Chapter Fifty-Eight

Darkness Awoken

"Natsu?" Erza asked, pushing herself to her feet and pulling Gray up.

The man they each knew to be the incredibly powerful Dragon King slowly turned his head towards her, locking eyes with the Fairy Queen before issuing a soft shake.

"No," he said, his speech still rough and untrained.

"Are you the one I met, inside his memories?" Lucy asked, trying to step in front of Wendy subtly.

"Heart-fil-i-a," he said slowly, his eyes narrowing the smallest fraction in a glare of recognition, "-girl," he added, confirming Lucy's belief.

"Gray, what are we looking at?" Lyon asked as quietly as he could, unwilling to bring any attention to himself.

"That is the worst-case scenario," Gray explained slowly, fighting the urge to bring any magic to the surface. He knew fully what this was capable of; he'd seen it up close in Loduhn, and he'd felt that power firsthand.

The pillar of light that was beaming from the forest doubled in intensity.

"Jellal," Natsu said slowly, his ability to speak already improving.

"Whose side are you on?" Erza asked, slowly drawing a sword.

She didn't want to fight him, she didn't want to even be speaking to him, but she knew just how volatile that fire of his was.

Natsu looked at her but didn't answer.

"Can you stop them as you are, the Oracion Seis?" Lucy asked.

Everyone watched in silence as the two women managed to speak plainly with the dark side of the Salamander without inviting additional aggression.

"No," he answered, "My stre-ngth… Path-e-tic… While im-prison-ed," he explained, weakly holding his arm up, watching as he moved his hand like a poorly skilled puppet.

"Help!" They all turned to see Ichiya running toward them at surprising speed, followed by a multitude of wizards all brandishing various weapons as they targeted him.

"Great, now this," Lyon moaned, readying his magic as he fell into the same stance Gray always would.

Natsu lazily raised his hand and snapped his fingers, "Igni," he said as if it were the most mundane thing in the world.

Every single one of the dark guild that had been chasing Ichiya had abruptly been incinerated in a flash-fire of blood-red flames, the likes of which left an evil feeling over all who had witnessed it.

"While I cannot commend you for taking so many lives with such little regard, I must thank you for saving my own, even though you almost caught me with that attack as well," Ichiya announced as he joined them, straightening his suit.

"I missed," Natsu admitted with his slow speech.

"I thought you said your power was pathetic, how was that pathetic!?" Sherry demanded, hiding behind Lyon as she spoke.

"My stren-gth," he said, turning to face the place the light was coming from, "Sha-dows Gods," he continued as he raised his right arm up, holding his hand out.

"My strength," he clenched his fist. A bright orange light shone from within, "Destroys worlds,"

"My strength," he splayed his hand wide to reveal the small sphere of pure energy that expanded into an enormous horizontal pillar of flames that sat above their heads like a great spear.

"My strength kills the unkillable." He said with clear words as he sluggishly launched his arm forwards, commanding the weaponized element to move.

It burned its way through the forest as it honed in on its target beginning to steal all of the light and cast a shadow on everything it approached.

Before the attack landed, the pillar increased its rays yet again and the spear of cursed fire dissipated alongside the hold Natsu's inner darkness had held.

A puff of orange flames sparked out from Natsu's mouth as he fell to his knees, looking skyway with confusion thick in his eyes. "Ow," he groaned plainly.

"I," he said after a tense moment of silence, "Am going to burn Jellal's soul for that," he muttered, looking around at the gathered faces who for the most part were staring at him in a mixture of disbelief and terror.

Lucy, Erza, and Gray were simply relieved that Natsu was Natsu once again.

"I mean, seriously, I know that he said he was going to throw everything at me, but who pulls a meteor out of the sky!? That guy has too much power for his own good," Natsu raged for a moment before collecting himself.

"Like you're one to talk!" Gray shot at him, a thick glare heavy set into his features as she looked down at the Dragon among them.

"Why does it smell like sulphur, Gray, have you farted?" He asked, facing the ice mage.

"This isn't anyone's fault but yours, you got hit with whatever that massive light was and then you took that Racer guy's bomb vest to the face, you were out cold, and your other guy was just wearing you like a meat suit. He just launched a massive attack at that light," Gray explained, stepping towards Natsu, undecided whether or not he was going to extend a hand or punch him in the face.

Against what he thought was his better judgment, he grabbed Natsu by the shoulders and hoisted him to his feet.

"Let's be clear, I could totally have taken that meteor if I had my magic," the Fire Dragon told them with a serious tone, a flicker of pride across his face.

"Of course you can champ, the fact that he's still conscious and activating Nirvana doesn't mean anything at all," Lucy said, smiling wickedly as she stoked the already aggravated fire from within.

Natsu's once fond eyes narrowed upon the Celestial Dragon Slayer, slowly morphing into those bright pools of gold that she loved so much.

The feeling of pressure had begun bearing down on them like an unseen force from the skies. For a tense moment, nobody even breathed as they carefully watched the Dragon.

"Mōdo Enryūō", Natsu's voice had come across as quiet as a whisper before the air was filled with the roaring sound of a King's fire, tearing away at anything unfortunate enough to be caught by it.

Without warning, Natsu turned heel and lurched forward, unleashing a devastating volume of magic.

"Fire Dragon King's Roar!" The attack was at least three times the size of Lucy's roar, boring itself straight down the path hers had previously carved, only this time it hadn't stopped or fallen short as hers had, instead, it continued moving right up until it hit a barrier around the base of the light.

When Natsu had finally willed the attack to cease, he wordlessly fell into a sprint, pushing through his trail of charred destruction so that he could, above all else, prove a point.

"As weird as this sounds, the safest place is probably right behind him," Gray explained as he looked towards Lyon, nodding as they both fell into step with one another. Sherry and Hibiki followed next, then Wendy and the two felines.

"Did you have to set him off like that?" Erza asked quietly, knowing that this was a topic that only related to the two of them.

"I had to," Lucy admitted, the lines of her facade cracking, "I don't know why but this whole Dragon Slayer attraction thing is so much worse when he's unstable or using more power than normal. I had to get him out of there or you'd all be witnessing something that we shouldn't be doing on a dirty forest floor!" Lucy exclaimed with a deep blush.

"Well, at the very least not with spectators," she added quietly as the two of them followed suit in the trail of burned destruction that Natsu was carving through the forest on his personal rampage towards Nirvana and Jellal.

"Gray!" Lyon had to shout over the deafening roar of Natsu's flames despite the increasing distance the Fire Dragon was putting between them.

"What are we trying to do here!?" He asked, looking over his shoulder to make sure Sherry was alright. He had no idea where Jura was, but aside from Natsu, the Wizard Saint could probably handle himself better than everyone else.

"We move towards Nirvana, our top priority is to make sure that Natsu doesn't lose control!" Gray explained.

"Shouldn't our main focus be on stopping the Oracion Seis from activating Nirvana? Or Jellal?" Lyon asked.

"You saw first-hand what happens when Natsu isn't in control of himself. With a snap of the fingers, thirty men died in an instant, he is our top priority, unfortunately, he's also our main fighting force right now. We support him and make sure he doesn't go too far!" Gray told his fellow ice mage.

"If it comes to it, there's always…" Lyon alluded to the forbidden spell that they both knew was the absolute last resort.

"Deliora was one thing, but Natsu is an entirely different animal, I'm not sure that it would hold him," Gray admitted with a dark look in his eyes.

"Guys, stop!" Hibiki's voice broke through, each as clear as day, "Jura's been cornered, the rest of the Oracion Seis are all on him, we have to go and help!" He said.

Up ahead, they all saw Natsu falter as a second beam of black light shot towards the sky from Nirvana.

"If nobody goes to Jura…" Natsu whispered, far enough ahead of everyone that it was simply a private conversation.

'The rock bastard will die,' E.N.D. stated flatly.

"But if I go and help him…"

'Jellal will not die,' The Etherious confirmed.

"Natsu, what are you doing, we have to go and help Jura!" Gray shouted, almost tackling the Fire Dragon as the ice mages caught up.

"We have to stop Jellal!" Erza countered.

"Jura won't last much longer against that many of them, we can't just leave him!" Lyon argued aggressively.

Natsu turned to watch the group, folding his arms and looking neutral as he weighed up both sides.

'There is a way to deal with both problems at once,' Natsu could feel the evil grin plastered proudly across E.N.D's face.

"If I do that, everyone here will be caught in it, they'll die just to save Jura," Natsu said out loud, garnering looks of confusion until Gray realized what was going on.

"Are you talking to him, what the fuck is wrong with you!?" He demanded as he stepped up and grabbed Natsu by the collar, pushing into his personal space.

"Unhand me," Natsu ordered in an unusually cold manner.

"Fine, but you know how fucking stupid it is. I promised you that I would stop you if I had to, you're only making him that much more present," Gray sneered before turning his back on his comrade.

'Are you really going to let Jellal go?' E.N.D. asked, a hint of a sneer present.

"No… No, I don't think I am going to let Jellal go…" he muttered as he spoke with his own inverse darkness.

Slowly, without explanation, Natsu raised a single hand above his head, palm open towards the sky.

'Yes, Immolation Sphere!' E.N.D. cried out in triumph.

"I can solve this problem, but…" he trailed off, deliberately not looking anyone in the eye. They could already tell from his lingering words that whatever it was he had in mind could be devastating.

"Or… I suppose I could…" Natsu trailed off, looking distant as this hand fell back down to his side.

A tense moment of silence fell upon the group before they watched the Dragon Slayer collapse, eyes wide open but vacant with a milky sheen to them.

He heard screams, and desperate summons name to try and bring him back to consciousness, but nothing registered.

He was no longer among them, neither sides of the coin were present in the body.

They were in a realm far, far away from everyone else, in a place where only the most powerful beings in existence could manifest.

"Hello again, brother," Zeref's voice called out among the dull whiteness of the void.

Natsu tried to blink away the heaviness in his eyes.

"Get out of my head!" Natsu doubled over, clutching at the back of his head, desperate to try and purge all traces of the dark wizard from his mind.

There was never a good time for this, but now especially was a horrendous instance.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, little brother. You see, that magic weapon is going to cause certain problems for me in the long run, and you don't seem to be faring too well with these mortal distractions, so I'm going to give you a little bit of motivation." Zeref explained.

The sound of footsteps reached Natsu's ears at the same time as he watched his brother materialize, no more than a dozen feet away.

"I'm going to break down some of those pesky restraints you've placed upon yourself, and if you don't get moving then I'm going to randomly take the life of one of your friends," Zeref said with a calm face and a warm smile.

"Are we on the same page?" He asked, tilting his head.

"We both know you can barely invade my head, let alone take anyone's life. If you try, then I'll ditch this human form and burn the world. If you're in my head then you know my words come from the heart," Natsu finally showed that iconic grin, knowing from Zeref's reaction that he'd nailed it.

"You've got grand plans, we both know that much, you might once have been hoping that I'd be strong enough to take your life, and now I possibly am, but you can't afford to have a run in with me now, or you'll lose everything." Natsu laughed hard.

"You've grown quite a lot, haven't you?" Zeref smiled, at last, almost bordering on a grin that looked identical.

"Maybe one day we will meet and you'll finally have your chance at peace by my hand, but until that hopefully far away day, it's going to be best if you stay out of my way and I from yours," Natsu said, gaining the upper hand.

"You'd best make sure that you put a stop to that weakness then, have fun fighting against yourself harder than ever before," Zeref's challenging grin turned to one of malice as he snapped his fingers.

Natsu felt his heart beating excruciatingly hard against his ribs as he was brutally ripped from their personal little realm and shoved back into his mind.

He opened his eyes, feeling like the weight of the world was bearing down on him. When was the last time that he'd felt this defeated?

Having the full weight of the Etherion cannon bear down on him was probably it, but this was definitely not far removed from that.

It took him a few moments to realize that he was face down in water, a few obsolete bubbles spewed from his mouth as he tried to breathe only to immediately start choking.

It was difficult to suffocate or strangle a Dragon, though it was a slightly different story when said Dragon willingly inhaled.

He found a solid foothold underneath him with only his knees and sprang up from the shallow red stream.

Red?

Looking down he found a spear of ice that had firmly pierced his chest from his back.

"Ah, yes, that would explain why I feel… Not great," he said with a slow sigh.

"I am, at the very least, going to shove my boot so far up Lyon's ass that he can taste the forest…" he glared, only then realizing that he had a small array of people staring at him with wide eyes.

"Natsu!" Lucy shouted, her voice a mixture of relief, worry, and trepidation at seeing the iced spear that had so perfectly lanced him.

"Oh, Gray…" Natsu said, realizing that Lyon wasn't with them, "Gray!?" he shouted, glaring as he came to the conclusion that the ice mage of Fairy Tail was the one who had attacked him.

"What the fuck dude, if you were going to put anything long and solid inside me, this was the wrong way to go about it!" Natsu glared. A wave of flames flashed over him, evaporating the spear in an instant.

Fresh blood poured freely out of the wound on both sides of his body, staining his clothes crimson.

"Natsu, that isn't Gray!" Lucy told him, turning back to her adversary.

In front of her was Leo, guarding fiercely against an array of attacks from Celestial spirits which Natsu had never seen before.

"Ah, the copycat. OK, I can handle this as long as that's Gray's face," Natsu sighed, pushing himself up again, pulling fire into his hands around the gaping wound in his chest.

"Shit, it isn't working," he cursed.

"You're a Fire Dragon, idiot, did you really think you'd be able to cauterize a wound on your own body?" The Celestial copy of Gray mocked him.

"What the fuck is going on!? One moment I was deciding on what to do, and the next I'm face down in a river with a spear in my back," Natsu huffed, staggering as he tried to push forward toward Gray.

Without being able to stop the bleeding in his chest he was weak. It wouldn't be enough to kill him, not him, but it was definitely enough to bring his strength down to the level these wizards were used to.

"Wendy, you have to help Natsu, we can't do this without him," Lucy told the younger Dragon Slayer.

"Kill the girl, she's done what we need her to do," they heard Angel order the Celestial Gray who simply nodded and fell into stance.

"Take one more step," Natsu growled with an anger that they had seldom seen. He held a single hand up, fingers poised to snap, "And I will burn your very soul out of existence!" he yelled.

"You're bluffing. I'd guess your magic is currently busy keeping your body from shutting down from blood loss," Angel sighed, crossing her arms, clearly having little to no interest in the Fire Dragon.

"And that would probably be correct if I was a regular human like the rest of you idiots, but I am not, and it isn't magic, it's-" Just as Natsu had been about to explain, a trio of dark mages had burst through the thicket on the other side of the river, all bearing down on Natsu, all aiming to take the head of the Dragon.

With a snap of his fingers, all three of the dark mages had been engulfed in a scarlet flash fire that turned them to ash, all of them falling into the river and being washed away within a second.

"Yeah, that, so, if you go now, I'll let you live. I'm not much in the mood to deal with you Oracion shitheads, my focus right now is killing Jellal, and you're in my way," Natsu growled, a puff of flames spitting from his mouth.

"It's a bluff, that power while obscenely lethal, has clearly taken much from you, you can't repeat it." Angel smiled brightly.

'Immolation Sphere!' E.N.D. yelled in delight, 'We can kill Jellal from here with it!'

"As well as everyone else within a hundred miles. If I use that, everyone dies. You forget that the last time we used that, Zeref and Acnologia were the only reason we didn't die, now shut the fuck up, I am busy," Natsu responded, no longer caring for the looks of insanity he was receiving from the opponent.

"Wait," Angel ordered, holding Gray at bay, "You know of Zeref?" she asked, giving Natsu her undivided attention.

"Yes, intimately," Natsu sighed before quickly backpedalling, "Wait, no, not intimately, I just- you know, there's never usually this much talking during a fight, even from me." he glowered, taking another step that sloshed through the river.

"Not so fast!" Gray grinned maniacally, throwing half a dozen iced spears at Natsu that took him under the surface all before he'd disappeared, being dismissed by his master and returning to the Celestial Spirit realm.

"I don't remember you being this pathetic," Natsu heard a familiar voice.

"Aquarius, I need you!" he heard an extremely muffled command from Lucy before the waters around him swirled violently as the Celestial Spirit was summoned.

"Two at once," Natsu muttered, "Without even using the keys, damn girl," he said, spitting some water out after landing on the bank with a rough thud.

"Hey Selerius, long time no snog, how's it going?" he grinned, knowing just how irate this was going to make her.

"Open, gate of the Scorpion Palace!" Angel swung a key in front of her, summoning a golden Zodiac spirit. He appeared in a blast of light.

"Oh, Scorpio!" Aquarius' cold heart and demeanour had melted in an instant.

"Hey, I thought you said you were done hangin' with losers like him?" Scorpio asked, briefly sending a dirt glance toward Natsu.

"Eh?" he looked up with furrowed brows, "I have a gaping chest wound, why would you kick a man while he's dow-hang on, who exactly is a loser? And for your information, she's done nothing but harass me ever since the tower of heaven, for things that I can't even remember!" Natsu shot back at him, seemingly deciding that arguing with Celestial Spirits was more important.

"Hold still, I need to heal you!" Wendy's timid voice called out beside him. He felt warmth flood through the parts of his body that had been pierced by ice.

Her magic was knitting his flesh back together piece by painful piece.

"You know damn well what you did!" Aquarius sent a lethal glare at him.

"So I left a scorch mark on your temple, big deal, I broke both of Leo's legs and burnt half of the old geezer's moustache off, get over it," Natsu tried to not to laugh at the memory of his own antics.

"I'm no longer upset about the scorch mark, I'm upset because you insist on getting my name wrong, and more importantly because you stormed through my palace, grabbed my face, gave me the deepest kiss of my life and then said you'd call me, which you never did! It's been four centuries, do you have any idea how that might make someone feel!?" Aquarius demanded.

There was a moment where only the sounds of the river could be heard before the Fire Dragon spoke once more, "OK, but, you definitely told me that your name was Selerius, I remember that part, the rest is kind of a blur. That isn't important right now, can you either kick that one's ass or go away, we don't have time for this!" Natsu shouted.

After a heavily directed growl of frustration, both Aquarius and Scorpio disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"For the record, you only broke one leg," Leo announced, quickly pushing forward to attack Angel while she had no spirits.

"Open, gate of the white ram!" Angel commanded as another spirit appeared in Scorpio's place, this time of an incredibly timid nature.

"Woah," Natsu said, receiving a glare of warning from Lucy.

"Behave yourself, Dragon," she said, her tone one that left no room for argument.

"Loke?" she asked, stepping up to his side and pulling his key free from her belt. She could summon them with her power, but she couldn't dismiss them on that alone.

"How are you the keeper of Aries' key?" Loke's voice was cold and slow.

"Isn't it obvious?" Angel asked with a bored expression.

"Ignore her, Leo," Natsu grunted, waving Wendy's attempts to heal him away, pushing to his feet and pressing forward to try and get between Leo and Aries.

"This is what you might call a spoil of war, you see, I killed her old owner, Kiera something, it doesn't matter, the point is, I've got this spirit because the previous owner was a trash example of a Celestial Mage," Angel admitted with a nonchalant shrug.

"Natsu…" Leo's eyes reached the floor, "You told me that you killed Karen Lilica…" he said quietly, almost too softly to be heard over the rushing of the river.

"Natsu…" Hibiki swore from where he'd been downed next to a heavily damaged tree, "She…" he managed to push himself to his knees, "She didn't deserve that, especially not by your hand… You think none of us know who you used to be!?" Hibiki demanded, his vision narrowing on the Fire Dragon.

"This pathetic oaf? I don't doubt that he's killed plenty in his life, he has that look about him," Angel sighed in contentment after seeing the events unfolding before her eyes, "But I killed Karen Lilica, and now I have control of her spirits. That's the harsh reality of our world, to the victors go the spoils of war," she added with a sneer.

"The Salamander," Hibiki said with such a heavy disdain that it didn't go unnoticed.

Natsu slowly straightened up and dusted the shoulders of his coat, considering the situation for a moment.

"Yes, I am the one called Salamander, I was given that name so very long ago, I am no dark mage, not anymore, and yes, I lied about my involvement concerning the passing of Karen Lilica," he admitted.

"This isn't the time for explanations, once this whole shitstorm is well and truly over, I promise, to anyone who wants to hear what I have to say, I promise that I will explain everything from the moment I received the contract from a woman who I later learned was Laya Heartfilia," he told them, refusing to meet Lucy's eyes.

He could almost feel the gasp and initial heartbreak from the fact that he hadn't chosen to tell her that he knew of her mother.

"Enough of this, you're all boring me now; Caelum!" Angel summoned yet another spirit, this one instantly falling into an attack pattern that shot a piercing laser straight down the muddied track where Aries and Leo had come face to face, neither wanting to be faced with the other.

"Move, idiots!" Natsu appeared between them in a flash, grabbing Aries by the wait and punching Leo in the face with a jab hard enough to get him clear of the beam. Leo had disappeared in a flash of Celestial energy that Lucy had immediately devoured just as Natsu had ordered her to previously.

Natsu gasped at the sudden feeling of pressure in his lower stomach.

"Oh, I didn't see that coming," Angel cooed slightly

"Ah," Natsu said slowly, looking down past the partially healed hole in his chest to see a much larger hold in his stomach, smoking at the edges.

Aries had started fighting Natsu's grip, but it had only become stronger, holding her even tighter.

Everyone watched in morbid fascination. Slowly, bit by bit, Natsu's hands had turned black like a deep charring, with scales growing out of his skin. His nails turned into long deep-black talons that glinted in the light simply from how sharp they were.

And his eyes, no longer gold and warm, but instead pure crimson and shooting a jet of flame.

"Finally, some real control of this imbecile's body," the voice of Natsu's inner darkness spoke. He took one look at Aries in his arms and his glare deepened.

"Leave this realm," he ordered. She vanished in a puff of pink smoke.

"You can't dispel my spirits, that's impossible!" Angel roared in disbelief.

"Silence," he said, turning his evil eyes onto Angel who had shirked back with so much force that she'd fallen over, scrambling backwards to put some distance between her and the Fire Dragon.

He pointed a single finger towards her, emanating the action of a firearm before a slim spear of fire flew forward, piercing Angel through the shin.

Her screams filled the air while she scrambled around the ground, eventually managing to pull herself into the river, the fire dying out as she did.

"Please," Lucy's voice came out as nothing more than a whisper, "If this is an act, it's going too far, please snap out of it Natsu," Lucy pleaded, hesitantly stepping closer to the Dragon who looked nothing like she'd ever seen. It was an odd mixture between what she was used to, and the form of darkness that she'd seen inside his mind, but it didn't quite fit either aspect, it was an odd in-between.

He looked at her with nothing in his eyes, no emotions of love or kindness, but neither did he look at her with disdain or hatred.

"I dislike your presence," he said after a moment, "I will not hold my hatred for Anna Heartfilia against you but do not stand in my way, or I will-" Natsu staggered in surprise when Lucy stepped forward and hugged him.

There was a brief hiss of heat that escaped from his skin due to the close contact. This was a feeling that he had never experienced before.

The closest thing he'd ever had to this was the fact that in his mind, Anna Heartfilia had apologized to him for how they had weaponized him, but this?

This was new.

"Release me!" he spat, disgusted with the mortal latched onto him.

"Igni," he snapped his fingers, hoping to incinerate her within an instant but nothing happened. No curse had materialized at his command, he'd been robbed of his power, if only for that single instance where he'd planned to use it on the Heartfilia girl.

"Tsk," he kissed his teeth, forcibly pushing Lucy away with enough force to send her to the ground. Wendy immediately stepped in to help pull Lucy up. She couldn't bring herself to look at Natsu, not while the overwhelming feeling of evil was lingering in the air.

"Insolent mortal, stop getting in our way," he hissed at her, already moving to walk away.

"Where are you going!? Natsu, you have to calm down, this isn't you!" Lucy pleaded, trying to catch up to her again.

"Miss Lucy, you shouldn't anger him!" Wendy pleaded, pulling at the back of Lucy's skirt to hold her back.

"The red woman has gone to intercept Jellal, correct?" E.N.D. stopped, craning his head enough to see Lucy.

"We split up, she went to go and stop Jellal while the rest of us carried you on our way to find Jura," Lucy confirmed.

"I am going to kill Jellal. This will likely result in the Scarlett woman dying in the crossfire, and the Dragon would not allow that," Natsu stated like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"He just stopped you from hurting me, what makes you think he'll let you hurt Erza?" Lucy asked, trying to come closer once again but Wendy had stopped her with surprising strength for such a small child.

"Because both of us wish to kill Jellal, and I will do it with one specific technique." The darkness grinned, enjoying the glimpse of freedom he had.

"That thing you've been trying to convince Natsu to use, what exactly is it?" she asked, feeling less fear and less anger around him as time passed on.

"Immolation Sphere," he said, the grin fading from his lips, "Is something we came up with that at its full power is the only thing we know that would kill Zeref for an absolute, undeniable fact," he explained. He sounded uncharacteristically cold for either persona that Lucy had experienced.

"Zeref is the dark mage, if he's still alive then he's just as immortal and old as you, how exactly could you possibly know for a fact that this attack will work on him, or even on someone like Jellal?" Lucy asked, starting to feel a chill run down her spine from the aura that was sweeping out from the creature before her.

"Because Immolation Sphere does not describe the attack itself, it describes the state of the world after we use it," he told her, turning to face her fully so that she could see the truth in his eyes behind those aggressive jetstreams of flame that protruded.

"Do you understand now, Heartfilia girl?" he asked her, tilting his head slightly.

"Immolation Sphere at our full power will burn everything in this world, it is the final attack, it will kill even Zeref and I, fulfilling the sole purpose for which we were created," he said, turning back to his current goal of Nirvana and Jellal.

"Immolation Sphere is the true power of E.N.D."

A/N: Been a while, huh? I hope you all had the best festive period and a year to look forward to.

I've been spending a lot of time on the 18 chapters that are all spread quite (very) far in the future.

To which point; I've had several people beta reading some of these, and one of the most interesting points that had been made was that while END has a very 'Venom' feeling when he's in his prison and inside Natsu's head when he's free (Yes, that will happen, and no, it is nothing like what you've read in this chapter) he has an overwhelming feeling of 'Sukuna'.

So, the reason this chapter took so long was partially because I didn't know what a Sukuna was. I do now, after having binged the entirety of JJK, and yeah, I get it, I absolutely see it.

I'm not going to change it because the response to END was 100% positive and I can't wait for the rest of you to read those chapters as well.