"Animus?"
Lucy stared at the cute girl whose expression had suddenly become far more frightening and asked in a low voice, "Wasn't she Sonya? Animus… wait, she's the king?!"
Brandish gave her a helpless look. "She is the King of Stella, Animus. Though calling her Sonya isn't wrong either. There are two personalities inside that body."
"One is the girl you met—the Sonya who can sense the sorrow of dragons. The other is Animus, one of the dragons who barely survived Acnologia's slaughter four hundred years ago."
"You mean Animus is actually…"
Lucy turned toward Sonya in disbelief.
At that moment, however, Animus was firmly in control of the shared body.
He pointed furiously at Mard Geer and shouted in a deep male voice that sounded completely wrong coming from Sonya's young appearance.
"This isn't what we agreed on! I wanted Dragon Cry so I could create an endless army of dragons, a force powerful enough to wage war against Acnologia! Not an army of those disgusting demons!"
The instant he heard the word disgusting, the false smile vanished from Mard Geer's face.
His eyes narrowed coldly as he regarded Animus with open contempt.
"A beaten dog that still can't accept its defeat really believed I intended to help you?"
His lips curled mockingly.
"You can't possibly be naive enough to think one little staff will reverse what happened four hundred years ago and give you the power to defeat Acnologia."
Mard Geer laughed without the slightest concern for Animus's fury.
Acnologia possessed strength unmatched throughout history.
Even Lord Zeref had no intention of confronting the Black Dragon recklessly in a direct battle.
As far as Mard Geer knew, Zeref had even established some sort of contact with Acnologia long ago, and the two still occasionally cooperated for reasons Mard Geer himself didn't entirely understand.
Animus, meanwhile, was practically shaking with rage.
Everything he had hoped for rested on Dragon Cry and that ancient Lost Magic array.
Without them, Mard Geer's insult was painfully accurate—he was little more than a defeated survivor still clinging to a war he had lost four centuries earlier.
Four hundred years ago, during the war between dragons, the faction hostile to humanity had treated humans as little more than food and entertainment.
Animus had been among them. During one particularly cruel attack, he and several other dragons had toyed with a young girl named Sonya until she was mortally wounded.
By sheer coincidence, Acnologia had come across the scene.
At the time, the Black Dragon had not yet been completely consumed by his power and hatred.
Seeing what the dragons had done to the helpless girl enraged him so thoroughly that he slaughtered every dragon present.
When he discovered that Sonya was already beyond saving, grief and guilt only hardened his resolve to exterminate dragonkind.
Animus alone narrowly escaped death. Desperate to survive, he used a technique resembling the one Igneel and the other dragons would later employ to hide within their Dragon Slayers, forcing his dragon soul into Sonya's dying body.
Against all odds, both human and dragon survived.
But Sonya was nothing like the Dragon Slayers Igneel and the others had carefully raised and prepared.
Animus had chosen her in desperation when he was already on the verge of death, and for the next four hundred years, he remained restricted by the frail human body he had used as refuge.
His obsession with Dragon Cry was therefore about more than the hatred and grief of the dragons contained within it.
Dragon Cry itself had originally formed around the ribbon Sonya wore four centuries ago.
Acnologia's grief and guilt over failing to save her had also seeped into that ribbon.
Over the centuries, those emotions mixed with the accumulated resentment of countless slain dragons until the object eventually became Dragon Cry.
Because the staff contained a trace of power originating from Acnologia himself, Animus had convinced himself that Dragon Cry possessed the potential to defeat him.
And now all of Animus's preparation had turned out to be nothing more than a tool for someone else's scheme.
Mard Geer had never intended to use Dragon Cry to help him wage his revenge.
"You treacherous bastard!!"
Animus roared.
The dragon soul that had spent four centuries recovering erupted violently from Sonya's fragile body.
In an instant, an enormous dragon filled the underground chamber, its entire body covered in blue crystal formations that radiated an eerie, cold light.
"DIE!!"
Now restored to his draconic form, Animus caused the crystal covering his body to blaze with power.
Tremendous Magic Power gathered around one claw before he brought it crashing down toward Mard Geer.
BOOM—!
The furious strike shattered the ground and sent a violent gale tearing through the chamber, filling the air with dust and broken stone.
Yet through the smoke, Mard Geer's silhouette remained visible, his taunting expression completely unchanged.
"Apparently four hundred years of recovering from your wounds made you forget how to fight."
Animus's fangs ground together.
"A Thought Projection?"
His emotions became increasingly unstable as rage overwhelmed what little restraint remained.
Every part of him wanted to tear apart the man who had manipulated him from the beginning.
Mard Geer's projected figure gradually began to fade.
Before disappearing completely, however, his smile took on an especially meaningful edge.
"Oh, right. Do you remember the medicine I gave you when we first met?"
Animus's heart seemed to stop.
Then Mard Geer's words began to make sense.
The pale-blue crystalline scales covering Animus's body started turning black.
Grotesque spikes erupted from beneath them, spreading rapidly across his flesh, while even his slit pupils darkened into a chaotic pitch-black.
"AAAAAGH!!"
Animus screamed as demonic traits consumed his powerful dragon body.
Within seconds, the crystalline dragon had been twisted into a hideous hybrid, neither entirely dragon nor entirely demon.
Mard Geer glanced toward Brandish and Lucy with an amused smile.
"I am one of Lord Zeref's strategists. None of you are important enough for me to dirty my own hands."
His Thought Projection continued fading.
"Do your best to survive, fairies."
With that, Mard Geer vanished completely.
Animus, meanwhile, had lost what remained of his self-control.
The demonized dragon roared wildly and charged toward Brandish and Lucy while the surrounding Quartum soldiers swarmed them like a black tide.
Fortunately, Brandish was still one of the Spriggan 12.
Even while devoting part of her Magic Power to resisting the demonic corruption spreading through her own body, she remained agile enough to weave between the attacking monsters.
She tucked Lucy under one arm and narrowly dodged Animus's breath attack.
Lucy, dangling awkwardly at her side, immediately started reaching for her keys to summon reinforcements.
Then, in the middle of their increasingly desperate battle, something suddenly occurred to her.
"Wait… where's Ankh?"
Dark demonic patches had begun appearing across Brandish's cheek, but her expression remained surprisingly calm.
"He disappeared while Mard Geer was still talking."
Lucy's eyes widened.
"Huh?!"
...
At that very moment, hundreds of miles from Altair, a warship was cutting across the sea.
Mard Geer lay comfortably on a deck chair with his hands behind his head, a satisfied smile gradually spreading across his face.
Behind him stood a group of Black Magic Cult followers, all of whom had been staring at him with the reverence their master clearly enjoyed.
The operation was essentially complete. All that remained was to return later and collect the experimental data.
It was unfortunate that the Fairy God of Death had appeared in Stella.
With Ankh present, Mard Geer had no realistic chance of obtaining Dragon Cry and conducting the more advanced stage of his research.
Still…
He had manipulated Fairy Tail, thrown Altair into chaos, and forced them to deal with the aftermath of his experiment.
That alone made the operation worthwhile.
The last traces of his irritation faded.
Mard Geer rose from the deck chair and barely managed to suppress the smug curve of his lips.
"You've all wanted to join the Alvarez Empire for quite some time, haven't you?"
He turned slightly toward his followers.
"Consider your wish granted."
Silence.
Mard Geer waited.
No eager thanks.
No flattering cheers.
Not even one sycophantic voice praising his generosity.
His smile slowly disappeared.
Annoyed, he turned around.
Then froze.
A black-robed man stood in the middle of the deck.
In one hand, he held a string of freshly severed heads.
Headless corpses covered the deck behind him, their eyes still open in death, while blood spread in dark pools beneath his feet.
The stranger looked toward Mard Geer.
Then he smiled.
It was an almost gentle smile.
Every hair on Mard Geer's body stood on end.
His eyes widened with genuine fear.
The real demon had arrived.