The destroyed bridge was a silent monument to the recent chaos, a tangled mess of twisted steel and dormant sleepers. The only sound that broke the heavy silence of the mountains was the rhythmic, almost hypnotic dripping of Erigor's blood, which trickled from the mutilated rails into the abyss below, a macabre metronome counting the seconds of a newly extinguished life. I stood there, amidst the devastation I myself had caused, observing the Lullaby flute in my hand. The skull carved into its dark wood smiled at me with hollow, malicious, and terribly hungry eyes.
"Play me..."
The whisper came, drawn-out, not to my ears, but vibrating directly in my skull, an ancient voice laden with the hunger of ages and an almost palpable expectation. The wood of the flute pulsed faintly in my palm, warm and alive, as if it had a black, beating heart within.
I tilted my head, with the curiosity of a cat observing a particularly stupid insect, and let the silence stretch for a few seconds before a slow, disdainful smile curved my lips.
"Ah… so you've finally decided to speak. I was beginning to think you were shy."
"Play me... release me from my wooden prison... and all of them, all your noisy enemies, all the arrogant masters, all the insignificant kingdoms, will fall before my song of death..."
I rolled my eyes with a boredom that was almost an art form. I spun the demonic artefact between my fingers with the casualness of someone fiddling with a pen.
"You're terribly insistent, aren't you? And so dramatic. You must be used to dealing only with weak minds, frightened hearts, and, frankly, people with dreadful taste in music."
The whisper hesitated for an instant, as if trying to process the insult, as if the idea of someone not bowing before its greatness was an alien concept.
"I know your creator, you know." I spoke unhurriedly, with a calm that was more threatening than any shout, letting each word sink into its unholy consciousness like a stone in a dark, icy lake.
The flute vibrated with an almost electric shock, and the whisper's tone changed from a hungry arrogance to a genuine surprise and a touch of... fear?
"…You… you know… the Master?"
"I do." I kept my gaze fixed and impassive on the hollow eyes of the carved skull, not allowing it to see the amusement dancing behind my facade of coldness. "Zeref. The Black Wizard. The Spriggan Emperor. The immortal emo with relationship issues and a worrying tendency to create things that try to kill everyone."
The wood pulsed again, harder, as if having a spasm. The flute seemed to tremble in my hands, no longer with power, but with an uncertainty that was almost... pathetic.
"…How… how is that possible…?"
"Tenrou Island," I replied simply, savouring every moment of its confusion. "I was about fourteen, if I remember correctly. Had a very instructive and rather depressing afternoon tea with him. He complained a great deal about his immortality and about how cruel the world is. A real well of optimism."
I paused, letting the information sink in, and then smiled slowly, a smile that was almost pitying.
"He's just… a tired man, Lullaby. Terribly pessimistic, with a god complex and a pathological need for attention. Trapped in a life he himself hates and which, to be honest, he himself created. He is not a god. He is not the apocalypse incarnate. And you…" I spun the flute again, feeling it tremble like a leaf in the wind. "...you are just another one of his failed experiments. A toy he created in a moment of boredom and probably forgot in some drawer."
The whisper faltered, its confidence dissolving like smoke. For an instant, the Lullaby seemed smaller in my hand, almost shrunken, its malevolent aura diminishing.
"I know exactly what you are. I know of your true, gigantic demonic form. And, most importantly, I know there's no point at all in trying to manipulate me with promises of power or threats of death." My voice was calm, lazy, almost sleepy, but every word was as sharp as the finest obsidian blade. "So, how about you behave like a good little cursed flute and stay quiet? Or I swear on all the gods I've already forgotten, that I will break you into a thousand little pieces and blow your ashes into the wind to become a problem for the local agriculture."
The flute pulsed again in my hand, but this time with anger, the whisper changing from a startled surprise to an impotent fury.
"You… you dare… to challenge me, you insignificant mortal…?! I am the song of death! I am eternal sleep!"
A low, genuine, and thoroughly amused laugh escaped my lips.
"Eternal sleep?" I tilted my head, almost finding the threat adorable in its lack of originality. "My dear, overrated demonic flute, do you really think you can frighten someone who has already slept for centuries on a hundred different worlds and, invariably, woken up on all of them terribly bored?"
The artefact trembled violently in my hand. The dark wood creaked as if under immense pressure. A palpable, malevolent heat began to radiate from its surface, and a thick, dark aura leaked from the cracks of the carved skull like smoke from unholy incense. The Lullaby, in its fury and desperation, was trying to break free. Trying to assume the colossal form that massacres cities and causes a great, great deal of paperwork for the Magic Council.
"I will break free… I will play my melody… and you… you will regret ever underestimating me!"
I sighed, a long, tired sigh full of a genuine disappointment. What a lack of creativity. And what unnecessary noise. I closed my hand firmly around the flute.
"No. You won't."
My Ethernano exploded from me.
Not in shouts, not in grandiose spells, not in theatrical movements. Just pressure. Pure, absolute, and crushing pressure.
A dense, almost visible bluish aura covered my body like a cloak of silent power, swallowing the small, arrogant Lullaby in the palm of my hand. The strong mountain wind stopped abruptly for a second. The birds fell silent. The entire world seemed to hold its breath, as if sensing the presence of something much, much older and more dangerous than a simple flute demon.
"WHAT… WHAT ARE YOU…?! THIS ISN'T HUMAN POWER…!" The Lullaby's mental scream was now a howl of pure terror and disbelief.
"I am your end," my voice came out low, cold, almost intimate, a whisper that was more terrifying than any scream. "You are just a broken instrument with delusions of grandeur. A faulty toy that Zeref probably forgot. You are nothing more than an irritating, out-of-tune note in the great, chaotic symphony of existence."
The flute vibrated violently, its malevolent aura desperately trying to escape, to expand, but my Ethernano, dense and relentless, crushed every spark of magic it emitted, suffocating it in its own power. The sound of the wooden skull creaking and splitting echoed through the silent valley.
"You wanted so badly to play for the world, didn't you? Well then listen, carefully, to the sound of your own, eternal silence."
I concentrated my magic in my hand, making it even denser, more massive, a crushing weight of pure, absolute power. The Lullaby screamed inside my mind, a distorted roar of fury and power that quickly turned into a pathetic whimper of pain and supplication.
"NO…! PLEASE…! I AM ETERNAL…! I AM THE MELODY OF DEATH!"
"No." I tilted my head, my blue eyes shining with a glacial tone and an almost divine indifference. "I am eternal. You are just… disposable."
With a dry, loud, and terribly final snap, the flute cracked. First into two pieces. Then four. Until dozens of black, lifeless fragments flew through the air, spinning slowly around me like the poisoned petals of a dead flower. Each piece still vibrated with the residual agony of the imprisoned demon, which let out one last, silent mental scream of pure annihilation before falling silent, definitively and irrevocably, for evermore.
I extended my hand with an almost lazy calm and caught a few of the larger fragments in the air, which were now silent, cold, and utterly devoid of any magic or life. Just pieces of old, cursed wood.
"The song, finally, is over," I whispered to the silence, and then, with impeccable timing, I yawned at length. All that display of power had been... tiring. "And, honestly… I really expected more from a work of art by the great and terrible Zeref. What a disappointment."
I looked at the lifeless pieces in my hands. They would be the irrefutable proof that the fearsome Lullaby was, in the end, nothing more than a broken toy with an inflated ego.
"Well… at least this will serve to show Erza and the others that the job is done and they can stop worrying." I sighed, feeling boredom begin to set in again. "Now… could someone, please, bring me a hot cup of tea before I completely lose my patience with the universe and decide to blow up this mountain out of sheer whim?"
The silence of the mountains, which I so cherished, was abruptly and rudely interrupted by a distant, mechanical sound that was rapidly growing in volume:
Vrooooommmmmm…
Chugga-chugga-chugga…
I arched an eyebrow, with a mix of resignation and mild curiosity.
"Ah… wonderful. Here comes the noisy, chaotic, and utterly unsubtle part of my guild."
The sound of the magic engine became deafening, and soon, like a mechanical monster emerging from its lair, I saw the car that Erza had 'borrowed' and Happy had currently nicknamed the "Fairy Tail Runner", appearing around a bend, driving along the tracks as if they were a makeshift road, a private race track, and completely ignoring any notion of safety or common sense. Dust rose behind it in an impressive cloud, like the trail of a low-altitude comet.
At the wheel, with a killer smile and a glint of pure danger in her eyes, was Erza. The little redhead really did have a thing for speed and for terrorising her passengers. Lucy, poor, blonde Lucy, was clinging to the passenger seat so tightly her knuckles were white, her face a shade of paper that rivalled my hair, probably praying to every god she knew and lamenting all her life choices. Gray, in the back seat and, predictably, already shirtless, seemed resigned to his own, inevitable death, with an expression of existential boredom that almost rivalled my own. And Happy, the small, insane blue cat, was laughing as if he were on the best, most thrilling ride at an amusement park, with his wings spread and his tongue out.
And, of course, hanging pathetically from the passenger window, like a particularly ugly and sickly car ornament, was him… ah, our dear Natsu.
Pale as a ghost, sweating buckets, with his eyes rolled back and swaying back and forth like a wet, forgotten sock on a washing line on a windy day.
When Erza, with her eagle eyes and superhuman reflexes, finally spotted me, standing calmly in the middle of the tracks as if waiting for the bus, with Erigor's bloody body behind me and the air of someone who has just finished a picnic, she slammed on the magical car's brakes with a suddenness that defied the laws of physics.
The car skidded sideways, kicking up a cloud of dust, stones, and metallic sparks from the rails. And, of course, Natsu, who, as previously mentioned, was hanging from the window like a dead, spineless fish, flew gracefully forward with a particularly wet, agonised groan, and landed on the track right at my feet, with all the grace, elegance, and dignity of a sack of rotten potatoes being thrown off a cliff.
"Urghhhh… I hate… all… of you… and your wheeled… vehicles…" he groaned, clutching his own rebellious stomach, while trying, in vain, not to kiss the iron rails.
I stared down at him for a second, with an expression of pure, crystalline contempt, then at the broken, lifeless pieces of the Lullaby in my hand. I sighed with the weight of the world on my shoulders. So much stupidity in one place.
"Indeed, Natsu… I also hate certain things in this life. Such as, for example, a lack of punctuality, lukewarm tea, and the need to deal with overrated demons before lunch. But at least I, unlike you, don't smell of sick and desperation when I fall out of a moving car."
When poor, traumatised Lucy finally managed to jump out of the car on trembling legs, the first scent that hit her was not the cold, pure mountain wind. It was the strong, metallic, and unmistakable smell of fresh blood.
She gasped audibly, her large brown eyes widening in pure horror as she looked at the ground.
Erigor's lifeless body lay there, sprawled across the iron tracks, with a deep, open wound in his chest, exactly where his heart should have been. The puncture I had made with my jian, precise and fatal, went straight through his body, and the thick, dark blood was still running in thick rivulets, forming small pools that, in turn, trickled through the gaps in the rails, dripping slowly into the abyss with a distant, almost imperceptible 'plop'.
His mouth was half-open, as if in a final, silent cry of surprise, and a trickle of dried blood ran from the corner of his lips. His eyes, once full of a fanatical fury, were now glassy, empty, staring at the grey, indifferent sky, reflecting only the dust of the battle and the emptiness of death.
Lucy, the celestial mage with a heart of gold and, apparently, a weak stomach, brought her trembling hands to her mouth, her eyes filling with tears of shock and horror.
"O-… oh my god… Azra'il…" she whispered, her voice failing, almost inaudible. "H-he's… he's… dead…"
Gray got out of the car in silence, his usual, noisy rivalry with Natsu momentarily forgotten in the face of the brutal scene. His cold, analytical gaze swept over Erigor's still body, then the rails stained a dark, sticky red, and finally, landed on me. He didn't say a single word, but I saw in his gaze that complex mix of reluctant respect, a palpable discomfort, and maybe, just maybe, a hint of understanding. He, at least, seemed to understand the necessity of certain… actions.
Even the usually so cheerful and carefree Happy landed slowly on the ground, his small white wings trembling slightly, his large round eyes wide with fear and confusion.
"A-Azra'il…" he stammered, his voice, normally so full of a confident 'Aye Sir!', now little more than a frightened whisper. "H-he's not just having a really deep nap… is he…?"
I spun the dark, lifeless fragments of the Lullaby between my fingers, which were now covered in the dark, dried spatters of Erigor's blood.
"No, Happy. He is, for all practical and legal purposes, permanently and irrevocably unavailable for future engagements," I replied, in a tone so casual, so devoid of emotion, that it made poor Lucy take a small, instinctive step back, as if I were some kind of monster. Which, let's be fair, wasn't entirely wrong.
Erza, the last to get out of the car, did so with a calm and authority that contrasted with the chaos of her driving. Her sharp, experienced brown eyes swept the scene with an impressive speed: the lifeless body, the copious blood, the fragments of the demonic flute in my hand, the twisted and broken rails of the destroyed bridge. She took it all in in an instant, showing no shock or horror, only a cold, pragmatic analysis of the situation.
She didn't say anything immediately. She just approached, slowly, with firm, determined steps, her footsteps echoing on the stained metal of the makeshift railway.
With a simple gesture, I held out my hand with the broken pieces of the Lullaby to her.
"Proof that the demon has been duly and permanently destroyed," I said, with a total and absolute lack of emotion in my voice. "The Magic Council, with all their irritating bureaucracy, usually likes these things. Helps with filling out the reports."
She took the fragments carefully, the cold, dried blood touching the gauntlet of her armour, and remained silent for a long moment, just observing the remains of the demonic artefact.
The cold mountain wind howled between us, carrying with it the smell of iron, of death, and faintly, of ozone.
I yawned. A long, deep, and entirely genuine yawn.
"There. Job successfully completed. Mission accomplished."
I stretched my arms to the grey, cloudy sky with a lazy stretch, like someone who has just finished pruning a particularly stubborn garden and not killing a man, crushing an ancient demon's soul, and possibly traumatising their friends for life.
"Now… could someone, please, bring me a hot cup of tea with two sugars before I fall asleep right here, standing up, and completely lose interest in this little, dramatic excursion?"
Lucy was still standing there, pale as a ghost, her trembling hands still covering her mouth. Her eyes, now full of unshed tears, couldn't decide whether to look at me, the source of all this violence, or at Erigor's body, open, still, and terribly silent on the tracks.
"A-Azra'il…" she stammered again, her voice thin, fragile, almost breaking into a sob. "What… what was that…? What did you… what did you do…?"
I yawned once more, resting my jian elegantly on my shoulder, letting the cold mountain wind mess up my long white hair in a dramatically appropriate way.
"What did I do, Lucy?" I tilted my head, looking at the lifeless body and then back at her with an expression of pure, crystalline indifference. "I solved the problem. Definitively."
Lucy swallowed hard, the sound audible in the heavy silence.
"S-solved…?" she stammered, taking a half-step back instinctively, as if afraid I might "solve" her too. "You… you killed him…! Without hesitating!"
I sighed, with the weight of boredom and others' ignorance on my ancient shoulders.
"And what exactly did you want me to do, my dear, naive celestial mage? Apologise for disrupting his plans and invite him for afternoon tea with biscuits and a civilised conversation about his feelings? He wanted to, and he was going to, kill all the guild masters in Fiore, including our old man, Lucy." I spoke with a boredom so palpable it was almost an offence. "If I had left him alive, wounded or incapacitated, he would have just tried again, and again, and again. He was a recurring problem. And I don't like recurring problems."
Gray, who until then had remained in a dark, observant silence, finally crossed his arms, his eyes fixed on me with a cold intensity.
"It didn't have to be… so… brutal. So… final."
I turned my face slowly towards him, arching an eyebrow with a superiority I didn't even try to hide.
"Gray, tell me something, with all the sincerity of your heart," I asked with a calm that felt like a blade of ice. "Have you ever fought to kill before? A real fight, where your opponent wants to erase you from existence and you have to do the same to them to survive? Because, in my vast and varied experience, this little fantasy of yours of 'fighting to win without actually hurting anyone' only works in badly written fairy tales and the speeches of naive heroes. He was dangerous. He was a threat. I just… nipped the problem in the bud. Before the bud grew and strangled us all."
Happy, now hovering nervously in the air, hugging his own tail as if it were a security blanket, was still trembling a little, his usual good humour completely absent from his furry face.
"H-he looks… so… so dead, Azra'il…"
"That's because he is, Happy," I replied, shrugging with an indifference that made Lucy flinch. "Well and truly dead, to be painfully honest. And frankly, the world is a slightly less noisy and considerably less irritating place because of it."
Lucy shook her head in denial, her face white as paper, her lips trembling.
"I… I can't… I can't accept this…" She squeezed her eyes shut, looking away from the blood that stained the tracks. "Fairy Tail isn't like this. We… we're not murderers… we don't kill people…"
I sighed again, a long sigh full of an age-old weariness, and bent down to pick up a larger, particularly sharp fragment of the broken Lullaby.
"Then maybe, just maybe, Lucy, I'm not exactly like 'you'," I said slowly, staring at the cold, dark, lifeless piece of the broken demon in my hand. "But mark my words, children: if no one, absolutely no one, is willing to get their hands dirty from time to time to do what's necessary, sooner or later, and usually sooner rather than later, you're going to lose a lot more than just your precious, fragile naivety."
The silence that followed my dark little prophecy weighed on us more than any shout or accusation.
Only the cold mountain wind howled between the distant peaks, and Erigor's blood, in a final, stubborn act of existence, continued to drip rhythmically onto the iron rail, a distant, lonely 'plop', like a macabre metronome marking the end of an era and, perhaps, the beginning of another, much darker one.
Erza, who had remained silent throughout my little lecture on the harsh realities of the world, looked at Erigor's lifeless body for a few more seconds, her eyes serious, dark, and indecipherable. The strong mountain wind whipped her long scarlet hair like dancing flames, but she showed not the slightest hesitation, not the slightest sign of weakness. She just took a deep breath, as if preparing for another battle, and turned to us with the authority of a true leader.
"...We've seen enough here." Her voice was firm, calm, but there was an undeniable weight to it, a maturity that shouldn't belong to someone so young. "We should head to Clover Town immediately."
Lucy blinked, still a bit shaky and confused by the sudden change of focus.
"C-Clover…? But why…?"
"The regular Guild Masters' conference is still happening there," Erza nodded, her mind already working at high speed, focused on the next step, the next mission. "We need to inform Master Makarov and the other masters about what happened here… about what Eisenwald's plans were… and about the Lullaby."
She looked down at the fragments of the demonic flute in her hands. The dark, malevolent aura had completely vanished, but the pieces of black wood still felt… cold. Dead. Laden with the memory of a terrible power.
"Besides," Erza continued, with a pragmatism that filled me with a reluctant pride, "the Magic Council will want proof of what happened. And they certainly won't just take our word for it."
Gray sighed, finally relaxing his tense posture a little, running a hand through his sweat-and-dust-matted hair.
"And lots, and lots of explanations," he added, with a weary tone. "Lots of explanations, a load of paperwork, and probably a long, boring investigation."
Happy, who now looked a little less terrified and a little more worried, was still hugging his own tail, his large round eyes fixed on me.
"A-Azra'il is going to get a right telling-off from the Master…" he muttered, with an almost prophetic certainty.
"I always do, Happy. Always," I replied, yawning at length and stretching with the laziness of a cat that has just woken from an eighteen-hour nap, as if I had just woken up and not just killed a man and crushed an ancient demon's soul with my bare hands. "It's become a guild tradition. Almost a ceremony. It wouldn't be a proper end to a mission without a good scolding from the old man."
Erza took another deep breath, her face a mask of pure, unshakeable determination, trying to maintain control of the situation and of her group of traumatised and rather dysfunctional mages.
"Let's go. We have no more time to waste here. The Master needs to know what happened."
With one last look at the scene of destruction, we climbed back into the magic car, with Natsu still half-groggy and muttering about fish, and Lucy visibly trying not to look back at the body we were leaving behind.
I was the last to get in, resting my chin on my hand with an air of deep boredom, feeling the cold, cutting mountain wind hit my face as Erza, with a new and perhaps slightly frightening determination, accelerated the magic car along the makeshift railway, leaving the mountain and its dark secrets behind.
Behind us, the broken tracks, the destroyed bridge, and the dark red bloodstains quickly disappeared into the distance and the rising mist.
And I thought, with a lazy boredom and a slight pang of irritation, that all of it, all that fuss, all that violence, all that drama… had been a huge, draining, and entirely unnecessary effort… just to make me miss my precious, sacred afternoon tea. What a waste.