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Night had settled over Magnolia, and Fairy Tail's guild hall was anything but quiet.
Every lantern and lamp in the building burned bright, and the noise spilling out of it was considerably louder than usual. A banquet had been called to celebrate Noah's return after more than three months without contact, and Fairy Tail had never needed much more than that for an excuse to turn the hall upside down.
Three months was a long time. Every day of it had felt like waiting for news that might never come. Now Noah was back, the Celestial Spirit World crisis had been quietly resolved in the same trip, and Natsu, constitutionally incapable of keeping anything to himself, had already announced to anyone within earshot that Zeref's curse was broken and both Ankhseram and the Black Abyss were gone from the world.
Most people had no clear idea what the Black Abyss was or what Ankhseram represented. It made no difference. The guild celebrated with everything it had regardless.
"Cheers!"
Glasses crashed together. Wine and juice flew in every direction.
Cana had her arms around a barrel larger than her head and was drinking straight from it, drawing a ring of cheering admirers around her. Gildarts, Wakaba, and Macao had their arms thrown over each other's shoulders and were performing something that generously might be called a song, badly and at full volume, pausing every few verses to thrust their glasses toward the bar in a wordless demand for refills.
Over by one of the side tables, Levy and Gajeel were deep in some conversation that kept setting Levy off laughing. Jet and Droy watched from a distance with matching expressions of quiet suffering. Years of devoted friendship, and somehow it still couldn't compete with the Iron Dragon Slayer who had walked in from out of nowhere.
Natsu and Gray had ended up on the floor under a table again, locked together in a wrestling match that neither of them showed any sign of wanting to end.
Lucy looked at them for a moment, decided there was nothing to be done, and relocated herself, Éclair, Happy, and Momon to a quieter table. Juvia stayed behind, cheering Gray's name with complete sincerity and undimmed enthusiasm.
In a slightly quieter corner of the hall, Zeref and Mavis sat together, watching the chaos unfold around them with identical soft smiles.
Makarov had claimed his usual spot at the bar. His face had taken on the deep flush of a man who had drunk just enough to feel comfortable letting his eyes wander across the guild's younger female members with obvious appreciation. At over eighty years old, he had decided, one was entitled to certain small pleasures.
Then he noticed three sets of eyes beside him wearing identical expressions of judgment, and he straightened immediately, clearing his throat.
"Right. Noah, there was actually a significant development in the Magic world while you were away."
Noah was sitting with Erza on one side and Mira on the other, an arm around each of them, and had very little interest in the topic Makarov was raising. He had, however, caught the old man's wandering gaze, and understood exactly what the sudden subject change was about.
He decided to let it go. "We already cleared out the dark guilds before everything with the Black Abyss. What else could have happened? The Magic Council didn't collapse, did it?"
"No, nothing like that."
Makarov took a measured sip from his glass. "Council Chairman Crawford has defected. He turned up as the new Vice-Leader of the Black Magic Cult."
That was unexpected.
The Magic Council sat at the top of the legitimate Magic world. Its authority and oversight extended over every guild in Ishgar, and its members conducted themselves with the particular gravity of people who believed their position entitled them to look down on everyone beneath them. Crawford, as Chairman, had wielded more institutional power than almost anyone on the continent.
And he had thrown all of it away to join the Black Magic Cult, an organization with no visible future and no legitimate standing anywhere.
Noah genuinely did not understand it.
Mira leaned slightly toward him and set a glass of chilled juice within easy reach. "The reason it connects back to you is the Book of Demon that Mard Geer carried," she said quietly.
Noah looked at her, and then the memory clicked into place.
He had been trying to work out where he had heard Crawford's name before. It was in Mard Geer's Book, which had recorded the Chairman's long-standing arrangement with Tartaros in considerable detail. After Noah had taken it from Mard Geer, he had passed it to Makarov, who had passed it to Mest, his undercover agent inside the Council. Mest had delivered it to Lahar, and Lahar, being exactly the kind of person he was, had moved on it immediately.
Impeaching a sitting Chairman was not something one Council member could do alone. It required support, and most of the Council members were Crawford's people. Crawford could have weathered it, called the evidence a fabrication, leaned on his connections, and almost certainly survived. Instead, the night after Lahar formally raised the motion, Crawford had vanished. He was gone before dawn, which answered every remaining question about his guilt.
By the time Lahar's people tracked him down, he had already made himself Vice-Leader of the Black Magic Cult.
Makarov set his glass down. "When Mest searched Crawford's mansion afterward, he found records that went further than the Tartaros arrangement. Crawford's connection to the Black Magic Cult goes back more than a decade." He paused, and the flush of drink in his face was slowly being replaced by something harder.
"The reason Deliora was able to run unchecked through the north all those years ago was because Crawford kept finding reasons to delay every joint response the guilds organized. And the reason the Black Magic Cult was able to build thirteen Towers of Paradise without anyone noticing was because Crawford was running interference for them the entire time."
The table went quiet.
Erza's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. She said nothing for a moment. As someone who had been sold into one of those towers as a child, the thought that it could have been found years earlier, that the people inside it could have been freed much sooner, sat in her chest like something sharp.
She did not dwell on the tower itself. If she had not ended up there, she would never have met Grandpa Rob, and none of the rest of it would have followed. She did not regret that. But the others who had suffered alongside her, who had never made it out, deserved better than what Crawford's interference had cost them.
Noah's hand found the center of her back and stayed there.
"Don't hold onto it," he said. "Give me a couple of days. I'll bring him back, and you can deal with him however you like."
Erza looked at him and gave a small nod. She believed him without question. And even setting Noah aside, with the Eighteen Demon War Gods gone and the Black Magic Cult's true backing dismantled, Crawford had nowhere meaningful left to run. She could handle him herself if it came to it.
The front door of the guild swung open.
Mest walked in still wearing his Council uniform, expression tight. He passed through the outstretched hands and shouted invitations from his guildmates without slowing down and made straight for the bar.
"Master." His voice cut through the noise around him. "We have a problem."
He looked at Makarov directly. "Crawford has the activation key for Face. I just received intelligence that he and the Black Magic Cult are planning to use it. They intend to drain every drop of Magic Power from Ishgar."