Chapter Text
Acnologia is wandering around the petrified remains of an ancient forest when he hears it. Ever since he met Natsu, he’s developed a habit of wandering around just for the sake of it. He technically has a place to go—Natsu would keep him company if he showed up at the volcano—and he could be doing something with himself, like he did before, but he instead finds himself wandering around without much purpose.
Something about Natsu’s quiet admission the other day, makes him feel better about that. He could think about why that is, or why he ever bothered to go looking for dangerous magic, even if he had no intention of using it, but it’s enough to him to argue it was simply all he knew how to do. Find dangerous things, destroy them. It had been his singular goal for so long. Some paranoid part of him says he ran out of dangerous living things to destroy, so he sought out simple magic artifacts.
…But Natsu was dangerous, even if he has never seen the exent of his ability, he knows intrinsically that he is. The fire mage has a way of putting him on edge like he has never been before, but if he’s honest with himself, there’s something almost comforting about that fact.
It had been a long time since he felt like prey, and even as a child, he was far too apathetic to care. Maybe it was the idea that he could care about his own mortality that made Natsu’s presence alluring. It made him feel alive for the first time in a while—for the first time ever, really.
Regardless of why, though, he finds himself falling into that fundamental curiosity humans are born with, wandering around strange places just for the intrigue of it all. He’s fairly certain he’s on the other side of the continent from Natsu’s volcano when he stumbles upon the forest. It’s noisy in the way forests often are, though its other defining feature—the trees—are fairly lacking. More like, there used to be trees, but now they are the simple stone visages of what once was.
There is still life, though. Sparse grass fills the forest floor, and he sees a few saplings about. A flock of birds sit in a particularly large tree—an old one, that is. But over the weak hum of the forest, he hears something else.
It sounds like a fight, but not a particularly fair one, if the swift thud of a body hitting the ground is anything to go by. It’s interesting to hear, though, this far from civilization, so he goes to investigate. Just because he isn’t actively seeking out the dark mages of the world, doesn’t mean he can’t interfere if he happens upon one.
And maybe he’ll find something Natsu would find interesting, but that isn’t the important part.
He traces the noise to a cave opening. Actually, it seems like it was a mineshaft at some point, but while it looks abandoned, it certainly isn’t. There are more scuffles—if you can even call them that—happening deeper in the cave, evidence of previous ones littering the mouth of the cave in the form of bodies. The cave smells a bit like magic and a lot like death, so it takes him a bit to realize the mages are only unconscious, which then makes him wonder why the cave smells like death at all.
He tries to parse out the other scents, but the rotten smell of death smothers anything else, so Acnologia is left to look around. He could be more worried about whoever else is in the cave, but he’s pretty sure these guys were just bad mages relying on their remote location to protect them in lieu of actual strength. Or any other form of protection, really. They could serve to learn something from Natsu in that regard.
He finds nothing in the first chamber, so he walks deeper into the mineshaft. That strange, rotten smell of death only continues to waft through the cave system. When he comes upon a split, he decides to follow it, for better or worse. He glances at the unconscious mage laying off to the side. They have a bruise blooming across their cheek and their neck is at an odd angle. With some trepidation, he continues down the death-tunnel.
Eventually the tunnel opens up into a large cavern, cathedral-like in its grandeur. Acnologia, in all his terrible might, does not bother with any sort of stealth as he approaches the cavern. A cursory glance from the mouth of the tunnel determines no present enemies, and he feels no magical presence.
Ancient script is hastily scribbled across its walls, written in some dull red reminiscent of blood, but the smell of the ink is too far gone—and too distant, under the smell of death—for him to figure out its composition.
As he finally enters the cavern, he nearly trips over some object, its smell and presence blending in with that of the rest of the cave system. He appraises it on the ground. It’s a scrap of fabric, folded upon itself. It feels familiar, except he has never seen a cloth so dark in color—its as if the inky blackness seeps out of it and into to the cave.
He realises, then, the smell of death permeating the air is magical in nature, somehow emanating from the scarf in his hands—because that is what it must be. A scarf.
“Natsu?” he asks the obscure figure huddled in front of a vault door, not immediately visible from the opening. It’s so large it almost takes away from the power of the mage before it.
That scarring he had caught a glimpse of just weeks ago was on full display, trailing down the nape of his neck.
He looks at the scarf. That power seeping from it reminds him all too much of the few chance encounters he has had with Zeref over the past three centuries.
Natsu appears to jump out of his skin as he turns around. The pallor of his skin is somehow even worse than when Natsu had found him outside after a month of silence.
He takes solace in the fact that the smell of death only wafts from the object in his hands.
“Put that down.”
Acnologia nearly obeys simply from the force of those words, erupting from Natsu with the strength of a volcano despite his shaking shoulders and bare neck. But he hesitates just a fraction of a second.
Natsu appears before him so quickly Acnologia would be certain he teleported, if not for the lack of the tell-tell warp of space. Rage fills those obsidian eyes, blazing like hot coals. The heat is very nearly unbearable. The shake in Natsu’s hands, though, is not from rage. It’s from exhaustion.
He almost does not notice Natsu’s near-empty magic container underneath the smothering presence of death, but even without knowledge of what Natsu’s magical presence feels like, the lack thereof is like a void.
Acnologia—for all his knowledge of magic and its limits—did not know it was possible to be so close to magic deficiency and still stand.
Natsu rips the scarf out of Acnologia’s hand and returns to his place at the vault door with all the grace of a wounded animal.
He does not put the scarf back on.
Acnologia does not ask why he’s here, why his scarf was overflowing with Zeref’s magic. He does not even wonder as to what could possibly warrant a vault door so big, or why Natsu was so enthralled in it.
He sits his ass down on the other end of the cavern and watches like a child in time-out.
Natsu drags himself out of bed one morning to the realization that he had sent the Heartfilia’s a letter well over a month ago and never bothered to see if they had responded. Blearily, he teleports just outside of that little town, banking on the brisk walk to wake him up. Once there, he finds a letter, dated two weeks ago. Not the worst response time, all things considered.
The letter assures him that they have the remaining twelve keys and that they appreciated the jewel he had sent along with his carefully concealed threat. Not that they called it that, but he knew what he was doing. He writes them a quick response and leaves it at that.
On his way out of town, he decides to stop at a small café to eat. It has been quite a long time since he had a pastry—he learned after a few too many failed attempts that he should probably stick to cooking. It had taken him long enough to get a hold of that—a craft requiring complicated, precise recipes is far too much of a challenge to his patience. Casting enchantments and writing complicated runes is oppositional enough to Natsu’s nature, and those, at the very least, are useful to him.
Despite the rough start to his morning—and if he’s being honest with himself, that was entirely his own fault—this trip ends up being a rather peaceful one.
Naturally, it couldn’t stay that way.
Igneel stirs in his chest—pulled from his dormancy by the only person other than Acnologia that is capable of filling the Fire Dragon King with dread.
Zeref, with all the brashness of someone who isn’t the most feared individual on the planet, walks into that quaint, innocent little café, and decides to prove Irene right.
Stars, does he hate it when Irene is right.
He sits beside Natsu at the little window seat he had squandered for himself. “Natsu,” he says, nothing in his voice. He’s heard that tone so many times in his life, but the complete and utter lack of feeling always drags longing to Natsu’s heart. Some old grief for the brother he lost, though he sits right in front of him, somehow dreadfully alive and brilliantly dead all at once.
“Nii-san,” he acknowledges, knowing better than to ever utter his true name in front of a crowd of humans, lest it send them into a frezy and activate his estranged brother’s curse.
He finishes his food, and gets up to leave, having already paid. Zeref follows him out and into the forest like a ghost, trailing him with the silent contempt only a creator could have for its creation.
“Acnologia?” Zeref demands once he has decided they are sufficiently far enough away from civilization to risk his curse activating. It is a wonder that someone can be so angry and so empty simultaneously. Or it should be, if not for the fact that Natsu has been dealing with this for just about as long as he’s been alive.
To him, it is just another unfortunate, bizarre situation, once again at the behest of his older brother.
“As far as I can tell, he’s completely sane,” he responds with every ounce of neutrality a mortal can possess. Still, nothing will compare with the overflowing emptiness of Zeref’s glare. The immortal dark mage exahales no breath as they stare eachother down. He is as still as a petrified tree, dead but not decaying.
If you contemplate his curse any more, you’re going to give me a headache, and I don’t have a brain anymore, Igneel deadpans from deep within his soul.
It’s hard not to. Not when I’m not really me.
Igneel’s presence shifts as if the dragon is rolling his eyes. One would think you the cursed one with your logic sometimes, he claims, but understanding settles in his gut. Natsu will always be intrinsically tied to Zeref, and proximity only makes that connection widen. It is, among others, the reason Natsu avoids his brother as vehemently as he does.
Zeref’s sigh is the only indication that the Curse of Contradiction is acting up, but it is obvious in the flash of his eyes that he suppresses it well enough.
“Very well, monitor him.” He pauses for a moment, caught in between leaving and voicing a dangerous thought. “You did it again,” Zeref accuses.
“So?”
Zeref’s eyes flash.
Natsu, Igneel warns.
Natsu pays no mind. “So have you, a hundred times over.”
“After what I—”
Natsu cuts him off with a sharp laugh. “After what you did to me? Because it has never been for my sake, Zeref. I am nothing to you.”
Zeref’s nostril’s flare.
Natsu is gone before the miasma clears the air.
Someone had mentioned to Natsu that they were trailing a group of dark mages, but they had lost them. The only real information they had is that they were apparently trying to unseal something, and it was in some remote place on the other end of the continent. Natsu had taken one good look at that mage and determined they were probably never going to find that hideout. They were young and looked like a breeze could blow them over.
He figured out where the base was awhile ago, but determined they weren’t an immediate threat, and went back home. It was just after that that he met Acnologia actually. Needless to say he had been preoccupied. That, and he had put off this chore for a bit too long.
Exhaustion bites at him as he lands just outside of the mine shaft they called a base. Still, he has enough strength to take out the quote-unquote guards they had at the entrance and scattered throughout. He is reticent to even call them mages with how inconsequential their magical presences are. They aren’t unfit for combat, per se, but it wouldn’t lend them power over mages. A mercenary group, then, probably with a few mages in their ranks. So what are they after in this remote-ass cave?
Mercenary or not, the only thing that would lead to a group of people congregating in a cave is something big and magical—not to mention they are supposedly attempting to unseal something. The question is what? He doesn’t sense anything at all, but the scarf around his neck certainly isn’t helping anything, considering the death magic still wafting off of it and obscuring any residuals that might be in the cave.
Oh, and particularly quiet mages, he thinks as someone leaps out at him from an unlit tunnel. He sidesteps the spell blooming from their hands, grabbing their forearm as the spell harmlessly soars past his head. They lose their balance with a simple tug as Natsu flips them onto their back. He gives them no time to catch their breath, kicking them in the head to knock them out.
He assesses the damage on the cave wall. A thin layer of frost covers most of it, but it melts quickly even against cold stone. Yeah, they weren’t very much of a threat. Igneel remarks dryly, not having returned to dormancy after his encounter with Zeref. Natsu shrugs.
He unravels his scarf, immediately more in-tune with the magic of the cave system. Something massive looms at the end of the tunnel the mage had come from. He really doubts there’s much they could do with whatever it is they’ve found in this cave, given their…manpower, but it is concerning that they were trying to do anything with it at all.
The cave opens up into a large, towering cavern. Faded, blood-red text fills the walls, too aged for Natsu to make out most of the words. From the bits that are legible, Natsu can tell that whoever wrote it was extremely paranoid.
That, and apparently, a dragon is buried here. The smell of dragons and their magic does not fade quickly. He nearly denounces the author’s claim on that basis alone, but he can tell even through the haze of death magic that something is buried here, and that it must have been powerful for its magic to persist so long after death.
And it must have been dead for a very, very long time, he thinks, turning his attention to a, frankly, ginormous vault door embedded in the stone. It is nearly as tall as the cavern itself, perhaps evidence that whatever is behind it is, in of itself, huge. But its size is obviously done, in part, to accommodate the sheer number of runes inscribed in it. They’re in a language so old, Natsu is not even sure Zeref would recognize it.
Without much thought, Natsu drops the scarf and approaches the door. “This…is going to be a very interesting puzzle,” he voices. The lack of the scarf gives Natsu an even greater idea of the power emmenating from not only whatever is buried here, but also of the vault itself.
Despite the unfamiliar language, Natsu is very familiar with the actual mechanism of containment spells, though he has to admit this is much more complex than anything he’s ever designed himself. His usual method is just layering a ton of wards with eachother. Granted, these seem to effectively be the same thing, the layers are just also entwined with eachother, and Natsu is tempted to try undoing it just to see if he can.
I’m not sure you want to find out what those are designed to contain, Natsu.
Yeah…he isn’t exactly inclined to that either, but studying the spell can’t hurt….
“Natsu?”
The fire mage almost yelps in alarm, but manages to to slow his reaction to nothing more than a jump. He turns around to find Acnologia standing there, Natsu’s scarf in his hands.
“Put that down,” that could kill you.
Acnologia hesitates, and Natsu moves without thinking, yanking the scarf out of the arcane slayer’s hands. He knows his hands are shaking, and he realises far too slowly that his magic container has not been refilled.
He returns to the vault, not bothering to ask why Acnologia was there.
Hours later, Acnologia is still sitting at the other end of the cavern. At some point, Natsu had summoned himself a small notepad, but other than that, the mage seems to be doing a whole lot of nothing.
Sighing, Acnolologia turns his attention to the scarf resting ominously at Natsu’s side. Some distant memory of his young adulthood comes to him, and he remembers he was once taught a Purifying spell.
Slowly, he pads over to the still-shaking figure of the Dragon Slayer. Carefully, he picks up the scarf, still void-black, but no longer leeching magic into their surroundings.
Natsu looks over at him, growl building in his throat. “I told you—”
Acnologia quietly releases a small burst of magic, forcing the death magic out of the scarf and allowing it to harmlessly dissolve in the air. Natsu’s growl dissolves with it.
Ever so gently, Acnologia places the scarf over Natsu’s shoulders. His hand briefly brushes the Dragon Slayer’s shoulder. Natsu’s skin is cold to the touch.
“You don’t eat much, do you?” Acnologia says, coming to a concerning conclusion.
Some degree of realization seems to come to Natsu, but he deflects. “I eat plenty.”
“Right.” He stops to assess Natsu’s magic again, as difficult as it is. “Why is your magic container so empty, then?”
“You can’t—”
“Sense your signature? No, I can’t, but it’s like there’s a fucking black hole where your magic should be. So, why?”
He averts his eyes. “I just used a lot of magic.” His tone is almost casual, but there is still an obvious undercurrent of tension. The reason for the deficiency is obvious, but it makes no sense that his magic wouldn’t have returned by now. He wants to pry—figure out exactly why Natsu used so much magic, but it isn’t exactly the relevant issue.
He sighs heavily. Natsu just keeps avoiding eye-contact, gaze darting back and forth but never quite reaching Acnologia’s.
“Your container would have filled up by now if you didn’t have an elemental deficiency,” he points out.
Natsu scoffs. “You don’t know that,” he states, turning his head away from him. He says it so quickly the words nearly merge together.
The Arcane Slayer raises a brow. Patiently waiting for Natsu to elaborate. He’s fairly certain the other can only play the cold shoulder game for so long. Sure he pretty much ignored Acnologia for several hours today alone, but that didn’t seem to be out of contempt…or whatever it is that’s happening here.
Admittedly, Natsu has a habit of lying by omission. Usually he’s so good at darting around secrets that Acnologia hardly notices anything is missing, but it’s obvious in their every interaction, every half finished story, every half-baked answer, that Natsu is hiding something. If he were any less observant, he might chalk it up to the tangled web stories that are inevitable after living for so long. Perhaps a confused plot point here and there that leaves stories falling flat. But the holes feel far too deliberate.
“There’s a million things it could be,” Natsu claims suddenly, voice much flatter than the adamant refusal of his previous thought. “Just because you starved yourself, doesn't mean I would.”
Acnologia knows it’s just a petty assumption, probably not based on anything at all. But he learns in that moment that being seen right through isn’t a great feeling. He’s never had anyone bother to notice things like that, and of course the first time it has to be with the intention of causing harm. He wants to be angry about it, but he lets it wash over him, if not without some substantial damage to his lower lip.
Natsu looks over at him at the sound of him biting through his lip. The Fire Dragon Slayer’s brow furrows.
“I– fuck, man. I’m sorry that was…I don’t even know. Shouldn’t’a said that.”
Acnologia releases his jaw, mildly disturbed by the feeling of his fang sliding out of his accidental piercing. It’ll heal, he reminds himself. Of course dragons don’t really have super-healing, but they tend to deal with wounds much better than squishy humans, if they even get them. And it’s hardly the first time he’s done that.
Usually, though, he’s using it to scare away particularly nosy humans.
He sits next to Natsu.
“‘S fine. You were right, anyway,” he says softly.
Natsu looks away again. “You were too.”
“Of course,” Acnologia responds incredulously.
The other slayer swings his head around. “What?”
He shrugs. “It’s always more than that, isn’t it? Especially if you admit to it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Slowly, Acnologia leans towards Natsu. He gives him a weird look, but he doesn’t move. It’s obvious he’s offended him somehow, or otherwise prodded at some sore spot.
Natsu’s scarf is still draped loosely over his shoulders, so it takes him no effort to tug the fabric off.
That familiar growl begins building up in Natsu’s throat again. He distantly realised the sound isn’t quite dragonic, but he doesn’t focus on it. In fact, he ignores the growl altogether.
“Why does this absorb death magic?”
Natsu blinks at him, opens his mouth, and then closes it again. The same concerned look he had just given Acnologia moments ago comes back. He seems to retreat into himself, as if having some internal conversation.
That’s something else he had noticed. Most of the time Natsu weaves around his secrets like breathing, but there are times he slows down. Stops midway through some explanation as if considering some new information. It really isn’t that unusual. Sometimes some factor Acnologia hadn’t considered yet comes to mind and he has to shift his understanding to fit it in. But once again, this instance rubs him the wrong way.
“For that matter,” he continues when Natsu still hasn’t responded. “Why did you smell so strongly of death after going to Alvarez?”
Acnologia slowly pulls Igneel’s scarf off his shoulders as if he were some skittish animal. He dangles the scarf so that some of it is still dragging along the ground. It shouldn’t bother him—he had just thrown it on the floor of this dingy cave for hours—but it irks him nonetheless.
He growls at him for the nth time, not really noticing how the deep rumble slips into something far too ethereal.
“Why does this absorb death magic?” Acnologia asks simply. There is no judgement in his tone. Not even an ounce of suspicion, even though Natsu knows he must be piecing things together.
It was only a matter of time, Natsu. Igneel doesn’t seem to be chastising him, but some nagging paranoia tells him that maybe Igneel was right from the beginning.
The dragon seemingly rolls his eyes. As a matter of fact, his acquaintance has been quite good for you. What I mean is that it was only a matter of time before he started getting concerned for you.
Natsu doesn’t have the time to figure out when exactly Igneel had changed his mind about Acnologia before the latter asks his next question.
And he doesn’t really know how to answer that one without…well, explaining everything.