Light, stars and the Starlight dragon

The den

While Luna was struggling to not get killed as sacrifice, the star she pleaded help to had started shining bright on the sky, moving slowly around. In truth, Luna could create small stars from existing ones, so it wouldnt be as strange to see one moving so freely on the sky.

In the same time, Sting, Lucy and the rest were still thinking of a plan on how to get to Luna before anything bad happened.

In reality, Luna was not that far away from Crocus. In a small town, that looked deserted for centuries, a veil was cast. Underneath the veil, lied the real city of mages, of the ones that captured Luna.

The team decided to split again and search again, thinking that maybe they had missed something.

Lucy went with Sting towards the northwest of Crocus, heading unknowingly towards the mage town.

While stopping along the road for a break, Sting sat down looking up to the sky, pensively. Then he saw it.

At first, he thought that his eyes are playing tricks on him. "Hey, Lucy, isnt it kind of early for stars?", he asked, tapping the girl's hand gently.

Looking up, Lucy saw the star too, now doing unnatural moves on the sky. If both were seeing it, then it mean Sting was not imaging it and something was up. They both agreed to follow it as it moved further from them.

Watching where they stepped, the two followed the star to where it went on the sky, until it stopped. The star was now hovering in place in the middle of the town. They had been here earlier so they didn't know what the star was trying to tell them, but the two looked around closer than last time, maybe they had missed something.

Lucy lightly tapped Sting on his arm, gently feeling his toned muscles. "Sting, look over there. See that?", she continued to lightly pull on his arm while pointing at the small rift that was showing mid air.

What could have caused it? Well, Luna still had some fighting power in her yet. She did her best to stall the mages from draining her power and using her body to channel the soul of the fearsome beast that could bring death: Acnologia himself. The mages actually wanted the world destroyed. They thought that if they could see the world's destruction, and survived it, they could be the ones to reform the world to their wishes.

Meanwhile,  Sting and Lucy were trying to break the spell that kept the veil over the village. Lucy agreed that boosting Sting's attack would be the fastest way towards a surprise break in. So, she focused her magic power and infused it into him, by placing her hands on his broad back. Lucy was a little flustered, but did good to dismiss her thoughts and focus on him.

Boosted up enough, feeling as if he just ate a good chunk of magic, used his dragon roar attack to widen the crack and punch a hole into the veil.

The attack punched the veil like an arrow into a tree and cracked it enough for the veil to break like glass. Once broken, the illusion fell and the true town was revealed.

One would expect some dark town full of shadows, but the two soon realized that the veil they placed was because the mage town hosted vast houses and walls with tower like structures, all too radiant to be overseen. For people with dark plans they sure enjoyed the radiance of light. That put a sour taste in Sting's mouth, as he didn't know how to react to the overly flashy sight that blinded their eyes.

"...uh...and I thought I enjoyed flashy lights...didn't expect to find such a flashy place hidden in here.", he commented.

"...it's an understatement to say it's flashy...", Lucy completed, both of them in awe. "Let's just move and find Luna. We can't waste time on this.", she added, grabbing Sting by the hand, still flustered and leading him into the smaller streets of town, to not be spotted. Of course they could fight, but considering it was crawling with strong mages, it was unwise to start unnecessary fights. The mage that cast the veil noticed it fell, but ignored it as they all focused on the ritual and nobody could reverse it at this point.