User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail Chapter 485: Five Days' Worth of Food, Review/@comment-4449950-20160517014639/@comment-7418318-20160517072548

"I'll keep this short" she says and then goes off to write the longest post on the comments. ^^

As usual it's point on what you said, except one thing. There is the possibility that August will refuse to negotiate, but will still let the FT mages go back to the guild... asssuming Lucy can keep Natsu from suicide-charging him after the refusal.

I know it doesn't make too much sense for him to not just straight-out annihilate them, but if August is like Brandish described him, it might happen. They did treat Brandish well and didn't kill Jacob after all, so that might be enough reason for him to at least allow them to return to the guild instead of instand-death.