My Azure Soul {A Fairy Tail Jerza Fan Fiction}

"Spies" of the Council

"So, where are we headed to?"

It had almost been an hour since we've left the guild's premises. It had also neared an hour to pass and yet, we're still not out of the woods. Vegetation litters on every path we take. It seems like Lance knows the way, though. So I didn't have to worry about us getting lost.

"To a guild not that far away." He brushed away some foliage to clear a path. "Grasleigh asked us to gather information about it."

"This is a dark guild, I presume."

"Yeah."

"And why such task?"

He paused for a while. "Well, think of us--our guild, particularly--as spies for the Council."

I looked at him in bewilderment, not exactly expecting that the Magic Council would be brought into this. "The Council? We're allied with the Council?"

He twisted his lips in thought. "I can't exactly say that we're allies."

When all I gave him was a confused look, he sighed.

"What we do, as I once said, is gathering information regarding the dark guilds that lurk around. This gathered data is then delivered to the Council, anonymously." We began walking again. "Grasleigh is acquainted with an authorized messenger whom he tasks to send the said data without specifying where and whom it came from. In short, we gather and give information to the council covertly. Then we leave the cleanup to them."

"Cleanup?" I asked.

"You know that dark guilds are being hunted down, right? That's what the Council do. Well, technically speaking, it's what the normal guilds do. The Council just gives them the job. And on some rare occasion, the Rune Knights are sent as well." He kicked aside a rock.

"Then what if they find us?" It was now me who paused in my tracks. "As far as I could recall from what you told me, Alpha Umbra is on the list of their targeted dark guilds as well."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there. That's what Grasleigh always says." He halted as well, but didn't look back.

"But--"

"Hold on."

I instantly held back my tongue. He began looking around, his nose slightly raised as he took a whiff of the air. I only raised an eyebrow at him.

"Do you smell that?"

I, too, then sniffed the air instinctively. All I could smell was the fresh scent of greenery at first, yet when I focused my head on a particular direction, I found it.

"Burnt wood?" I wasn't exactly certain. But although it's slightly faint, it was still apparent. I raised my gaze, looking through the branches and foliage of the towering trees. The sun wasn't present; it being hidden behind the clouds perhaps, thus leaving the skies with a faint glow. But it didn't take me long to spot it; black smoke, albeit not that evident because of its minimal size, was floating into the air, its root headed northeast.

"There!" I alarmed my brother, and soon we were no longer walking.

Through the bushes and other greenery that scattered around our path, we ran towards the source. We leaped over fallen logs and boulders multiple times, piercing through bushes along the way. We eventually reached a small cliff, which gave us a perfect view of the occurrence below.

A one-story building, with two trees on each side strangely bent over it as if to hide the said establishment with its leafage, stood among the massive number of greenery. It would've been remarkably concealed if it weren't for the fact that it was burning.