Acnologia

[Gildarts]

A tide of empty space washed over him as he plunged deeper into the foreboding chaos he could not outrun. Swirls of shadows resurrected around him and his direction only grew more tangled in the forest of darkness.

Fleeting time splashed upon him with an imperceivable rain that fell floating like feathered ash, as it washed over the contours of his face and dribbled down the lines of his cheek. The swish and flicker of his cape behind him pulled at his shoulders as he felt the immense brush of a great wind weigh against him. He blinked so that he could see the challenge that faced him, yet his eyes could only see black and his body could only feel the disembodied sensations that threatened to pull him limb from limb. The messy maze of motion chomped into his lost arm, and an icy chill froze like an icecube where his other leg used to be. Piercing prickles were felt in place of the vacancy that was his missing appendage. The needles, darting into his absent skin like daggers that soon became eviscerating flames.

Gildarts, the man who had yet to scream despite the viciously attacking horrors of his mind, clutched at his scalding arm and grit his teeth together. Wild and carnivorous, his eyes blazed and his ivory teeth flashed from the darkness in the part of his curling lips. Air escaped but the snarled grating of his maw reassured him that his teeth were there, he was there, despite all the nothingness that echoed back to him and the drowning howls of monsters that he could not explain.

It called upon him as it growled without shape, without the caution of time, and without fear of what it would become. A frenzied beast that Gildarts had known so well throughout his life.

The man, weaver of this pain, knew exactly what it was that he now faced. It was his weapon. His curse. The magic that he wielded to cause so much death. Others knew it as Destruction. Uncontrollable, just as chaos or time. Unyielding power, ultimate death, or simply ‘the reaper.’

Gildarts knew it as a fire whose flame could never be completely extinguished. It tore into his body, and he once again became consumed by its power. His feigning muscles, his own bones, everything he was, soon began to break. The silence was filled with his swallowed screams of despair. On his knees, he clutched at his bandage-covered abdomen and his eyes darted around the room flickering on the many points he could not see. An empty space, filling with shadows and fleeting light.

“Grrraaaahh.” He exhaled and fought the power within once more, a corner of his lip turned upward to reveal a jagged smile. The shape had been warped by torture, but the light in his eyes grew as the dimmed glow of life steadily brought color back into the dismal space.

One last gulp as he extinguished the smoldering torment of devastation before the pain-tolerant Prime rose from his humbled kneel on the dusty ground. His hand pushed against the shifting sand and his unbalanced body staggered into a stand. “Won’t get the best of me yet.” The Prime seemed to be thinking, as the images of smiling faces were called to his mind and always encouraged him to live on.

It was a hollow feeling of triumph.

For they were not there. The Fairy Tail wizard had defeated this nightmarish wave of tormenting magic, but it always seemed to come back a hundred times stronger than before.

There was no telling how many times he had endured the threat of oblivion. Yet every time, his mind grew more distant from the place his feet stood. The man was always aware he was asleep during these dreams, for his absent hand sometimes took shape and glowed when the destructive magic threatened to devour his soul. It was growing stronger than even he could control, Gildarts could only fight back when the consuming hunger became too much to bear. Soon, it would overpower him and he would not be able to face the aftermath.

Already, it had taken so much.

The gray twilight allowed him to look at his hands, one silver, the other covered in golden skin, etched with lines of time, wear, and battle scars. The corners of his mouth tugged with the weight of gravity as his brow furrowed. This was the triumph and it was always seemed like such shallow victory. He would fight for:

Another day.

...

His hands, he crunched his palms together. One left movement swept with the sensation touch, the other, he could only see. He blinked and exhaled a tired sigh as a fleck of black rain stained his organic hand. The color contrasted against his skin and the drop did not feel cold and refreshing as it should have. Instead at the touch it was warm, sticky, and his fingers smeared against the crimson paint. His weary brown eyes turned to look up, only to see that the same blood drooling from the starless sky.

Clumps of it poured from above, drenching his coat and covering most of the slippery ground. Warm ichor gelled in his hair, and the warrior refused the urge to flinch as he tasted hot scent of iron on his tongue. Blood pooled around him now, and though his hands flung with command, and waved with the will of his magic, the plasma did not disperse. Instead, it grew larger it intention to drown him. He was striding against the thick liquid that hardened as concrete. Brown eyes searched for an escape to the ‘room’ that he was soon realizing he didn’t remember ever entering. White walls, now painted black, and in the corners the levels of the blood began to grow, smothering his immovable arms and legs as the muscles of his neck bulged and his chin strained to reach above the line of warm liquid that only grew up to his ears.

An ocean of death, and he too would die in this daunting trap. Powerless, alone, and unable to pull his distant memories close to him. He was unable to gather the strength. Heavy breaths reached for air as his mouth became covered in thick scarlet that colored the stubble on his jawline.

Heaving the air into his lungs he caught one final breath before the last of the room filled and the liquid had risen above the top of his head. Swimming in blood. His muscles fought to even make a simple movement, and already his lungs burned for air.

Death had come to reap him, and whatever this place was, he immediately recognized the hopelessness that was his odds of survival. If he couldn’t move, how could he fight? He would soon suffocate on his own breath, rather than taste the blood of this thing’s victims.

“And just who are you?” A voice suddenly thundered.

Again his eyes had pressed shut as his skin fought against the liquid’s slowly warming touch. With his head spinning, his weightless feet had lost their place on the ground and replacing his thirst for air was the flood of nausea that caused his insides to collapse. And now this thing wanted to him to introduce himself.

“Oh, Gildarts huh? And why do you want to join Fairy Tail?” A gasp caught in his throat as he choked on blood, it was Makarov’s voice. And these were his memories. The same blood that surrounded him with eternal screams. Were these the people he had killed? But then... Makarov too... Gildarts shook his head, unable to bear the leaking truth.

“Ah, is that so Gildarts? I’ve heard of you before, names of courage travel far, further than the ends of the earth. We’re honored to have you as a member of Fairy Tail. But, in order to stay you must make me a promise....”

“Oh, what is that master?” Gildarts felt his heart leap as his own voice responded to this, youthful, vibrant, and untainted by the blood he would spill in the years to come. A free-spirited laugh came belting out of the youthful mage before the seriousness of their exchange consumed the silence. “Master, you have my word.”

With the rushing of wind, the sound of their exchanged farewell faded as Gildarts realized his lungs had wrinkled into prunes. Eyelids too heavy, his chin nodded toward the darkness that had left him in an empty daze. Death was supposed to be peaceful, a silent music to a weary soul such as his, yet nagging against his thoughts were the blades that began to stab into him from all around.

Lacerations formed by the same blood that had suffocated him, ribbons of his blood flowed with that of the scarlet tide as the remainder of his life was literally drained from him. Limp fatigue caused his crumpled body to fall at an inflexible angle, yet at the same time as his last minutes trickled away, a great roar woke him from his macabre slumber.

[Gildarts]

If the Fairy Tail wizard thought his nightmare was over, he was undeniably mistaken.

And while the stains of blood had been washed away by the mighty howl of a vaguely familiar beast, Gildarts continued to cough up the blood that was not his. The same that he had nearly drowned in. The taste of iron was hot on his tongue. Another wheeze, his lungs desperate to grasp air. The biting sting had left crumbs of crimson in the corners of his eyes.

The man sucked in a hollow breath and rose to the great quaking that had started to shake the ground. For a moment, there was nothing. His body dipped as his shoulders straightened and he had nearly caught his breath. Nearly.

And as suddenly as it began, any perception of time was lost as his eyes fell upon the only ghost of his past. Gildarts, of Fairytail. S-Class wizard and great warrior, known to all the magic folk of Earthland as the wielder of crash, had been defeated. And now, he gazed upon the monster that should’ve killed him.

Goosebumps slowly crept into his spine, prickling with the fiery sensation of ice, tingling with forlorn hope and his own repressed fear. The quaking did not stop, yet, his eyes seemed to flatten the dimension of dreamscape in which he stood. An anger so immense, the fabric of his nightmare almost shattered with the broken reality. His stare. Stone-cold, and deadly, fell upon the great dragon, Acnologia.

Not again, He had vowed. Never again. And yet here it was, in the flesh, enormous with a with a power so tangible Gildarts couldn’t help but to notice the wavering of his own knees. If that wasn’t proof of the creature’s existence, there was no truth in this world. For Gildarts - who faced the reality of his death every single day - was always, always brave.

It was unspeakable... Unthinkable... It was true.

“You’re here.” His eyes told the beast, a creature so full of fury, and yet there was but a single auburn-haired man raising in retaliation to the might of the unholy creature. “I’m no insect, Dragon of Death. And you’re no man.”

The words meant more to Gildarts, who was still undeniably dreaming, as he challenged the beast. “I won’t let you kill them.” The thrashing of pale fire soon commenced and winning this duel was his only option. If he could slay the beast here, then perhaps in some way his guild could be saved and he would not let the chance slither from his grasp again.

Gildarts had left Fairytail on Tenrou Island, holding the hands of his loved ones while the great beast’s maw opened revealing a throat full of fire and erupting the flame of hellfire upon them. In his arrival, he had been delivered from that death, Erza too, was alive. Somehow, through it all, he had been transported here to this world. If he could kill this monster, then perhaps they would survive. And perhaps, just perhaps..

All of them could live again.

[Gildarts]

A tremendous roar erupted from the clouds above him, and loomed over him with the chilling feeling of an imminent and certain doom. Gildarts felt his lungs increasingly desperate, it felt like a mix between suffocation and drowning.

A face in the shape of a skull flashed with the strike of lightning. It was a woman, ruthless, powerful, her eyes black and enflamed with nothing but rage. Suddenly the face changed, it was Nealaphh, his opponent from the battle he could barely remember. A sickness clutched his stomach like nothing else as the two eyes of green bore down on him -he had stolen the third- and the face of shadows hovered without form, until it dissipated with the squawking of a crow, or perhaps it was a raven...

A flapping of sleek black wings flickered in the half light and a stream of images coursed through the Prime’s mind like the gushing of water during a great flood. Lucid, vivid, rapid, and all delivered with a force that could not be stopped.

Now, a dragon’s shape conquered the sky. Colossal in size, but also in its girth any onlooker could see the immense power gushing forth from each one of its shimmering scales. The underbelly of the beast was black, and through the upswept dust and broken limbs of a night-kissed forest could Gildarts see that the great monster was due to land on top of him. But now, he could not move. His limbs -the ones that still had blood pumping through them- would not move. As though they had been ensnared by vine and clutched steady by thorn, Gildarts was pinned in his exact location, the dragon’s daunting silhouette descended from above, the chill of its shadow could be felt chilling the mage’s very skeleton.

Help! he thought with the utmost futility as he realized his fate would soon be, quite literally, upon him.

From below, Gildarts, the strongest Prime, looked up at the dragon’s black underbelly and could only grasp at straws, for his body would not move to his will. The dragon now, turned its head down at him, to look, and its face was sliced in half.

One half, being Acnologia, the dragon of his nightmares, the dragon that delivered only death to the world of Earthland. His home.

The other, the creature he knew as Volvagia, one who lived at the top of Death Mountain, and stirred inside only when sleeping... A slumber Gildarts had dared to stir in his waking moments. Volvagia was not a dragon he had had to fight alone, and it dwelled where he knew his body to currently be located, where ever his mind was, he was in the Omniverse. With some reluctance, Gildarts concluded that the Omniverse too, was his home.

A malevolent WHOOSH! of air caused his hair to streak across his face in tiny, wind-whipped little strands. Gildarts was forced to press his eyes shut, and when he did, the dream suddenly blossomed with colorful life. Faces of friends and enemies flashed before him with light, but each with a smile touched with warmth.

It was as though he was looking across an uncut field in the summer, cicadas chirping, a backdrop of trees in the distance, and nothing above him but stars. Then, fireflies emerged, trusting that their own light and the beams from their friends would be enough to guide them on their way. The stars had descended from the sky, and dwelled in little twinkling beauties just above the chutes of hay and unweeded grass. A scent tickled his nose, one that could only have been the smell of his old guild, Fairytail.

Flashes of their faces came to him now, boldly streaking across the starry sky, Master, Natsu, Cana, her mother, and they slowly changed from the friends of Earthland to those of the Omniverse, Ambrosia, and those he had met along the way. A fresh fire smoldered within him, one of hope, one he recognized was ignited every time he battled. The fire had a shape, and it smoldered blue on the symbol over his heart.

Cana’s face flashed before his eyes, and then Molly’s. Perhaps it was because a piece of Gildarts’ heart was missing. The Ambrosian’s cute dress fluttered in the wind, she was holding out a hand to Gildarts, over the ten year old’s shoulder, sung a thousand glittering fireflies. Unshed tears glittered in Gildarts’ eyes, for when he took the young girl’s hand, who beckoned him closer, with an unspoken promise to relieve the old man of his duties, the moment his organic hand was less than a hair’s length away, Gildarts opened his eyes to the black reality that was Death Mountain. The smoke filled his nostrils once more, and Gildarts blinked away the dream, though it was unknown if he was still blinking because of the smoke in his eyes, or because the peace of home had been so close to his heart, yet still so unattainable.

[Gildarts]

A thick cloud of destruction hung low in the air. Gildarts was passing in and out of consciousness, in his dream, he spat out a few teeth, and his eyes wobbled around the scene of death and destruction. It was the aftermath of a dragon’s rage, which, resembled a bit of what Gildarts’ own magic could offer, but with all the more terror. He was hanging there, both in and out of his body, for this was a dream, or a nightmare, with a message Gildarts was not willing to hear.

The Prime struggled to remain sane, while the screams of the dead drove past his ears. He could only imagine the complete horror on their faces, before they were burned with flame. Humans. Dead. An entire village of them. That was the outcome of his loss. Gildarts felt sick to his stomach, meanwhile, the screaming wouldn’t cease.

“Won’t somebody help us?”

“Help me please! My baby!”

“No...” a woman sobbed as she sifted through the rubble, only to find the remains of her two children.

This was, of course, all if the second wave of Primes could not stop the dragon’s destruction. However, Gildarts knew not of this extra set of defenses, and merely could only feel the weight of the guilt in his heart, for the destruction he could not save these people from. He willed his body to move, to stand, to fight, but neither was an option.

Gildarts dared to look down, to see if he had lost any more limbs, as he had once before during his first battle with a dragon who was impossible to defeat. The most horrific thing Gildarts looked down to, was his body was standing, erect, and able. Perhaps more able than he had been in many years. Yet, he would not go to help the village. Just why wasn’t his body moving?

The screams and pleas of the helpless drove on, Gildarts felt his mind stagger, while his strong body remained standing tall. As though his will had left him, the wizard sighed and felt more helpless in his own dream-body than he had ever before, since his magic usually conquered all.

This feeling was interrupted by a thought, no, a memory.

Gildarts was ten years old.

He had discovered he was a wizard just two years prior, during a horrible accident, which resulted in one of his friends dead. They had been playing the most innocent of games, hide and go seek. Gildarts had chosen a great spot, which offered a good set of cover from the seeker. Nothing seemed any different about the little boy, who loved to play with his friends, however, on that fateful day, Gildarts would never again, view himself as normal. Nor could he act that way.

Gildarts was the last to be found of his friends, and when a boy known as Marcus popped his head over the wall, Gildarts jumped in his skin, laughed and said, “You found me! Took you long enough!” Gildarts knew, and had hoped his friend would. Hide and seek was a bit of a lonely game when you were waiting.

Then he heard the horses feet, stomping and rolling in with an air of darkness cast. Gildarts frowned at this, and asked Marcus, “Who’re those guys?”

“They’re bad guys my dad was telling me about, they’ll do anything, even murder for money. We better run, or hide. We could stay here. In your spot, it took me a while to find you, and I know this town. These guys’ll never sniff us out.”

“What about everyone else?”

“Some of them got called in for dinner from their moms, after I found them.”

Gildarts nodded, “Kay, we can hide here.”

However, these people, these invaders, knew magic of their own. Quickly they found the boys, and before Gildarts knew it, Marcus was being dangled above his head. “You better stop!” The marauder was shaking the kid, nearly to death. Marcus was crying, screaming, between the breathes he was able to take.

“What’s a kid like you gonna do? Or maybe you’d just prefer if I drop him?” there were two other men on horses now, daunting over the red-headed boy who had gotten to his feet, defensively, as they had swiped Marcus away from his side. Now they were holding Marcus over a canal, which was at least twenty feet down. No boy, let alone man, would survive the jagged ending.

“Don’t you dare!” Gildarts growled, putting up his fists like he had seen the fighters do. Gildarts had chosen this hiding spot, it was his fault....

When they dropped him.

“NO!” Gildarts shouted helplessly. And everything exploded around him.

The ground below him, disintegrated down the shaft that Marcus was still screaming from below. Now the horses, and the group of “bad guys” who had dropped Marcus down the ravine. Now they were facing the same fate. Alongside boy-Gildarts, who was panicking on his way down.

It had all happened in five seconds. Marcus. An explosion. Now everyone was tumbling to their deaths. Water down below was growing closer, though it was a shallow river, encased in jagged rock. Gildarts felt the power well up inside him again, and extended his hands fearfully, his body, hoping by instinct, to catch him, as though it were out of a tree.

The ground, spiked with rock and boulder, as he tumbled forth with enough momentum to break bone, suddenly disappeared with the wave of his hand, which grew with light. The air slowed around him, the rocks each broke apart, and his tumbling slowed to a near stop before he fell into the hole in the ground he had created.

Stunned, Gildarts heard ringing in his ears, before he felt the water from the river fill his newly created lake. His body was immediately submerged, and he swam to safety, the higher, remaining banks of the river. He caught his breath, his clothes drenched in chilled water, and he looked over his shoulder, to the bloodied corpse of his friend, who he could not save.

-

Flashing forward two years, his mentor stood over him. “You must apply yourself Gildarts, or else this kind of thing will happen daily.”

Gildarts felt his cheeks heat with the scold, “You don’t know what it’s like! My magic isn’t easy to control... And the way they look at me... Like I’m some sort of monster... I’m only ten years old, and I can’t help it if I have this magic. I didn’t even get to choose!”

“Gildarts, sometimes fate has a different plan for us, than even we can see from here. You are young, and you can learn to wield your magic, or at least stop it from ravaging those around you, and your own body.” Crash magic was dangerous even for its user, as his master had instructed many times before.

“I only want to do good, I don’t want them to see me as a bad guy.”

“It doesn’t matter your intention, you’ve hurt innocent people. They were doing nothing, going about their day, and their roofs caved in on them. Because you lost your focus.” The teacher said to his apprentice, who felt anger well up inside him.

“No.” Gildarts spoke after a pause, “It does matter my intention. I don’t care if you say Crash is a magic that can never be learned or tamed. I’ll prove you wrong. I’ll prove everyone wrong. And you can’t stop me.”

-

Gildarts had run away from home, since that occurrence and for a while, he starved. He was too afraid of his own power to wander into town where food would be more or less assured. He scavenged, for as long as he could, and began to learn his craft only slightly, however, it would not be tame inside him. One day, he met a man, who changed Gildarts’ life forever, and gave him a purpose, and a renewed sense of family. He had lost his own, many years ago. Now, though, he had gained a guild he would be loyal to for the rest of his life. Fairytail.

And the man that had found Gildarts by ‘coincidence’ during a walk in the forest. And when Gildarts was not tall enough to reach the lowest bough of a tree, the man, a master of Fairytail’s guild, grew before the boy’s eyes, and showed him that magic could be peaceful and helpful, all the same.

Now, Gildarts was torn away from this memory, of meeting Master, by the screams once more. He could not tell if they were of the village in the Ashen Steppes, or of those many he had killed or injured due to his magic which he could not control.

Make. It. Stop. Gildarts nearly begged to whatever God was listening.

A feminine chuckle filled his ears, and the screams stopped immediately, “Oh, you silly, silly wizard. I don’t want to.”

Gild’s jaw dropped. It was her.

The Malefactor.

Inside his mind, she was there to stay.

[Gildarts]

“You.” Gildarts said within his mind, with a tone of solemnity.

“Me? Yes, me, I would have thought you’ve forgotten about me, considering your current defeat.” the voice pouted as she spoke, it was apparent due to her fluctuating pitch.

Gildarts growled, “You want control, it’s almost ironic, since I barely have it myself.”

“Yes, your power is certainly interestingly intricate...” she noted, “But I’m sure I can crack it, at least, before I make sure you do.”

“You will not gain power over me, not my body, nor my mind.” Gildarts declared.

“Spoke nobly, wizard. However, you don’t get a choice in the matter. When you let me in, to tote on your back to assure I would not destroy villages, you actually accepted me, let me into your mind, where someday, whenever it will be, I will gain control of your power, and destroy everything you know and love, with your own hands and magic.” her voice kissed his ears.

“I’ve battled with this magic, this curse, for the most of my existence, and I’m not about to let you come over and steal its power, perhaps even if you ever did somehow get control, you’d be eroded by the pure destructive properties that is Crash magic.” Gildarts spoke from experience.

“Perhaps that is why you rarely speak.” she said scornfully, “Your fear prohibits you.”

“Fear, of a strength I know not where it ends. That kind of strength permits fear. Which I will grow from.” Gildarts spoke knowledgeably.

“Spoken well, young Prime. I will defeat your will, so someday, you will wish I would take your control, for you will have none, as long as you remain the same, wizard, don’t you see what Omniverse has done to your power? For all the fights you have been in, you’ve lost every one. You are going to live forever, in this terrible, terrible state of mind and body. You’ve already lost yourself Gildarts, you’ve just been denying it. And now that I’m here, and while I battle for the power over your mind. You will be forced to defeat, because you will wish it. I will guarantee everyone you know to die, and everyone you love, a fate worse than death.”

“You’ve been trapped for too long, it is you who has lost yourself. Perhaps, though you are a foul creature, you were once whole. Once, you might’ve had some sort of human mind, which would protest your evil, but now, you’ve grown so thirsty for any sense of feeling, you’ve destroyed the last ounces of humanity you have within you.” Gildarts jousted.

“That’s where you’re wrong, wizard! I was never human, never have I ever had to live in such filthy, groveling, conditions as that of a troglodyte.” the rage of her words quaked in his ears. The world around him was dark. He must’ve nodded off just long enough for this conversation to take place, for when he opened his eyes, it grew light once more.