Greed
Disclaimer: I do not own Rwby or Harry Potter.
Prologue: Last Step, First Step
"I know you are here ssssomewhere!" The serpentine monster, longer than a road train and about as thick around with scales as black as the Abyss it looked like it was spawned from, hissingly roared out, the beast's voice a distorted mockery of humanity edged with ophidian venom and enraged malice. into the driving rain that fell from the immovable black clouds that loomed over the now skeletal cityscape of the once bustling city of London.
"Come out!" The beast howled in rage, the creature's immense blunt snout twisting to and fro as it allowed its black scaled and heavily scarred visage to cut through the darkness, a lone orb of bloody scarlet piercing the shadows in a search for the prey that it knew was nearby. Where the enraged scarlet orb's twin might have been there was only a gaping hole, fresh and recent and still dripping black oily gore like an obscene mixture of shadows and blood, a sign of the power of the prey that the hellish monster sought.
The massive creature halted its lengthy scaly body in the middle of what might have been a busy thoroughfare just under a decade ago, whipping its snout back and forth as it balefully glared down the two ruined roads, more pothole and puddle and rusting hulks of vehicles than asphalted passageway, and let the rest of its immense length coil around it to the point it looked like a massive rearing cobra.
An enraged hiss emerged from its fanged maw as it saw and sensed nothing but only the rain diffused traces of its prey, enough to know that what it hunted was somewhere close but not enough to pinpoint its quarry's trail let alone its prey's presence.
"Come out, boy!" The obsidian skinned serpent howled, a desperate rage tinged with more than a hint of madness and insanity in every syllable, the voice of a beast at the end of its tether and tugging at the weakening chain leash that was barely holding it together.
...barely. What was left of it anyway.
High above the howling serpent, perched on a small section of still standing floor of an otherwise collapsed building, a shrouded figure's emerald gaze glared down at the dark skinned monster with all the intent of a predator stalking its prey. Waiting.
Knowing that the opportunity, the chance to end this near half a decade long game of cat and mouse within the ruined city of England, would soon reveal itself.
Soon.
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The hidden figure barely moved as he crouched in his chosen position, the rubble of the broken keeping him hidden from sight. The weather, cold and stormy and pouring wet, did the rest.
"Come out and facccce me, Coward!" The howled and hissed words of his writhing and twisting adversary below reached him through the rain that pounded down and the thunder that rumbled and crackled across the dark sky. Beneath his hooded cloak, his mouth twisted, too dark to be called anything light hearted like a smile or a grin and too bitter, too jaded, to be called a smirk. It was an expression of bloody satisfaction, the bared teeth of a predator that saw their prey practically walking into waiting jaws.
But, otherwise, he remained silent and still, patiently waiting, refusing to answer to the enraged monster's, who had once (supposedly) been human so many years ago, taunts. He was no longer the impetuous youth, the Golden Boy of Bravery and Courage, that leapt in feet first, recklessly, into danger. Time and Experience and that most effective and unforgiving of teachers, Pain, had taught him better. There were times when Bravery, Courage and Valour had to give way to Cunning, Deception and Ruthlessness if one wished to succeed in life.
Killing a hideously powerful monster intent on having his guts for a gory crown was one of those times.
For a time, all that could be heard within the small section of the city was the effects of the everlasting storm overheard and the increasingly harsh hissing of the scaly monster below. The hidden man stayed quiet, waiting for the right moment to act. A moment that, knowing the monster, his long time enemy, below, would come very shortly.
The damned snake never had the greatest amount of patience when his temper was roused. Something that tearing out an eyeball, wounding him, would have most definitely done.
The monster didn't like being reminded of his mortality.
His patience was rewarded when a hissing shriek shattered the stormy evening, clearly heard even above the constant thunder and lightning, as the thin leash of the monster's temper snapped like a thread. A quick glance with emerald gaze over the broken wall confirmed that it was the moment he had been waiting for.
"Fine, Coward!" The monstrous serpent howled, the length of the creature's massive body seeming to warp as an eerie dark mist seemed to gather over it, the atmosphere suddenly filled with a power that seemed to be made of corruption and malice, making the rain feel like a fetid poisonous was slime dripping down his back. The hidden man couldn't help but let his body give a shiver of disgust.
The monster's power said it all. Whatever that entity had once been, there was nothing human beneath that scaled hide, either in flesh or in spirit. It truly was nothing more than a monster.
"Fine. If you wissssh to hide like a rat," the man's emerald gaze narrowed as he saw the dark miasma of the monster's power sink back in to the creature's body, seeping back through the minute gaps in its scales. As it did so, the obsidian scales seemed to distort and bulge, looking like lesions, sores and pustules were forming beneath the beast's unnatural armour. A disgusting sight. to say the least, made only worse that the forming lumps seemed to writhe and twist as they grew, as if something was trying to break out of them. Something alive.
Just like he wanted the creature to do. As powerful as the monstrous entity was, it was more than a little predictable. And a predictable enemy was one that could be countered.
Unseen to any and all, one of his gloved hands, glowing faintly, brushed a particular brick in the stonework he was crouched behind. A series of jagged scrawls, runes, arranged in circle, appeared and flashed slightly before disappearing, leaving only the faintest of glows behind, showing that the runic creation, as were its brothers on the surrounding rooftops, were primed for action and needed only a last push to trigger. The hooded man's warped expression became more a real smirk, knowledge of what was about to happen filling him with a sense of glee and grim satisfaction.
Finally, after so long, after so much pain and suffering that the monster below had caused, both before and since it had taken the form it was now in, the creature's time was coming. Death was coming for it on swift wings.
The beast just didn't know it.
Speaking of the rabid mongrel...
"Then prepare to be hunted like one!" It howled, followed by a massive burst of black miasmic power, one that had the hidden man been anyone other than who he was would have sloughed rotting flesh from yellowed and decaying bone.
(The man, once upon a time, wouldn't have that anything good could have of his constant exposure to the monster in his more youthful days. To be fair, his resistance, bordering on outright immunity, to the effects of the creature's arcane and corrupted miasma wasn't exactly good, the resistance had created its own complications for him over the years, but it gave him a small edge, or at least allowed him to even the playing field a bit between him and the ophidian monstrosity below when they faced off. He just looked for the silver lining in the dark storm clouds that had constantly surrounded him in his life, seeing the chance to snatch victory, or survival, of the gaping jaws of defeat.
He was stubborn like that. And that was something that the massive serpent utterly despised about him. )
A burst that was almost immediately followed by the sounds of tearing flesh and venomous hissing as, from all along the pustules of the creature's length, snake-like heads and bodies, mirrors of the original they were attached to and spawned from save for having two eyes to their 'parent's' one, burst forth, each of them covered in a dark slime in a corrupted mockery of birth.
"Screeeeeahhhhh!" The multitude of serpents cried, screeching and hissing in malicious joy at being brought into the world to Hunt and Kill. The observing man's face wrinkled in distaste at the sight of the horrid monstrosities. No matter how many times he saw the damned monster pull off this particular trick it never got any less disgusting for him to see. It truly showed how much of an abomination to nature that the monster and its writhing spawn were. He could practically feel the very skin of the World, the hand of Gaia, Mother to All Life, recoil from these twisted worms.
Still, despite his distaste and disgust for the creature's action, it was exactly what he had been waiting for.
A softly glowing finger lightly tapped the small set of runes once more, making the arcane scrawls glow slightly brighter for a moment...before flaring into brilliance just as the hooded man turned away to prevent himself from being blinded.
At the same moment, in several ruined buildings that surrounded the intersection in which the monster and its brood were now hissing in shock and slight fear, forked tongues flickering rapidly, near identical runic carvings also flared to life, triggered into action by the mother rune.
Then the world shook, the constant wall of rain seeming to shatter like glass, as a series of explosions rocked the small section of the ruins of London, like earthbound thunder, creating shockwaves through both the ground and the air. The sudden explosions seemed to affect the monsters and its profane young greatly, the smaller serpents, still with a good portion of their bodies still rooted inside their progenitor, swaying and hissing in confusion and fear and pain, the explosions having rattled them. Their creator was also in the same boat, if to a lesser degree, its loud hissing sounding distorted, almost like it was punch drunk.
The monstrous horde was so out of it because of the shockwaves that they barely noticed the airborne masonry above them, caused by the explosions, falling toward them. Just like the other stone worked buildings that surrounded them, the ruins having finally reached the breaking point due to the explosions.
The mammoth monster of a pythonic abomination only had a moment to realise the danger it was in, its single scarlet eye going wide in an almost human expression of shock and absolute fury. It had time to give out one last screech of inhuman rage before it and its putrid offspring were buried under multiple metric tons of falling masonry.
"POTTER!!!!!!!!!!!"
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The hooded man gave a cold smirk of satisfaction as he heard the enraged shriek of his long adversary. A smirk that only broadened as it was abruptly cut off, muffled and choked out as the creature was buried beneath the weight of stone and mortar leaving the echoing rumbling of the thunder above, the plick plick of the rain that still fell and the slowly fading clattering and grating of stone on stone as the rubble settled and shifted.
The hooded man gave a snort of grim humour as he lowered the hood of his shimmering garment, one of the few remaining legacies he had of his parents, exposing his face to the cascading rain.
"Idiot," the rasping voice, dry and rusty from prolonged disuse, of the now revealed man commented to himself as he turned back around and now looked openly down onto the now buried intersection.
His face was sharp and raptor shaped, almost gaunt but not quite, with thin black eyebrows that stood out starkly from the amazingly pale, almost porcelain like, skin. The man's most outstanding features, however, were two fold. Unlike his gleaming emerald right, over where his left eye would have been was a black eyepatch that seemed to shimmer, the face of the patch a piece of highly polished obsidian. As if to highlight this patch, giving a possible reason for its existence, a massive scar, almost half a finger's width wide, ran from the above his left eyebrow to just in line with his nose, the vicious wound was shaped like a reversed bolt of lightning.
These, combined with his seeming eternally untamed short black hair, gave him a rather intent and predatory yet calm appearance, like an old and experienced tiger on the hunt, one who's impetuousness and fire from their cub days had been tempered and honed into something cooler and fair more lethal.
His right eye, a vivid emerald green, danced with cold humour as he looked down on the destruction he had wrought, squinting slightly to see through the still settling dust that lingered despite the rain and wet. About a minute or two had passed since he had triggered the explosions, thus giving the rubble time enough to mostly settle into their knew positions within the intersection, creating a huge pile of broken stone and debris that, barring some of the greatest slices of luck ever in the history of mankind, was capable of crushing almost anything beneath its combined weight.
Quite the accomplishment, albeit a destructive one, for someone who could no longer use a wand anymore.
His keen eye snapped to a certain part of the rubble as his sensitive picked up a deep toned rumble and harsh grating that seemed a little out of place with the rest of the soundscape. It was an amazingly intact piece of brickwork, damp and pitted and likely only held together by the metal rods that stuck out of it on either side, that leaned on one of the higher heaps of debris, almost covering an entire side. Focusing on his hearing, he could almost swear that he could a faint hissing sound, like a gas pipe releasing pressure.
The keywords of that phrase being 'almost anything'.
He didn't bother to sigh or moan or groan. While there a slight, slight chance that the trap he had set up could have done the scaly bastard in, he knew his luck wasn't that good. The slimy serpent was a tough nut to crack at the best of times. Likely, at best, the rubble had just wounded him slightly, weakening him a touch, maybe a few dozen broken bones and gouges, perhaps even a snapped spine if he was fortunate. He doubted it though.
Just as well the explosions were only part of his plan.
He wrapped a hand around the silver hilt of the sword sheathed at his side. His body dipped into a slight crouch as he peered down, ready to spring like a predator about to pounce or an eagle ready to dive upon some poor, innocent pigeon.
Of course, the massive serpentine head that exploded out of the rubble, showing signs of fresh wounds along its exposed body and head, as it roared its rage to the heavens was no pigeon by any means.
"POTTER!!!!" It howled, a wounded and maddened beast, as it thrashed around, sending debris tumbling and kicking up more dust despite the wet weather. It was clearly worse for the wear from being crushed by the falling masonry and its spawn had not fared any better, each of them that he could see clearly dead, crushed into a pulp and bloody as sin, but still attached to their progenitor's body making the creature even more grotesque that it usually was.
The man identified as Potter gave another flickering smirk as he noticed the trailing corpses attached to the monstrous snake that was his adversary, each of the smaller monsters still oozing putrescent ichor from their scaled wombs.
Perfect.
His eye flicked back to the raging head of the monster, the powerful form that the coward who had once been called Tom Riddle aka Lord Voldemort aka the Dark Lord had been forced to assume after the moron had meddled with the Tree of Life. The mongrel was still squalling and howling like a babe denied their candy. A pitiful sight if it weren't for the sheer power that the monster could bring to bare.
Harry Potter, former Bow-Who-Lived, stood taller, the ever whistling making his Invisiblity Cloak whirl around and snap like a pennant or a warrior's battle standard, took a booted step over the ledge he was on...and then fell towards his enemy, his emerald eye alight with battle fire. Silent and unseen as he drew his sword, the rubies in pommel shining dully even amidst the rain and storm.
It would be rude of him to ignore such a perfectly engraved invitation.
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It was sheer luck on his opponent's part that prevented Harry from ending the long long struggle he had with the monster called Voldemort not a moment later.
A sudden and errant jerk of the snake's thrashing body, as if it had suddenly gotten stuck and had twisted around to see the cause, prevented the once teenaged wizard from planting the long blade of Godric Gryffindor's former sword through the monster's cranium and killing it. He quietly cursed his luck in his mind.
As such, with a twist of the sword in his hands, he contented himself with carving a new opening in the monster's body, a long and deep wound just behind the monster's jaw that spewed forth dark oily blood like a fountain. He knew it would not last too long but he would take what he could get with the battle to come.
The hellish screech that elicited from the beast's throat was more than a little satisfying however, making his blood beat up in slight excitement and a feral smile crossed his pale but rugged face. He was no longer the mostly placid, almost meek, boy he had once been. He was something that was both more, and less, than what he had been.
And he glories in it.
He hit the ground heavily, the rubble beneath crushed into veritable powder beneath his kneeling form, but was no worse for the wear. Had it been anyone else, they would have likely died, or at least shattered the entirety of the bones in their lower body, from performing the five story death drop he had. Even he, one of the strongest of wizards by virtue of pure magical capacity, before Snake Face had meddled with the Tree of Life, would have become naught but a red splat on the pavement.
Things had changed since then however.
Harry rolled forward, toward the quickly recovering monster that had once been Voldemort, before springing forward with sword at the ready and a war cry on his lips. His plan was in motion, all he needed was to play for time.
"Haaa!"
Within a blink of an eye, Harry Potter was carving away at the tree trunk thick body of the massive serpent, his silvery sword biting deep into flesh and cutting through rock hard scales with ease due to the sheer quality of the sword he used and the truly inhuman strength he could put behind each swing.
Due to his position and the monster's predicament, stuck as it was in the rubble, said creature was unable to bring its head and fangs to bear on him. As such all that it could do was either attempt to trap Harry in its coils to squeeze the life out of him or use its length and vast bulk to try and crush him flat like a pancake. Neither succeeded as Harry was far more spry and nimble, easily leaping away, over or under thrashing coils before surging back in to hack at the monster's flesh again.
Which only made the monster grow more enraged, if its howling mixed with hissed curses meant anything.
"Cursssse you, Potter!" The sweet dulcet sounds of an angry and pained former Dark Lord reached the ears of Harry.
The sword wielding man just continued to hack and slash into the beast's flesh, his emerald eye glinting in slight triumph as he noticed the wounds that he inflicted were not only not closing but seemed to be getting worse, as if something were eating away at them.
Excellent.
However, in that of moment of triumphant understanding, the tables were turned.
The monster seemed to have managed, through dint of luck and wild thrashing, to exhume the end of its tail from the rubble. And in a rather explosive manner too.
Harry only had moment to realise something had gone wrong when the slick rubble beneath his booted feet shifted slightly, bulging upward and causing him to lose his balance, to stumble. At any other time this would have meant nothing, requiring only the smallest of moments to recover from.
However, he was in battle at that moment. And the smallest mistakes, in the tiniest of moments, had changed the outcome of entire wars.
Off balance, he was easily thrown aside into what little remained of a brick wall of a building as the monster's tail exploded up from beneath his feet and smashed into him with the force of a fuel truck going at highway speeds.
Breath exploded out of his lungs as the tail smashed into him, only his absurd endurance and greatly changed skeletal structure preventing from being either snapped in two or having his ribs shatter like dropped porcelain and shred his organs, pain blossoming around the site of the powerful blow. He absently noted that, as he was sent flying, if he got out of this, that the bruise from the tail whip would be enormous.
His unscheduled flight was cut short as his back hit the tumbled brick wall, hit it just the right way for him to feel like someone had either driven a massive spear into the small of his back or tried to break his spine over their very pointy knee. He didn't particularly like either experience.
As would the one he was going to get on his back from hitting the brick wall.
Breathless, momentarily paralysed with immense, his muscles slightly slackened, eye half closed and his mind fighting to even think through the pain filled haze he was in, he was in no state to defend himself from the monster's attempt to seize control of the battlefield.
His breathless lungs were forced to give a choked cry as Harry suddenly felt like a mountain was dropped on his chest, the sudden weight making the broken bricks dig deeper into his back even through his cloak and leathers and made his eye snap open as wide as could be...
To meet the scaly visage of his enemy as the immense serpentine head, still dripping gore from both small cuts and from the gaping hole where one of its eyes should have been, loomed over his now pinned-by-monstrous-coils form. An odd expression spread across its serpentine muzzle, strangely readable despite the lack of humanity in its features, as it looked down on him. An expression of both rage and triumph, the face of a being that had finally managed to rid themselves of a constant irritation.
The monstrous ophidian entity's 'face' then seemed to relax after a moment's silence as the two enemies glared at each other, single orbs of green and red meeting and conveying the all of the hatred one had for the other. A hatred that, this time, one way or another, would be buried forever.
"Well now," the monster whispered silkily, cruelty and malicious in every syllable it spoke, vengeful hatred in its remaining eye, "it sssseemssss that your luck hasss finally run out, Potter!"
Harry didn't give his enemy the satisfaction of replying to the goading statement. Not yet. Given enough time, it would not be the serpent that would have the last laugh.
Then he would reply.
"You have caussssed me no end of trouble," the monster continued, its monstrous could sliding over Harry's pinned form like they were trying to grind him into dust beneath their owner's baleful half-glare. "Again and again you have hindered my worksss, torn up my plansss, and have alwaysss managed to essscape my wrath." The monstrous head reared up just a little higher and its coils suddenly clenched, crushing stone and driving the little air he still had from his lungs, making Harry's vision grey out for a moment. Its eye seemed to glow with a bloody hue, shadows writhing on the edge of its schlera and lightning illuminating the jagged crest, like a twisted crown of bone and scaly flesh, on its blunted head. It gave the monster an air of tyrant about to pass judgement, of an executioner about to swing the axe. It would have been a frightening sight for most.
But Harry Potter was not most people.
He simply stayed silent and waited. It shouldn't be long now. He had sowed the battlefield with seeds of his victory. Now was almost the time to reap the harvest.
And Voldemort's arrogance and desire to gloat and penchant for melodrama only made things better for him.
"But not thissss time." The monstrous form of Voldemort growled, its massive jaws opening wide, fangs dripping with acidic venom. Behind those saner sized teeth, Harry could see a small red glow start to form, illuminating the innards of the creature's throat, and could feel the swell of magic being gathered for a purpose, a destructive purpose.
The monster reared higher and higher still, to the point that it loomed over the admittedly shortened rooftops while still having enough length on the ground to pin Harry in place and support its towering bulk. The illumination in its throat had grown bigger and brighter until it looked like the serpent was clasping a scarlet sun in its maw, one that was streaked with writhing shadows, like a colony of serpents were whirling around it. The feeling the ball of power emanated was far from comforting. It spoke of only one thing.
Annihilation of an opponent.
Destruction of one's enemies.
Death to all.
"Witnesssss the judgement of Lord Voldemort!" Voldemort hissed somehow around the sphere of arcane power, the bastard's words clear enough, "For your actionsss, you are hereby ssssentencccced to Dea-!"
The creature's pronouncement was suddenly cut off, its entire body giving a sudden jerk, spasming, its head most of all, the sphere of destruction it held suddenly flickering and guttering like an almost spent candle. Harry smirked coldly.
It was about time.
Crimson eye wide in shock and alarm, the monster gave another spasm, harder and stronger, a gurgling hiss escaping its now empty maw...along with a stream of oily black ichor, the creature's poor excuse for life blood, that splattered on the cold, wet ground. In the dim light of the arcing thunder, one could see faintly silvery flecks within the putrid substance.
Harry's smirk widened as he rolled out from under the slackened coils of the thrashing and hacking my beast. Ordinarily, he would not have taken pleasure in seeing someone or something in such pain and agony as the creature clearly was. Even when he had faced his enemies in the past, having them at his mercy, he had simply killed them, despite the amount of pain they had inflicted on others before almost certainly making them deserving of more torturous fates. Harry was not one to be a macabre sadist, he had been a man on a mission and had been removing obstacles in his way.
He just looked on, sword held idly in hand and pouch at his belt, as the now monstrous form of Voldemort howled and thrashed wildly in pain, gouts of ichor vomiting out of its gaping jaws along with agonised hisses and shrieks. Fountains of the substance also flowed from holes beneath the creature's scales and oozed heavily around serpentine corpses that plugged them. His lips twitched from a cold smirk to a smile for a moment, his hardened heart feeling joy for the first since he had been trapped in the ruined city with his nemesis years ago.
For Voldemort, however, he would make an exception. There wasn't anything left of the man that he had once been, the charismatic, intelligent and handsome youth of times long past, for Harry to pity or feel guilt for. The creature had drowned an entire country in hatred and fear and death because of his desire for power, steeping himself in depravity even to the point of breaking the greatest of taboos, one that went beyond the maiming of one's own soul in order to stave off that most inevitable of forces, Death.
The monster was getting exactly what he deserved.
He gave a small chuckle as he watched the former Dark Lord's thrashings get both wilder and weaker by the moment as the metallic poison, a powdered mix of cold iron and Goblin Silver and dried Basilisk fang, that both inhibited magic and was highly poisonous if it entered a magical beings bloodstream, did its deadly work, shutting down or inhibiting the magical processes that happened inside the body and thus threatening the existence of the magical organism. Voldemort should have known better than to destroy Gringotts and all of its inhabitants. Say what you will about the goblins, greedy little money grubbers that they were, but there were no beings more vindictive or more capable in taking vengeance to an art form.
The little blighters might love their gold and wealth, but they held their pride above that. They might take you for every Galleon you have but they would gladly pay every Knut they own if it meant that could fulfil their vengeance.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MEEEE!" Voldemort roared weakly and shrilly, the snake's one eye rolling almost wildly and head swaying drunkenly, the gaping maw drooling ichor thickly. The beast had fallen back into its coils, no longer a rearing cobra ready to strike. Harry could the wounds on its side growing wider and wider as the poison ate away at the putrid flesh, exposing the roilIng black mass of energy beneath the scaly hide, the abomination's true nature, more rotten spirit and pitted soul than true flesh, now truly revealed.
Harry just chuckled again, his single eye gleaming with malice, flecks of gold glowing in the elongated pupil of his single ocular orb. He could admit to himself that he took pleasure in this monster's pain. He was also sure that the former goblins of Gringotts, in whatever passed for their afterlife, were also taking a similar amount of pleasure.
"You should have known better than to attack the Goblins, Voldemort," Harry said as he prowled around the thrashing beast, a hand clasped around the hilt of his sword ready to use it the moment that the opportunity presented itself. A moment that, judging by the weakening thrashing, would come soon enough. "They kind of take offence to that sort of thing."
The monster's eye was now as wide as it could go, the eyeball weeping black tears of ichor and putrid blood just like the rest of its body, delirious in fear and pain and agony. Harry wasn't even sure his biting comment and mockery had been heard by the beast.
He shrugged mentally. That wasn't his problem.
The beast abruptly reared up to it's full height, it's towering length pointed up, stiff and straight as an arrow, and wide open mouth pointed to the darkened and stormy sky. The body spasms and thrashing seemed to have stopped for a moment. Harry knew what this meant.
He covered his ears just in time as the creature gave an unholy shriek that split the air and, Harry wagered, was likely heard in every nook and cranny of the city.
"KREEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
There were no real words to describe the wall of noise that issued from the beast's mangled and dissolving throat. Anger, rage, despair and, most of all, complete Fear and sheer Terror were conveyed in that single discordant call. It was the wail of complete loss, the cry of defeated and dying. It was a death shriek, a death knell of a monster.
Gouts of ichor burst from the creature's wounds, the carcasses of its abominable 'offspring' shot from its flesh like dead fish out of a cannon, making Harry take a sharp step sideways to avoid being hit by either substance. The scaly flesh that had once armoured the monster was now flaking away, dissolving and being washed away by the heavy rain. Harry could also see the squirming mire of roiling corrupted power, once hidden beneath the faux flesh, reach out and try to close the wounds or stimulate the creation of more flesh, but it was hindered by the myriad of silvery specks that were within it, occasionally giving off a small spark of arcane power that made the tendrils of power recoil violently, smoking and sizzling and often dissolving. Harry could only imagine how much it hurt.
Like a hewn tree, scarred and hacked by the hands of a lumberjack, the towering monster then began to collapse, fall, trailing an oily and thick black and red smoke that was its true power.
Defeated.
Harry took a short hop to his left as the creature's body smashed into the rubble strewn ground, crushing brick and mortar like simple parchment and cratering the ground with its weight. Harry barely shifted from the minor earthquake that the creature created with its impact and merely locked gases with the creature named Voldemort.
Satisfied green met delirious and enraged scarlet even as the creature fought to stay alive for just a little longer, to keep the hungry grasp of Death at bay for another moment.
There was silence between them for a moment before that emerald eye hardened as its owner stepped forward. Lightning flashed, both in the clouds and upon the ground.
A moment later saw the life-light within that scarlet orb fade, driven away by the silvery sword buried almost to the hilt in the serpent's skull, puncturing what passed for the monster's brain. Harry glared into that lifeless eye, his gloved hands wrapped firmly around the hilt of the weapon he wielded, examining the depths of it to ensure that there was no deceit nor trickery. He found none.
(For a brief moment, just at the moment he had struck the final blow, he thought he had seen something in that scarlet eye. A gleam of vindictive hatred and spite. He had hastened the coup de grace upon glimpsing it in an effort to end it before it began. It looked like he had succeeded. Something that he was thankful for.
Voldemort was not noted as being a gracious loser.)
The monster, Voldemort, was finally dead.
Harry gave a slight sigh, tired and worn down and old, but also oddly satisfied, as he gave a firm tug on the hilt of his sword, pulling it out of his dead enemy's skull with a meaty shlick sound, and turned away from the swiftly cooling corpse. He felt no need to linger here. His job was done. Another item on his life long checklist ticked off.
Oh, he still had other things to do...but they were few, minor and hardly urgent.
(It was mostly taking down that barrier that had been erected around the city, an immense magical cage that trapped all those inside it at the time of activation until certain conditions were met. Harry would have to figure what exactly those were if he wanted to get out of the ruins of London. Pity the caster wasn't alive to tell him, it would have made things easier. He would have to do it the old fashioned way, something that would take time. A lot of it
That didn't worry him too much. It wasn't like he didn't have such a commodity to spare. Benefits to being who he was and the experiences he had gone through.
It still kind of left a sour taste in his mouth that it was because of Voldemort that he had the capability.)
Right now, all that the Potter scion wanted was to get some much needed sleep. It had taken a month of short sleep and extreme concentration to get everything ready for this last showdown. Add that onto him exerting a great deal of physical power, along with the mental relief of finally having dealt with his nemesis in a permanent fashion, and you had one exhausted and weary warrior that wanted to sleep for a week straight, damn the consequences.
It was likely this exhaustion that prevented him from acting fast enough to evade the monster's last spiteful curse.
Harry suddenly felt the hairs on the back of his rise, alarm bells in his head ringing, as he felt a sudden pulse of arcane power. Familiar arcane power. Power that should have already disappeared.
He spun around, goblin silver sword held ready in one hand and the fingers of his other splayed out as weak eldritch sparks danced between the digits.
Harry first noticed that the lengthy body of Voldemort was swiftly disintegrating, a red and black smoke that stunk of extremely corrupted arcane power, a scent that was almost uniquely Voldemort's own (no other people being foolish enough to sink as far into the depraved arts as Voldemort had.), seeping from the corpse, no longer held and bound to the will of its dead user.
Or so it seemed.
The 'smoke', abyssal black and blood crimson, gathered into a quickly growing and roiling ball above the corpse of its fallen master, making Harry uneasy and unsure. That didn't look good to him.
Before he had time to properly analyse this new phenomenon and take the appropriate action, the corpse had fully dissolved and the last trails of eldritch smog had gathered into the orb of malevolence. Everything seemed to go still and quiet, even the rain, ever falling on the ruins of Britain capital, seemed to slow, as if gravity was not as powerful as it should be.
Harry only had time to twitch his fingers once in a distinctive shape, a glowing pane of magical power appearing around him in a dome like shield, before the roiling arcane power of Voldemort shot toward, radiating hatred and malevolence.
The shield did little good.
Instead of trying to smash into him and destroy, as he had half suspected the power of Voldemort would do, it instead seemed to stretch out, engulfing him in its crimson darkness. His gaze narrowed for an instant, wondering what was happening.
Then he felt the pain smash into him like a runaway train.
He felt like every inch of his flesh was being torn and stretched, as if under the tortures of Procrustes, and his bones were warping and cracking. The feelings were worse than anything he had ever felt before, even the Cruciatus was not as painful as what he was enduring now. It was like his very soul had been thrown into a black, crushing and stretching and mangling him without a care. He wasn't even able to breath, let alone scream.
Thankfully, the sudden and harsh impact of the pain was swift to knock out his unprepared form. The darkness of unconscious came swiftly even as his last scrambled thought echoed in his strained mind.
What now?
Pbpbpb
Pain.
That was all that Harry could feel as he muzzily returned to consciousness.
His muscles felt aching and torn. His skin made it seem like he had been flayed. The less said about his bones, the better.
Still, despite the agony he was in, he pushed through it to take stock of where he was, his battle trained instincts kicking in. He had learned well to always be aware of where he was In relation to others.
He held back a hissed curse as his gloved hands weakly pressed against the ground, the feeling odd for some reason his muddled mind was currently unable to fathom. It hurt even just moving his arms, let alone putting any weight on them. And this wasn't mentioning the quivering weakness he could feel in them. Right now, he doubted he even hurt a fly.
What the fuck had put him this state?!!!
His eyelid opened blearily only to see darkness. A soft panic ran through him, cutting through the confusion created by the agony he felt in every last nerve ending, thinking that what had caused his pain had blinded him. The panic gave his muscles a weak surge of strength, enough to, at least, roll him on his back, panting with anxiety, exhaustion and effort.
The sight that he then beheld ( a part of him relaxing in the knowledge that he was not blinded. Losing one eye had already been devastating to him in mind and body until he had found a work around.) had him wondering just what the hell he got himself into this time.
As he was torn between musing and half-panicking about his new predicament, a shattered moon in the sky above bathed him in its dim silvery light.
Pbpbpb
Author's Notes
Well, folks, how did you like this?
My apologies for being absent for so long from posting stories, but 2016 was a hard year for me, for reasons I have no desire to explain. However, I am now back in the saddle and riding hard.
Going forward, you can all expect for me to post at least once a month. Maybe even fortnightly if I push it. I hope that will satisfy you all.
Now, in regards to this story, it is going to replace my previous HP/Rwby crossover. Thanks to series 3 and 4 being released, and the world building within them, I now have a more solid foundation to build off in regards to Rwby, which will also make for a better story.
In hindsight, my previous story was a bit of shmozzle, and this will try to rectify that. Here is to hoping that I can succeed.
Take care and, please, read and review.
With regards,
Kujikiri21