Betrayal Of the Demon King(E.N.D)

Chapter 21

3rd P.O.V
The group all went together to the base, deciding it best not to split up at this point since things may get a little dangerous. They all explored the area that the base was supposed to be in, taking longer then it would if they were to split up, causing Gray, Natsu and Happy to groan about it.

"If we split up this would be so much faster, ya know?" Gray stated, irritation in his voice.
"I agree." Natsu said with the same tone of annoyance.
"I agree, but we can't. We are going into dangerous grounds and with our previous.. 'episodes' with Natsu, we simply cannot risk splitting up." Erza stated, her voice serious. Mard huffed at this, 'Master can handle himself. Insolent mortals.' He thought. Natsu also huffed at this, believing he could handle himself, but not arguing.

The group carried on walking around the area, going back into the forest a few times and scouting around a large span of the area, though, they still couldn't find anything.

After about 5 hours of constant searching and going retracing what they've already searched, they were about to call it a day and head to an inn since it was night. The sky was clear, showing off the pitch black darkness lit up by a mass of stars, beautifully scattered across the evening sky. Constellations like Aquarius, Capricorn and Pisces all clearly visible in the night, giving Lucy the sense of nostalgia, memories of Aquarius coming to mind. She quickly dismissed this thought, the feeling of fatigue and tiredness washing over her after a long day of walking, exploring and searching.

As the group just decided to head back to the small town, Natsu smelt something from afar. It was faint, but it was there. He froze for a second, realising it was a faint stench of blood. The group stopped to look at him, wondering why he froze in place.
"Natsu? You ok?" Lucy asked.
"I smell blood." He answered simply. The group, minus Mard, gasped a little, momentarily forgetting Dragon Slayers had good noses.
"Where?!" Erza asked, urgency clearly shown in her voice.

Natsu didn't say anything and ran in a direction, to the west. The group quickly followed behind him, the feeling of tiredness now washed away with a feeling of tension and dread for whatever the blood could be from. Natsu, on the other hand, slowly picked up the pace, the smell of blood getting stronger. He could easily tell it was human's blood, the demonic influence of E.N.D's powers when they merged upped his smell by 20x more, now he was even able to tell who was walking in front of him from miles off, though he would have to concentrate.

The group soon came to a stop at a clearing, all of them looking around for anything suspicious. Soon enough, they spotted a small grass patch which looked as if it had been set alight, various patterns scorched in the ground to show a strange looking magic circle.

Natsu immediately recognised the patterns and slowly reached into his bag to get the orb he had gotten before. Once he got it out he soon realised that not only were the patterns and runes the same, but the orb was glowing once again, but this time, the glow was much stronger and brighter than before.
"Guys.. Look-" He said, pointing to the glow the orb had, and the strange, identical markings and runes. Everyone's eyes widened slightly, all their attention now drawn to the orb.
"Strange.." Erza said. Natsu nodded at that, sniffing around for where the stench of blood came from but immediately realised. It came from the scorched magic circle.

"Guys.. The blood, I think it came from that.." He stated, his free hand pointing to the magic circle on the ground. Erza's eyebrows furrowed at that.
"But how?" She asked.
"Well.." Natsu began, "There's either a hidden room under that where there's a lot of blood loss going on, or.. This circle was made with human blood as well as fire.."

Everyone else, excluding Mard, grimaced. Who would make a magic circle using blood?!

The group was to engrossed in their own thoughts to realise Natsu. He was staring at the orb piece in his hands and the magic circle, an odd feeling overtaking him. He felt like he'd seen this before, it all felt so familiar, but he couldn't, for the life of him, remember what it was. Though, he knew what he needed to do with this all somehow.

Before anyone knew it, Natsu had started advancing into the circle, still holding the orb piece. The piece began to glow even brighter, being almost blinding to look at but he still kept a hold of it. In the centre of the circle there was a small lump of moss, Natsu realised, and he began sweeping away the moss until it was gone. The moss covered the rest of the Orb, all of it in one piece. He slowly gulped, the rest of the group now realising where he was.

"Natsu? What are you doing there?" Happy asked.
"I- I just found the rest of the Orb." He said, a slight shake in his voice.

Before Mard could ask himself why his master seemed so scared, Natsu put the Orb piece into the Orb, making it whole. With that, the whole orb lit up with the blinding blue colour it was before. The magic circle seemed to do the same thing, all the patterns and runes littered across the circle lighting up. Natsu, who was stood on top of the circle, realised his irreversible mistake, realised why this was so familiar, realised why it drew him in. Mard seemed to at the exact same time,
"MASTER!!" He screamed, running up to the circle, but got stopped by what seemed to be an invisible barrier, making it impossible to cross over.

The rest of the group didn't know what was going on but they did the same as Mard, a terrible feeling over taking them. They all pounded on the barrier with all their might, Erza summoning weapons and armour, Gray summoning ice, Lucy summoning her celestial spirits, Mard summoning his thorns and Happy summoning his wings and launching himself at the barrier, hoping the force he put behind it will break it.

Natsu, on the other hand, couldn't hear what they were saying, and he knew why. This- This abomination of a spell was created just to be used against demons. For the one specific purpose of abolishing demon kind. And he hated it. He hated this spell because of all the damage it did. The creator of this spell is long gone and no one can even remember his name. He died creating this spell, you see. He just left behind notes and instructions on how to conduct this sort of magic. It was a special and rare kind. Holy, in a way. It 'exorcises' demons, as the creator calls it. But in short, it strips demons of all their powers, no matter how powerful they are, temporarily, and all at once, their powers come back in a designated amount of time causing immense pain with both stages. This was used to slaughter so many demons in the past, but Natsu thought it was gone, he thought the spell was lost throughout the ages. Apparently not. How he even forgot about it, as well as Mard, he did not know.

Blinding light filled up the space Natsu was in, blinding the others of their view. All that was heard was a scream, and all that Natsu saw was white, before black began to bleed into his vision, slowly taking over.

~~~~~

What's everyone's Zodiac signs, I'm Aries!

Zodiac Dates:
Aquarius = January 20th - February 18th
Pisces = February 19th - March 20th
Aries = March 21st - April 19th
Taurus = April 20th - May 20th
Gemini = May 21st - June 20th
Cancer = June 21st - July 22nd
Leo = July 23rd - August 22nd
Virgo = August 23rd - September 22nd
Libra = September 23rd - October 22nd
Scorpio = October 23rd - November 21st
Sagittarius = November 22nd - December 21st
Capricorn = December 22nd - January 19th