The fight didn't really go anywhere.
The general's sword could cut through anything Aelius threw at it, or outright negate the magic before it could take hold. Spells unraveled on contact, spores died mid-bloom, and his decay simply stopped existing where the blade passed. And Aelius wasn't exactly equipped to answer that properly. He refused to draw Alaric's sword, not for this. He wouldn't risk damaging it. His other blade was gone, lost after the first clash with Knightwalker, and his plague sword… only now did it occur to him that it was probably still lying where he'd fought Nehzhar.
So they stood there, trading blows that didn't matter.
Aelius stopped taking damage. The general didn't either. Regeneration met negation, and neither side gave an inch. It was a perfect stalemate, the kind that could have lasted until the castle collapsed around them.
Then Lucy came through the ceiling.
Stone and debris rained down as she burst in riding one of those massive beasts Knightwalker used, a Legion the king had called it, its roar shaking the chamber. Another girl clung behind her, one of Edolas' own by the look of her. A traitor then.
That decided things.
Aelius didn't hesitate. Neither did the others. Natsu, Gray, Erza, and Aelius all moved at once, leaping onto the beast as it surged upward. The general didn't pursue, didn't even try, just watched as they took off, the floor cracking beneath the creature's weight.
As the wind tore past them and the chamber vanished behind stone and smoke, Aelius glanced back once.
The general was still standing there, sword lowered, untouched. Both gave each other a look of indifference as the fairytail mages retreated.
"Where are we heading?" Aelius asked, leaning slightly to look past the beast's plated neck.
Below them, the massive dragon-shaped chain stretched through the air, links thicker than towers, embedded into the giant lacrima that held Magnolia inside it. The thing pulsed faintly, like a heart. Every time it did, he felt it in his chest, a dull pressure that made his jaw tighten. That was a city—a whole city, hanging by a weapon.
Right now, they were moving away from it.
Ahead loomed another floating island, far larger than the others they'd passed. Big enough to carry a full city, streets and towers etched into its surface.
"Vanessa and Wendy are in there," Natsu said suddenly. His voice was lower than usual, stripped of its heat. "The king wants to wipe out all the Exceeds."
The word hung there heavier than it should have.
Aelius didn't answer right away. He kept watching the city ahead, the way its walls curved to accommodate the floating island, the way light glinted off towers that hadn't seen real ground in generations. Then he spoke, calm and cutting.
"…why do we care?"
The reaction was immediate.
Natsu twisted toward him, flames flaring sharp and instinctive. "What do you mean? Why do we care?"
"I mean exactly that." Aelius finally looked back at them. "We have an entire city's worth of lives hanging in the balance above us. Magnolia. People you actually know. My house. Shops. Streets. Graves. And you want to divert because of a different world's ruling class deciding to butcher a species they don't like?"
Gray stared at him like he'd been slapped. "You're talking about genocide."
"Yes," Aelius replied without flinching. "I am. And I'm asking why that outweighs everyone we've already sworn to protect."
Erza's grip tightened on the beast's hide. "Because letting it happen makes us complicit."
Aelius exhaled slowly through his nose. "Spoken like someone who's never had to choose which fire gets put out and which one eats a city."
Natsu stepped closer, heat rolling off him. "Wendy's a kid."
"So are half the people in Magnolia," Aelius shot back. "So were the ones in the labyrinth. So were the ones your king experimented on. This world doesn't get to pretend innocence just because the victims have fur and wings."
Silence followed, tense and sharp.
to know when to cut her losses
Then Lucy spoke, quieter than the rest. "Vanessa's with them."
Aelius didn't even hesitate.
"So?" he said flatly. "She got herself up there. She can get herself back down. Vanessa's smart. She knows when to cut her losses. Same with Wendy."
Natsu spun on him, eyes blazing. "That's your answer?"
"It's the honest one." Aelius finally turned, mask tilting just enough to show he was looking directly at Lucy now. "She isn't helpless. She isn't naive. And she sure as hell isn't stupid enough to die for a cause that isn't hers."
Lucy flinched, but she didn't look away.
"You don't sound like you believe that."
"You don't know me well enough to say what I sound like, Heartfilia," Aelius snapped, eyes narrowing behind the mask. "You barely know what I am on a good day."
He turned back toward the city below, voice hardening as he spoke. "I don't understand why you'd risk the lives of everyone here for a bunch of whatever the hell Exceeds are. They're not our people. They're not our problem. This isn't our world."
Natsu bristled. "They're people."
Aelius laughed under his breath. Not amused. Just tired. "They're targets. That's what they are in this place. Same as us. Same as anyone who doesn't fit." He gestured sharply ahead. "We free our guild. The same way Fullbuster and Scarlet were freed. We get Magnolia out. Then we leave. Clean. Simple. Anything else is sentimentality getting people killed."
Lucy's voice shook. "You're talking like they don't matter at all."
"Because they don't," Aelius said, taking a step closer to her.
Lucy flinched. So did Natsu and the others, instinct kicking in all at once, bodies tensing like he was about to lash out, but he didn't lash out at them.
"Yeah," he went on flatly, "I get my magic back, and suddenly you all remember who I am. Do whatever you want. I'm done here." There was no drama in it. Just a flat exhaustion.
He turned without waiting for a response and stepped off the legion.
For a heartbeat, gravity tried to claim him. Then his magic solidified beneath his feet, invisible support catching him midair. He walked forward like the sky had simply decided to cooperate. It was a simple trick in theory. Just about mage with enough control could manage it. In practice, very few bothered to master it.
Aelius didn't even look back. The distance between them grew fast, his figure already pulling away. He kept moving, descending at a shallow angle toward the capital city they had just left, anger coiled tight, aimed inward more than anywhere else.
Behind him, no one spoke. Not Lucy. Not Gray. Not even Natsu. Because for once, none of them knew what to say that wouldn't make it worse.
Once the others had gotten far enough away, Aelius sat down.
It occurred to him, with dull clarity, that the king's military would probably try to stop them. Or counterattack. If they did, they would have to go through him first. That part was simple.
He could only hope the morons above him realized how stupid their actions were. He knew better than to believe it would happen. Saving everyone was never an option. It had never been.
That truth made his jaw tighten.
Someone was going to die one day because they could not leave well enough alone. Because they had to interfere, had to push, had to involve themselves even when it did not matter. He hated that it still bothered him. Hated that he could still feel angry about it instead of being numb.
He craned his head upward just in time to see the massive lacrima slam into the island.
Almost slammed into the island. They had wedged themselves between the two floating masses, bodies and magic straining as they actively tried to push the lacrima away. Aelius stared for a long second, then stood, brushing dust from his legs as he began walking toward them.
So much for intercepting the military.
He had heard that Gajeel had freed Gray and Erza using his dragon slayer magic. Which meant the rest was obvious. All Natsu had to do was break the lacrima. Magnolia would be saved. The weight of the island would drop by more than half.
Smart and Efficient. Of course, that assumed any of those four were capable of not being idiots.
Aelius exhaled slowly and kept moving. And by the time he was close enough to hear words, he could see hundreds, thousands of flying cats, so that's what an exceed was, flying up to help push back the island.
"You guys are insane," Aelius said, voice carrying easily over the wind and cracking stone, "and the biggest morons in two separate worlds."
He wedged himself between the islands anyway.
Not to push.
He spread his arms wide, body forming a rigid T as if daring the iwieght on either side of him to try harder.
"Plague Gods: Aegis."
Black and green magic tore itself into existence in front of him. A wall formed instantly, thick and uneven like petrified flesh, slamming into both islands at once. The impact sent tremors through the stone as it dug in, grinding and screaming while it fought back the sheer mass of the lacrima bearing down on them.
Aelius gritted his teeth, boots skidding in the air as the pressure hit him full force.
"Blight Ward."
Blackened vines erupted from nothing, crawling over the wall like living things, wrapping, knotting, reinforcing every fracture before it could spread. They latched onto the islands themselves, burrowing deep, anchoring the barrier in place.
Still not enough.
"Plague Gods: Bastion."
The spells fused.
The wall thickened, stretched upward, reshaping itself into a towering structure, more fortress than barrier. Veins of sickly green light pulsed through it as massive tendrils burst from its sides, lashing out and digging into stone.
The entire formation shuddered. For a moment, everything froze. Then the lacrima island stopped moving. Aelius had equalized it.
His arms trembled, muscles screaming as blood ran freely down his fingers and dripped into nothingness below. His magic burned through him, not violently, but steadily, like something determined to outlast him rather than overpower him.
Then the Exceeds arrived.
Hundreds of them. Maybe more.
Individually useless. He knew that. They knew that. But together they swarmed the tendrils, pushing, pulling, adding their weight and effort wherever they could. Tiny hands braced against glowing stone, wings beating furiously as they screamed and shouted encouragement at each other.
Slowly, painfully, the lacrima began to move back.
Inch by inch.
Aelius laughed under his breath, strained and humorless. Of course, this was how it worked. Not strength, not intelligence or strategy, just sheer refusal to stop.
The pressure built to a breaking point.
Then the lacrima detonated, and light swallowed everything.
Aelius threw up another layer of magic on instinct, shielding himself as the explosion tore through the sky. When the brilliance faded, the massive structure was gone. No debris or fragments. Just empty air where it had been.
The chain disintegrated next, unraveling into dust that scattered in the wind. Silence followed.
The islands drifted apart naturally, tension bleeding out of the stone like water. Aelius let his arms fall. The bastion collapsed into ash and spores that vanished before they could touch anything living.
He hovered there for a second longer, chest heaving. "Next time," he muttered, turning back toward the others, "try not to solve problems by almost killing everyone involved."
A presence slipped into the space behind him.
Aelius felt it immediately. A familiar magical signature, muted, the same one he had sensed once before, during the chaos surrounding Laxus. Mystogan, the man, didn't announce himself; he simply appeared, cloak shifting in the wind, and went to work.
Aelius didn't bother turning fully. He caught fragments anyway. The residual pulse of spatial magic. The sudden pressure change in the air. The sense of something massive being displaced rather than destroyed. The lacrima was gone, sent to Earthland, if Mystogan was right. Which meant they had completed their mission.
He tuned the rest out until his attention was snapped outward instead, instincts flaring sharp and cold. Far in the distance, shapes were moving. Dark silhouettes cutting through the clouds, growing larger by the second. Legion beasts. And hundreds of soldiers on top of the war beasts.
So the king wasn't finished.
Distance, their massive forms blotting out chunks of sky.
Aelius rolled his shoulders once. "Good. I needed an outlet," and then he whistled.
The whistle cut through the air, sharp and loud. Every head snapped toward him. Even Mystogan and one particularly large black cat mid mid-emotional moment, froze.
Aelius didn't look back to see if they were paying attention. He knew they were. He lifted one arm and pointed downward. All eyes followed the motion. The military was close enough now that individual shapes could be picked out, and the cats immediately started panicking, wings fluttering uselessly.
"We can't fight them in the air," Erza said, jaw tight.
"Go back to Exstalia, we can fight them there," one of the cats barked out. A guard, judging by the armor, though the tremor in his voice ruined whatever authority he was trying to project.
"What do you mean, we?" Aelius cut in, not bothering to hide his irritation. "Just stay behind me and be quiet."
"Aelius. Now is not the time for… this," Erza snapped, finally turning toward him.
"For what?" he shot back, already stepping forward, feeling his magic spread wide. "Me doing my job? You can't fight them in the air. I can."
A bolt of magic tore upward from below, fast and unfocused. It would have taken the black cat mid-sentence if it had landed.
It didn't.
The spell struck Aelius's aegis and dispersed on contact, light smearing harmlessly across the black green barrier before vanishing entirely. Not even a crack formed.
"This is exactly why I stop arguing with idiots," he muttered. "Stay behind me. If you want to see Magnolia again, do not move."
He stepped forward.
The distance between him and the legion closed, not because they advanced, but because the air itself felt thinner around him, stretched tight like skin over bone. He spread his hands slowly, palms outward, fingers relaxed, almost casual.
"Pox make. Fly's."
Mist poured from his hands, thick and greasy, rolling outward in heavy waves. It clung, it gathered, it twisted. Shapes formed inside it, wrong at first, half dreams and silhouettes, then solidified with a wet, chitinous click.
Dozens of flies tore themselves free from the fog.
Each was massive, easily twice the size of a man. Their bodies were bloated and segmented, wings torn and veined like rotten glass, beating with a sound that crawled into the skull. Mandibles clicked and ground together, strings of viscous filth hanging between them. Long legs drifted lazily as they hovered, as if gravity had simply decided to give up around them.
The buzzing filled the sky. Not loud, worse than loud, it was wet, echoing off walls that didn't exist in the sky.
Screams erupted behind him.
The cats scattered instinctively, wings faltering, some dropping altitude before catching themselves again. Even Erza went still, eyes locked on the swarm.
The flies surged forward at his will.
They slammed into the legion beasts, crawling into armor seams, joints, and eyes. Mandibles tore and injected, poison spreading faster than fire ever could. Wings dissolved mid-flight, membranes sloughing off in wet sheets. Riders screamed as their mounts failed beneath them, bodies pitching into open air while the flies followed, hungry.
Men tried to burn them off. Flames flared, desperate and wild. Steel hacked through wings and legs. It worked for a few. By the time the last fly was crushed or burned away, less than half the battalion was still airborne. The rest were falling, screaming until the sound cut off far below.
Aelius took note of the gaps without much interest.
Knightwalker was untouched.
She stood on the foremost beast like the chaos wasn't even happening, spear planted, cloak snapping in the wind. No rot crept across her armor.
Aelius wasn't surprised. "Figures," he muttered, more tired than impressed.
Knightwalker finally moved, leveling her spear at him as the distance between them closed. The legion beasts corrected their flight, wounded formations tightening around her like a shield.
Aelius rolled his neck once.
Then the air lit up.
Beams tore upward from the city below, white and blinding, the same kind he had seen swallow the flying cats chasing Carla and Happy, and compress them into crystal. They slammed into his aegis in rapid succession, impacts ringing through his bones. The wall held, but every strike made the air scream.
Behind the first wave came more. And more. Lines of legion beasts rising from the skyline in ugly, uneven layers, soldiers packed tight on their backs. The sky filled with wings, armor, and light.
Then something else moved.
Far below, the ground parted.
Metal broke through stone.
A dragon's shape rose from the city's depths, massive, angular, every plate of its body forged rather than grown. It was anthropomorphic, wingless, a mockery of the grand beasts and likely, hopefully, a mockery of their power as well.
The Dragon Knight.
Aelius barely registered Mystogan's voice, explaining it. Something about the king's greatest weapon. Something about magic being useless against it.
The words slid off him.
His ears were ringing.
They had been for a while now, ever since the argument on the legion, a low whine at the edge of his hearing. Now it swelled, pressure building behind his eyes, behind his skull, like something was winding tight inside him.
He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and breathed.
In. Out.
The ringing didn't stop.
Beams kept coming. His aegis blocked, and blocked again. They wouldn't break it until he ran out of magic, and he was willing to bet he would outlast them still.
Knightwalker pointed her spear.
The military surged, and at the same time, the metal dragon opened its jaws and roared.
The sound wasn't organic. It was pressure. Power screaming against the air itself. The magic along its throat ignited, and a beam of white energy erupted forward, tearing through the sky like a blade.
It hit Aelius's aegis, and for half a heartbeat it held. Then it shattered.
It broke apart in chunks of dissolving magic, peeled away like skin. The force slammed into him hard enough to shove him backward through the air, boots skidding against nothing. If the beam had continued another fraction of a second, it would have torn straight through him and kept going, through the islands, through everyone behind him.
It didn't.
A second barrier snapped into place.
Mystogan appeared between the beam and the others, both staffs crossed, their crystals screaming as they absorbed the impact. The energy split around him, carving burning scars through the clouds before dispersing.
Silence followed, and Aelius steadied himself, chest rising sharply as he caught his balance. His hands were shaking. Not from fear. From impact. He stared at the space where his aegis had been.
Erza's voice snapped through the air behind him. "Aelius!"
He glanced back just enough to see the looks on their faces. Shock. Fear. Real fear. Aelius snorted, rolling one shoulder. "Figures," he didn't point out how ten minutes ago they were ready to defend themselves from him.
He flexed his fingers, feeling the ache crawling up his arms begin to dissipate. His aegis, spread that wide, had always been thinner. Basic logic. Coverage traded for density. Still, seeing it fail like that sat wrong in his gut. Defense was his strongest point. Always had been.
The ringing in his ears surged again, sharper now.
Knightwalker didn't hesitate. She pointed her spear forward, and the legion beasts surged once more, rallying around the Dragon Knight like it was a banner instead of a monster.
More beams fired from below. Smaller than the dragon's, but constant.
Aelius clicked his tongue. "Alright. Lesson learned."
Erza flew up beside him, blade already in her hands, the wind tugging at her armor. "You can't block that thing alone."
Aelius didn't look at her right away. His eyes were still locked on the Dragon Knight, on the way the metal plates along its neck were shifting, charging again. The ringing in his ears pulsed in time with the glow.
"I can," he said finally, voice flat, "if I don't have to cover the whole sky."
He glanced sideways then, eyes cutting past Erza and landing on the three figures hovering farther back.
"We've got three dragon slayers, don't we?"
Natsu bristled immediately, flames licking up his arms. Gajeel cracked his neck once, iron already creeping over his skin. Wendy hovered a little farther, tense but steady, eyes fixed on the metal dragon.
Aelius pointed at them, his annoyance put aside momentarily. "You three deal with the dragon toy."
Natsu opened his mouth, probably to argue, probably to shout something stupid.
Aelius didn't let him. He pointed again, this time toward the mass of legion beasts and soldiers regrouping around Knightwalker. "Scarlet, Mystogan, and I handle the military. We keep them off your backs."
Erza's grip tightened on her sword. "And if the Dragon Knight turns back on us."
"Then break it faster," Aelius replied. No heat in it. No challenge. Just a fact. "If they're not done by the time we clear the sky, we'll come help. Simple."
Mystogan drifted closer, staffs humming softly. "You're certain you can hold them."
"I'm certain I'll be finished first," Aelius replied flatly, eyes locked on the advancing formations. "Then I'll turn the king into sludge."
Mystogan paused. Not fear. Calculation. "That assumes you survive what comes next."
"I always survive," Aelius answered, the words flat and bitter, like something repeated too many times to mean comfort anymore. He turned away from Mystogan and Erza, eyes back on the wall of fire and light hammering against his aegis.
"Honestly," he added, voice carrying without effort, "go help the Exceeds. I do better by myself."