Chapter 66 - Silunna

Fairy Tail: Paths of the Soul

Axel shut his eyes, shielding them from the blindingly bright light. He felt weightless, like he was floating in the middle of the ocean, before suddenly dropping without a breath. He landed on his back, knocking the air from his lungs, and stared up ad the glowing blood red moon in the sky. Axel tightened his fist, feeling the ground beneath him shift in his hand. Confused, Axel looked around, not knowing what to expect.

It was sand, a flat landscape of nothing but sand. Axel sat up, brushing the sand of his pants and off his shoulders. "Where...?" He mumbled, trying to find anything even remotely recognizable. When he shut his eyes, he was standing at the guild, and when he opened them again, he was... Nowhere.

"Axel!" He heard Zeke behind him, turning around just in time to catch him against his stomach. He looked up at him with teary eyes, clutching at his clothes. "You're here too!"

Hearing this, Axel looked up, finding his friends gathering themselves a few dozen feet away. Rift was on his feet, scanning across the horizon with a hand shielding his eyes from the light of the moon. Geno stood behind him, doing the same thing but in the other direction. Jak stood apart, turning over part of the booth table that had been transported with them. Shelly was the only other one who hadn't gotten up yet, resting on her knees and staring in disbelief towards the horizon.

Axel jumped to his feet, looking around for some sort of landmark they could use to get their bearings. It was the same as when he was siting down: sand. Sand for as far as the eye could see. Everything more than a mile away was not but a dark haze, as the red moon overhead provided very little light in the night sky. "Where the hell are we?" Axel asked, approaching the others.

"Well..." Rift sighed, sliding his hands into his pockets. "It looks like a desert..." Axel huffed, but Rift just looked back at him and shrugged his shoulders. "If you have more insight, I'd love to hear it."

"You think we're out around Creghurst? In the badlands?" Geno asked, continuing to scan the horizon. "I don't remember there being this much sand out here."

"Naw, there's only one desert in Bantia that I know of. But..." Rift sighed, scratching the back of his head. He stared at his hand, massaging his wrist and looking like he had an idea forming in his head. "Hey Zeke...?" He asked, watching the tiny cat bob up and down in the air. "How do your wings feel?"

"What?" Zeke twisted his head sideways, confused by the question. He glanced at his wings for a moment, looking for some sort of injury, but just shrugged and said. "They feel... Kind'a heavy, I guess." He mumbled, trying to not sound like he was complaining. "I mean, it's not like I'm tired. But it feels weird here."

"Yeah..." Axel nodded slightly, channeling a few sparks of electricity between his fingers. It was harder to do for some reason, like it took more concentration than usual. He recognized the sensation immediately, years of training and fighting had made him well accustom to the feeling. "There's less magic in the air here."

"Not just less, I'd say there's almost none at all." Rift corrected, a grimace falling over his face. "I think... I think this is the Silunna desert."

That caught everyone's attention, stunning them all into silence for a moment. Except for Jak that is, who kept staring out at the horizon. "You mean, from that one council job?" Asked Geno. "The desert that's slowly been swallowing up the countryside over the last ten years? That Silunna Desert?"

"One and the same..." Rift gave a slow huff, looking out as far as he could see. "That bug thing must've had some sort of fast travel spell. Like Requip, but backwards: automatically brings it back to wherever it came from."

"Hey, you mean that bug thing?" Jak asked suddenly.

The others all followed his pointing to a feint, blue speck slowly distancing itself from them. The machine that they had been gathered around when the light brought them hear was slowly flying away, carried by a pair of glowing blue wings that had materialized from it’s back.

"Yeah..." Rift mumbled in disbelief. "That one."

"Should we follow it?" Jak asked again.

Rift opened his mouth, but stopped just short of berating the youth. "That... Might not be a bad idea."

"Seriously?" Zeke landed on Axel's shoulder, nervously bunching up his adopted brother's shirt in his tiny paws. "We're just going to follow after that thing?"

After pulling Shelly to her feet, Rift glanced back and threw his arms out to the side. "Unless you think standing around here will get us somewhere." Nobody said anything, and Rift began descending the side of the sand dune they where perched on. "Looks like that thing knows where it's going. And that's better than what we've got." Though one look between them indicated that nobody thought this was a good idea, they all followed after the machine into the night.

It wasn't that hard to keep up with the thing. It's wings would flicker and blink out of existence on occasion, leaving the crippled machine to fall to the sand. It would get up and stagger forwards, before the wings flashed to life and it took to the air again. They all kept their distance from it through, fearing it had more unexpected mechanisms they had yet to discover. The walking wasn't the hardest part through, it was their surroundings. They instantly became aware of a harsh chill in the air, which seemed to be getting worse the farther they traveled. It was silent too, no wind to disturb the sand. Only the sound of their own footsteps and the occasional metallic clink of the insect they where following.

"Hey... Rift?" Geno asked, breaking the silence for the first time in what must've been an hour of silence. "What was that council job again? The one about the legend of Silunna desert?"

Rift, leading the group, slowly scratched his neck. "Well, only Jaina, Isa, and the master ever saw the request... They threw it away long before any of us could get a look at it. So anything I could tell ya is just a rumor." He stopped a moment to look back at them, making sure nobody was falling behind. "Me, Kat, and Zumma all asked about it back then, but the most we ever got was that it was a scouting job. Find the problem, fix the problem, go home in time for diner."

Despite looking like he didn't understood, Jak piped up. "What's so hard about that?"

Rift chuckled at his cavalier attitude. "Well, for starters: nobody ever came back." They all stopped momentarily, stunned by the answer. Sensing this, Rift continued. "The story goes; there was a city out here, called Silunna. Big tourist town: casinos, hotels, the works. Used some sort of state of the art magic power grid that kept the lights on at all hours of the day. Then one day, out of the blue... Something went wrong. All the magic drained out of the area, the plants and animals died out, and the ground dried up into..." He kicked at the ground, brushing one of his footprints away. "Well... this."

"That's all we know?" Axel shouted from the back of the group. "What'd the Council do about it?"

"Nothing." Rift shrugged. "They where as stumped as everyone else. Anyone they sent in to investigate never came back. Constant sandstorms made it impossible to navigate, even for their airships. Eventually they decided to just close off the area: set up a perimeter, keep people out, and hope nothing more comes of it." He glanced up at the sky, turning his head to the side in confusion. "No sandstorms tonight through, lucky us."

Zeke, who had slowly become more nervous as the story went on, looked off into the distance. Like he expected some monster to come charging at them out of the night at any moment. "And now we're here too..." "Yep..." Rift sighed, the connotation of that apparently weighing heavy on his mind. "We're here too."

Almost as if it was waiting for the end of the story, the insect they where following dropped out of the air. It twitched in the sand, before a bright spark shot out of it's back, and the thing grew silent once more.

They all rushed to gather around it. Rift turned it over with his foot, and a thin wisp of smoke poured from it's joints. "Ah shit..." He cursed, taking a step back and running his hand through his hair. "Looks like that's it for our guide."

They all exchanged a glance. Except for Shelly that is, who kept her eyes on the insectoid machine a few paces behind the others. "So... What now?" Jak asked, crouching down to poke at the machine.

"Well, it was going that way." Rift thumbed over his shoulder. "Might as well keep moving."

"What if we get lost?" Asked Zeke, nervously gripping the end of his tail.

"We're already lost." Rift shrugged, waving for the others to follow. He picked up what was left of the machine and dangled it over his shoulder by it's few remaining legs. "How much worse could our situation really get?"

The group walked for an hour more, slowly trudging through the sand to an unknown destination. There where no landmarks to go by, nor had anything come into view. Geno suggested using the stars to navigate, but nobody seemed to have any confidence in that plan. In fact, the only thing that told them they weren't going in circles was the straight line of footsteps behind them, left undisturbed by the non-existent wind. The silence had returned too. Everyone was no doubt thinking back to what was happening at home, and the condition of the guild master. Axel however, had someone else in mind. Amber's horrified face as she disappeared with the masked man had stuck in his mind like a photograph. It looked so alien to see her like that. She was never one to overreact, even when she was mad at him. And he couldn't ever recall a point where she looked afraid. Tense maybe, but never afraid.

Tired of listening to the sound of them walking, he decided to voice his concerns. "You know guys, something's been bugging me about what happened back at the guild."

"Has it now?" Rift shrugged, tossing the machine to Jak to carry while he worked some of the tension out of his shoulder. "You mean other than the fact that we somehow ended up lost in the middle of hell's-half-mile?"

"Not that, I mean Amber." He corrected, shaking his head. "She was-."

"She was scared." Said Shelly.

Everyone stopped. Shelly hadn't said a word since they'd arrived here, and apart from Jak, nobody had tried to force a conversation out of her. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Rift said. "Can ya blame her?"

"She wasn't scared on her first job, when we had to fight Nina and her pets. Or when we were kidnapped by Bloody Smile." She said meekly, clutching at the strap of her bookbag. "She took one look at that guy in the mask and she froze."

They all exchanged a glance, but from Axel's perspective, they all looked to be in agreement. Something was definitely off. With a huff, Geno turned away from the others and mumbled. "Yeah, but I don't think any of them had the power to kill someone as strong as a guild master."

Shelly stopped dead, stomping her foot in the sand. "Dads not dead!"

Rift roughly shoved Geno by the shoulder. But he looked just as suppressed that she'd heard him. Apparently, he'd spoken louder than he meant too. All the same, the thought had been on everyone's minds, and it was too late to take it back now that someone had actually said it. Shooing Geno away, Rift tried to approach Shelly. "Shelly, he-."

"He's not!" She backed away, looking a little more frantic. "Jaina's there to help, he'll be fine!" It seemed like the more she tried to convince them, the more she convinced herself. "He'll be fine..."

Nobody knew how to respond, or how to get her to calm down. None of them wanted to tell her to be prepared for the worst, so they all sighed with relief when Jak piped up. "Hey guys? Something smells... Dead."

They all turned to look at him, staring out into the expanse of nothing around him. With a huff, Geno said. "It's a desert Jak. Odds are something's died around here recently."

Jak shook his head. "No, I mean like... Reeeeeaally dead."

"As oppose to partially dead?" Rift snickered.

Taking a quick sniff, Axel couldn't believe it. It was feint, but unmistakable. "Hey... I smell it too." The others seemed to take his account more seriously than Jak's. Following his nose had gotten them out of more than a few tight spots before. Jak was right though, it wasn't just some dead animal. Now that he had it, the stench of rot seemed to be coming from everywhere. "Something really bad is out here."

"Hey, what's that?" Shelly pointed into the distance, at a strange bump on the horizon. It was barely visible against the night sky, but much like the smell, now that they saw it, they couldn't stop looking at it.

"You can't be serious..." Rift mumbled.

"Is that your casino city?" Geno asked.

Rift just shook his head. Axel however, stared at the insectoid machine, then at the city in the distance that it had been leading them too. The gears where turning in his head, and a spark of hope flashed in his eyes. "Do you think Amber's there?" He blurted, taking a sudden step forward.

"What?" Rift asked, caught off guard. He glanced between the machine and the city as well, slowly coming to the same conclusion. "I mean, I see where you're getting that idea from but..." He was less enthusiastic than Axel, weighing the odds in his mind. "Ughh... I don't know... Maybe?"

"Really?" Shelly piped up, a bit of the hope returning to her eyes. "We need to go. Who knows what that masked guy's done to her."

Rift huffed, still not liking the idea. With no other alternative, and having passed no other landmarks in their journey, he nodded begrudgingly. "If that's true, then watch your backs. If that guy in the mask really is here, we might be in for a hell of a fight."

The closer they got to the city, the larger it seemed to get. At first it looked like just a few buildings, then a couple blocks. Then, after walking for about twenty minutes, a vast, half buried city stretched out before them. Buildings almost five stories tall, with not a single window remaining, lined a street stretching back for miles. Street lights that had long since blown out lined the center of the road, and the shadows of more structures loomed in the distance. The worse part was the smell of though. It wasn't just Axel and Jak now, everyone could smell the sickly stench of rot permeating the area.

Approaching the mouth of the city, the group stopped abruptly to look around. From a distance, it looked like something out of a movie, so the shock of their surroundings only hit them once they where close enough to touch it. "This can't be real." Geno mumbled, brushing his hand along the wall of the closest building. "What the hell is all this?"

"One big tomb..." Rift muttered, wrinkling his nose for the stench. "A city of the dead."

"Guys, I smell..." Axel began, gasping in disbelief. "I think I can smell Amber. She's here!"

Shelly shuddered, taking a step forward. "Amber!?" She cried. "Amber, can you here us!?"

"Hey, hey!" Rift grabbed her arm and pulled her back into the group as her voice echoed off the buildings. He waited for the echoing to end, before whispering. "Keep it down, we don't know what's out here."

Shelly shook free of his grasp. "But Rift, we-."

"Look out." Jak tackled them both to the ground, just in time to avoid a barrage of red, crusty spikes raining down on them. Geno and Axel dove into alleys on opposite ends of the street. A metal wall sprung up in front of Rift to defend against a second assault, while Jak dragged Shelly to a third ally. Rift stepped out of cover and thrust his hand, loosing a barrage of blades at a silhouette on top of one of the buildings.

There was a flash, and a figure appeared above Geno with a sword in it's hand. Geno dodge rolled out of the way, unraveling the chain from his waist and lashing it at his assailant. The figure blinked out of existence, but another barrage of red spines landed at his feet when he tried to rejoin the others. "Scatter!" He called, turning to sprint down the ally.

"I'll find Amber!" Axel called, grabbing Zeke against his stomach and sprinting off.

"No, wait!" Rift called from cover. "Stay together!" It was too late; Geno, Axel, and Zeke where all out of sight by the time Rift looked. He only caught a glimpse of Jak leading Shelly away by the hand before they too vanished from sight. "Dammit!" He swore, diving into the closest ally to him to track down his teammates.

Jak and Shelly skidded around a corner into another ally, weaving down the backstreets of the abandoned city. Shelly shook her hand loose from Jak's; he was probably twice as fast as she was, and almost pulled her off her feet with every step he took. Not only that, but running in the sand was hard; how he was able to keep his pace was a mystery to her.

The two of them came to a fork in the ally, and Jak veered to the left. "C'mon Shelly!" He called over his shoulder. "This way!"

Shelly nodded, gasping for breath. However, the moment Jak stepped into the left leading street, a wall of ice jumped up from the sand. Shelly skidded to a halt, her hands landing on the ice wall to keep from slamming into it. She spun around to see another figure standing in one of the building windows, from which a barrage of razor sharp icicles rained down on her. "Solid Script: Flames!" A wall of fire jumped from Shelly's fingertips, countering the ice being flung at her. The figure stepped into the light, a woman with a bandanna covering her face. Something was off about her, but Shelly didn't have time to think about it as she turned to make her escape. "Solid Script: Smoke!"

As a plumb of thick, grey smoke filled the ally, Shelly covered her mouth and dashed away. She couldn't get drawn into a fight, she had to find Amber. A large battle would attract more people, and the last thing she wanted was to be captured again. She continued down the backstreets, glancing through any window or open door for any sign of her friends. She couldn't hear anything beyond her own footfalls in the sand, and her growing gasps for air. Trying to keep pace with Jak was hard enough, and soon she had to stop to take a break.

She rested her hands on her knees, hunching over and taking a few deep breaths. It felt like she was in the middle of a training session with Jaina again, yet her breath was returning a lot quicker than before. All that running really had been worth it after all. With a small smile, she pushed off her knees and patted her cheeks, preparing for the fight that she was no doubt about to get into.

"Ok..." She whispered to herself. "I can do this."

Not a moment after the words had left her lips, Shelly felt something hit her in the back of the neck. She went ridged, grasping at whatever it was to get it off her. It felt wet, but solid, sort of like mud. Without warning, the thing tightly closed around her neck, and she felt herself yanked backwards.

She gasped as the back of her head impacted the wall, and her book-bag dropped off her shoulder. She tried to catch herself, but the ground was gone; what was worse, she couldn't breath! She was dangling just inches off the ground by her neck, kicking her feet and gasping for breath. She grasped and tugged at the sludge around her neck, but her fingers sunk into and moved through it like water. Black shadows crept in from the corners of her vision, and she could feel herself loosing consciousness.

She looked up, following a log, sticky looking red tendril up the wall, to see a man in a cloak crouched on the building's roof above her. The tether hung from his wrist, and tipped his triangular cowboy hat while he sneered down at her. "Sorry, lil' lady. You lose."

"Crimson Eye!"

A red streak of light shot across her vision, slicing through the tether. Shelly dropped to her knees, greedily gasping for air and feeling a rush of blood to her head. She was free. She didn't know how, but she was free. She couldn't find her balance, the rush to her head making her dizzy, and it was all she could do to not fall over.

The moment her vision cleared, someone grabbed the collar of her shirt and drag her into a run. Shelly still hadn't caught her breath, and frantically tried to push whoever it was away. "It's okay." A familiar voice whispered to her, grabbing her hand mid flail. "Just keep running."

Shelly tried to listen to her, but she was still out of breath, and their sudden sprint to safety hadn't done anything to help with that. She looked over her shoulder, seeing the cloaked man in the cowboy hat running along the rooftops after them.

"This way!" Shelly felt her savior tug her sideways, through a doorway and into a building. They didn't stop there though; together they skidded across the sand and into another room, where she finally let Shelly drop to her knees. She gasped again, her head spinning with thoughts. She'd been saved, but not by one of the guys. She glanced up to make sure she wasn't imagining things, finding the one who saved her peering out the door on the lookout for pursuers.

Shelly's heart jumped into her throat at the sight of her, because the one who'd saved her was Amber!

Next Chapter – Chapter 67 - The Undead