Hot and Cold

Edolas

~*****~

"Edolas?" I echo irritably

Carla nods. "That's right. A world that exists independently from the one we know. And unfortunately, a world that's begun losing it's magic."

"They're running out of magic there?" Wendy asks.

"What do you mean by that?" Natsu asks.

"How is that possible?" Happy asked.

"Unlike here, in Edolas, magic is a finite resource, without limits on its use, it will one day disappear forever. In an attempt to restore their rapidly diminishing magic power reserves, the King of Edolas developed a spell that would absorb it from another world, our world." Carla continued to explain. "It is a very powerful spell indeed. He called it Anima. That is what opened up the hole in the sky."

"So, that's it." Wendy hummed delicately.

I scratched at my head almost violently. "When did all this crap start?" I ask irritably.

Carla hummed almost silently before answering. "Six years ago, they began setting up Anima vortices all along the barrier between our worlds. But the experiment did not go as they planned. It seems someone had made it their goal to close them, one by one." She looked a bit disturbed for a moment before she continued. "But this Anima was simply too large. No one was strong enough to close it. And thus, the guild and everything surrounding it was absorbed."

"Why would they go after Fairy Tail like that?" Natsu asked.

"I told you. To provide more magic power to those in Edolas." Carla snapped.

"So they chose Fairy Tail because it has a lot of top class wizards?" Wendy asked. "Because there was more power to take?"

Carla nods. "That's correct."

"I can't believe it!" Natsu barked. "That's a seriously selfish move!" He turned his face to the sky and held his fist up. "YOU'D BETTER GIVE US BACK ALL OF OUR FRIENDS, RIGHT NOW!"

"I don't think that's how that works," I comment as the sky remains distorted.

"Well, it was worth a shot," Natsu shrugged as he glanced at me.

I rolled my eyes. "You mean it, Ballad? This happened because of you, me, and Carla? It's our fault?" Happy asks, his gaze all of a sudden on the pink, trembling cat in my arms.

Ballad swallowed the lump in her throat before nodding. "Indirectly, yes..."

"What do you mean, Indirectly?" Happy whined.

"The King entrusted us to complete another mission entirely!" Carla snapped. "Something that was totally independent from the one involving Anima and magic absorption."

"But that doesn't make sense!" Wendy cried. "How can that be true when you were born in this world? Hatched out of an egg!"

"And Happy was, too! It was me that found him!" Natsu cried.

I hum as I glance down at Ballad. "Where the hell did you hatch, anyway?"

She sniffled and buried her nose into my coat. It hits me. She said I smelt familiar, like a forest when it's freezing. She was hatched near the mountain Everest and I lived on. She had to have been. "Indeed, we were..." Carla nods. "To be perfectly honest, I myself, have never personally set foot in Edolas. I was born in this world and have spent my entire life here. It's exactly as Wendy said. But we were imprinted with this knowledge. The details of our mission and of Edolas are part of what makes up our very being. The three of us, were born to carry out this mission, for our kingdom. So why... Why don't you two know the first thing about it?!"