Fairy Tail - Twilight Empire

Chapter 58 - Secrets

Lucy had to take the next few sessions alone, huddling away in the castle library with only the dim light of a protected candle to join her. Levy left dozens of notes for her, hidden in tiny nooks and joints of various books scattered around their area so nobody would locate their findings easily.

She was up well past when she was supposed to, but her relationship with Axel was granting her a bit of an extended curfew. She almost managed to secure sponsorship from Kip to allow her to have this permission, and she promised to reward him with greater findings.

He sometimes joined her in those lonely moments, there with a big smile and no idea how to help her. He wasn't well-read, hadn't ever done research, and didn't know what Lucy was talking about in the slightest as it pertained to demons of the Books of Zeref, outside of what little he knew of the Tartaros Division.

Lucy brushed some hair out of her face. She had her hair already done in pigtails to help with her readability. She skimmed her fingers over one of the older books in the library and then closed it. She wished she had Levy's glasses, but her research was meant to be casual. If anyone saw her, it would raise suspicion on why she was taking things so seriously.

She'd finally narrowed down her search to just a few books that talked in oddly specific terms about Lullaby, all of which had been routinely mentioned in various other research texts on Zeref's black magic. Each of these was old, perhaps older even than Fairy Tail, but it wasn't as if the flute had mechanically changed that much in the intervening centuries.

There was only one recent document she'd plucked from the records, but she held off on reading it because it was dated to the time of the Twilight Empire itself. It'd likely be a piece of propaganda, with little truth propping up its claims. She wanted the unfiltered facts first.

Lucy set a few books back on the shelf where they belonged, rubbing her temple as she did so. The late nights were beginning to wear on her. She spent so much of the day training with Kip and Levy, and then socializing, that reading was becoming a far greater chore than she anticipated.

At least there were meaningful gains on her end and on that of her friends. Well, friends seemed a strong word. Kip was kind to her, a good trainer, but, she was beginning to suspect he wanted to hold a few things back. Secrets, maybe.

Lucy blinked, trying to refresh her tired mind. No. She didn't believe that. But she continued to reflect on Kip and Brandish's conversation. What had she wanted to know, why did she want to speak with Lucy?

And why had he been so giddy to help with the research?

Lucy wasn't entirely sure how he found out about it in the first place. Perhaps Levy let it slip, but she wasn't one to go spilling secrets like that. It was a mission for Fairy Tail, not Kip. If he was truly an ally, then...fine.

She flipped through a few chapters of a particularly thin book, reading over its notes on Lullaby, the use it saw, briefly, in an age long past. All the same, all substantiating the same narrative of its destructive potential. Based on what Hisui told her—how the old Magic Council infused it with the power of thousands of tortured souls to feed the demon locked within the flute—the information was slightly outdated, but what worried Lucy was how these people continued to run tests on Lullaby, all without fail or harm to themselves.

It sickened her to think of poor, innocent people being wiped out all for the sake of testing the dark weapon. How the wielders also managed to protect themselves was another wonder. It was meant to kill any who heard its tone. Did they have some sort of protection Zeref hadn't anticipated?

Lucy sighed and read over the modern report from the Twilight Empire, disgusted at its verbiage as it, in no difficult terms, blatantly discussed how the weapon had been destroyed during the usurpation of the kingdom under the Twilight Empire. Zeref and the others were keen on covering their tracks, it seemed.