I had the priviledge to do a little writing collab with @queenbutterfly276 about Sera's becoming, and had a lot of fun with it (though admittedly I had to go back to read some of the manga chapters because I had forgotten about a lot of the events of the fights ^^' but honestly it was a nice journey back into the manga)
Summary: The final battle in Clover ensues, the stakes are high, and Sera struggles a little bit with her emotions and feeling that what she can do, might not be enough. But it doesn't mean that she wouldn't try. And she does try, and succeeds in becoming Fire from Flesh
Characters: Sera, Ingrid, Aaron, canon cast, Solara makes a brief appearance (as does Adlai as her friend)
Length: ~4.8k
The air around the kingdom shifted. The wind felt wrong and harsh to her ears. Sera kept pausing on the path to look behind her at the source of the feeling. But she couldn’t see anything that particularly looked wrong about Clover.
Her friends had noticed her anxious turns. Aaron himself had stopped a few times, grasping at the grimiore on his hip. The rough texture seemed to ground him as the kingdom suddenly went dead silent.
Then, they saw them.
The paladins.
They descended down from the skies, behind the clouds that had formed a layer, almost as if a blanket, suffocating and heavy. If she had stopped to think about it for longer, then maybe she would have tasted a kind of irony in it. The paladins descended down from the high heavens to murder and mangle all that they held dear, as if it was a divine judgement delivered from a higher being, while in reality it was the making of a mortal man. How exactly he had made this into a reality, Sera didn’t really know, nor did she particularly care. The world was a strange place. She herself wasn’t quite human. And sometimes the unlikeliest of things became the most logical of outcomes.
But nothing of this made sense. Nothing about this was logical.
It just felt wrong.
Sera felt like she probably should have felt more confident. More sure. They would make it. They would win. But even though she didn’t dare admit it, there was a creeping feeling of doubt. Maybe because Mereo, too, had been so serious.
She was rarely serious. At least in this way. And Sera was made out of her fire, so maybe that was why she, too, was rarely serious like that.
But now Sera tightened her fist and grit her molars together.
Ingrid must’ve noticed it, because she gave her a look. Aaron’s hand was still grasping his grimoire, but his body was much more tense than a moment ago.
In these few seconds that feel like minutes.
And Sera… Sera began feeling really… really ticked off within the few breaths in between the stagnant air of the moment. Because how in the ever living hell did they dare come here, to her home, her friends’ home, and act like they were better based on some kind of a made up idea of what was good and right?! How dare they?! The insult and the downright stupidity of it.
Words formed on her tongue. But instead of shouting them out, the fire that burnt within her, condensed the words into a whisper, a growl in her throat, like fire collecting in a closed space prior to the moment of explosion.
“Fuck. You.” She spoke just under her breath as her eyes narrowed.
The flames in her heart welled up into a mass of rage. Her grimiore expanded and her mass of spells flew through her thoughts. She didn’t need to speak, just had to pick one and launch herself at those monsters.
And so she did.
Hot flames covered her fist as she kicked off the ground at the nearest paladin and struck.
Her friends stirred into action in an instant. Ice surrounded her peripheral vision and she watched as the stones cracked and broke with the mixture of heat and cold into thousands of pieces. The sight of the bastards made her scowl turn upwards for a second.
She was going to kill these monsters for even considering harming her home.
The stir of her flames made her body feel energized and ready for the harsh battle she had entered. Underneath her, she could sense the shifting of the soil as Aaron and the earth spirit tore down anything in the sky. Their geographical changes to the terrain helped her push herself higher into the air.
Then she felt a familiar presence before it flickered away at lighting speed.
Her fire reached towards the movement, coating her arms in whirls of orange and yellow. The shaky form from her battle against Zenon slowly covered her body but it felt larger, angrier. Bigger as her rage at their audacity grew.
Suddenly, she couldn’t sense the earth moving anymore.
And Ingrid let out a scream.
Below her, Aaron was gone and one of the lone angels was in his place. The ice mage was far too close to that creature than Sera ever wanted her to be.
They… they threw Aaron, her friend, her team, part of her home, away like trash. And now they wanted to take Ingrid with them too.
Her heart burned with something hotter than melted lava as she took in the distance between them. She kicked off one of the stone beasts in the sky and threw herself into the frenzy without a care for planning.
The fire only wanted to kill.
The fire that burned and ached and … lived.
Because she did live. The fire within her did live and was alive for her family, for her friends and loved ones, and those that stood by her. She might have been a being, not entirely human, made from fire and mana and life.
Fire was something… not quite tangible. It wasn’t something that fits into a box. It wasn’t something with exact dimensions, but it breathed and grew with her, within her, and around her. But even if it did… it still felt … not quite enough. Not big enough. Not sturdy enough. As if there was something in there that didn’t yet quite know how to be.
It wasn’t a question of mana, she thought. Because there was all this mana around them. All of this within her like a tool she didn’t quite know how to wield well enough for her liking. No matter how many stone monstrosities of mockery on all that was good and true shattered under the heat of her fire.
She felt a surge of familiar mana close by.
That of Mereoleona.
In Spade Mereoleona had nearly mastered something… turning her body into mana. Becoming a creature of fire.
If it had been almost any other point of time, Sera might have found irony in it.
Her becoming flesh from fire, and Mereo becoming fire from flesh.
Materia into mana. Life into mana.
Because they weren’t the same things. Materia, mana, life, and magic. But they did overlap. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here.
And the more she burned, the more she felt alive while trying to clutch onto the world; the world that she didn’t want to slip from between her fingers. A world where Aaron hadn’t died in vain. Where Ingrid wasn’t holding onto dear life. Where Mereo’s flames didn’t burn with something that almost bore a hint of desperation within it. Because sometimes hunger and desperation hold similar tastes.
Sera’s fire was angry. It was furious and it burned her bones as her knuckles were white. It was hungry. It was alive. And it was… just a tiny bit desperate.
She needed this.
Whatever ‘this’ was.
She needed her fire to be more. She needed the breath in her body to be more, give life to something in her mana, in her magic, so that she could scorch and melt and scream out her curses to the wretched beings that were crumbling under her fists one by one, even if not fast enough.
The only saving grace was that as she burned, no tears could be shed. No emotions other than rage could consume her in this form, if only to push her harder into the battle. The violence didn’t feel like it did in Spade.
She felt no guilt for they were less human than she was.
In the sky, she caught sight of angels falling onto the ground in burning chunks. The mana around her flowed and followed until the surrounding area looked like ash from a volcanic eruption.
In the distance, she could sense a calmer area. Her flames allowed her to traverse the air like the sharpest of birds. She lowered herself in front of her sobbing friend.
If Sera was the purest flame, Ingrid would’ve looked like the first frost in winter. Everywhere she stepped, the earth froze into sharp icicles. She looked at her, in her purest form possible, and still walked forward to embrace her.
”I-i, they just moved so fast. He was there and then he wasn’t. G-golem was with him s-so do you think?”
Do you think he could have survived? That was the question she couldn’t quite ask.
Sera felt her body stutter and she summoned every bit of poise that Nozel had taught. It barely worked but she choked out the best response she could.
”If he’s alive, he’s too far away for me to sense him. But he’s a spirit’s host, Golem will protect him.”
That seemed to reassure her friend, if only for a second. As Sera glanced around, she noticed the dark red stain that was growing on on Ingrid’s dress.
”We need medics.”
The area was clear for now, but those bastards were still up in the air ready to strike at any moment. Waiting for her to let down her guard.
The flames surrounded her once more as she helped her friend into her arms. The hot anger was present, but she felt them merge with the coolness the ice mage naturally gave off.
She had always loved it when it was too cold out and she could hold her friends until they warmed up. Now it just felt hollow.
They had to keep moving, no matter what.
And it meant trying to kill more of the angels on their way to the medics if it was possible. Which wasn’t ideal in any sense of the word. But they couldn’t exactly avoid them either given how they swirled around in the sky.
The medics would probably be closer to the castle, away from the walls of the city. Running around like crazy, trying to do as much as possible, just like everyone else. Of course there was the off chance that some of them would have wound up closer to them in their haste, but it seemed unlikely. Which meant that it would be a …longer way than Sera would have liked.
The stain was growing too fast.
Ingrid must’ve seen the look in Sera’s eyes as they made their way forward, Sera’s arms and flames around her, because she concentrated a little bit of her mana around herself. Like a sheet of frost or a blanket of snow.
“I got it,” Ingrid tried. “I heard-, cold helps slow down bleeding,” she said, trying to sound confident.
Sera wasn’t as convinced.
But Ingrid wanted to believe that it was true, that it wasn’t so bad, and she wanted to believe that she could make Sera feel better.
And Sera didn’t want to argue against.
Ingrid was trying to take care of her, despite being the one injured.
It was always easier to take care of others than yourself.
So Sera just nodded. She wasn’t sure what she would have said, if she had said anything.
All she knew was that Ingrid was slightly shivering. Maybe from the shock. Maybe from the blood loss. Sera doubted it was from the cold of Ingrid’s own magic.
But she didn’t stop to think about it as they made their way forward. And the further they got, the closer they got, the more it felt there were angels around. The more the battle raged on around them.
“There”, Ingrid pointed as Sera was eyeing the area for an immediate threat swooping on them.
The medics’ cloaks came into sight, but their mana was all over the place. Sera felt a familiar flutter that tried to be more, that tried to stretch more.
In that moment an angel swept down, closer to them, but Sera’s fire burned. She spun around half a circle while still holding Ingrid in one arm and punched that stone cold creature right in the face, making its form crumble and pieces fly all around them.
Ingrid shook more while clutching onto Sera.
The stain was dripping onto the cobble stones of the city.
“Medic!” Sera yelled and caught the attention of one of the hooded figures nearby.
His eyes shifted between the person he was tending to, and Ingrid for a moment. His mana fluttered. Perhaps to end a spell. After which he rushed over.
Sera felt herself lowering her friend into the arms of the medic in a rush. She didn’t want to hurt Ingrid more but she also didn’t want to waste time. The anxiety of inhuman eyes searching made the flames behind her neck burn hotter.
But most seemed distracted by the larger fights around them. As the medics crowded around her friend, Sera took a quick scan of the ground around her.
The hoods made it difficult to recognize anyone but she saw the robes of other squads swarming in and out of the surrounding area. She felt the comforting aura of healing magic flowing through the citizens as they rushed past her.
In the distance, she heard some of the medics leading people into a group.
”Citizens, head this way. We’re forming a group to get away from the battlefields. Any injured that wish to leave can join but it has to be soon!”
Get as many innocents out before they get killed. She watched as multiple groups pushed past her as she floated there. Only one caught her eye as she walked by.
She was the blonde woman she had seen near the Vermillion captain many times. If she remembered correctly, she was supposed to be expecting soon. She sensed a shift in the woman’s mana at the same second she flinched downwards. Her friend caught her arm before anything could happen.
”Are you okay, Lara?”
”Yes, the baby just kicked. I’ll be better once we evacuate.”
The confirmation of another human being in danger by these angels made her feel sick to her stomach. She lifted herself away from the group and towards where Ingrid was being treated. Her friend gave her a sad smile when she approached.
“There’s a group evacuating the citizens and those too injured to fight. It’s only a bit away, we can get there if we start leaving.”
”No.”
The response wasn’t a surprise to her, not a bit. The ice mage held eye contact with her as her wound was stitched back into its natural place, piece by piece. The horrible red stain remained ever present in Sera’s sight.
”I can keep fighting, besides, we need to hold back the angels long enough to find Aaron.”
The idea of finding their friend filled her with both hope and dread. She had experienced death before, she had killed before but this felt different. Fire was not meant to feel the same way humans did but she knew if she were to discover any of her home’s bodies, she would burn this world to the ground. Maybe that was what they called love.
The will to do anything to keep someone safe.
She hoped that was correct. Sera couldn’t dwell on that for much longer, as the angels appeared to be moving closer to the capital. Ingrid placed a cold hand on her shoulder, not flinching at the sight of flames enveloping her skin. She nodded and Sera pushed into the air and flew.
Pushed. Or climbed. In ways it felt like climbing. Like she was climbing up with every angel that came in her way. Closer and closer to something.
Maybe that something was just the roar of familiar mana not too far from where she was. But there was something… wrong… in it.
And as Sera glanced further towards where Mereo was, that was when it made sense.
Only that it didn’t make sense.
The burning flesh. The stench of it.
And whatever creature it was that was before Mereoleona. A monstrosity with tentacle-like arms, much less of a human than Sera was.
The Crimson Lion Kings… burning, crumbling, as Mereo pushed through.
Her mana was roaring. Her mana was becoming… her. It felt like Mereo was more mana than human.
But that wasn’t what made it feel wrong.
That feeling came from the sacrifice of their peers.
But every sacrifice allowed Mereo to get closer. So there was a kind of twisted relief in it. That it wasn’t in vain.
There was a purpose.
No matter the personal cost, Sera thought.
That … that must’ve been love. That must’ve been the feeling she was feeling.
Because this was her home. These people were her home. And her peers felt the same.
She could feel the emotions rising from her throat, all the way behind her eyes, where the anger and grief and love combined into a weird, absolutely strange mixture of emotions that rolled down her cheek as a single tear.
But that feeling also made her fire burn brighter, larger, stronger. If that was what it’d take, she would burn, and burn and burn and burn as hot as she could so that the stone that were the angles would crumble under the immense heat. She would turn stone into liquid. Into dust. Into something far less than these winged coffins of false truths.
However, she wished that before she did, she’d at least get to see Aaron. That he would arrive with his golem, and she’d know that her home was alive.
She knew she had to survive long enough to see.
Follow the flames.
Mereo was still burning, crashing, and killing the angels with speed she didn’t think was possible for a human. She could match it and guard her back as they struck at the stones again and again.
There wasn’t time for speaking, only battle. And she knew the woman understood, the hard look in her eyes as each sacrifice aided her power to destroy any enemies that got in her way.
In the distance, across the border, Sera could feel the earth shifting.
Familiar, but not quite her home.
She could see people dressed in white as they exited from the Diamond border. One person moved the earth like it was her own flesh. That was the familiar mana but why-
Something in her peripheral moved.
One of the angels got too close, in her second of hesitation, but it never reached her as the earth itself swallowed it whole. One of the paladins, the broken humans, had shouted something that she didn’t make out.
But then, she heard Mereo cackle behind her. And Sera looked to the ground for the first time during that battle.
And there she saw Aaron.
And he saw her as well.
There was blood but she knew he could see her because his eyes were shining like lamps and because he cracked a smile to meet her gaze. The golem was in its truest form, the earth incarnate, ready to become a tidal wave of power at any moment's notice.
“I got this! Don’t worry bout little ol’ me!”
Something about his tone made her believe that. Sera let herself follow the fire instead of the earth as she let Mereo lead her into the heart of the danger.
Blazing past the dying stone, she realized how many of them there were. And how many of them had been destroyed while the paladins were held off. She could make out the center of the capital in the distance while up above was the devil user, locked in an eternal conflict with that false idol.
It took all of her willpower to not break away and crush the man that hurt her home. But she knew that in doing so, she’d be letting down Ingrid and Aaron’s trust in her. They didn’t get hurt for her to throw herself into a more dangerous fight.
She could see a small group looking up at one of the paladins and she glanced towards Mereo. The stench of burning flesh never left the woman but the heat overwhelmed her form.
In her heart, Sera knew that she wouldn’t survive after all of this. And it pained her to realize it as she watched the first human to embody mana itself burn away slowly. She wondered if Mereo knew, or cared.
Though if Sera had to guess… she would have guessed that Mereo didn’t care. She was going down with her squad. Because while she wasn’t a captain, she was still a lion. Her squad was her pride.
She was going to go down with them.
Acceptance.
That must’ve been it.
Accepting the inevitable, out of love.
And she felt that… she understood the feeling.
Neither of them would get out. They’d both go out in a blazing glory of the battle, for the sake of their loved ones.
And that would be okay.
But… perhaps more importantly, for the sake of the goal, if Mereo, someone who was fully human, could turn into mana. Then Sera… who was little less human than Mereo, but a whole lot of more human than this … thing… calling itself Morris. The being that yelled and taunted and made fun of them both.
“YOU WILL FAIL! I WAS SENT BY GOD!”
Sera wanted to punch the bastard right in the face. Wipe that grin off of it.
Aaron’s golem swung at the angels, shattering dozens of them in an instant, and roared with a deep and earthy roar. Though Sera thought it must’ve been Aaron’s anger coming through.
Sera closed her eyes, with acceptance, and clenched her fists just a little tighter, though she didn’t think it possible. And let her mana envelope her further. As if to consume. She had lived long enough to know that Aaron was fine.
He’d be fine. Ingrid would be fine.
Now she could burn. She could burn with her entire spirit. And she accepted it. She could burn with all her anger and her love combined.
There was a flash of light.
A paladin.
One that bore the face of the Black Bull’s vice captain. But it wasn’t him. A brother maybe. Sera didn’t particularly care.
That was a paladin. Enemy. An obstacle in the way of her home’s continued life.
Sera slammed her body into the monster’s side as hard as she could, bringing it down to the decimated earth below. The paladin hadn’t noticed her before but he certainly did now.
Don’t give those things a second to react.
Her fists filled with fury and fire entwined as she struck the monster below her, never stopping. She felt something dark and wrong manifesting behind her and for a moment, she hesitated.
And the paladin smiled cruelly as it tore open part of her shoulder.
Pushing back, she felt her body get sucked into something dark and heavy. Shadows, she realized.
The Black Bulls vice pulled her out of his mana, looking worse than her. A dark haired woman grabs at her shoulder but stops as she sees the flames licking off her body.
She wondered if she was feeling the pain in the same way a human would. Likely not. The fire around her pulled itself back together into its proper shape as she stood.
The thing, the wrongness from before, stood clocked in darkness and welded a blade ready to fight that paladin.
The Black Bulls captain and a devil had joined forces.
As he leapt forward, she lifted herself up to join before the girl called out.
“Hit him from behind! I’ll cover and Nacht will move me across!”
Nacht showed his agreement by allowing his shadows to take form around the battle field, caging the two men who were fighting inside.
Sera moved to strike from behind as the Black Bulls captain and Nacht attacked from the front. The speed at which the attacks were launched was almost too much for Sera to keep up.
Light was one of the fastest mana types. And darkness, its opposite, was mirroring it. Darkness. Absence of light. Present where light hadn’t quite yet gotten. Against each other.
The paladin gave her a smile and a look from over his shoulder, but it didn’t seem to think her as, as much of a threat as the Bulls before it.
And it ticked Sera off.
The black haired woman joined them, casting Black Heavens over them as spells were thrown at such incredible speed Sera had to pull everything she could from her mana. Somewhere in the distance she felt a roar of fire.
Fire that was …alive than just fire.
And whatever it was, in that moment where she didn’t have time to think. Just feel. Barely realise. Her body. Her spirit. They knew that… that was what she needed to become.
She needed to become fire. Fire and flame that were alive.
It might not be enough, but that was all she could do.
So while the spells flew around. They were going against the smiling faced Paladin, 4 to 1.
Her flames took a shape of her body. Or her body took the shape of fire.
She wasn’t afraid. She welcomed it.
Fire that breathed. Fire that had a will. This was her becoming.
And she would destroy everything in her wake.
If light and darkness were equals, fire was the product of light. Which meant that it had the potential to be greater than it.
To burn brighter.
To scorch everything she wished into ashes.
And at that monstrosity to burn with her.
Distracted by the onslaught of attacks, the paladin hadn’t spared her more than a brief glance. That was his mistake to make. And it will be his last.
The flames grew bigger and harsher as she latched onto the angel and pulled at every seam she could. There wasn’t the sight of burning flesh but it melted like overheated stone.
The sad attempt at a grimiore stopped flipping its pages and she felt the shadows close in around her. She pushed herself up into the sky, kicking the now melted abomination down towards the Black Bulls captain.
“KILL IT NOW!”
The thing attempted one last mutation but not before the sight of purest black sliced through its throat. If it had blood, it would’ve choked. But it simply crumbled away into dust. It might’ve said something but Sera did not hear nor care at that moment.
She could see the same dust gathering in the distance. The others had won. Above them, she could hear crashes as the wind picked up around them.
The battle against Lucius was ending. She felt herself sink to the ground, away from the group but close enough that they could call for her if need be.
There was something comforting in the thought. That she was still close enough to everyone. That was still there, to see it all to the end.
She knew it’d be alright.
And so she smiled.
She smiled a smile that wasn’t quite happy. It wasn’t just content. And it wasn’t just accepting. There was a kind of a sadness in it as well, because… if she could have had one more wish, then perhaps it would have been to see her friends, her home, after all of this too. See how they’d grow. How they’d live.
See them happy.
So she couldn’t claim to feel only happiness. Only acceptance. But they were there too.
She had gotten the one wish that she had held throughout the battle. That they’d win. And that was what mattered.
She shouldn’t be so greedy as to want something more still.
Her body began fading away. She was losing a grip of her senses.
Is this what dying feels like…
A passing thought. Almost like going to sleep.
Almost.
….
…
..
There was a flash of light.
And she stared at the ground.
At her hands.
At the stones of the streets that were intact.
For a moment she wondered if this was some kind of a hallucination made up by her imagination, but as she saw her friends, her family, everyone who should have lived. She felt the weight of her body.
Here’s some drawings I’ve done of Roger and my OC for this AU and timeline, Solara.
In this AU, Rouge doesn’t exist for Solara is the one in her place, she’s Roger’s lover and Ace’s mother. She’s also the user of the Flame fruit, which in this AU Ace genetically inherited the abilities from Solara. And she’s also apart of the Roger Pirates. And Ace’s style is clearly inspired from his mama, as is the greasy look.
At last, I finally finished the art with Solara ( @thoughtfullyrainynightmare )! ✨
I’m so sorry it took me longer than expected, dear, but I created this piece especially for your beautiful mini-fanfic. Thank you so much — and thank you for letting me bring Solara to life through my drawings. I always love drawing her, especially her gorgeous hair! 💕
Luna: "Heheheeheheee! Solahahahara! Plehehehease stahahahap!"
Solara: "I told you not to eat the mushrooms, but you didn't listen and flew right into this web! Someone has to teach you a lesson!"
Luna: "I'm sahahahaharry! I lehehehearned my lehehehesson!"
Solara: "Hmm, I don't know if you have. Better tickle these smooth armpits of yours just a little bit longer just to be safe..."
