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CHAPTER START---
---Iceberg…
"Wake up."
Oberon stirs awake in the first-class, private train compartment. Across from him, he sees Laxus sitting on alert, staring out at the snow-covered mountains in the distance.
"Those are the mountains, right?"
Oberon yawns and looks out the windows, using Telescopic Lens to hone in on them. "Yeah, it should be at the base. Let's head out."
They pack away their things and quickly exit the compartment, entering the luxurious hallway and moving to the back of the train. "Can we make a stop in Bosco on the way back?"
Oberon glances back at Laxus. "Why?"
"I just want to see it. This is the first time I've been out of Fiore."
"Depends on how serious this situation is. Did you sleep at all?"
"If I sleep I could miss the sights, and who knows when grandpa will let me leave Fiore again."
Oberon shakes his head as they reach the back of the train. He sees a uniformed man standing guard at the rear door and nods to him. The man opens the door, allowing freezing midday winds to enter as he steps aside.
Both boys politely nod to the man before stepping outside. Laxus zips up his winter jacket while Oberon Requips his S-Class Coat on, pulling it over his shoulder before floating off the back of the train.
Laxus uses Lightning Magic to hover in place behind him as the train leaves them out in the middle of this mountain range.
"That's better," Laxus says as he floats about, cloaking in golden lightning. "I appreciate you using that Spell to prevent me from getting sick on the train, but spending that much time always feeling like I'm falling wasn't fun."
"Better than throwing up all over the floor."
"What isn't better than that?" Laxus follows Oberon as he ascends for a few hundred feet, and as the high winds reach his nose, his face turns in disgust. "Ugh, definitely the right place."
Oberon glances over at him, and Laxus points directly at the mountains. "Blood?"
"Lots of blood. Charcoal and burnt flesh too. But this place is freezing, even for a Dragon Slayer."
"Which means it must be a lot to get through the cold air. Alright, let's go." Oberon flies toward the gathering point with Laxus close behind him.
As they soar through the biting winds, Laxus holds his coat closed tight, but Oberon is entirely unbothered. 'I need to learn Ice Ability Magic,' Laxus thinks before shifting his focus to the snow-covered forest and chasms below.
Every few hundred feet there are deep ravines between sections of forest, creating uneven terrain, making it impossible to see more than a hundred meters at a time from the ground level.
Using his draconic eyesight, Laxus notices cracks in the cliff faces, along with sections of the landscape being less stable or outright collapsed as they get closer to the mountains.
"There was a lot of seismic activity here. Looks like it started right where we're going."
"Is there anything we should be worried about."
"The blood is getting stronger. It's drowning out other scents. But I don't hear anything dangerous, just a lot of chatter ahead."
"Chatter? What do yo—" Oberon stops in the air, looking out at the sea of wagons and tents near the base of the mountains, all contained within a tall and thick Earth Wall along the perimeter. "That's a lot of people. A few thousand at least."
"Rune Knights too," Laxus points to the men in white and blue cold weather uniforms standing guard around the area. "A few battalions. Something big must have happened here."
"Oberon!" Both boys look down to Gran Doma, and the man politely waves them over to him while placing the Sound Amplification Lacrima back into his belt. All attention is placed on them as they descend to him.
Laxus is far more eye-catching than Oberon, shrouded in golden lightning that arcs around his body and heats the air. But all around them, there are civilians.
Thousands of civilians wearing thick clothes provided by the Rune Knights. Huddled together on small grounds or within the warm tents, desperately trying to gain some semblance of normalcy as they eat rations and recount everything they can to the Rune Knights.
All around and atop the long Earth Wall are Rune Knights maintaining a Barrier to keep the biting cold at bay, allowing the civilians to have a better chance at surviving while the grievously injured are being treated.
But even now, in the midst of this vast effort to resolve a tragic situation, all attention turns to the descending boys.
"Oberon?" one of the older women asks, forcing herself to stand to get a glimpse of the boy. "It really is him. Oberon is here."
Tears quickly form and begin flowing down her cheeks, and word spreads, causing a sea of crosstalk and murmuring through the camp.
A few young children, no older than six years old, look at the boy and focus on the one cloaked with Lightning Magic. "Who is Oberon?" One of them asks, feeling and seeing a joyful excitement spread through the previously saddened survivors.
"A powerful Wizard," a Rune Knight says. "You were born in there, so you don't know. But he is nearly unstoppable, and will be the key to all of us safely getting out of here."
"He's the plain looking one," a nearby man says while standing on crutches. "But don't let that appearance fool you. He was powerful enough to be offered the position of Wizard Saint, and refused it. You'll come to realize the importance of that in time…"
As the murmuring grows, and a few people begin cheering, Oberon stops in mid-air and waves at the survivors, earning loud cheers from them. He then quickly descends to Gran Doman, seeing the man moving toward a massive formation of rocks closer to the mountain.
"The scent is stronger in this direction," Laxus says as he and Oberon flank Gran Doma, falling into step beside him, marching through the snow and ice.
Gran Doma waves his hand, and all the Rune Knights move to guard the survivors, clearing the path and providing them some privacy.
"Yeah, I can smell it too," Oberon says, the scent of blood and rotting meat now reaching his nose. "What's going on."
"We can talk in a moment, after we're inside."
A minute of walking later, they arrive at a massive slab of stone with a half-collapsed tunnel under it. Gran Doma doesn't hesitate to enter, using his staff to create a Light Sphere in front of him. Oberon and Laxus share a curious glance before following behind him.
They find themselves in a massive tunnel with rubble on either side, and entire sections collapsed. There are pillars of wood, iron, and stone propping up the structure as they delve deeper into the mountain.
Laxus pinches his nose shut, but the iron and rotting flesh is so pungent he can taste it, upsetting his stomach.
"A large section of this mountain is hollow," Gran Doma says. "The people you see out there are 7000. They're less than half of the slaves they had working in here."
"Slaves?" Oberon looks disgusted, and notices the word left a bitter expression on Gran Doma's face. "By who?"
"All the cultists are dead. But the survivors say they were another cult of Zeref."
"I swear, every time something vile happens, it always leads back to Zeref."
Laxus nods. "How'd you find them, and why not send us?"
"They were expanding the structure when a collapse happened. Most of the cultists died when the collapse happened, the few survivors were quickly killed by their former slaves. The tremors were so great a local Wizard Guild came to investigate, that's when they saw a few people frozen to death outside and called us."
"How long ago was this?" Laxus asks as they descend past a destroyed tunnel into a larger chamber. "Those people out there are all wearing winter clothes and have food, that couldn't have happened quickly."
"Hm. That was three weeks ago. But we have to check all of them and the information. These people were kidnapped over the last three decades. Some of them were even born in here and know nothing else. It's a complicated situation."
"How do you plan to move them?"
"We've been working on that. The tremors collapsed the roads we could have used. And the land between here and the train tracks are deathly unstable. Even if we could bridge the chasms, most of the people would die on the long march there. Either from cold or falling. And winters this far north are…beyond cruel."
"That explains why people are so happy to see Oberon," Laxus says. "You want him to move everyone, right?"
"That would be helpful, yes."
"That's easy," Oberon says. "But about the Rune you sent to Fairy Tail."
"That was meant for Makarov Dreyar, but I am glad he showed you. The sooner this can be solved, the better." He leads them through a few reinforced corridors, carefully stepping around rubble and gaps in the floor. "What can you tell us?"
"It's a activation Rune. Think of it like the trigger on a rifle. It starts the entire process after the Rune Matrix is lined up. But the sequence it belongs to is circular, the energy has to flow to it, make the full circuit, then come back to it to be complete."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning the intricacy of the Matrix and size of wherever this Rune is carved determines its power. It's used in collection and condensation of Magic Energy. This place wasn't just using slaves for construction—"
"They were a power source as well," Gran Doma says. "Those cultists planned to rip the life out of them with the altar."
They arrive at a set of massive stones that are broken and collapsed, allowing the trio to step over and across them into a large stone chamber. Oberon creates dozens of Light Spheres with a thought, creating daylight within the dark room, illuminating the massive activation Rune etched into the stone altar in the middle of it. The Rune itself could fit the Fairy Tail guildhall five times over inside it, astonishing Oberon.
"Oh gods," Oberon mutters as he floats above, looking down at the layout of the room. "Are there other rooms like this in this place?"
"No, the survivors said this was the only one. The most closely guarded location in the fortress."
"One room to drain all those people. That would have taken a long time, and definitely led to riots," Laxus says.
"No. Not one room, or multiple rooms, multiple facilities," Oberon says as he summons a few Super Archive screens around him. "I need to solve exactly what sequence we're dealing with, but contact the Magic Council, tell them be ready to go to multiple similar locations…"
CHAPTER END---
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pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene [Read ahead & support me]
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