The Ritual of Second Origin 1

It was an oval room, filled with various geometrical ornaments. Brain's agents were completing last adjustments meant for the ritual of unlocking magic potential. In the middle of the room the altar took central place with a lot of grooves making a net of broken lines stretching all the way to a strange machine with a large lacrima as the element which outstands of the rest. Bunch of agents wearing strange masks concealing their faces were walking here and there to end preparations. Alien aesthetics of different country here and there brought some mysterious exotic beauty to the array. The purpose of the machine was to inject ethernano into human body and then transform them into magic pool of the wizard.

Usually humans were beings without pool of ethernano. How could they even have pool of magic if they don't have magic? The point is that some people are able to cultivate ethernano into their bodies and then grow pool of ethernano as a new organ becoming wizards. The ability to cultivate it is a huge aspect of their potential as wizards. Nowadays most of wizards don't have to really cultivate ethernano pools from the scratch. Some are born with magic and some aren't. The practices of cultivating ethernano pool were neglected as most wizards concentrated on getting better control over their pools and turning it into desired magic. Even if they realize that they should improve their pools, often it's a bit late, because their bodies get probably too old to support great improvements in ethernano pool. If someone would find a way for a wizard to store more ethernano in their bodies his future would be limitless... At least that's what Brain though.

Brain learned from his past mistakes and tried to make the ritual appear more professional and make altar more comfortable than before.

'It's a bit of shame that we couldn't do the same for Ultear. Back then we didn't know the exact method to empower wizards so we just hanged her in the air on cables without contact with the ground. Now we're sure that the effect can be achieved with arrays.'

Next to Brain was Severin looking with a hint of uncertainty. He already looked healthier than before. Turning his ethernano into darkness magic lowered burden on his mind. At least the fever part as darkness gave him feeling of refreshing coldness. What he didn't know was that Brain used subtle magic to influence his thoughts about the ritual. As without any brainwashing he would see the ritual solid and a bit scary now it seemed even somewhat charming. Brain a used charms to make him have more expectations of ritual and make him a bit less scared. He wanted even to do something about pain, because ritual is really painful, but charms are quite ineffective against pain and those would make the boy realize that he was influenced with charms which in turn would negate the effect.

"Don't worry about, kid. I'm here and we're sure that everything will work perfectly."

"I'm scarred that..."

"You'll do something stupid cause of pain?"

"Yes, uncle..."

"Let me tell you something. I did it before and one girl destroyed the lab. She was feeling healthy and even more powerful. Try to not do something similar. If you'll feel urge to unleash something, point that into that window above us. However regardless of what she's done I can ascertain you that she was healthier than ever. Ritual is rather safe if you're able to bear all the pain."

"Rather?"

"There were some cases of people dead because of pipes that accidentally fell on them."

*laugh*

"We can't deny that no one ever died during rituals. We just lowered the risk."

The truth was that the rituals killed a few subjects before. Some of them being unable to endure pain and some being badly hurt. It needs to be mentioned that before performing it on Ultear the ritual was more imperfect: It required surgeries and electrical shocks which burned their bodies. Now ritual was less painful because ethernano were injected and transformed with more well designed arrays and less electrical shocks but some electricity was still needed as a medium in injecting ethernano. Only people with special constitution are able to ignore shocks. Maybe the best would be users of lightning magic but finding those is a problem. Klodoa, his good old comrade and magic staff was one of those when he was human. Unfortunatelly... he's not a human anymore.

"Oh... When can we start?"

"In a few minutes. Everything is ready. We just need to make sure that instrument is warmed up."

"Okay..."

"Let's talk about what you can do do increase your chances. Do you know, where we, wizards have our pools of ethernano?"

"Somewhere there"

Severin pointed on a place near his stomach.

"Correct. But there's a thing you probably don't know. Wizards can have multiple magic power pools. Some of very experienced wizards got two. Legendary wizards and some of magic creatures even more. We usually don't mention it because with such a small number of examples it's hard to say something for sure, but we discovered that there're fixed places in which those pools can grow. You see. Humans aren't really magical creatures. We cultivate magic into our bodies to use it and children of wizards share predispositions to do so. This is your situation."

"I have talent for magic?"

"In some sense of that word yes. It doesn't make you necessarily better at it than most of wizards but you're sure better than non-wizards. Heavens may listen to your prayers. But you need overcome first some tribulations. Do you know what magic pool do?"

"They store ethernano particles. Wizards use those to get magic for their spells."

"Yes, that's indeed function of those but there's more. Those pools stabilize flow of magic in our bodies. If there's an excess of magic in our bodies they either force magic out of body or direct it to the pools gathering ethernanos for later. You probably experienced it before. The burden on you was relieved right after you unlocked your magic."

"Yes. Uncle, I was thinking it is like that because of darkness. It's cold."

"Well... it may be right to certain extent, but the most important thing about that it is that you got access to magic pool. Instead of leaking everywhere in your body your magic gets in and out of the pool."

"..."

"Yep, untamed magic is harmful. Too much unfamiliar magic will make you sick. What did you think?"

"But magic it's everywhere! How's that most of people are not sick?"

"That's pretty simple. Their bodies doesn't absorb that magic."

"I don't understand."

"I need to explain that to you later. Anyway. You need to unlock your second magic pool to make all the excess of magic go into it. First is quite easy even if it requires some work. You did great doing that on your own. Second is hard as hell. By normal means rather impossible. And here's where we step in! We can use electric shocks to stimulate growth of tissues responsible for condensing second pool."

"..."

"Shocks are painful but those alone..."

"It's amazing!"

*sigh*

"Let's talk about what you should do. You're going to lie down on the altar here in the center. Then we're going to put on you this little device."

Brain pointed on black belt with a strange device made of wooden circles on circles. It consisted of three layers finished with little metalic veins. It resembled a flattened cone.

"What's this?"

"This is what we created to make stimulation more concetrated in one place. Listen me, Severin. No mater what, you're not gonna try to change its positions. If this little thing will get off its position, whole ritual will probably turn into pointless pain. Quite bad perspective so to speak."

*gulp*

"That's it. There's nothing more to say. Now it's your choice. You can take the risk, get off this sickness and start to look after your father or refuse and..."

"I agree. Why do you think I'll refuse? I was sick for long!"

"I didn't mean that. So let's start that."

...

Meanwhile in Era there was a Friday night. Next to the Magic Academy Lucy, Layla, Gran Doma, Hayako, Makarov had their meeting. With them there were also Gildarts Clive, Laxus and Porlyusica. There were also three hooded figures. One standing next to Layla and two next to Gran Doma.

Layla told Makarov to not expel Ivan for now, because it would cause a great resentment in Laxus which he could dirrect against Makarov. Makarov first didn't want to listen because knowing about Ivan's wickedness was already a lot for him and he was thinking he just can't let Ivan corrupt Laxus anymore. Family bonds are not easy to cut. Laxus loves Ivan even if he hurt him a few times. And after all Ivan gave him a very expensive lacrima with dragon's power which suits Dreyars a lot. For the sake of the future it's better to wait a bit and come up with a good scheme. Makarov scolded her as a manipulative bastard using others as means but then he remembered something about the day Yuri died and promised to think about it.

After agreeing to participate in battle Makarov asked Laxus for help. Help was just an excuse to implicate his grandson into battle and taking care of Lucy. In the end he also implicated Gildarts. In case of things going bad Gildarts can just use his Crush Magic to defeat some enemies and even dispel some really tricky spells. The most troublesome was Porlyusica. She and Layla shares some similarity in character: They hate people being mindless brutes and usually beat sense into them through... being brutes themselves. Makarov saw this, break a sweat and decided to shut up feeling those two can beat up him even in giant form with just bare hands and ordinary brooms. Instead of epic fight between radioactive dinosaur and mythic great gorilla he saw them having just a nice talk and tea. Most of time he had to fight with his urges to not do something stupid. For a moment he even expected some ulterior motives stating that 'faith moves mountains but faith and money moves everything'. Nothing. Just nothing. Porlyusica turned out to be caring and unselfish. In the end she promised to participate in their plans under condition she will remain far away from battles and the only thing she's going to do is taking care of wounds and medical condition.

And now they are standing in the middle of empty plaza plaza under the light of single lantern . Layla started:

"We are here to make sure everyone knows what we're going to do. I'm grateful everyone decided to come here. Coming to Era surely took a while and you want to rest a little before what we're going to do next. I'm sorry for a choice of location but there's a reason why we're hold the meeting here. Mr Gran Doma, can I depend on you on this?"

Gran Doma nodded.

"First, I want you to take a moment and leave all devices you use for communication under the lantern. Don't worry. You'll get them back."

"Why is that? Those are our things!" told Laxus.

"Just to make sure of something." said Layla.

"Please, do that Laxus. We have some things to talk about. The earlier we start the better." urged Makarov.

Everyone left their communication lacrimas under the lattern and returned.

"What now?" said Laxus

Gran Doma waved his pastoral and chanted.

"Magic Scripture: Privacy!"

A circle of white in colour runes flashed around them shocking everyone. Suddenly Porlyusica, Makarov, Lucy, Hayako and Gran Doma felt something buzzing in their clothes and arachnid like things started to fall off. They looked all the same.

"What's that thing? Gran Doma?" uttered Porlyusica. Laxus also was confused.

"Mom?"

"Someone was eavesdropping us. Thank you, Mr. Gran Doma." claimed calmly Layla.

"My pleasure. We see now that things are serious. Someone planted on us devices to spy on us. Guessing from the fact that they're look similarly they're made by one person." Gran Doma stated.

"Why someone would do that?" suprised Lucy asked.

"That's easy, Lucy. Someone wanted to be sure of what we're going to do." said Gran Doma.

"I'm starting to have bad feelings about this" said Porlyusica.

"I'm sorry. We're going to make sure, you'll be safe."

"Don't even dare say that! Most of morons, who do that end dead!"

"That's the part of plan." said Layla.

"Being dead?" uttered angry Porlyusica.

"No, letting the enemy know that we know someone's spying on us."

"Huh?" everyone were dumbfounded.

"Mom, can you explain?" asked Lucy.

"Yes, sweetheart. Let me tell you everything and remember to not disclose it to anyone under any condition! The first thing, someone's planning to manipulate us into losing the battle with Brain!"

"WHAAAAT?"

"Yep. Everything we're doing now leads us to a tragedy. We have various reasons to believe in that. First is Mrs. Hayako."

"Me?"

"Yes, by coincidence you, one of the strongest Celestial Magic Mage, lost your legacy! Dark Magic Guild just by COINCIDENCE picked the one village which was a home for your family. One out of hundreds!"

"Okay. But what does this have to do with me?"

"Let me end and you'll understand a part of this! My ancestors gave me a spell that I have to perform in X777 to save the world from Acnologia which require to use 12 Gold Keys or sacrifice my life. I don't have those so I expect it's possible that I have to sacrafice my life.

"What sense..." Hayako didn't ask on time before Layla continued.

"You, Dreyars have serious family problems. For four generations you still lose your wifes. Three of you lost your wifes for some kind of strange reasons!"

"You said that my mother died because of the curse of Ankhseram." pointed Makarov.

"Yes, but now we have some kind of new knowledge about this curse. Despite ancients saying that the curse of Ankhseram should be inflicted on those, who decides, who should live or die, we know already that's impossible. If that was the truth behind the curse, every murderer should be cursed because they decide people to die. That's not how things are so that's not the truth! Damn! If that's the truth, Porlyusica should be cursed because she decided to save a lot of lifes."

"As you're saying that now..." Makarov agreed.

"Let me continue. What's more strange in the lands to the north someone sent Deliora, a demon from Zeref's book. Deliora destroyed a few villages and was stopped by a woman ice mage for the price of her body. Hers daughter wants to get revenge on Magic Council for the doings of Brain and get Zeref reborn to make him resurrect her."

"Huh?"

"Don't 'huh?'! Let me continue! She's gonna takeover the headquarters of the guild which attacked the village being a home of Hayako's relatives and she and Brain are going to 'save' the slaves of that guild to turn them into their followers and then use it to build a tower to use a ritual to resurrect Zeref. And that's not all! The master of that daughter seems to be the second guild master of Fairy Tail! To make things more ridiculous there's an alternate world to Earthland. It's called Edolas. You, Porlyusica, can confirm that because you're actually from Edolas, right?"

"How did you... MAKAROV! DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT?" Porlyusica was shocked. No one never pointed her like that.

"I..." Layla for a moment stopped cause of strangeness of making a reference to Porlyusica.

"..."

Clouds were starting to form above them out of nothing. It was a sign that something horrible is going to be revealed.

"I'm sorry for having this secret, but this is a necessity. As you see it's the truth. Edolas exist!"

"This is really getting dangerous! I'm sure we are about to be struck by lightning or something!" muttered even angrier Porlyusica. She was reffering to dramatically changing weather. Layla didn't want to stop.

"The point is that in the world called Edolas we're all having our counterparts, clones or something like that! But there are some exceptions of that rule. For some reason there's no counterparts of Gran Doma and Porlyusica! And do you know why? I don't know it for Gran Doma, but Porlyusica... she's a counterpart of a majestic dragon that lived 400 years ago. That dragon and some other dragons, Zeref and my ancestor created the spell I have to use and Porlyusica lives actually in our times. To make things more strange that dragon contacted with Porlyusica and made her write down the spell made for a Dragon Slayer!"

"..."

"And... despite everything my Celestial Spirits don't know anything! It's suspicious! I know that because in the world of Celestial Spirits time flows much slower. One day in their world is 3 months in our world. In short if they remember last five years of their lifes they should know something, but they don't or can't say!"

"..."

"I know that! St..." Porlyusica was getting more and more pale. Everyone was listening the woman that was doing her crazy triade in disbelief.

The sky above them got strangely cloudy with little sparks above.

"That's only a theory but the conclusion is rather obvious. Someone mess with us a lot! Someone who can make Celestial Spirits forget, curse wizards with curse of Ankhseram, plant little spying devices on us, make people get born, when they want, place Zeref's demon in desired place, make a destiny for wifes in one family to die young shortly after giving birth to one child, and maybe even make the second guild master of Fairy Tail go nuts! If I have to guess I would say it's Ankhseram!"

And then lightning shot in their direction. Porlyusica paled as she thought for a moment they're going to die. But then...

"Nom, nom, nom."

Laxus ate the lightning and massaged his belly. Everyone watched in disbelieve. Makarov then said:

"Laxus, have some manners after devouring the lightning. I'm sorry for my grandson."

Drops of water started falling. First a few to make you feel that ten seconds later...

*soft thunderclap*

Rain is going to get heavy.

"LAYLA! Look what have you done! Now we're all wet!" shouted Porlyusica.

"Sorry. I didn't mean that."

"*sigh* I hate people."