Haruka & The Fairy Tail Guild
The clock ticked slowly towards midnight. In the silent, dark night, the train station was restless quiet as all eyes watched the clock hand move with agonisingly slow speed. The building was so quiet that each tick of the clockwork sounded like a sledgehammer.
The ticket officer was pacing. Magnolia's train station was mostly deserted, with only him, the conductor, and the night manager still on the premises. Still, the walls reeked of wrecked nerves and unspoken fear.
The man glanced towards the clock. It was now four minutes past twelve at the dead of night. In the last decade, the train station had had their fair share of delays, yet never seven in a row.
"Perhaps there's wreckage on the track," the night manager suggested with forced optimism.
"Then why haven't they called it?" The ticket officer said darkly, narrowing his eyes as he stared down the tracks. The communication lines had been eerily silent all evening. The station was as quiet as the grave.
The manager opened his mouth a few times to try and think of a reason. Finally, he settled for a lame, "I'm sure it'll be fine."
The minutes clicked by in painful silence. They were all twitching and nervous as the night seemed to grow even more ominous. The only sound was the frantic breathing as the night manager puffed cigarette after cigarette. It was nearly one by the time they all recognised the familiar rumble of the locomotive driving down the tracks.
The manager nearly collapsed in relief. All three men realised a breath they hadn't realised they were holding. "Thank god," he muttered in relief. "That'll be the 11.56 from Clover."
The rumbling became louder, but it was too dark to make out any details as the dark shape rolled along the tracks. It was the conductor who realized it first. Even in the gloom, he knew every train that passed through Magnolia by its engine alone.
The heavyset man shook his head in quiet dread. "That's not the 11.56," he muttered in terror. "That's the wrong bloody train…"
They all turned and stared. That was when the music began.
It started as softly as a breath of wind, like a giant animal exhaling gently in the night, but it grew in tempo slowly as the rhythm hit them. It was slow, raw, and steady, like the heartbeat of a monster, resonating gently in the wind. The noise carried a power that cut straight through the walls and into their skin. It was dark, mellow and rumbling.
If they had been in any condition to listen, then they would have recognised the sound as laughter. Instead, the men were too busy screaming as their souls were ripped out their bodies from the melody. Even the blood curdling screams were drowned out by the low rumble of that tune.
Above the town of Magnolia, the clouds churned and the wind became fierce while the train docked at the station with a tremendous groan.
Wooden feet shaped like talons touched the platform as Erigor calmly exited the train. The demon cast only a cursory glance at the men screaming in terror as he stared out into the gloom of the town.
"So this Magnolia…" Erigor muttered in a raspy voice. "What a nice place to catch some flies…"
Whatever shred of humanity there had been was soaked away as the Mage morphed further with Lullaby. He didn't even look remotely human any more. His body was made out of gnarly wood twisted into sharp edges, while two huge horns jutted outwards from Erigor's skull. His eyes were purple and almost bird-like, and his forehead was dominated by a third eye that gleamed with unnatural energy. His right arm was mangled and bent into the shape of a jutting scythe, and there was a gaping hole in the centre of his chest where his heart should have been.
With every breath, Erigor exhaled through the holes over his body, producing a shroud of dark wind that coated his skin, and the dark melody echoed around him. The very air seemed to shudder from the demonic tune.
The three men weren't screaming anymore. They were rolling on the ground; their faces red and their bodies twisted in nightmarish pain. Their ears were bleeding. Erigor barely even glanced at the ticket manager as he walked by, idli using his scythe arm to split his skull. The blood splattered over the ground.
The demon smirked as he turned to face the conductor, still sitting in his booth. Erigor took a large breath and inhaled, while the melody reached a nightmarish peak. The conductor gasped one final time just as his soul was yanked from its vessel, being sucked into Erigor's gaping mouth like a vacuum.
Erigor spat with disgust as he swallowed the soul. "Pathetic," he sneered in a demonic voice. "I'm sick of eating the souls of such weaklings. I want strong souls. I want souls soaking in Magical energy."
The doors of the train clicked open. Slowly, the lumbering shapes of the former Eisenwald members staggered out of the carriages. They were humanoid, more or less, but their eyes were vacant and empty while their skin had a rough, gnarly texture almost like bark.
A body that once belonged to Kageyama stumbled by him, and the demonspawn growled hungrily as it saw the thrashing body of the night manager. Erigor glanced at the only remaining human bemusedly, before holding up to halt Kageyama. The terrible melody paused and the air turned quiet.
The man shuddered as the song stopped and suddenly he could think again. He took one look at Erigor and the army of demons departing the train, before turning and running frantically towards the town. The terrified screams echoed through the night, even louder than the howling wind. Erigor just grinned as he watched the sleeping town slowly start to wake.
"Let's give them some warning that we have arrived," Erigor said with a hungry smile, running a tongue across jagged teeth. "All that fear and adrenaline—it makes the soul so nice and juicy ."
The demonspawn didn't respond. They were just husks, after all, with no personality remaining. They were just dead bodies animated by the Lullaby still echoing through their skulls. Erigor looked at his former guildmates with mild contempt, before reaching a decision.
"You lot attack first," he ordered, causing the demonspawn to shamble towards the town. "Soften them up for me. I want them to be terrified."
The monsters lurched slowly down the stones towards the exit of the building, filing through the ticket machines. Erigor never had high expectations of them, but he might as well make them useful. They were all expendable.
Across Magnolia, the wind roared like a beast, slowly swirling into a huge typhoon circling the town. An enormous wall of wind completely sealed the town. Erigor chuckled, causing the melody to thunder off the walls as he watched the demons descend.
"Come on, flies…" He growled hungrily, focusing on the lights of the Fairy Tail guild hall in the distance. Even as a demon, his hatred of the legal Guilds never faded. "…Let's make a feast out of this!"