Note: Written for the QLFC Round 3
Prompt: Write a story using your team name (In this instance, Kestrels.) Additionally, my word count restriction was 1501-1750.
Position: Beater 2
BETA: I'm a Nerd and Proud
Word Count: 1,519
Igor Karkaroff sped over the moor as quickly as he dared push the rickety broom that supported him. He had stolen it from a small magical town many miles back, and while it often shot him in the wrong direction or sputtered to a stop, it was far better than walking. As much as Karkaroff liked to believe he was making progress, he know that the Dark Lord could Apparate to his location in an instant, and the broom seemed interminably slow compared to the instant transport that his master was capable of.
The Dark Lord… Even the thought of the name made Karkaroff shudder. The air seemed to drop in temperature until he was left shivering, hands clenched to his broom as the ice climbed from the tips of his fingers to his heart, chilling him to the bone. Even the thought of his previous master was a small act of rebellion and he forced it aside, chiding himself. The Dark Lord was behind him, Karkaroff assured himself. The Dark Lord would never find him, especially if Karkaroff was traveling without the aid of magic. He would be untraceable.
His hopeful thoughts were extinguished, though, when he saw the looming thunderheads spread over the moor, their dark shadows like a perverse embrace, swallowing him whole. No, the Dark Lord stood over him, watching with his serpentine eyes, teeth bared in a grisly smile.
Karkaroff trembled and leaned forward on his broom, which earned a low groan as he strained the enchantments even more. He needed to go faster, he needed speed, the speed to evade the clutches of his master, where he could never be found again.
A low crackling and moaning roared from the clouds above as they darkened like a bruise, shifting from deep greens to an ugly purple. Lips twisting in a sneer, Karkaroff turned his eyes away from the sky and focused instead on the ground that rocketed past him, piles of slate-gray rocks and low grasses stretching on for an eternity.
Karkaroff had been riding for hours, days, but he felt no trace of fatigue. The chilling fear guided him, the ice frigid against his frantic heart. Days were nothing to him – he simply had to move on.
A whistle of wind sounded over the rumbling thunder and Karkaroff shivered again, not from the fear but from the physical cold. His clothes, once fine and well-maintained, had been reduced to tatters from exposure to the cruel elements. His boots were worn with holes in the soles, his cloak pitted with more gaps than a fishing net. The wind slipped through the seams, raced across his skin raised with gooseflesh. Karkaroff would have given his wand, his very soul for a warm meal by the fireplace, but his fantasies were improbable. He would, most likely, never sit in an armchair by the fire again.
A sharp cry echoed over the moor and Karkaroff's veins spiked with terror, his cold-numbed hands fumbling for his wand. Once he had drawn the thin stick of wood from his coat pocket the cry echoed again. With a sharp tug to the left Karkaroff slowed the racing speed of his broom, digging his boots into the grass to reduce his momentum, until the broom slowed to a complete stop.
The moor was silent, save Karkaroff's beating heart and rasping breath magnified tenfold in his ears, each inhale like a thunderclap, each exhale a strike of lightning. He tried to recall the cry of the creature, remembering a thousand mythical beasts of torture and demise he had encountered over his studies of the Dark Arts. Was it a thestral, with knobbled limbs and stretched, blackened skin, ready to devour him? Or perhaps a dementor to rip out his soul? Karkaroff wondered how much of an affect the dementor would have on him – he felt as though he could grow no colder, and his situation might be made easier if he were to die rather than face the tortures of the Dark Lord.
If he were to die…
The cry sounded again, fierce and intimidating, a throaty call of challenge. Mustering up what little courage he still possessed, Karkaroff raised his wand before him and turned in a slow circle. Every blade of grass he examined with scrutiny, as if it were holding hidden dangers yet to be revealed. The Karkaroff of the past would have roared with laughter at his foolish antics, his ridiculous appearance, but the time for laughing was now gone. He had probably forgotten how to under the agonizing stress of his journey.
"Who's there?" Every syllable was an ordeal as Karkaroff forced the rasping words from his parched throat, his voice trembling and cracking. As if in response the cry sounded again, followed by another overlapping sound – the beating of wings.
Karkaroff's heart fluttered with fear and he raised his wand higher, his hand trembling so much that it was a wonder he didn't drop the thin bit of wood. "I warn you, I'm armed!"
He hadn't spoken in so long, for fear that the Dark Lord could somehow hear him, how he would rush to the moor in a blur of shadow and darkness, angular fingers curling over his wand to utter the final curse. Karkaroff shrank back towards where his broom lay, panic overtaking him, and clasped his other hand over his wand hand to stay the tremors.
"Come out!" He shouted, and in a cacophony of whirling sound hundreds of bird took flight all around him, wings beating, frantically reaching towards the sky.
Karkaroff fell to his knees as the kestrels swarmed above him, filling the storm-charged air with their masses. Feathery wings battered his head and chest as he cowered, face pressed against the damp grass, tears prickling his eyes. Claws dug at his tattered clothing, tearing the fabric mercilessly, and the screeching cries of the kestrels filled his ears until he feared he would never hear anything other than their trumpets of war bellowing, bellowing forever.
With the same swiftness they had appeared they were gone, the only remnant of their flight the feathers they left behind, drifting to the moor like a sparse bout of snow.
Karkaroff stared, tears coursing down his cheeks for reasons he himself did not know. His wand had fallen from his hands but he left it lying in the grass, hands instead outstretched, watching as the last kestrel flew over a patch of boulders and out of sight.
A resounding thunderclap boomed over Karkaroff's head and it began to rain.
As the heavens emptied their waters from the firmament down upon him. Karkaroff raised himself, staggering slightly as he stood, and took his wand in his hand. Already the grip was slick with mud and the water that pumped down from the sky with fervor. He couldn't live like this, a life where a flock of birds brought him nightmare, damnation, a life where he could never settle, never still the beating of his heart. He had been a fearful man before, but now fear controlled him. It guided him, pulling on his strings, just hard enough to make them snap.
The rain drenched him, dumping down from the heavens with the sole purpose to drown him. In mere moments his clothes were soaked through, ragged as they were, and the chill overtook him again that he trembled uncontrollably, knees knocking together in a steady metronome. The world to Karkaroff was dark and cold, full of rain pumped from the skies, rain that filled his lungs and drowned him, thundered through his veins. He was a being of ice and frost as the frigid air rushed over him, and he wondered if he would ever be warm again. Water coursed over his hair, trickled down his face in rivulets, tracing tracks like so many tears as they fell.
Stop this foolish nonsense, he cursed himself, but his teeth stamped against each other and chattered against his will, so he could not utter his foul oaths. He might not be able to invoke the spell...
The words were on his tongue, but he was terrified to utter them. The words that would trumpet the end to Igor Karkaroff, just like the kestrels had trumpeted their exit, so would his death song play. An existence free of the Dark Lord, even in death, was not much of an existence at all, but it was better than the crushing, chilling, consuming dread.
Maybe, he thought with the smallest smile, maybe it will be better that way. Maybe I'll finally be free.
Free like the kestrels, whose wings lifted them above the heavens.
Determined in his decision, Karkaroff raised the tip of his wand to his temple just as a shard of lightning pierced the atmosphere, arced through the thunderheads and sounded its percussive blast. The explosion was so loud that it disguised the sharp crack of a familiar sound, the sound of Apparition.
As the first syllable fell from Karkaroff's lips the jet of a green spell collided with his chest, and all was nothing.