Title: Ortus
Author: DTaishou
Rating: T+
Summary: ONESHOT – Sequel to Inrequietus
.oOo.
Preparations, it seemed, had finally paid off. The potion had been completed to his explicit orders. The ingredients had arrived, and all that was left were the results. The fat blubbering idiot who dared to call himself his servant squealed shrilly to himself, and he suppressed the wince of annoyance. The rat was entirely too taxing upon his already frayed nerves. The Demon was there, presiding from a dark corner of the cemetery.
He retched at the thought of touching this rat and bemoaned that it was not the Demon instead who performed this ritual. But it required the flesh of a servant, and a servant she was not. His shriveled, mutilated excuse for a body was dumped none to carefully into the cauldron of bubbling liquid. It felt like oil to his scaly skin, slick and bubbling but hot as fire. He hissed against the fires that engulfed him but heard the words spoken by the rat all the same.
"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!"
Pity that line was written in that way. His father would have never contested to rejuvenating his worthless son, and he grinned the dripping grin all the same. The bastard must have rolled over in his grave. The fine powdery white drifted around his emaciated form and clung desperately to his skin. Scales. Skin. He couldn't tell the difference anymore.
"Flesh---of the servant---w-willingly given---you will---revive---your master."
The little bastard was faltering now. How droll. The slice of meat hung limply in the surrounding muck before latching onto him like a leech. He detested the face that he was forced to use the rat instead of perhaps the aristocrat. His properly groomed and cared for flesh would have given him a much more stable body. The Demon would have served his purpose far better than either of them, but again. She was not his servant to be used. She was his teacher, mentor, master, slave, familiar, Goddess. She was above such petty rituals, even if she herself had discovered it for him.
"B-blood of the enemy…forcibly taken…you will…resurrect your foe."
He was entirely too melodramatic. The aristocrat would have finished the ritual in half the time and still remained standing without pain upon his face for another hour and half. Despicable little rat. He found it endlessly amusing that the revolting little creature was still conscious. The tiny scarlet droplets glistened in the color that he adored before they were absorbed into his frail skin. All at once that delicious pain consumed him. Writhing, aching, burning, growing.
He grew and grew and the cauldron exploded around his body. He imagined the pieces piercing bodies. Blood everywhere. Screaming. He relished the mental tortures as he straightened. His vertebrae, too many for a normal man, cracked into place. Night air. Felt good against his hot flesh. Bare flesh. Pale skin, white skin.
"Robe me," he hissed in the cruel, cold voice of the Dark Lord. Silken pleasure wrapped around his tall form. Simple pleasure. He felt the faint caress of claws against his neck, fangs upon his earlobe. He reached into a deep pocket. Withdrew the wand. Yew. Thirteen inches. Phoenix core. He grinned that dripping grin of the Demon and laughed. High, cold, cruel laughter that shot shivers up his own spine and curled like black tendrils of whatever remained of his soul.
The Potter boy was here as well. The rat was nearing unconsciousness. He kicked the groveling form aside and sneered as it released a fresh howl. The Demon came forward in black coils and wrapped around his willowy frame. The weight of coils was replaced with the seductive press of supple womanly flesh. The Demon slammed him into the ground with bone-shattering force, and he relished the feeling of escaping rushing air. He was alive, truly alive.
"At long last, I have my Flight of Death in flesh," the Demon hissed from above him. He grinned that signature dripping grin, and as the Demon's tongue traced his teeth. Fangs. His time had been well spent in preparation for this moment. Her claws raked against scales upon his chest.
"Nagini," he hissed, and at once the weight of the Demon returned to coils. Neither time nor place to do such things. Best wait for a warm bed and cold stone walls. He climbed elegantly to his feet. Burden of the Demon upon his body, he observed the pale spidery thin hands. Slender digits, very long and delicate. Convincingly fragile but radiating the Dark magic he had bathed in during his prime. The Demon's fangs had drawn blood. He touched the ruby beads.
"The taint?" he whispered. Coils tightened satisfactorily.
"No longer exists."
"Hold out your arm, Wormtail," he said lazily. The rat blubbered and stumbled. He grasped the other arm and traced his mark, his mark, his mark. Black, black, black. Skull and snake, skull and snake. He grinned again. The rat released a howl of agony and he laughed in sadistic delight at the pain he wrought. The boy was wailing, too. Reminding him of the time fourteen years ago. Was it really that long ago?
"How many with be brave enough to return when they feel it?" he asked to seemingly no one but everyone. "And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?" The air was filled with popping and cracks as his followers made their appearances. He spoke with the child, his nemesis, but how demeaning it was to have a child as his enemy. The child would be powerful, he admitted, but not for a long while. Would that child even survive until then? It was hardly probable, but the chance remained. His people came, his Death Eaters answered their summons.
"Welcome, Death Eaters," said he. "Thirteen years…thirteen years since we last met. Yet you answer my call as though it were yesterday…We are still united under the Dark Mark, then! Or are we?" He tested them. Cruel and merciless he tested them until they broke, flinging their bodies upon the ground and begging for forgiveness. Oh how he relished this. The aristocrat was rather good at appearing confused and helpless. How entertaining.
"Salazar would be proud," the Demon hissed in his ear. He grinned, and his Death Eaters recoiled in horror. He couldn't hold in the mirthless, spiteful laughter that spilled from his lips before he turned on the boy and began slandering the child's story. Power reeked from him, a light, white power. His antithesis. The Potter child dared to stand against him, and the ensuing battle was ill performed but it hardly bothered him. The accumulation of his dormant power…it filled his veins, and even as the brat escaped, he could not bring himself to hold his fury for long.
"To Riddle Manor, my Death Eaters!" he hissed and felt the familiar grasp of claws in his robes before reappearing in his old chambers. They were dusty from disuse but slowly regained color. As the Demon slammed his newly revived form to the stones, she gave that dark grin.
"What is it that you wish of me, oh Dark Lord Voldemort?"
"Show me that I live."
"As my Lord commands."