Arlock sighed inwardly. Then, in the manner of a sage addressing the young, he said, "I too was once where you are, certain and unshakeable. But what lies ahead for you is only despair."
Natsu and Gajeel ignored this completely. They were glaring at each other.
"You useless fire lizard, this one's mine!"
"You iron-headed idiot, if you hadn't gotten in my way I'd have finished him already!"
"Say that again and I'll deal with you first!"
"Try it!"
The veins at Arlock's temples pressed against his skin. The youth of this generation had no manners whatsoever.
"Die!"
He swung the staff. A complex magic circle assembled itself in the air, dense and precise, and fired a barrage of magic bullets that completely engulfed both of them.
The cultists nearby watched what happened next in silence.
Natsu's hands were already wrapped in flame. His body slipped through the gaps between shots, and anything that came close enough was deflected by his fists. Gajeel was less subtle, shifting his right arm into an iron rod and driving it forward in a single straight thrust, letting the bullets break against the metal.
"He's deflecting magic bullets with his bare hands?!"
"The other one has completely disappeared into the fire!"
"What are these two?"
Arlock composed himself and raised his staff to form a shield.
Then Gajeel walked through the remaining barrage and headbutted the shield apart.
Two fists arrived in the same moment. Iron on the left side of Arlock's face, fire on the right. The iron mask shattered. Arlock flew backward and hit the ground over ten meters away, sliding several meters more before stopping. His mask landed separately.
He lay on his back, his long grey-white hair spread around him, eyes open to the sky.
It was the first time anyone had seen his face.
The skin beneath the mask was deeply scarred by burns. Not a fresh injury. This had happened long ago.
The sight stopped Natsu and Gajeel cold. Even some of the nearby cultists went still.
Had something that terrible happened to him? Was that what had driven him to Zeref?
Gajeel said slowly, "Your face..."
"Hah." Arlock let out a faint, hollow sound. "You noticed. I burned this face for this day. That was the price."
He didn't finish the sentence.
Because everyone on the field had already turned to look at the sky.
The clear blue above had gone dark. Clouds were gathering and converging from every direction, folding over themselves, building into an enormous spiraling vortex that blotted out the light.
Wendy's face went pale. "Is that, Anima?"
Lucy searched her memory for the word.
"You mean Edolas's large-scale spatial magic? But that's already been..."
"It isn't Anima," Carla said, cutting across them. She closed her eyes. "But it is spatial magic of the same order. Something is coming through. I can see it." She went quiet for a moment. "A sword. An enormous sword."
Among the cult members, elation broke through the fear.
"The High Priest's magic!"
"The summoning Lord Arlock paid for with his own power!"
"The War God that fights in our name!"
"We'll win! The purification will succeed!"
Arlock's voice carried across the entire battlefield. "Come forth. Answer my contract and take from me what was promised. War God Summon: Ikusa-Tsunagi!"
Thunder rolled through the clouds. A colossal foot descended from the vortex and drove toward the earth.
Erza's voice cut through everything. "Everyone, scatter!"
Fairy Tail moved without hesitation, breaking in every direction away from where the foot was coming down.
The cult members fighting nearby had no time to react.
A dozen or so cried out as they were crushed underfoot. Another twenty were thrown off their feet by the shockwave of displaced earth and debris.
Macao pulled Romeo behind him, watching the fallen enemies, and said under his breath, "This thing doesn't seem to distinguish between sides."
A second enormous foot came down.
A towering figure with a black body, grey-white hair, a demonic face, and a longsword gripped in its hand settled onto the earth before them. Its feet were planted on the ground. Its head was lost in the clouds.
Romeo craned his neck upward and said in awe, "It's even bigger than the Guild Master."
In Marba City, Lahar's operation had wrapped up. The cult's infiltrators inside the city had been effectively neutralized, and he was giving the order to consolidate and move to assist the group outside when a giant dropped out of the sky.
The Enforcement Unit soldiers, like Lahar himself, stopped where they stood.
"What is that?"
"What kind of creature is that?"
At the city's edge, the Thunder God Tribe stood inside their prepared barrier formation and looked up at the sudden apparition with expressions ranging from alarm to disbelief.
Bickslow said, "Freed. Can your formation stop something that size?"
"The defensive formation is absolute," Freed said, and paused. "Provided the magical output is sufficient."
Evergreen smiled. "There's no need to worry. Warrod is out there. And he brought company."
Outside the formation, Rhodes, Makarov, Warrod Sequen, and Wolfheim stood side by side. The presence they gave off together had a steadying quality to it.
"Summoning magic." Rhodes knew this kind of aura well. "Is this the dangerous magic the intelligence flagged the Priest as carrying?"
"That is Ikusa-Tsunagi, one of the Eighteen War Gods." Warrod's voice was calm. "He used a high-stakes summoning technique. The price to call something at that level would not have been small."
"The children could be in danger with that amount of magical force in play." Makarov's body had already begun to glow as he prepared to shift to giant form and move.
Warrod raised a hand. "Don't underestimate them, old man. Opponents at this level will take them a little time, at most. They'll be fine."
Makarov held and turned it over in his mind. It was probably true. He had watched what these children were capable of across the past weeks.
Wolfheim was already moving.
His body swelled as he ran, broadening and thickening with each stride until he had taken the form of a massive green beast. He called back over his shoulder as he went: "Leave this to me! This creature falls under the Council's jurisdiction. There's no reason for any of you to risk yourselves over it!"
He hit all fours and accelerated, vanishing from view at a speed that seemed wrong for something his size.