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  Everyone in the street not familiar with Siegraine was confused as to whom the stranger was talking to, but the rare few who did recognise my features were immediately on guard before they even spoke. The others of the entourage who didn't recognise the face still did their job, however, and were ready to protect the injured civilians present.

  "By the order of the crown I decre you to reveal yourself!" Shouted Arcadios, the first to step forward with his bde already drawn.

  "Butt out of this reunion, you magicless clown," said the stranger as they lowered their hood. With a clench of their fist, several Bind Snakes surged from shadows at everyone's feat and began to wrap around and constrict those they grabbed with their runic forms. Those who could sense the magic easily evaded the trap, but that was limited to myself, Crawford, and Selene, who were both treating this like a sideshow. "Now, where were we, dear brother?"

  "I could ask myself the same question because I have no memory of a brother," I said wiping the dust off my uniform.

  What is your goal here, Lyssa? Didn't I warn you what would happen?

  "Oh, you wound me dearly! But not nearly as much as when you destroyed all the ships on your way off the isnd, leaving the hundreds of the rest of us at the mercy of our svers!" the double shouted at the top of his lungs.

  I'm setting your stage, blueberry. You were already pnning on making the R-System a known threat eventually, right? Let's make the legend grandiose! Make sure they use that big ol' cannon!

  "Oh, my..."

  "Quite."

  Murmured the Chairman and dragon to the side, just two amidst the crowd of questioning and scornful gres and voices, many in too much pain from the Bind Snake to actually accuse anything directly.

  "I did no such thing! Who are you!?"

  How do you know about that?

  "Don't bother trying to lie to your family, little brother. Or did you forget about your sins just like how you forgot about you're own flesh and blood!?"

  The same way how I know I'm not the only Thought Projection present right now. Clever little trick by the way, but I found my own way to make mine tangible. Nice to know you lied to us all about your actual name, too. Were you always a cunt, but just hid it that well we never realised?

  A sudden, arming thought raced through my mind, bringing with it a sense of extreme danger.

  "I asked you who you are! Were you the one responsible for this!?"

  What did you do to Ultear? What's your goal here? You clearly read her memories.

  "No. My goals are greater than destroying diners."

  Maybe. But she's fine. Because I want to see you three succeed. Destroy the Magic Council. Clean up the cockroaches. Resurrect Zeref. Encourage Erza to get stronger. She made S-Css as of st month, if you haven't heard.

  "Then what do you want, Jell!?"

  Why? That's something that'll take years before we're finished pnning everything. Have you realised His greatness without me there to guide you? If so, William, Milli, Sho, Simon, and Wally, they'd all be happy to have you back.

  "So you do remember us! I was worried for a second there. But I digress. We, our found family, all managed to escape our shackles of svery, destined to toil away and die for hedonists who didn't know Lord Zeref's true glory, his voice! But with those shackles gone, and starvation imminent, we were vulnerable, weak, and in our misery were able to hear His wisdom!

  "We're so close, now, my brother, to finishing the project those fools in their accidental enlightenment had us start making for them! And what type of brother would I be if I didn't offer you a chance at salvation? Come with us, return to us! Become Lord Zeref's vessel at the dawn of his resurrection and have your transgressions be forgiven when he grants us peace in Heaven!"

  No. But I'd be more than happy to have you and Zeref in one body so I can hear you scream in unison. Your deaths won't be quiet and I will remember every delicious moment!

  "Are you insane!?"

  I see. A pity, truly. Sho and Milli will definitely hate you now that know their "Big Sis" hates their "Big Bro" this much.

  "No! I am blessed!"

  They'll hate me even more by the year's end. If they're still decent souls, at the very least.

  Then, in an obviously orchestrated moment, the crimson runic snake holding the raging Arcadios down weakened just enough for him to break through it. With a roar, he threw the longsword at the double.

  "It's useless," said the Chairman.

  In the same instant, the sword cleanly sshed through the double with absolutely no resistance. The body of the leader flickered, smiled, and vanished, alongside the rest of the group.

  "They were a mere Thought Projection. The rest were simirly just an illusion." he finished.

  "It doesn't matter. Criminals no matter the form they take have no right to walk free of chains," Arcadios replied with a sickeningly righteous tone, the sword flying in the air and returning to his hand.

  While they were having their discussion, I quickly turned on my heel and tried to get away as quickly as I could.

  'If she had unrestricted access to 'Ultear's memories then a lot of things could be happening right now without anyone noticing, not even Ultear herself. It's about time Hades owed me a favour.'

  "Hold it!" A voice said from behind me as a gauntleted hand grabbed my shoulder in its attempt at a vice grip. I looked at the tan knight captain who stopped me, barely able to hide my annoyance.

  "If you could let go of me I clearly have some important matters to take care of."

  "You most certainly do, boy."

  —

  Meanwhile, in an unknown part of Fiore, a blimp with the emblem of Grimoire Heart embzoned upon it soared through the air at a height that made it look no more like a bck dot than a bird at a much lower altitude.

  The ship's bridge, with a gss skylight that enabled an open view of the world outside, sat empty yet not undisturbed. The throne upon which only the dark guild's master may sit was throne to the side, uprooted wholesale and the pnks of wood that pinned the chair along with it.

  Further, throughout the airship, several members of the guild were nursing burns, though none were severely injured. The most aggrieved of them all was Zancrow, the Fire God Syer, who was screaming incoherently in confusion and anger as to how he was even capable of being burned to begin with.

  Only one was crying, however, and that was the oh-so-young, pink-haired Meredy who was hurt by the image of the woman she secretly considered to be her mother attacking her with a dark smirk on her face.

  Azuma, the only member of the guild aside from Ultear herself and Hades capable of showing kindness to children in any capacity, tried to reassure her as best he could. The battle junkie he was though was able to realise that little Meredy's wounds were different from the rest. Frostbite. Not burns.

  At the quite literal heart of the airship, Hades himself stood untouched in any way, basking in the ominous violet glow of the Devil's Heart engine. His only companions were Bluenote Stinger, the guild's Deputy Commander, and the floating communication crima to his side.

  "Are you certain that the girl that did this was the Phantom Lord's demon brat?" the guild master asked, his voice steady and measured, unnervingly so.

  "Yes, master," spoke Ultear through the crima. The two leaders could see that despite the calmness in her voice, she was sweating and frazzled. "I spoke with her only yesterday, after all. The description you gave me perfectly matches hers."

  "I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation you're in, girl," barked Bluenote. "You appeared several hours te to deliver your field report with a false notion of our schedule, something that you, the time wizard, should not have. Then, exactly one hour after you left this morning, when we were well into the air, several thousand thought projections of the demon syer you went to question appeared in our library undetected, raised it, and almost managed to destroy the Devil's Heart. To do that the infiltrator would have needed knowledge of the airship's yout and our flight schedule. Your acting skills are noteworthy, you are our infiltrator, but that also leads us to wonder if you're infiltrating us as well."

  Indignation fshed across Ultear's face, consuming whatever fear she might have had. "If it wasn't for me ying down a framework that'll lead to the Magic Council's destruction, you would have enacted a pn that would draw the ire of every legal guild and government on the continent directly towards us! But because of me all of that bme would instead be directed towards the Cult of Zeref, instead of us! How dare you!?"

  "His accusation isn't baseless, Ultear dear, but I do not think you would betray us. Not willingly." Hades spoke while he stroked his beard in thought. "You should focus your efforts on Jell, still. If she was indeed able to read the memories of that girl from Walraven's cult of personality then there's nothing to say she can't alter memories either. That likely expins your pse in memory from st night. Unlike Erza, though, she doesn't seem afraid of anyone coming after her. With your memories of the Cult of Zeref's and Jell's manipution, as well as our own pns that are linked with them, she may try to come up with pns of her own. Stick with the Council, stay close to Jell, and make sure she doesn't disrupt any of our goals. Consider this an addendum to your current mission, not a new one. Find out all you can about her. Lyssa Wisteria is now a priority target. You are dismissed."

  She looked at the calm eyes of her master in shock before acquiescing and lowering her head in submission. "Yes, master. It'll be done."

  The connection between the two crima ended and Hades' floated behind his head. The tall, muscur, elderly man walked forward and rubbed his hand alongside the scorched metal of the Devil's Heart, the source of his power and eternal vigour.

  "Are you sure it was wise to leave her pn so unchanged? We should send the demon flying while we can."

  "Not possible, at least not without some trouble. Phantom Lord's guild master is a corrupt and greedy man. Any open attack on them will be taken as a decration of war, which he will use as motivation to cim the bounty on our heads and that of our subsidiaries and the honours that would bring. We might be able to win the battle, but with that many lives lost the other guilds and kingdoms would be forced to act as well, and our resources are unfortunately finite. It's the stalemate we've been locked in since the conception of the Bam Alliance."

  "Pinning it on Beestenbloed will be a matter of course. We can even have Zoldeo or Kain kill her remotely, make it look like a suicide."

  "Zoldeo wouldn't be able to do anything because she's not a human, he'd have to possess someone around her which would reveal the usage of magic eliminating the possibility of them considering it to be linked to an anti-magic cult. And Kain would need a piece of her hair, however, and getting that from a wizard who can turn their entire body into magic is going to be an impossible task. You're more than welcome to try, though. It would be funny."

  The area around Bluenote started to be crushed by his Gravity Magic reacting unconsciously to growing frustration. "We must do something, anything! She attacked us on our home turf and the punishment should be swift and painful!"

  "There is something we can do, Bluenote. We wait. We scheme. And when the time comes, destroy. Take full advantage of every opportunity we ourselves open for our benefit and no one else's," he said with a flourish, showing to his second-in-command the ash that dirties his gauntlet. "That is what she did to us. Caught us off guard. But now we can prepare. If she does have Ultear's memories then she will be several steps ahead of us already, now we need to catch up. And who knows, we might even be able to recruit her! She did almost kill little Meredy after all, but didn't in the end."

  "Don't be so optimistic, Master Hades. A bug is a bug no matter how kind they are. Just because they can fly doesn't mean they don't need to be squished."

  "Well, it doesn't matter right now anyway. Go and rally the others. Tell them after our next supply run we won't be nding the ship ever again. Any and all contact with the surface will be done through communication crima and teleportation."

  Bluenote groaned in dissatisfaction before bowing and leaving to do as instructed.

  Hades himself left to investigate the library where the girl first appeared. It was, at one point, a grand thing. His pride and joy. Almost a century of magic tomes and scrolls were collected, preserved, and read with great care. It was easily the rgest collection of lost magic in Ishgar, all stemming from a love he discovered thanks to the efforts of Zeref himself. A love that turned into an obsession when he tried to resuscitate his unliving friend, Mavis Vermillion. Cursed to undeath, an eternal sleep, and should she have ever woke up, the inability to love.

  But deep within the bowels of Fairy Tail's basement, he had lost himself to his research. And so, he left. He named Makarov, the son of his friend, the 3rd guild master of Fairy Tail, the first magic guild to appear in Ishgar since the advent of the Dragon King Festival and the fear of magic it birthed. On his journey to resurrect his friend, he discovered the dark truth of the Essence of Magic and knew that if he wanted to experience it in full he needed Zeref to awaken and usher in the Ultimate Magic World regardless of the lives it would cost.

  To do so he raised the Seven Kin of Purgatory, taught them all lost magic in hopes they too would discover the Essence of Magic, and founded Grimoire Heart.

  And the library he had established was his love letter to magic in a world that would have chosen to burn it all away. His own crafted spells. Magic knowledge he ventured the world to find and spent fortunes to obtain.

  Gone.

  The first thought projection that revealed itself appeared here, in the library. Then, like a swarm of bees that had found a lush garden, thousands more burst forth from the original as fming silhouettes before solidifying in one coherent form each. A near century of knowledge was then ripped off the shelves, leaving no book or scroll on the shelves before the flicking of pages turned into a droning buzz.

  Then, having sensed the eruption of magic, the guild members burst through the door. In a scene straight out of a horror movie, thousands of violet eyes snapped onto the six of the Seven Kin of Purgatory with unnatural turns of the head.

  Then they ughed.

  Then there was fire.

  Because thought projections are made by turning magic into physical forms each of them was only as strong as a fraction of the original's total magic power, but when they start to explode violently that becomes a problem. Zancrow should have easily removed the problem by devouring the fmes, but the second the fmes entered his mouth they turned into whirling bdes of darkness.

  Amidst the chaos one of them had managed to make their way through the shadows towards the Devil's Heart with intent to destroy it, but Hades himself stopped it.

  Thirty seconds.

  The whole thing only took thirty seconds.

  All of Hades' priceless collection and almost the source of his strength had disappeared within a surprise attack that sted thirty seconds.

  He wanted to be mad. He did. It felt like the natural response. But as he looked around he saw something that the rest didn't.

  There was less ash than there should be.

  "A perfect memory, huh?" Hades murmured with a smirk. The bellowing ugh that ripped out of him couldn't be stopped. "BHAHAHAHA! The balls on this girl! I have to have her!"

  At that moment he realised the rouse she tried to paint. That she had in the span of a few seconds memorised every word, equation, and glyph and then burned it all away so that no one but her had access to the information. But no matter how perfect her memory was in the long term, no one could accurately absorb that much information that quickly without at least a few things going wrong.

  But, instead of just destroying the knowledge, she chose to preserve it, teleporting it somewhere they couldn't track. There she could read it all in her leisure, or destroy it after reading it, or share it, or even use it as a bargaining chip.

  He had felt like that in that brief moment he had felt a kindred spirit. Someone just as greedy for knowledge as he is.

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  SMKenward