The Love of Dragons- Nalu

Chapter thirteen-Revelation

POV: Lucy

The hurt that followed Natsu's departure wasn't like I'd expected, I didn't feel the pain in my heart, that was numb. The real pain blazed through every fiber of my being, it was like hundreds of little needles surrounding me, stabbing me from every angle. I had wasted an entire day staring at a sheet of paper sitting alone in my apartment. Usually words spilled from my pen and I could barely keep up, not yesterday; that had been spent entirely trying to think of the word on the tip of my tongue. It never came but there was definitely an emptiness. Levy spent the entire morning convincing me to come to the guild and had finally succeeded. She seemed distracted and recently spent a lot of time with Wendy Marvel.

“Lucy! Lucy, hey, earth to Lucy?” Levy snapped her fingers, summoning me back into the present.

“Hm? Yeah?” I mumbled, barely opening my mouth to speak.

“Wendy was telling me about the man that you saw, I was wondering if anything about him struck you as odd?” She pouted, “And it would have been wonderful if you had responded the first time I asked.” Her arms folded and she tipped her chin away from me.

“Sorry... Uh, he seemed overconfident I guess. I mean he threatened Natsu so he must be a big deal.” I stared at the table and traced patterns on the wood with my nails.

“Anything else?”

“...I couldn't even gander his age..?”

“Yes!” Levy raised her shoulders and squealed, “Thanks Luce!” She clutched a new stack of books to her chest and plopped down next to me; sliding her reading glasses on.

“Need help Levv?” Gajeel came over, his voice rumbling like stone.

“Thanks, could you read this? Tell me if you find anything about dragons, even just one word.” she tossed a smallish book into his arms, then passed another one to Wendy, “You're a dragon-slayer too, so if you wanna help I'd appreciate it.”

“Okay.” Wendy enthusiastically threw open the book while Gajeel picked at the pages like he was reading a foreign language.

“Something wrong, Gajeel?” I asked quietly, sitting like a stump wasn't going to make me get over him any sooner.

“No.” He glared icily at me and went back to his work, tapping each word with a claw-like fingernail as he read it.

“Let me help.” I requested, secretly hoping that Levy would grin and say, 'nah, we've got plenty of people so you can go drown in your misery for a bit longer.'. Instead she lit up and stood with sudden intensity,

“I found it! I knew I'd heard the name Rothe somewhere!” She hugged the novel to her chest and then held it triumphantly into the air, “See?” She underlined with her finger a short paragraph,

“Dragons have the uncanny ability to transform into a specific human form. This form ages, but will cease the aging process at thirty years in order to match the psychological age of the dragon. Typically the human closely resembles it's dragon counterpart and will be an incredibly powerful mage even whilst residing within their secondary body. The most distinct known dragon figure is a woman resembling Acnologia, the dragon king; this particular woman often chose the alias of 'Rothe'. Legends spun around the world of this monarch, however it turns out to be the queen. As a winged serpent, very little is known about her and the same goes for the human appearance, all that is known is that she is sadistic and power-hungry. Legend often says that she-”

The rest of the page looked torn by blades, the edges had a faint spattering of scarlet blood and curled like sharp-tipped wings.

“Wait!” I stood, shoving back my chair so suddenly that it toppled over and tripped Grey on his way in, “You're saying that the woman who Natsu just went to meet and work with is actually a dragon?!” I shouted, Grey stumbled up and stared at the small group with his jaw practically touching the floor.