end his takeover transformation, even as it ate away at his magical energy. It had slowed the drain of the magical barrier particles more than it was spending. But firing off black holes was not an easy magic to rapidly perform.

Seilah was working as he had commanded, using her macro to keep the barrier particles from spreading out and constrain them towards the voids. Minerva was attempting the same with her territory magic, though the particles ate away at it.

Eventually Arthur fell to the ground, too weak to stand, Seilah standing over him with an icy, hate-filled glare.

Arthur awoke in the same hospital he had been in before he had gone to stop the attack on the data center. Minerva was sitting by his bed watching over him, her face showing obvious relief by the time he was coherent enough to process it.

“I knew you were too strong to die so easily,” She said with a vicarious pride.

“Where’s the demon?” Arthur asked. Minerva answered by pointing down, and he leaned looking over the edge of the bed to realize Minerva wasn’t sitting on a chair, but on Seilah’s back, the demon forced onto her hands and knees.

“She told me she had to obey all my orders so I had her bring you safely to the hospital without hurting anyone, but she kept back talking so I decided she needed to learn a taste of humility.”

Seilah glared hatefully upwards. And Arthur sagged back into the bed. He was pretty sure making someone your chair was not a good sign of character even if they were a demon, but he’d seen glimpses of over 400 years of the demon manipulating human society towards disaster and suffering so he wasn’t in the mood to lecture about her right to dignity. He wondered how many of the problems in the modern day could be traced to Tartaros in general, and Seilah’s sadism in particular.

“Woof! Woof!” Seilah shouted, not even imitating the bark of a dog so much as pronouncing its onomatopoeia.

Arthur looked at Minerva. “I may have ordered her to only say woof when she wanted to speak.”

“Talk normally and freely,” Arthur said looking at Seilah. “At least until I tell you to silence yourself.”

After the second minute of a continuous deluge of complaints about Minerva, Arthur, and how as mere humans they had no right to treat one of Zeref’s demons this way, Arthur reinstated the barking order.

“So did I miss anything important?”

“They killed the nice Mr. Seam,” Minerva said. “Almost killed the surgeon he was with.”

“The nice Mr. Seam had been collaborating with them and the other top guilds of the Balam Alliance since before it existed. He’d played the neutral third party in the talks that formed it.”

Minerva froze, a look of shock and horror on her face. “But he seemed like such a nice old man.”

“Appearances can be deceiving. The proof of his involvement wasn’t concrete yet, but Gran Doma was checking in on it. Seilah, speak normally and truthfully tell me why Crawford Seam was killed.”

She glared at him, eyes like a wild cat’s mouth twisting almost seeming to twist like a hissing cat’s as well. “Because he knew too much about us.”

“So he was a conspirator?”

“Yes.”

“Now will you be good and keep your tirades about how demons are better than humans to yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Then I guess you can talk normally for now. Minerva stop sitting on her; you’re better than her, you don’t need to ground someone underneath your heel, or I guess ass in this case, to prove your worth, do you?”

Minerva rose to her feet, but had to think about the answer for a bit. “I don’t.” There wasn’t feeling or heart in it; she was giving the answer Arthur wanted to hear and nothing more.

“The need to put down another to show you’re strong is ultimately a sign that you’re not confident in that strength, and that no matter how much power you have you’re not actually strong.”

“So you’re going to release her?” Minerva asked in a tone of disbelief.

“I did not twist a part of her core nature to prove I’m strong,” Arthur said in a hurt tone. “I did it because she’s a dangerous creature of murder and destruction who was trying to force you to kill yourself in a horrifically painful manner and would do it again if I released her.”

“No I wouldn’t,” Seilah said.

Arthur glared at her. “Tell the truth.”

“I… define release.”

“Put you back how you were originally.”

“Oh, in a heartbeat.”

“What would you do if I released you without undoing how I tampered with your mind?”

“Plot how to permanently escape from you despite the limits you put on my behavior.”

“And what would you do to other people while plotting?”

“Write their tragic life stories,” Seilah answered without hesitation.

Arthur looked at Minerva. “I guess it’s not the same thing,” She said, abashed.

Arthur nodded, looking at Seilah as she rose to her feet. He wasn’t sure how much he’d actually changed. She was ultimately a projection from her book, wherever it was. When he twisted her soul it had changed the writing in the book, but despite his skill at Takeover he still would need the book - or a better understanding of the magic that made her - to know how it had re-written her. He only knew his intent; an iron-clad prohibition against harming him or Minerva, and an inability to disobey him; subconsciously he was probably drawing on Asimov’s three laws, and every story in I, Robot had something going wrong with those.

Mard Geer, the leader of Tartaros, sat with six of the nine demon gates before him. Between them all were two books. Or more appropriately one book and the remnants of a book. It was more accurate to call them six of the eight demon gates now.

They had lost three of their members. One only briefly; Tempester would reform in the resurrection chamber in less than 24 hours. One permanently; Jackal’s book had a hole form within it, the ink drained dry from its pages, and even many of the pages had turned to dust. The third was most worrisome. Her book had changed. It was only a few lines, but although she was Zeref’s creation he was no longer her master.

To the assembled demons that change was more horrifying than Jackal’s death. Their sister had been taken from them, her very existence defiled.

They were meeting to discuss what to do about it. Killing Crawford had been too hasty it would seem. He could have been useful for telling them more about the mage from Guiltina. They knew he had fought one of the Wizard Gods, and that even three to one they were risking failure; but they could resurrect from death and it had been decided it was better to only risk 3. 6 would leave enough to defend the Cube if he won and managed to launch a counter assault or alerted the Ishgar council to do so, and 3 should have been able to destroy the database and escape while he was gone for a while without it being confirmable that it was Tartaros. It might put back their plans by a few years if the Ishgar governments went on high alert, but they could hide and drink in the suffering of the resultant crackdowns, especially with Seilah nudging things from the shadows and manipulating individuals with her Macro curse. They had hoped to never directly engage the Guiltina mage. To say things did not go as they planned was a serious understatement.

But Jackal was gone. The etherious of Zeref were used to being immortal. They were ultimately projections from his books. If their books still existed their souls could return to them and the Cube could reconstitute their bodies. They might lose some recent memories, Tempester would forget his name since it was not actually part of his book, but they would return. There was the risk that one might be frozen like how that bitch, Ur, had frozen Deliora, but even such an act was not permanent.

The destruction of Jackal’s book was. The demon gates were for the first time in their centuries long lifespan forced to feel the fear of death. They did not like it. But existential threat as the Guiltina mage was, the re-writing of Seilah’s book was worse. They could be altered. Turned from the sacred form that Zeref had given them, twisted from the image in which their Creator had made them. Their very purpose could be overwritten. Poorly. It had been a crude job, margins scribbled with commands, only once or twice making its way into the text proper. But there was the terror of what could be. Was it a rush job? Had he been prepared? Had Crawford betrayed them and it had been a trap? They lacked information.

The question had to be raised. Did they destroy Seilah’s book, and put her out of the misery of enslavement? Kyouka was the main proponent against this. It was possible they might manage to rewrite it themselves. It was magic and not a curse, they might need a human assistant, but it should be possible to fix her. Seilah would have been their best hope there; she was the writer amongst them, and the one able to directly control humans to ensure one did not take advantage of their position, but it should be possible.

Even once they had decided not to immediately end their sister for the hopes that they could return her to them. There was still the decision of what to do about the Guiltina mage. Crawford had said he would return to Guiltina in under a month. Did they attack before he could? They could put out a call to arms to the guilds under them, hoping to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. But there was a risk. He had killed Jackal and corrupted the soul of their sister. He could kill more of them, or twist them in ways they might never be able to undo. Or did they go into hiding and wait for him to return to Guiltina. Hope that they could free Seilah, and reclaim her, and that he would not take note and return as they amassed power until they were ready to overturn the order of Ishgar. They might even wait until he had died. Humans were typically mortal. Age would eventually claim him. But he had tampered with the art of Zeref. He had changed the will of the Creator.

Worse than just that Seilah could be made to give him everything she knew about them. If she turned over everything to the Ishgar authorities then they would never be able to reunite with their maker. As much as it pained them to do this to one of their own, they knew it had to be done. Even more than they couldn’t afford to lose one of their own, they couldn’t afford to let her turn over all of that information. Mard Geer himself performed the execution, destroying Seilah’s book.

They would go into hiding. They would have their revenge on the Guiltina mage someday. But for now they would bide their time and wait for the opportunity to swallow Ishgar up in chaos and despair.