Fairy Tales

[Gildarts]

Spiraling darkness. Her stomach lurched, then felt as though it were speeding in her stomach at two-hundred miles an hour. Her hands reached out instinctively, as though to grab walls, or grapple upon any ledge the darkness might let her, but to her streamlining fears, there was nothing to hold her.

I’m going to die.

She thought to herself, and then his face flashed into her mind. It was painful, to have to look at his face in the darkness. She herself could never find the words to tell him. Now she would never have the chance to say it. Tenrou Island was her opportunity to make him proud. She would’ve become an S-class wizard, as he once was. Someone worthy of noticing. Cana, never felt as though she was. Yet, Lucy had helped Cana, given her the confidence and courage she needed, but then the other guild had interfered in the contest, and Cana couldn’t remember anything more. Had the dragon killed them?

Had she died without a father?

The encompassing world around her was still black. But this time, she drank in a taste of burning, acrid, smoke which filled her nostrils, scratchily passed down her throat, and sunk smolderingly in her lungs. The girl coughed as she wiggled her fingers, which met with a texture that resembled sharp rock, it was warm, as though heated from below. Cana’s entire body was laying on this jagged surface, and she dug in her palms and drove her torso upright.

Bright amber eyes followed the corners of the room, or rather, cave. It was dark, and the air was so dry, she thought that her lips were already chapped, though she had been in the room for what she could tell as but a few minutes. Her eyelashes cleared away the clumps of black ash that cluttered the corners of her eyes. Her lungs, still wracked with a wreathing struggle for breath that caused her to arduously cough more, until she was driven to rip a shred off of her already revealing shirt and use it to cover her nose and mouth.

The cloth sifted the air around her of ash, and helped her to breathe, however, it did nothing for the hot tears rolling from her stinging eyes. The white cloth was tainted black by the sooty smoke, and she resembled a ninja now, while her rich, brown eyes were framed with darkness. Finally, she dizzily stood, and leaned against  “What the... Where am I?”

Last she remembered, she was on Tenrou Island, battling the other guild, and then... When Cana tried to remember, she got woozy, and fell into the wall, her head, inches from a sharp spear of rock. When the girl collected herself, she looked down, maybe her attire would help her confirm, and possible wounds on her skin.

Her eyes looked down to see her clothes, now dusted with ashy soot. Over her shoulders and sleeving her arms was a white cardigan without a cape or buttons down the front. Popping outward, was her large bust, covered by a bando-bra shaped navy-blue, almost black brazier, with a white stripe to tie in her jacket. Past that, her smooth stomach was free of fabric, and off to the left side, her Fairytale tattoo was showing boldly in a patch of skin that had yet to be smeared by dirt. On her legs, a pair of very tight black pants and a cute belt wrapped loosely around her waist.

Through her headache, Cana, a woman in her mid to late twenties, remembered her choice of clothes and thought they matched her style, which was in fact, distinctly sexy.

 Over her shoulder, she had a small satchel, and though she didn’t know it, it was much like her fathers, but a little more fashionable than his ruddy looking sack. Cana fished her hand around in her purse and quickly caught all of the strands of her hair, gathered them together in her fist, and wrapped the bunch of hair in a messy bun. Her neck, which was now sweating, was free of the tickle of her long, curled, brown hair, and she sighed a wheezy breath of relief.

Her eyelashes batted against the dry air some more, her comfort was not long lasting, for the room’s temperature was ever-rising. The haze of Cana’s head hadn’t cleared, much like the densely accumulating smoke of the room, but it was soon made clear to her by the spouts of lava coming from the ground around her, and rolling in streams right past her feet, that Cana was in danger.

Brown eyes looked around again, darting, and hoping to cut through the smoke of the room, but from where she was, it surrounded her. A frown weighed on her lips, and the woman wondered whether it would be safer to make her way up, where the source of the lava was surely coming from, or down, where it all would surely go. She bit her lip from under the shred of fabric, and felt it bleed. “Tch... Gildarts, where are you when I need you?”

Story of my life.

It was by a stroke of very bad luck she had not found the very Prime she mentioned by name. She had decided to go up, to ascend the mountain though her intuition nagged her, her gut and heart told her Gildarts was up there. Yet, after a few steps into the submerging black clouds, Cana’s foot almost stepped directly in the flaming heat of lava, and the fear bristled in her from head to toe. That was too close, She told herself, and while she was deciding whether or not to take an extra step upward, fueled by the yearning in her heart, just to be sure, the fortune-telling mage was struck by horror as she heard the roar of a dragon, louder than any thunder she had ever heard in the sky.

It was, unmistakably, a dragon. The thrilling sense of fear burst in her accelerated heart, and stirred in her melting shoes. She let out a startled yelp, it was a cute scream on the woman’s lips, though there was nothing attractive about a dragon that may well threaten her life. The woman almost shouted for help, but she wanted to save her energy, though had she, she knew no one would hear her up in the desolate place where she was, and that her hoarse voice would not carry but a few feet. A few feet, would have been all that it would have taken to find Gildarts’ ears, for he was battling a dragon by the name of Volvalgia with a group of other Primes, just beyond her eyesight.

The tears of fear cleared streams on her pale skin and left stains of white on her black-chalked face. “Damn,” she felt so helpless. There was nearly nothing she could do, and though she could consult her cards, she did not feel like she had the magic to summon the future’s truth- nor, did she have the time.

Pools of lava now drew largely around her feet, and she was trapped in an encompassing circle, forced to choose, right or left. Toward the dragon, toward the source of the lava, toward the danger or away from it all, away from, even, the sure sense she had in her stomach that Gildarts was there. The girl blinked, and chose “up” but when she started to take a step, a huge boulder came out of no-where, shot through the smoke, and collided with her stomach, where Cana was sent rolling backward, down the hill of the mountain.

It was a miracle she survived. Blood poured from several wounds, but they were only, at most, an inch from the surface. Still, the pain hurt, and the scalding sensation mixed with that of the unbearable heat. The disoriented girl looked around, and found that she had conked her head pretty damned hard on a conveniently sturdy black rock. Cana was seeing doubles, but at least she was seeing.

The world, no longer black, but now resembled glowing embers, with a hue of bright orange staining the clouds in the sky. Her blood leaked to the ground, and started to sizzle upon the obsidian quartz. Around her, a volcanic world she had never before laid her eyes on. It was almost magical in the way the landscape fell, but on the other hand, lava had started to trickle too close from her, she could now see that it came from a spout in the mountain, rather than the volcano erupting. It was one hell of a climate. The woman squinted through strands of her hair, but really, she could only see the glow of the magma clearly. The rest blurred together with a vague uncertainly of shape, directly affected by the throbbing that her head battled with.

Instinctively, Cana felt her hand go to the spot on the back of her head that hurt the most. Immediately, she felt her palm splash with a warm gush of blood. Fear turned her body rigid, and sent he stomach upside down. But that was not the only thing, it was almost uncanny, but Cana could feel that something in her body was different, something about the mechanics of it, something about its balance of magic. Still, a wound like this, on her head, in this climate, in an unknown place where she had little memory of arriving there.

A pout bridged on her lips, and Cana thought her chances of survival were dismal at best. I can’t even see straight. Oh yeah, and there’s a dragon due north of here. Just. My. Luck. A little magic would get her out of this in a synch, but could she even use it in her state? Cana tried, through the dizziness flooding her thoughts, and through the pain stabbing into her mind, to focus on her cards. She supposed it was because Gildarts was her father, but magic had always come easily to her.

A flash of light, and Cana felt a great sense of hot power guide her fingers to one of the cards. Quickly and desperately the woman grabbed it, and launched it into the air. Soon following it, a great force of energy filled her legs, and with a gust of wind, Cana was sent away from the looming shadow of the disastrous mountain, and taken far, far away.