Arthur watched the battle from afar. It’d been a month since he had taken Team Pax under his metaphorical wing. He had begun instructing them and training them alongside Tabby and Minerva. Georg had been displeased with the way he had single handedly wiped out the guild, and given him a talking to about how he was supposed to be helping Team Pax get combat experience. So in the 2 that had followed over the course of the month he’d hung back and merely provided support.
Cullen and Pax were progressing well. Neither were natural born warriors, but they were serious about their magic. Cullen had made massive strides in properly combining his sand make and dragon slayer magic. Pax had just been improving his capabilities, but he had already possessed some substantial capabilities; he could increase or reduce mass with his dragon slayer magic, making things lighter than air, or making someone too heavy to stand.
Orin and Tabby were the problem children. Orin had a tendency to freeze up in combat, and not like Iceman. He’d started trying to learn, after he overheard Minerva ranting about how despicably useless he was to Cullen, but he was more concerned with impressing her than actually improving. It was annoying. And Tabby…
He had rushed in while the others were still getting into position. Physically he was comparable to a child. A child with a sword, but a child. And his sword fighting was questionable. He was actually highly skilled. If you were judging sport fencing. He fought only in a straight line, and he went for light blows as if merely a touch was enough, and he didn’t use the blade, but merely the point. He didn’t make proper use of his wings either. It wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t over eager to rush into battle.
He’d still not managed to teach the cat how to assume battle mode, or Moon Dragon Slayer Magic. Tabby had made progress in both, but he needed a real sword instructor. Unfortunately Suzaku had to avoid both Arthur and Tabby; Selene spied on both of them, and Suzaku used her child’s magic. Arthur didn’t want her finding that out too soon. The Dark Dragon Knights were not at the ‘useful’ level they’d be in 8 years, and he didn’t know how badly Selene would react. Plus the guild was attached to Georg and she was likely to go for his head. Give it a few years of his increasingly tyrannical behavior and who could say.
Which meant that right now, Arthur was playing defense for Orin and Tabby. Well mostly Caelum was. His little responsibilities were scattered. Tabby had rushed in, screaming challenges to honorable combat. The guild had started to scatter then. Not because they were scared that Tabby could beat them, but because they were scared this was some sort of diversion.
Minerva had teleported herself to their escape tunnel, taking Orin as back up. Caelum couldn’t get a clean shot in, but Orin had separated himself from the battle for the most part, and Minerva could more than handle herself. Checking on her throat the Archive link, Arthur almost felt sorry for the alchemists she was brutalizing. She’d finally gotten Territory Armor down properly, and was using it to avoid the poisonous miasma that the last standing alchemist had produced.
Tabby had made it inside. Cullen had followed after him. Caelum was continuing to take pot shots here. A man almost got Tabby from behind, only for the spirit’s beam to knock him out. Well Arthur hoped it had held back enough to only knock him out. Bounty was for live captives, not dead heads. There were three alchemists remaining, but none of them seemed to actually possess battle ready abilities. Oh they had some vials of pre-prepared tricks, but even those were limited. Cullen’s spear struck the barrier one made to cover his retreat, passed through it, and then exploded to knock the alchemist out in a deluge of sand.
Another rushed Cullen, but Tabby managed to cut her calf, causing her to trip. They had the inside handled.
And Pax and Aries had already handled outfront. If it wasn’t for the powerful spatial magic that was setting off his Archive’s alarms, Arthur would be calling this mission effectively completed.
Coco stepped out of the portal which had appeared. The running girl from Edolas, and Selene’s chief of staff.
“Selene demands your presence,” She said.
“Busy right now,” Arthur grumped. “I’ve got other responsibilities to take care of.”
“She said to drop whatever you’re doing and come,” Coco stated.
“It will have to wait.” He still needed to make sure the alchemists stayed captured long enough to be taken to the authorities, and didn’t have any tricks up their sleeves. E didn’t want to leave his squad.
“She said to call in one of her favors if you were a sorry excuse for a human being.”
Arthur sighed. He’d promised her three tasks. And while he might have argued more, he was confident that Minerva and Pax could handle this. He wrapped Tabby in his territory teleporting the cat to the top of the building, and he contacted the squad over his Archive link to tell them that Selene was insistently calling him away and he needed to see why.
“Fine,” He said, and followed Coco through the portal.
Arthur soon saw why Selene hadn’t come herself. The portal hadn’t led to the capital and a castle. Instead it had led to a coastal city. A horrible storm raged overhead. Buildings lay in ruins. And Selene was visible in the distance, flying over a massive wave, and teleporting away huge portions of it as she went.
“So did she say what I needed to do? Or do I need to go talk to her?” Arthur was already chomping down on an X-Ball as he spoke.
“Stop the storms,” Coco said.
“Storms?”
“This isn’t the only one.”
Taberius Clawdius Kaiser Germeownicus was indignant that he had been dragged to another world from his battle. He might have protested violently if he hadn’t seen the devastation taking place on the other side. The ocean was missing from the shore, and the winds were howling. Rain was falling in sheets, and lightning flashed brilliantly bright across the sky.
“Tabby, it’s time to show you’ve got the stuff to be a knight,” Arthur said, using that horrendous nickname because Taberius Clawdius Kaiser Germeownicus was apparently too long. Such was the nature of humans.
“I am a knight,” Taberius protested, his hand on the hilt of his sword. He wasn’t certain that Arthur could hear him, though. The wind had picked up, water hitting across his face like a wall as it fell, and a roar of thunder had echoed through the rooftops where they were standing.
“Then put your wings to work. The streets below are flooding. Rescue as many people as you can,” Arthur said.
Taberius hesitated for a moment. They were humans. The relationship between the exceed and humans was not the best. Accepting Arthur, who had defeated Faust and prevented a disastrous, for the exceed, genocidal war was one thing. Rescuing humans… people had been banished for the like. They were ultimately both a threat and enemy.
“In this storm?” Taberius said, fishing for an excuse not to do it.
“No one else can. A knight must rise to the challenge and the occasion. And you are a knight, aren’t you?”
Taberius looked down. “I’ll save them,” He said. There was peace for now. Hopefully the Queen and the elders wouldn’t be too upset with him for this decision.
“Good. I’ve got a wave to stop,” Arthur said. It was visible already, if only out towards the edge of the horizon. Water was rising in a solid wall and when it hit the city would be destroyed.
Arthur flew out over the dry seabed in his Caelum star dress. It was nearly impossible to see where he was going through the rain. The ethernano in the air was as great as on Elentear; he’d not needed his X-Ball. The storm especially seemed to be particularly filled with magical power. If he consumed one of the flashes of lightning, or the darkness that surrounded him it might well trigger the dragon force it was so rich in power.
He used his takeover magic, combining the powers of both Jackal and Seilah. It wasn’t energy efficient, and the benefits wouldn’t be sufficient in battle. But he needed to pull out the absolute amount of power he could right now. He considered taking it a step further, pushing into a more totally etherious form, and removing his own limiter on curse power. But he decided against it; there was simply too high of a chance he’d go berserk, losing control of the takeover form and succumbing to its desire to lash out and destroy. Even with just the act of combining these two he could feel that it was only his mastery of the magic keeping him from snapping.
Still the combination pushed his magic power to a new height. It would burn out his stamina fast, and didn’t provide the greatest benefit to Macro. But he wasn’t using Macro. He was using the Explosion curse. And he was using a curse; one which he could fuel with the fear, misery, and horror he could, in this form, taste in the air coalescing as curse power. It was a greater pool of power than even the ethernano around him.
He spread it to the limits of his power, and created a massive explosion against the wave of water, trying to hit it force to force. It slowed. But it didn’t stop. A second explosion saw relatively small waves - merely measured in the double digits of feet not the triple created by his own magic buffeting him, threatening to pull him under. And then he was forced to turn his boosted magical power to a wall, a massive wave breaker of territory magic.
The ocean hammered down on top of him when it hit the wave breaker. He swapped from his star dress to the sea king’s regalia, holding his wall in place as the water carried him. But the wave breaker had worked. The force of the tidal wave, at least in this area, had been broken.
It took him a while to confirm that, though. The wave really had knocked him, his prosthetic hand actually being knocked from his arm, and washed away until he recovered it with his territory magic. But while the wave had knocked him, it had hammered down into the seabed that the tsunami had pulled all the water in from, and not onto the town. Despite his wave break the flooding was going to get worse from the tsunami, but it was a lot better than it could have been.
Still it was minutes before he was fully re-oriented. He’d been washed far to one side as well, a terrible undertow dragging him before he got his senses back. The curse power in the area had reduced significantly, fear and dread turning to hope as the wave was stopped, and making things worse he had lost his best means of flight until the star dress was repaired.
Still with the wave dealt with, it was time to deal with the storm and hope to prevent a second wave. He summoned Enif, and he rode out to sea, like a knight riding in a cavalry charge. But he was tilting at the whirlwind. Even Enif, quick and powerful in flight as he was, was blown to one side, and despite having tied himself on with Territory Magic Arthur found himself crashing into the sea. Stunned by the feeling of falling and the heavy wind and then waves, it took Arthur a moment to realize Enif was with him, having crashed alongside him still bound by Arthur’s vice of space. The terrible gale had torn the celestial spirit from the sky.
Arthur took a few moments to recover. His power was ebbing fast; he’d pushed too hard. But he couldn’t be done yet. He opened his mouth, swallowing the darkness of the storm tossed sea, where the clouds above had blackened the afternoon sun. If he hadn’t been using Satan Soul he’d have triggered the dragon force, he could feel the dragon seed trying to surge and overcome his demonic transformation with its own alteration to his mind and body. He needed to act quickly.
Raising his hand up, he released an explosion. The curse burst in the center of the storm cloud. He released his Dark Dominion magic, letting it consume the magical energy in the storm to grow. It flared, it expanded, and then it exploded, having fed too much too quickly. Still it was much more energy efficient to consume ambient ethernano than to use his own store from his origin. But his mastery of that spell was still sadly lacking, and as a wave hammered him despite his sea lord’s regalia, he knew he had to turn to Territory magic. Spreading his space through the storm cloud, he scattered it, teleporting parts of the air across miles around, breaking up the storm front. It wasn’t the best solution; the ethernano and storm were still somewhere, just broken up into smaller clumps. But it would stop the winds for now.
He managed to pull Enif from the surf with his territory magic, teleporting the pegasus above the waves before teleporting himself onto his friend’s back. He leaned on the celestial spirit for a few moments, feeling like he’d gone a few rounds with Hades. And then he pointed towards Selene. “Take me to her.”
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It only took moments to reach Selene, but by that time Arthur had fought down his takeover and the rage of his dragon seed. He’d used most of the power anyway simply letting it flow into his origin instead of tapping the dragon seed for power; or making the mistake of allowing it to surge with its own power.
Selene was still in her true form, and Arthur found himself naturally hesitant to approach. The sheer power she was leaking out was like a natural disaster made flesh. She dwarfed his own magical strength.
“Arthur. How many cities did you save?” She asked.
Immediately Arthur felt a wave of shame and guilt. Not ‘did you save the city’, but ‘how many’. He’d fought hard to save one. But how many other cities were on this coast line? How many people had died? And how much of it could be blamed on him for bringing Altaface here? How much was just living in interesting times?
Guilt and shame froze his tongue, The dragon’s eye narrowed. “Well?”
“One,” He said disgusted with himself. “I stopped the wave, and then did what I could to remove the hurricane.”
“The storm will be back. And if you can only protect one town we won’t be able to keep this up long,” Selene said.
“We need to talk to the white out clan. Or priestesses?” Arthur said.
Selene let loose a long breath of air from between draconic teeth. “They will not be happy to hear from me.”
“They kept Altaface’s power in check in Elentear, they can help do it here.”
“You’re right, but they won’t be happy to hear from me. Or my chosen diplomat. But I trust that you can convince them.” Selene’s face made him think of a fox. He’d not known that a dragon’s face could be so expressive. It was playful, superior, and teasing.
Arthur wanted to curse. He was going to go talk to one of the few groups that were truly dangerous to them, publicly aligned to their enemies, and he was going to have to do something he always dreaded…
Talk to people.
Arthur appeared at the White Out Temple, with Tabby at his side. The exceed looked about the world he had just been drawn into. The temple looked like something you might see near Kyoto. Not just a Japanese temple, but a particularly old one. The structures were wooden, and they smelled of old wood, well maintained for centuries.
It was bright, the sunlight dazzling after the premature night the storm clouds had cast over Edolas. He had stepped from a wet, miserable world, where waterlogged wood that had been someone’s house had littered the ground, and onto a sunny mountain top, one which was at peace with no signs of danger or dread.
No one was out and about right now. There were no laborers, no caretakers, no signs from the outside that the temple was occupied. A wooden arch led the way into the temple complex proper, directly in front of Arthur.
He began to step forward. He’d only made a single step before the doors of one of the temple buildings swung open and half a dozen individuals began to rush out. They were armed, or in the midst of arming themselves, still pulling armor on as they rushed towards him. Four men and two women were rushing to surround him, pole-arms leveling towards him. Their weapons were long wooden poles tipped with long, curved blades. Two were women, and four were men, all six of them in matching uniforms, and wearing their hair in a ponytail of some sort, and their skin lightly sun-kissed and tanned.
Tabby’s hand moved to his sword, drawing the blade from its sheath. “If battle is your wish, then I, Taberius Clawdius Germeownicus Kaiser, shall-”
Arthur’s hand planted on his head. “We come in peace and have no desire to fight you. Tabby, put the sword away.”
“They have drawn upon us! We cannot back away from the challenge of a fight!” The cat yowled, and Arthur wanted to smack it.
“We’re here to ask for their help. We do not fight people we’re trying to ask for help,” Arthur said, stepping between the exceed and the spearmen.
They rustled their naginatas, thrusting them towards Arthur’s face. He could feel them next to his flesh, pressing lightly against his clothes.
“For our help?” A woman’s voice creaked out. It was an aged voice, and the woman it came from was small and wizened with age and time. “And what do you need help with, traveler? Few mages of such capability come to our mountain.”
“It’s easier to talk without a blade to my throat,” Arthur said, his body being held tense and immobile because of the blades pressing against his body.
“Forgive them, they are a touch overzealous.” She raised her hand and placed it on one of the poles, guiding it gently down. “If he wanted to fight us, you’d not have your blades at his throat. Though if the cat does not sheath his sword we may have a problem.”
Tabby smiled with a look of swelling pride. “Finally someone respects my skill and puissance. I will sheath my sword only when I am assured my comrade is sa-”
“Tabby, sheath the sword already. We’re asking for help not threatening people,” Arthur snapped.
“They’re threatening us!” Tabby shouted.
“We are knights. We don’t threaten people to force them to help us,” Arthur said.
Tabby’s face twitched, and then he sheathed his sword. Soon the lances were lowered, and the elderly high priestess of the temple was inviting Arthur in.
Arthur hesitated as the matriarch of the temple asked him to explain what he needed. How did he even begin?
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that Altaface is gone,” Arthur began.
“Altaface is gone?” The woman said, her tone doubtful.
“Yes. It’s been transported to Edolas.”
“You realize how ridiculous that sounds. Altaface is a monster of legend. Do you even truly understand what Altaface is?”
“I’m the one that moved it,” Arthur said.
It took time to convince them that Altaface had in fact been moved. Or at least that it was plausible enough to be possible. And then the chewing out began. Fairy Tail would have, in almost a decade, destroyed Altaface straight out and the White Out Temple would feast and congratulate them on saving Elentear from the terror which was Altaface. Here and now? Altface hadn’t been a clear and present apocalypse. By removing Altaface, Arthur had removed an overflowing source of magical power.
The elderly priestess was livid with fury, her hands clenching until her knuckles turned a pale white. And then she began to berate him, ranting with rancor in her voice, tearing into him for the sheer recklessness of his actions. Arthur fumed more and more as he listened. He dreaded talking back, fearing how she’d respond, and the screaming match - or worse violence - this could escalate to, if he did talk back.
It was Tabby who cut off the priestess’s rant, drawing his saber and plunging it into the table in the same motion. “Enough of these wasteful words with nothing in them but vitriol!” The cat yowled out. “You talk about having fought this monster for generations, but you complain you may have lost its benefits. You claim to dedicate your entire lives and beings to preventing the harm it can cause. Well it is causing harm right now. I have seen the sheer force of destruction its storms have caused on this other world. A world where it can also do good. Except that they need you.” The cat pulled the saber out and waved it at them. “So what do you do? Berate someone for at least trying to make an improvement. You fear what will happen to this world without the beast, but you have no idea what it actually is. Your own walls betray your words, talking of how your own order has long sought its death. So he’s freed your world from its doom, and put it where it can do some good. And you arrogant, empty headed hypocrites would let it doom a world that could be saved if you would just listen and heed his words. Where is your honor? Or are you truly nothing more than a sanctimonious witch more vile and fowl than other witch breeds because of your false piety?”
The cat’s fur had risen up, as if to make him look bigger, his wings spreading as he flew up into the sky. The guards had their naginatas pointed toward the exceed, but Tabby didn’t seem to notice, his eyes blazing like twin emeralds reflecting flames as he stared down at the temple’s matriarch.
She froze, shame running across her face. She took half a step back, her body trembling and shaking just a little. There were a few moments of awkward silence, weapons still held. It wasn’t the naginata wielding guards that Arthur was wary of. It was the priestesses themselves, whose magic could prove disastrously powerful.
They seemed every bit as worried about his magic. His takeover magic was primed and ready, the hope that by mixing his magical energy with cursed power they would have more trouble taking him.
It did not come to it, though. The matriarch raised her hand. “The exceed is correct. We have long sought a means to remove the threat of Altaface from this world. It has been removed. We should be thankful not enraged. It was a reckless act, and we should have been informed, and included in the decision, but it is done. And if Altaface could be moved once, it can be moved back. But we cannot let another world die from its raging magic when we possess the power to white out its magical power and save the world.”
She looked not at Arthur, but at Taberius, a look of respect on her face. “We will help you.”
The priestess shook as she saw who it was that had sent Arthur, and who was the power behind him. They were not unfamiliar with Selene. She had not pushed Altaface to the breaking point she would eventually have in the regular timeline, but she had already begun feeding her magical power into the world slowly, working to agitate the creature and had already been brought to the White Out Temple’s notice.
“You serve this monster?” The aged priestess asked, her wrinkled lips pulled back over her yellowed teeth with rage.
“It was the devil’s bargain I had to make to save Edolas and Elentear,” Arthur said with a sigh.
The old woman glanced at him then.
“Devil’s bargain? I think I’ve just been insulted,” Selene said. “He convinced me that risking Elentear was not the most effective means to create the distortion I need, and that I could save it while also saving Earthland.”
“Earthland?” The aged priestess asked.
“It’s another world,” Tabby said.
“We don’t really have time for full explanations,” Arthur said. “What do we do about Altaface?”
The wind howled. The priestesses of the White Out Temple had identified the heart of the ethernano concentration causing the storms. The problem was reaching it. It was out at sea in the heart of a hurricane. They could put an end to it, and bring the level of magic in Edolas down to a non-dangerous level, but they needed to to the ethernano concentration first.
Legions could carry them, but the winds made it impossible for them to fly close enough. Which was where Arthur came in. Selene was playing storm watch. Her ability to affect entire land masses, or more relevantly entire storm systems, at once with magic was well and far beyond his. He’d protected a city from a wave. She’d saved a dozen. But Arthur, hopefully, had enough power to spearhead the group, and disrupt the main storm.
Feeling the winds, and the way they threatened to blow Enif off-course, had Arthur worried he wouldn’t be enough. Even with the celestial spirit’s magical power being turned fully towards the shielding effect which kept the air from tearing its rider off at its high speeds, rain was passing through and the spirit was being blown slowly but surely away. The legions were nearly a mile behind, unable to reach closer due to the sheer power of the storm.
His territory spread through the storm. The flow of ethernano was creating an interference effect much like bRAIN’s, but his pure magic had overcome that and could overcome this. But the sheer force of wind and rain was proving difficult even then. He teleported a portion away, and there was a ball of lightning formed explosively in its wake. With his magic he tore away hunks of wind and rain, but he couldn’t directly affect the magic. Not with Territory.
He let his magical power flow instead into the darkness of the storm around him, making it grow, awaken, and spread. If Territory failed him he would use his Dark Dominion.
The darkness spread, replicating itself by feeding on ambient magical power. It was too fast. The superstructure of the spell would stretch and break, and he would have to reinforce it. He supported it with walls of Territory magic, shaping a corridor for the Legions to fly through. The effort left him drenched in sweat, despite the lack of true physical activity. The lacrima in his chest ached and burned, and he could feel himself drawing heavily on his magical energy even as absorption from the ethernano-storm around him helped to keep him continually topped off. It was worse than facing Altaface directly, the concentration high enough to be dangerous, but not to constantly top him off faster than he could spend the magic.
The legions approached, and the white out priestesses began to spread out. They were whiting out the magic, destroying the heart of the storm, and returning relative normality to Edolas as a whole.
And then the magical power surged. A water spout erupted in the middle of the priestesses’ formation. Thankfully the center was open but what came up must alas come down. Water was spreading to crash like an avalanche down upon them.
Arthur’s reaction was fast, as if the world was moving in slow motion. His hands came together in a clap, slow magic shooting out in all directions, covering the area. It would only do so much to the wind and rain, but it covered the water spout. He still needed to act fast. He couldn’t concentrate his Territory magic to the point of removing it. It’d cause his walls to fail and the wind and rain would return. Instead he raised his silver hand, fingers coming together like the barrel of a gun, his thumb going down to ‘fire’. It was not his dragon slayer magic this time, though. He was concentrating his Dark Dominion Magic, firing a ball of consuming darkness far more concentrated than the norm. Its false gravity pulled and twisted, and he felt the gauntlet’s index finger twist and implode around the power surging out of it, a small ball of darkness firing out.
It struck into the water spout and for a moment expanded at impossible speeds, the water being pulled in. But it consumed too much. The magic faltered, and the portal to the short lived pocket dimension failed.
He didn’t hesitate. He fired again, the ‘second barrel’ of his ‘gun’. His middle finger twisted and imploded, mangling into uselessness as the second ball of darkness fired outwards. He nearly collapsed then, leaning forward onto Enif, his magic spent. But the water spout never fell, the mountains of water having been pulled into the darkness, and the White Out ritual continued.
He’d done it. The magical energy in Edolas had been normalized, and yet the level was still far, far beyond when he had first arrived here. The storm had stopped and there was ‘lacrima snow’ falling across the western coast line. It had been a natural disaster of epic scale. He didn’t know what order of magnitude of people had died, but eternal magic was here, at least as long as Altaface was.
The White Out Temple was set to have talks with Selene tomorrow. And Arthur was celebrating that he’d stopped the storm. He’d beat a tidal wave, and a hurricane. The sense of sheer, unadulterated, and pure power was immense.
The capital had not been directly touched by the storm. In fact it was barely aware of it. Magic had been being reintroduced into outlying regions, but it was slow going, and that left communication outside of army channels limited. Still rumors had escaped from the army, but the stories and rumors were wild.
And he was going to celebrate. Selene had rewarded him with a bounty she thought fit the job. Currency, of the Edolas variety, enough to make it well worth his while. He’d finally obtained the bounty for completing a job without violence, and he wanted to party. He was going to go out, and enjoy the wonders of the capital and its magic.