Adult-FanFiction.org : Anime

I'd Freeze the Heavens for You	By : Rhov Category: +. to F > Fairy Tail Views: 3091 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Fairy Tail is the property of Hiro Mashima. I make no money, I just do this for my own pleasure.

Chapter List
- 1-Labyrinth
- 2-Aimless
- 3-Pitfalls
- 4-Penalty
- 5-Berries
- 6-Destructive
- 7-Countdown
- 8-Ice
- 9-Perseverance
- 10-Warmth
- 11-Hostages
- 12-Time
- 6
- 7
- 8
Chapter 7

Countdown
Lucy could not sleep that night. It was two o'clock in the morning. Watching the monitor, she saw Gray pushing himself through the night. He dared not stop now, and definitely not for many hours of sleep. At every chime of the maze's annoying voice, the fear in his eyes intensified.
"You now have nine hours left."
Lucy glanced over. Wisteria had fallen asleep on the couch. Slowly, Lucy left the monitor and crept through the cabin. It was dark outside. Nobody would see her. Even if there was a penalty, she could run away before the mad mage returned to freeze her. She could not continue sitting there in that warm house, with food and a soft bed, and watch while Gray suffered. It pained her too much. Just watching him brought tears to her eyes and made her heart burn deep inside. If he could not make it to her in time, she would run to him. Together, they would figure something out, or at least fight together.
She wanted to be together with Gray again. More than anything, she wanted to see him. It was worth any risk, just to hold him and get him help before the berries poisoned him.
She tiptoed to the door, cautiously took the handle, and twisted it. She had feared it might be locked, but the handle twisted soundlessly. Then she slowly pulled the door back. Icy air blew in, and she heard a snort as Wisteria began to wake up.
"Lucy?" came a sleepy grumble.
Lucy threw the door open and made a run for it. Maybe nobody would see. Maybe the dark would hide her.
No such luck.
The area overhead blazed red.
"Penalty! Eight hours subtracted. You now have one hour left."
"No!" a man shouted.
She heard the scream and looked toward the hedges. "Gray?"
"Lucy?" She heard feet running so close, he was probably on the other side of the hedge. He yelled frantically, "Lucy!"
He was so close! "Gray! I'm here. I'm going toward..." Suddenly, Lucy's legs froze together, and she fell into the snow. "Ahhh," she screamed as the ice burned her skin.
"Lucy!" Gray yelled in a panic. "What happened?"
"My...my legs." She looked down and saw the ice. "My feet are frozen together. I can't walk."
Wisteria came out of the cabin. "I told you, you can't leave."
"Who's that?" Gray demanded.
"She's been taking care of me."
Wisteria gazed through the darkness at the hedge. "My, he's close! Sadly, there's still one more loop around from that location. It takes much more than one hour."
"Dammit! I'll just blast through this bush then. Ice-Make..."
"She'll freeze if you do," Wisteria warned sharply. "You have one hour, and the penalty for destroying the bush will end the clock. I'd help, but that's cheating and you'll be penalized also. Any more penalties and time will be up. You need to run, boy! Run fast."
"Shit!" Gray growled, and they heard his steps pound away. "Wait for me, Lucy. I'll definitely be there." Then his footsteps faded away.
"He won't make it," Wisteria said sadly. "For what it's worth, Lucy...I'm truly sorry. Not even I can do anything now." She began to turn back into the cabin.
"Wait," Lucy yelled, stretching her hand out. "Why are my feet frozen like this? Is it just because I tried to run away?"
"No," Wisteria answered with a regretful sigh. "It's part of this damn, twisted game. Because the woman will try to run away at the end, her legs will be frozen when there is six hours left. Now your boyfriend has only one hour to make it in time, so the freezing has already begun." Wisteria turned aside and walked away, going past the cabin. "I've seen too many women get frozen, and I truly can't stand the screams anymore. It was pleasant spending these few days with you. You're a lovely girl, Lucy...very much like my girlfriend Opal was. It's no wonder Gray fell in love with you."
"Wait!" Lucy shouted. "At least help me get back into the house. If I can get by the fire, this will melt."
"Not even a dragon's flame can melt that ice," Wisteria told her. "Nor can it be shattered. There's only one way to break the spell."
"What is that?" Lucy asked, pulling herself along the ground.
Wisteria looked back at her with a sad gaze. "He has to say the words you've always wanted to hear."
"Words...I want to hear?" Lucy asked in confusion. "I don't get it."
She shrugged and turned away. "Only you know what you want to hear, and only he can say it. Whitehall told me that most men who make it this far only to see their girl frozen gave up and didn't even try to save her. Whitehall has a huge collection of frozen women. I've seen his sickening hall filled with them. I've heard that one or two couples made it out together, but that was before my time. It looks like Gray will at least make it here alive. You should be happy for that. Pray he loves you enough to try saving you. Maybe you can leave him a clue on what to say."
"But I don't know what that is!" Lucy shrieked. "Wisteria?"
The woman kept walking. "I'm sorry, Lucy. I...I really can't take it anymore," she said, sniffling with grief. "Not with you, not after we've become friends. I just...I can't watch. I've seen it too many times, I'll go insane if I have to watch you suffer as well. I'm so sorry."
"Wisteria!"
The purple-haired woman ran off, covering her face as she sobbed. Then, suddenly, she vanished. Only her footprints in the snow showed that anyone had been there.

Gray ran frantically. He no longer heard Lucy's voice, but now he knew she was very close. He blinked out dizziness. Lack of sleep, lack of food, and the poison slowly running through his veins and affecting his nervous system all made concentrating a challenge.
Left wall! Left...left? Right? No, left.
"What's happening to Lucy?" he shouted, holding his head as the dizziness got worse. "Come on, I know someone out there is watching me. At least tell me what's going on."
The maze's voice spoke to him. "At the six-hour marker, the sweetheart will begin to freeze. It's to make sure she doesn't run away in desperation. Usually the phases of freezing happen over a six-hour period and in six phases, but due to the penalty of leaving the cabin where she had been confined, the phases have already begun. Rather than over six hours, it'll happen over sixty minutes in ten minute phases. First her feet up to the ankles, which are already frozen. It's quite painful."
Gray began running faster at that, sneering as he thought of Lucy in agony.
"Then she'll be frozen up to the knees, then to the waist, then just over her chest. At that phase, her heart will start to slow down due to the cold. Then she'll be frozen up to the mouth, still able to breathe through her nose but unable to scream for help. Finally, when the timer runs out, the ice will cover her head, and she will be completely frozen."
"What happens then?" he screamed.
"Game over. You lose. The frozen statue of Lucy Heartfilia will become the property of Willie Whitehall."
"No!"
Gray raced through the darkness, one hand to the left wall, the fingers scraping and bloodying as they flew past the red berry bushes to guide his way. Hunger and fatigue were forgotten as Gray pushed himself onward, running in the dark as if trapped in a nightmare.
Then suddenly, he saw glowing golden eyes up ahead and the growl of a wolf or large dog.
"Oh hell no," he sneered. "Toss all you want at me. I'm blasting through everything to get to Lucy. Ice-Make: Lance!"

Lucy pulled herself over the frozen ground. With her feet frozen tightly together, she could not really even crawl, but inched like some sort of worm. She had to keep stopping as the snow made her hands go numb. She had not thought to pull on warmer clothes. She shivered, and the painful iciness on her feet did not help.
She heard something rumble, then the sound of an explosion. It was a distance away, but still close enough to see a sudden pillar of ice rising within the surrounding maze.
"Gray," she whispered, realizing he must be fighting the last of the challenges in this diabolical labyrinth.
She watched, hoping to hear or see more. The ice pillar remained. Perhaps it was trapping something. She hoped that meant Gray won and simply left the ice in place.
Suddenly, the ice crept up her legs and went up to her knees, aching her skin until it was so cold, it felt scalding. She cried at the pain and rubbed the skin just above the ice.
"It hurts...hurts, hurts," she sobbed. She looked back out to the maze. "Gray!" she shouted as loudly as she could. "If you can hear me, please hurry!"

Gray did hear her, but only faintly, not enough to make out the words. Still, there was desperation in the echoing tone of her voice.
"Congratulations on defeating the direwolf. You now have fifty minutes."
Gray held a dripping gash to his arm where the direwolf had managed to graze him with its massive claws. Once again, he was wounded with no time to properly tend to it. He cast a bit of ice over his arm to slow down the bleeding. Then he grabbed hold of the bush to pull himself up and looked around at the maze corridor.
Which way had he been going?
Which wall was the left one?
He looked one way, then another down the endless passages of berry bushes. He began to panic. Which way had he just come from? There was no snow on the ground here to check his tracks.
"Dammit!" he shouted.
"Forty-nine minutes left. Just to let you know, your sweetheart has been frozen up to her knees. Did you hear her shout for you? She was crying in pain."
"Shut up!"
Gray picked a direction and ran. As the minutes ticked by, the maze counted them off. He hated hearing those numbers.
"Forty-two minutes. Forty-one minutes. Forty minutes left remaining. Your sweetheart has been frozen up to her waist. Her precious treasured area is encased in ice."
Precious treasured area? Gray hardly cared about that. He heard another female scream and realized it must be Lucy. Tears began to blind him. This maze seemed to never end, and now it was a true nightmare, unable to run fast enough, unable to get to her.
"Thirty-nine minutes."
"Shut the hell up!"

All was slowing down for Lucy. She felt like she had been lying in the snow for ages, immobile, gasping for air. The ice had come up to her chest, and she felt her whole body turning sluggish. She could barely move her chest enough to breathe. Her arms had also frozen over when she reached up to grab the icy ache in her heart. Now they stayed there, her hands pressed to her heart, as if pining for the man she hoped would come in time.
She still wondered about what Wisteria said. What were the words she wanted to hear? Shopping trip? New Celestial Spirit key? Free rent?
She could no longer move her hands, but if she could figure out what she wanted to hear that would break the spell, maybe she could leave Gray a clue.
"G-Gray..." she whispered, shivering. The minutes passed so slowly. Her heart thumped...thumped...thumped...so slow, so deliberate. "What...do I want...t-to hear?"
She wanted to simply see him, hear his voice, and feel his strong arms around her. She wanted to hold him and thank him for all he put up with. She wanted to say...
What?
"Gray..." she sobbed. Wisteria said he would not make it. He was so close. If she had just stayed inside, he would have made it here just fine. Now he had only a few minutes left.
Suddenly, she felt the ice creeping up again. She wanted to scream, but her lungs did not have room to move. Only a low groan escaped as the ice crackled up her throat. It was painful, but she still had hope.
Gray would make it.
He would save her.
She tried to smile as she told herself that. He would come. He would free her from the ice. And once she was free, she wanted no other ice on her skin but his. Gray's ice was okay, but this wicked ice magic was like being touched in a bad way.
She wanted Gray's touch.
She wanted his smile.
The ice went over her mouth as she thought those bittersweet desires, freezing a sad smile onto her face.

"You now have three minutes."
Gray was nearly blind with desperation. His lungs burned from running so frantically for almost an entire hour. His legs wanted to stop and rest, but the countdown kept drawing up more and more adrenaline, pushing him on. Blackness threatened his vision. He wondered if the racing of his heart was speeding up the poison. Still, he did not give in to the pain. His feet kept stomping onward
"Lucy?" he yelled.
"She can't respond. The ice has covered her mouth. That's why it's so silent. She could be right in front of you, but she can no longer shout for you. That way the couple doesn't cheat by having the man follow her voice. She tried to call out to you a while ago, but her frozen lungs made that rather impossible."
Gray hated the taunting. He made another corner, a sharp ninety-degree turn, only to see a dead end. He screamed but quickly continued on, trusting Lucy's advice about following the left wall all the way to the end.
"Follow the wall. Follow the wall!"
"Two minutes," the maze chimed. "At this point, her heart is beating only barely enough to keep her conscious, she can only breathe tiny breaths through her nose, and she is fully immobilized. At least she's no longer in pain. By now, her nerves have completely..."
"Shut up!" Gray snapped, racing onward. "Just shut the hell up. Come on, where does this damn maze end?"
"One minute. Shall I do a countdown? Fifty-two, fifty-one..."
"I said shut up!"

Back at the cabin, Lucy was encased in ice. Only her nose, eyes, and ears were still in the open. She could hear Gray's boots, but she could not call to him. All she could do was lie there, staring up at the dark winter sky, not even stars to gaze upon, just darkness as she waited.
I trust you, Gray. Even if you're too late, you'll find a way to free me. I know you will, because...I...
Then her eyes opened wide.
She knew it! She knew the words she wanted to hear him say. Those three special words.
And there was no way to give Gray a hint.

"Twenty, nineteen, eighteen..."
Gray felt tears in his eyes as he ran. Just a little more, he told himself. She had to be just around the next bend.
"Eleven, ten, nine..."
Gray couldn't believe it. There was no way he could let Lucy be frozen. No!
"Five, four, three..."
Gray saw a turn in the hedge up ahead. He ran with all of his might and grinned in relief. "Lucy, I'm..."
When he turned, it was yet another dead end.
"No," he whispered, shuddering in horror. "No, no...I..."
"Two, one. I'm sorry, but time is up. You lose. Lucy Heartfilia has been frozen. Game over. Thank you for playing."
Gray collapsed to his knees and stared straight ahead in disbelief. "Lucy," he whispered.
Her laugh came to his ears, and he saw the twinkle in her eyes. Then in his mind, he saw that joyful face turn blue and freeze over. Just like he had seen Ur turn to ice, so in his mind he saw Lucy freeze, crack, and become ice. Gray shook out the vision and forced himself back up to his feet.
"I'm not giving up. Even if I failed you...Lucy..." Tears dripped down his cheeks. "Even still, I'm not leaving you behind. I won't let that bastard take you away from me."
Resolutely, Gray kept onward. Even if she was frozen, he was an ice wizard. He would free her, simple as that.
"I'm coming, Lucy. You can yell at me later for being late." He plodded onward with defiance.

End of Chapter 7
- 6
- 7
- 8
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

I'd Freeze the Heavens for You