"Lady Minerva! You're charging too far ahead!"
"At least check your flanks!"
The soldiers in the rear shouted, but Minerva wasn't listening anymore.
Because she'd already spotted her opponents.
Cana, Lisanna, and Elfman stood in a loose formation ahead, clearly expecting company, but not expecting her.
All three tensed at the sight of Minerva. The dark markings crawling across her skin, the distorted air shimmering around her fists, eyes that glowed an inhuman amber.
Cana recovered first. "Is that Take Over? Satan Soul, like Mira's?"
Minerva's expression twisted, insulted. "Take Over? Don't lump me in with something that low-class. This power is on an entirely different level."
She smiled. "Cana Alberona. You've come at just the right time. We still have an unsettled score from the Grand Magic Games."
"How did you know we were going to throw the match to Team B." Cana's mouth ran ahead of her brain for once. She'd been stressing about that particular secret lately, and the word score triggered the wrong nerve.
She caught herself a beat too late. Minerva probably wasn't talking about that. Cana switched tracks smoothly. "Anyway, it was a tournament match. You're really holding a grudge over that? And didn't you go easy on me in the first place?"
The Grand Magic Games had been recorded. Cana had rewatched their fight afterward, something had nagged at her during the match itself, and the footage confirmed it. Minerva had held back. Deliberately. She'd given ground she didn't need to give.
Cana hadn't understood the motive back then. She understood it even less now, why go easy on someone and then hate them for it?
"Enough talking." Minerva's eyes went flat. "Die."
She closed the distance in two steps, both hands crackling with spatial energy.
Cana felt it before the strike landed, the raw weight of that magic pressing against her skin. 'Yeah, I'm not tanking that.' She fanned three cards between her fingers, threw them to cover her retreat, and hauled Lisanna back by the arm.
Close-quarters brawling was Elfman's department.
"BEAST KING SOUL!"
Elfman's body swelled as the transformation ripped through him.
He met Minerva's charge head-on with a straight right that should've stopped a freight train.
Their fists collided. The shockwave flattened the grass in a ten-foot circle.
And Elfman slid backward.
His eyes went wide. 'In Beast King form?' He dug his heels in, tried to reset, but Minerva was already through his guard. She'd punched clean through the shockwave like it wasn't there.
A spinning kick caught him square in the ribs. The crack was audible.
Elfman ragdolled sideways into a tree trunk hard enough to split it.
"GAAAH!"
"Elfman!" Lisanna thrust both palms forward. Scales flickered across her forearms. A pressurized jet of water blasted from her hands, thick as a battering ram, aimed at cutting off Minerva's advance.
Minerva sidestepped it without looking. The water gouged a trench in the dirt behind her.
And she didn't spare Elfman a second glance.
Her bloodshot eyes were locked on Cana.
She lunged.
"Tch!" Cana ducked under a spatial blast that warped the air where her head had been a half-second ago. She backpedaled, whipping out cards with both hands. "Smoke Screen!" A wall of thick grey smoke erupted between them.
Minerva tore through it without slowing.
Cana was already gone, repositioned ten feet to the left, another spread of cards ready. She threw them rapid-fire. "Card Dimension-Binding Serpent!" Glowing chains of light spiraled out from the scattered cards, snaking toward Minerva's limbs.
Minerva ripped them apart with a pulse of spatial magic. The chains shattered into sparks.
But it bought Cana two seconds. She used them to put a fallen tree between herself and Minerva, already prepping her next hand.
"Now I definitely know why Rhodes stuck me on Minerva duty," Cana muttered, shuffling cards without looking down.
'This woman is unhinged. The second she sees me, the whole war stops existing. She's supposed to be a commander, she's got an army behind her, and she's tunnel-visioning on a personal grudge from a tournament match.'
'Petty doesn't even begin to cover it.'
Minerva blasted through the tree.
Cana swore and kept moving.
"Kyoka's subordinate is still too immature."
Keyes materialized on the edge of the battlefield, one moment the space was empty, the next his skeletal frame stood there as if he'd always been, staff resting against the ground, hollow eyes surveying the chaos with mild disinterest.
He raised his staff and tapped it once against the earth.
Three figures stepped out of the dark mist behind him.
"Go. Fukuro. Vidaldus. And, Ikaruga."
"As you command, Lord Keyes."
The three spoke in unison. Their voices were flat, like recordings played through dead speakers.
Reanimated corpses, puppeteered through Keyes's necromancy.
Compared to Silver, who'd retained his will, his personality, his soul, these three were hollow shells running on muscle memory.
It didn't make them less dangerous.
Juvia, concealed within the mist, saw them first. Her voice came through Warren's telepathic link, sharp with disbelief.
"Those are Trinity Raven!"
A beat of silence on the link. Then Lucy's voice, shaking. "But, they're dead. They died at the Tower of Heaven!"
The Tower of Heaven. Akane Resort.
Trinity Raven had been among the enemies they'd fought there. Fukuro the owl-headed martial artist. Vidaldus the hair-whipping rockstar. Ikaruga the swordswoman who'd shattered Erza's armor.
All three killed in that tower.
Now standing here with dead eyes and drawn weapons.
Erza's voice cut through the link.
"Don't hesitate. Those aren't the people they were. They're puppets, nothing more."
Gray wasn't listening to any of it.
He'd gone still the moment Keyes appeared.
His right hand was shaking, not from fear. His father. Silver Fullbuster. Keyes had taken Silver's corpse and turned it into a weapon. Had puppeteered the body of the man who'd sacrificed everything to protect his son. And now this thing was doing the same to others. Dragging the dead out of their rest and forcing them to fight.
"It's him," Gray said quietly. The words barely made it past his teeth. "That necromancer."
The black markings on his right arm pulsed, then spread. They crawled up from his wrist to his elbow, from his elbow to his shoulder, frost crystallizing along the dark lines.
The temperature around him plummeted. Grass frosted over. Moisture in the air turned to snow.
He shifted his stance. His left arm extended forward, his right drawn back, the posture of an archer nocking a killing shot. Ice formed in his hands and took shape of a silver bow with clean, lethal lines, and an arrow to match, both radiating a cold so deep it burned.
Devil Slayer magic. The magic Silver had passed on to destroy demons.
"Ice Devil - Zero Destruction Bow!"
He released.
The arrow shrieked across the battlefield. Two hundred meters. Three hundred. The air split in its wake, a trail of frost and shattered moisture stretching behind it like a scar.
Straight at Keyes's skull.