"Yes!"

"Really?"

"Yep! Just imagine all those cramped tunnels, there'll be nowhere for the monsters to run!"

I'd brought the healer's deal to Cana, and she was…excited. Maybe a little too much.

"Are you sure you don't want to think about it?" While I did consider the deal worthwhile, I was also aware that I had zero experience, and after the llysanwe attack I was very paranoid about being ambushed.

"I already did all the thinking I need," Cana said, throwing an arm around my shoulder. "Just watch and learn as I show you my true power!"

"Uh, those are tunnels, I'm pretty sure your full power would collapse them."

"Juvia," Cana turned a bit more serious and looked me in the eyes. "I know this is your first mission, and I haven't been at my best so far, but I've been hunting monsters for years, you can trust me on this. Besides, we'd probably be sent to do this anyway if they actually followed protocol and sent for help."

I swallowed, "Ok, if you're sure."

"I am." Cana clapped her hands together "But first, we'll need to get in there, so get planning!"

I gave her a deadpan stare "Didn't you just say that you're experienced?"

"Yeah, but you're better with people things, and the Southern Wolves are people." She said shamelessly.

I sighed, she had me there.

"Alright, so we want to do this a soon as possible, while the Wolves are still tired from the last attack. We also want to be as quiet as possible about it, since the point of this is to give the healers a break."

Cana nodded.

I looked to the floor as I thought. And thought. And glanced back and forth from Cana to the camp. And eventually decided on something.

"Alright, here's the plan."

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Cana and I snuck up to the last building before the wall, doing our best impression of classic Loony Toons sneaking around (it's not like I know of any other ways). I sent an eye to peak around the corner to make note of the one guard at the foot of the stairs leading up the wall.

"Why do they even have a guard? All the monsters are coming from the pit." I asked.

Cana shrugged, "Just in case someone is dumb enough to try to take the opportunity to steal?"

I thought for a second.

Yeah, there's definitely at least one person who would do that.

With a quick gesture, Cana produced her sleeping gas card. A quick conjuration later, and I'd dissolved a cloud of the stuff in a sphere of water.

I splayed my fingers, turning the water into a nigh invisible mist which I sent at the guard with another wave of my hand.

I watched anxiously, but I needn't have worried, the guard keeled over in seconds. I caught him on a bed of water and lowered him gently. Couldn't have the thump alerting anyone – or giving him any wounds that would need treatment.

I gave Cana a thumbs up and we ran to the stairs.

The stairs were inside the wall fortunately and connected hallways within the wall which in turn led to what I presumed were storage and meeting rooms. Probably inefficient to carry down equipment from the guild hall all the time.

Unfortunately, as we were making our way up the stairs, we heard voices coming from a hallway above us.

"I smell something weird" came a grating, metallic voice.

"You sure its not just the remains of the attack, Guild Master?" a booming voice responded.

"Yeah, I'm sure!" the apparent guild master snapped back.

Cana and I looked at each other, both of our expressions showing that we knew we were screwed. Running back was an option, but then the guild master would find the guy we knocked out and put the Wolves on alert.

I sent an eye to check on the two approaching us.

To my surprise, this actually provided useful information. While I didn't recognize the looming figure with a massive frying pan of all things strapped to his back, it was difficult to mistake the face of Gajeel. There weren't exactly many people with manes of black hair and metal bars through their noses and in place of their eyebrows after all.

Two incoming, one big with frying pan, one small Iron Dragon Slayer I spelled out with water for Cana Take big one out fast and quiet, I got the Slayer.

Cana seemed doubtful for a second, but she nodded.

The stairs were switch backs, so we had a moment to prepare before Gajeel and frying pan guy turned the corner.

The moment the two turned the corner, faster than I could react, Cana had a card flying at frying pan's face. He was no slouch, managing to flip his frying pan of his back and in between him and Cana in a mere blink…though not before the card had reached his face.

Gajeel, even faster, jumped down the stairs towards us. His airtime gave me the moment I needed to cover the stairs in a layer of water and literally fallback. I barely managed to keep my focus when the blade of a massive chainsaw flew close enough to me that I felt the breeze on the tip of my nose.

But that was game and set. Cana's card unleashed its load of sleeping gas in frying pan's face. Gajeel's jump landed him on water with surface tension increased to keep him standing and wavy enough to trigger the Dragon Slayer's motion sickness.

Cana's opponent toppled. Gajeel stood for but a moment before falling as well. I saw brief recognition moving towards apoplectic rage on his face, but another of Cana's sleeping gas cards hit him before he could get a word out.

The stairs were quiet but for the sound of heavy breathing which, after a moment, I realized was my own.

I looked at Cana. She seemed concerned.

"Holy shit"

She nodded.

I took another few breaths.

Cana gestured to keep moving.

I nodded.

We finished moving up the stairs, though it was Cana leading now. On autopilot I sent an eye through the door at the top to make sure there was no one between the door and the edge of the wall. There was one, but he was facing away from the door, looking out towards the pit.

Cana and I sent another burst of sleeping gas his way. Not enough to knock him out, but he did have to focus on keeping himself awake. In his distraction, Cana and I ran to the edge and jumped down.

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From here to the entrance was open ground where we'd surely be spotted. To avoid this, I formed a drill out of water, a relatively simple reshaping and expansion of the death ball. We would've tried this from the beginning, but the wall was designed with burrowing monsters in mind, extending deep underground with detection wards reaching even deeper.

We dug straight down and towards the entrance, hoping that we would stumble upon a tunnel eventually. I put up a thin dome of water around us to catch the debris and collect it behind us. We were trying to get the Wolves a break, not give the monsters another place to attack from.

Reaching a tunnel took a frankly absurd amount of my reserves, but it was fortunately peaceful enough that I could take a breather after freezing the loose dirt and debris in place. I couldn't control the resultant ice, but I was able to cool the water enough that it froze by itself.

Cana pulled out her sofa again, and we laid down together while I waited for my reserves to refill. We were in a position that was just begging to be attacked, but that was the goal of this expedition so two birds, one stone and all that.

"Is it always like that?"

It was weird how much stronger my reaction was to this fight than the one with the llysanwe. I supposed with people it was a bit different, and the fact that I actually saw this one coming as well. I never even saw the llysanwe until they were dead. I didn't see the thing's tongue until it was already through my chest, unlike Gajeel's attack which I watched and felt a hairsbreadth from splitting my head in half.

Cana snorted, "No, it's usually much longer and more desperate. The guy with the frying pan was way weaker than us, and most mages don't have a weakness as convenient as motion sickness."

I'd been a bit busy to think of it at the time, but now that Cana had brought him up again, I couldn't help but think back to Gajeel. If my memory of canon serves me right, he should be well on the way to joining Fairy Tail by now, yet from what the healer told me, he apparently hates Fairy Tail.

Then again, I think he only joined because he saw how well Juvia was getting on with the guild, and he didn't exactly have that same example here. I did get along well with the guild, but I also clearly didn't act like the original Juvia…

I grimaced. He probably thinks Fairy Tail is mind controlling me. Even explaining that I was actually an Outsider wouldn't make things better. It would probably make things worse honestly.

'Hey, don't worry, we're not mind controlling your former guild mate, she's just been devoured by an extradimensional parasite which is currently piloting her body.'

I snorted. Yeah, that would go over well.

Cana looked down at me curiously. I shared the source of my amusement and she seemed to find it funny as well.

"I guess you're feeling better?"

I thought for a second and realized that "Yeah, I think I am."

With no warning she leaned down and kissed me. She held it for a second then leaned back, looking down at my shocked expression in satisfaction.

"There, now you're definitely feeling better."

On one hand, I am. On the other, it's a little disturbing how quickly she's taking the lead in this relationship.

'Eh, who am I kidding' I thought as we got up 'I'm into it'.

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Hours into our delve and I was getting more and more impressed with Cana. I knew she was more powerful than me. I knew she was a better fighter than me. I knew that she was more experienced than me.

But it was one thing to know these things academically. It was something else entirely to watch her suddenly punch out and drive a fist through a living stalagmite I hadn't even seen yet.

Sometimes she'd hold something for me to blast, but I could tell it was solely for my benefit. I know I'm good with Water Magic, but watching Cana work gave me a whole new perspective on the meaning of experience.

Yet, despite all the monsters were killing, something felt wrong.

At first, I thought that it was because things were too easy. Everything I knew about the Catacombs (admittedly not much) suggested that they were extremely dangerous, and not just because of the monsters, the environments were supposed to be extremely deadly as well. Despite the warnings though, the challenges proved to be underwhelming. Even the toughest of hides gave way before a pressurized stream or Cana's fist. Mental assaults barely tickled. Extreme temperatures were taken care of through my ability to control the temperature of water or liberal use of Cana's fire card. Poisons and spores were blocked by shields of water or dissolved and the few that Cana inhaled simply had no effect on her.

I told Cana my concerns, but she simply informed me that this is expected, the warnings are for everyone, and we were most certainly not just anyone.

Getting my ego stroked like that likely isn't good for me but I enjoyed it anyway.

Then I thought it might be that all of the tunnels were accessible. There were no tiny cracks, every tunnel and chamber could accommodate us comfortably.

Cana informed me that this was simply a feature of the Catacombs. All the easier for the monsters to fight each other if there is space to do so. There was plenty of speculation about if this was by intelligent design, but no one had bothered getting to center or properly mapping out the Catacombs, so the mystery remained unsolved.

Third guess was the charm though. I was thinking about the monsters that had attacked Ghareon and the monsters that we had fought so far, and I noticed a startling difference. From the strange stalagmite thing to the mushroom forest to the psychic slug, all of the monsters we had faced were either immobile or could only move very slowly. There were no slimes or floating distortions, anything that could move had already left.

This observation got a reaction out of Cana. A monster tide does generally depopulate its origin, but it should still leave some monsters behind. Or other monsters should have come here in the time we took to break in and start working our way through the tunnels.

Now that we were paying attention to that fact, it became even more obvious, and led us to another observation – we never came up on a monster from behind. In the case of the fully immobile creatures, this made little difference, but for monsters like the slugs and blubber slimes it was a bit strange to realize that they were always heading towards us.

There was, unfortunately, little we could do with that information besides be wary for possible sentient interference. We couldn't really assume human since this is the Catacombs and between Fiends, Demons, and Giants there were plenty of mundane – relatively speaking – sources of non-human sentient interference.

----------------------------------------

We'd been down in the Catacombs for hours, and frankly, I was getting bored. You'd think delving the unknown would be interesting, and it was at times, but eventually all the monsters and environments started to blend together.

Immobile monsters tended to rely on things like camouflage and incredible defense or maybe artillery-esque attacks. All of this was rendered irrelevant by Cana's superior sense, my own shields, and our overwhelming power.

I'm sure it would be different – and far more stressful – if the normal menagerie were present, but there's only so many times you can blast or shred or pierce a monster to death in one go before it starts getting boring. We couldn't even appreciate the locales because anything that looked nice was meant to distract you while it killed you and therefore had to be destroyed immediately. Hell, I'd even gotten used to the sight of the monster's flesh boiling away after we killed them.

It was getting to the point that the knowledge of us being in an incredibly hostile environment where everything was out to kill us was moving firmly towards being academic instead of visceral. I would get lost in thought at some points and either snapped myself out of it or had Cana slap me back to focus.

I was retreating into my own head so often that it was a real surprise that I was the one who noticed something carved in the left fork of the tunnel we were travelling through.

"Cana."

"Yeah?"

"What's that?"

She followed my finger and her eyes widened.

"That's Alvaric. What does Alvarez want here?"

"Alvarez has their own language?"

Cana shot me an annoyed look. "Yes, and its currently spelling out 'left'."

Well, this probably had a lot of implications that I was too politically unaware to make sense of. It was also a definite irregularity that could point us to the origin of the increased attacks.

"So I guess we're going left?"

"I don't know, this looks like people stuff."

"You know more about Alvarez than I do though."

"Probably not actually, but do you have a better idea?"

Neither of us did, so left we went.

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From there we came across a carving at every fork (and three and four pronged forks, are those still called forks?) that guided us closer and closer to another massive cavern. It didn't rival Ghareon in size by any means, but it was still far larger than what should be possible naturally – and arguably far more spectacular.

It was spherical, the walls rough and covered in glowing purple veins, expanding from a stalagmite that rose from the bottom of the cavern to the center and was crowned with a violet heart. Half crystal and half organic, the heart pulsated, and its light illuminated a decidedly disturbing sight.

We were hidden at one of the many holes that littered the higher levels of the cavern, looking down at the cages covering the bottom. Screeching filled the air as the menagerie of creatures tested the bars in various ways. The cages flashed purple, green, pink, and blue in response to each attempt and the cavern filled with howls and screeches with each failure.

Above the creatures and surrounding the heart was a metal platform holding an enchanted lab and populated by –

"Demons" Cana breathed.

The two chimeric humanoids could be nothing else.

As we watched, a brutish purple scaled demon raised a cage to the heart, which responded by ejecting a knock off Shai-Hulud like it was toothpaste. The other demon – a humanoid figure with moss for skin – grimaced at the result and said something to the purple one, who responded by negligently throwing the cage down to the cavern floor.

Cana and I backed away.

"What in the goddamn fuck was that?" I asked Cana. "Why are there demons here? What the hell is that purple thing?"

Cana looked at me, ashen faced "That…that's really bad."

"Fucking elaborate!" I hissed.

"I…I don't know what the purple thing is, but the demons are clearly using it to attack Ghareon" that made sense, "Which means Alvarez is taking hostile action against Fiore, which means we may be going to war…" she trailed off.

I prodded her to finish.

"Which would mean the Gods are going to war."