Early June 1994, Fortress Rhodes, Rhodes.
It was in the late hours of the evening that word reached the Kastello that wizards of an unsavoury nature had landed on the island. A terrified messenger had run mile after mile in the cool evening air to deliver the warning. Summoned from his arcane library, Harry grew cold and vengeful as he learnt that where the wizards had landed, a small fishing village had been razed to the ground, though not before one of his patrols evacuated the population. He gave up on his plans for a night's sleep, deciding instead to walk down to the police station in the Old City of Rhodes.
It was in that police station that Harry learned in greater detail what had happened. Coming ashore in a a dhow, a militia of wizards from all over Europe and Near Asia had burned the nearest houses to the ground, thinking their occupants within. It was reckoned that they intending to seize the newly-transferred island and use it as a base from which to launch attacks on anyone they didn't like, or anyone that simply had something they wanted. Their weapon? A basilisk. A serpent-demon of ancient make, born of unnatural spellcrafting and capable of terrible destruction.
Immediately, with the security of the islanders and the thousands of visitors compromised, Harry acted. A lot of people had mocked him for his age, but there was no doubt that in a crisis, his command was welcomed. Turbines howled in the harbour as the gunboats stormed out to sea, setting up a patrol cordon, as well as moving inshore to provide support. The police laid a distant cordon about the land around the quarry. Then the nearest battle mage was alerted. Unfortunately, the only battle mage anywhere in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean was Harry himself.
He found himself almost looking forward to the fight.
Almost glowing pale-golden, Harry's sword had kept its edge well since completion. On each side of the guard just below the blade were red gems, formed into the shape of blazing infernos, each holding fire elemental enchantments. That keen blade was sentient, though it did not speak, Harry could feel through it emotions and even feel and learn some of the skill of the souls embedded in the metal. His staff of red ironwood, with a ruby inset within the head stood in one hand, and with a mere thought, it grew an axe-blade of dark steel capable of felling a horse in one blow. As his magic coursed through the staff – now an axe – swirling paths of runes burned like fire up and down the haft. Harry approached, alone, to the entrance to the quarry.
A mere thought and he was sealed under spells of stealth, making him silent, making him nigh-imperceptible and nigh-invisible, which would allow him to attack without warning. Which was excellent for Harry, for the battle mage was a specialist in shock warfare. A bit of initial stealth to neutralise sentries and try and locate the basilisk, then he'd go for all-out shock-and-awe tactics.
Waiting until he had the sun rising behind him so that he'd be able to work, Harry approached the entrance to the quarry facility, seeing just two guards in a stereotypical black robe pacing the gate, the rest of the facility surrounded by a rusty chainlink fence from when it was still in use in non-magical hands. With silent paces, he moved ever closer, until he finally had both of the sentries within two yards ahead of him.
With all his cold fury mustered, Harry lashed out. A sickening thunk announced the collision between the back of the nearest guard's head with of spiked steel sleeve at the bottom of the ironwood haft of Harry's battleaxe. He immediately spun around, hands now coated in the blood of the dead wizard, and decapitated the second sentry with the axeblade. Any scream was silenced by the instant massive trauma inflicted each terminal blow.
Harry drew out his golden greatsword, wielding the large blade effortlessly in one hand, drove it into the back of the first sentry about where his heart was. He grinned as the weapon sucked all life energy from the body with grey flames, leaving it a dessicated wreck which crumbled to dust when he disturbed it by withdrawing the sword. A rush of magic and unnatural joy raced through Harry, his sword nearly singing with necromantic energy as he drove it down into the decapitated body of the second sentry.
The quarry that opened up before Harry as he advanced was a relatively shallow affair with a sloping floor, and was much wider than it was across from his position. At the far northern end, on Harry's right from his perch on the cliff side to the east, a gaping cave opened up in the rockface. He couldn't see anything, but given the guards pacing it, and the number of wizards outside, it was not being used as a headquarters, but a containment zone for a very dangerous weapon.
His eyes narrowed at the roof of the cave, then at the cave mouth. Harry decided that if the basilisk was in there, he was either going to collapse the cave roof, starve the creature of food, water and oxygen, or simply blast the whole thing with one of the nastier fire-based battle spells he was proficient with.
Catching a snatch of conversation on the wind, Harry rolled his eyes at the vanity of dark wizards. 'Disciples of Herpo' indeed, they were a bunch of murdering thugs. He disappeared with a near-silent swish, reappearing on the quarry floor opposite the cave mouth, with the dark wizards positioned between them.
The concealment spells slipped away, revealing him in all his glory as a battle mage. A simple double-layer ankle-length greatcoat of black dragon's hide, with rivets glinting dully, where plates of fire-hardened steel lay between the layers of dragon's hide covered him from wrists to shoulders to ankles.
Just about visible from the cuffs and collar of the jacket was a chainmail hauberk, while a cloak lay from his shoulders to his ankles, making an odd sound – for it was made from thousands of carefully beaten steel scales riveted to dragon scale. His face was masked by a fine veil of chain, his eyes mere slits behind the spectacle plates of a Byzantine helmet. A plume of purple horsehair grew from the spike of the helmet and plunged down the scalemail cloak, stopping short of his dragon leather boots.
Then of course there was the blade in his hand, a four-foot long greatsword that coursed from hilt to tip with necromantic fire, and the blood-coated battleaxe in the other hand. Rune magic glowed up and down the haft, and revealed the dark gleam of a revolver holstered at his hip. He was a barbaric sight, a battle mage stepped out of older times, fire and fury following his every step.
The wizards froze, unsure of what to make of this intruder, then it was realised that by his mere presence that he was no friend of theirs. Yet it was too late, they'd hesitated for half-a-second, and hadn't realised that they were already doomed. The battle mage piled into the fight, beginning the attack by raising his axe high above his shoulder, armoured gauntlet clenched about it. The spell coursed through the runes, and then he slammed the butt of the haft into the floor.
The two closest wizards suffered immediate and horrible deaths in less than a second. Harry watched, grimly as the they suffered the results of the pressure of the air around them suddenly increasing from just under fifteen pounds per square inch by five-hundred atmospheres to three-and-a-third tons of pressure per square inch. The resulting implosion compressed the poor bastards almost instantly into tiny mushed lumps of red... stuff. As he concentrated on the counter-attack, Harry unclenched the fist holding the spell, and with the sudden release of the five-hundred atmospheres of pressure, the remains of the wizards blasted outwards in an explosive fashion, coating the surrounding stone and sand with blood as that mush of red goo reacted to the sudden release of pressure in an explosive fashion.
Turning so cutting spells flashed off his armoured coat, Harry glared in contempt as the stunned dark wizards shrugged off their moment of frozen terror and attacked. The slicing spells merely left scars on the plate and hide that protected him. He swept forward, swinging the axe about his head. He dealt a terrible blow with the spiked butt of the axe haft to the head of his nearest enemy, gruesomely splattering his brains against the rocks. Thrusting the greatsword forward, the necromantic flames died down as he took their magic and cast.
"FULMINE MORTEM!" he incanted, a crackling charge of electricity bursting from the end of the long blade, gripping a wizard in the terrible power of what was a mere shade of nature's electricity.
Switching the spell, he spun the sword around and swung it as if playing golf. The electrocuted, still-smoking corpse was flung end-over-end in the air, before crashing down into a group of wizards who were just emerging from a magical tent, crushing the tent with the body. A wizard came too close and Harry flayed his stomach all the way to his spine with one slash and spun around, decapitating the wizard. He whispered a few words, and the energy of the dead wizard grew in crimson flames along the blade.
He thrust the sword towards the tent, and suddenly the ground from in front of his dragon hide boots to the canvas structure was alight with red flames, like a powder trail being lit, it raced forward. Sanguis Ignis, the blood-fire curse, summoned with the blood of the slain foe. The tent erupted into a pyre of scarlet flames. Harry added a wind spell that fanned the fire into a true inferno from which there was no escape for those wizards. A fitting funeral.
More curses flashed his way from two wizards fighting as a team, but with terrible metallic clangs, they were thrown aside by shields that Harry summoned, and then the terrible response came. A ball of shocking yellow erupted from his axe, tinged with blue to the front. The blue of the shield-breaking spell blasted a hole in the dark wizards' jointly-cast bunker spell, then the blasting spell splattered them across the quarry. With such a gruesome end dealt by the battle mage, it was a little surprising that the invading wizards tried to close the distance and surround him. A more tactically sound decision than simply fleeing and hoping to outrun a curse.
It seemed a good idea, right up until the first one toppled into a pit of boiling quicksand. Then the battle mage was amongst them, two wizards swept up off their feet into a raging maelstrom of sand conjured with a typhoon of air. The sand stripped them to the bone, and then it was too late. A hurricane of flames and steel, Harry's flaming sword struck left and right, cutting the wizards down with contemptuous ease, hewing off limbs, even as he whirled his monstrous battleaxe about his body. The spike on the back of the head could pierce armour and even some magical shields, and the axeblade itself cleaved off arms and heads with terrible force. Corpses fell about him, finishing the maimed off either with a sword-thrust, the spiked butt of his axe haft or simply kicking them into the boiling quicksand.
Suddenly there was a roar of a spell, three voices incanting it. The hounds, blazing with black magic erupted from three different wands. Harry laughed as the torrent of Fiendfyre plunged towards him. He spoke, words of power thrumming off the rocks, and then the cursed flames twisted around and crashed atop one of the casters, the floor of the quarry shaking with the impact. Harry swung around and hurled the massive axe, spinning end-over-end until it came to a halt. The axe's path was interrupted by the back of one of the two remaining casters, who turned to flee his own spell. A sickening thunk and he crumpled, axe deeply embedded in his spine. All the last wizard heard was the sharp crack of a pistol round as it punched into him.
Even as the Fiendfyre was dying, Harry heard the smooth rustle of skin on the sandy rock. He froze for a moment, listening and identifying the location, then dashed forward. Half-vaporised, in a form of black smoke, he re-materialised over one of the bodies, and seized up his axe, and then vanished.
Appearing on top of the cave entrance, Harry looked down on the back of the sinuous beast moving forth from its layer, and struck. He drove his staff, with a great build-up of magic, into the stone beneath his feet and collapsed the cave entrance. As he rode the landslide, he waited until the perfect moment and bounded forward onto the basilisk, driving his sword deep into its flank, and then swung at it again and again with the axe. He cut between the armoured plates of its back, and embedded the axe into the snake's spine neatly paralysing it with one thrust. Drawing his sword forth from the basilisk's flank, he conjured a tray with which to catch the basilisk's precious lifeblood before slicing open its throat.
A highly magical substance such as that would be of great use to a practitioner of thaumaturgy such as he.
August 1995, Domum Magicae, the Vatican, Roma.
Entering the Grand Hall of the Mages was always an interesting event. Seated in serried rows, from nearly two-hundred countries were the most powerful and skilful wizards, headed up by the Arch Mage. The Mage Councillors, in their roles as politicians and diplomats, then the occasional combat mage, like himself. For Harry, he elected for an appearance of supreme boredom, making sure they all knew he had far more useful things to be doing than delivering his annual report. Battle mages were used to commanding, leading men, fighting. Not paperwork and speechifying.
Chronomancy, thaumaturgy, demonology, necromancy, pyromancy, invocations and summonings. Not bureaucracy. He could summon wraiths and demons, he could fiddle with the passing of time. Elements could be combined in magic to create other substances. He could bring up the shades of the dead, burn a great forest to the ground. The names and powers of the Old Gods were his to invoke. With his eyes alone he could shatter the mind of an enemy, with his own mind he could project terror or courage into others. Arcane spells were his to wield, his sword his right hand in battle, his magic his left.
Present him with paperwork or politics and he tended to start looking for heads to remove.
"Battle Mage Potter, have you heard of the situation in Britain?" asked the Arch Mage.
"All I know of current affairs in Britain is what I have discussed with my counterparts in the Royal Navy as per the discussions on the defence of Rhodes." Harry stood and announced; "That is limited to matters in the Mediterranean and Aegean, and the supply of retired seamen as an auxiliary force to man my patrol boats."
"Then I fear you have not heard of the return of the Dark Lord Voldemort." the Arch Mage.
"The who-what?!" replied Harry.
A few uncomfortable glances were shared between the witches and wizards seated there.
"The British dark lord." hinted the Arch Mage.
"YOU FORGET, I raised myself as a bit of a vagabond around Continental Europe for a number of years before settling into my study of magic." Harry silenced the whispers; "Names of dark wizards mean little to me, unless I'm intending on making a corpse out of them."
"Perhaps then it would be best if you learnt this yourself, but we have reports from a trusted source in the form of the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards that the believed-dead dark wizard has in some form evaded death after what should have been a fatal curse." the Arch Mage half-explained; "It has been decided to form an investigative mission to the United Kingdom, and as our sole British member, it is common sense that you should lead it."
"Lucky thing that wizards so lack such a thing as common sense." Harry mocked, before the ensuing silence informed him of what he really didn't want to know; "You're not bloody serious, I haven't been in that damned country since I was a toddler. A homeless orphan. With respect, my home is Rhodes now, and you'll need a bloody siege to pry me out of there."
"Rhodes is still, and should be for many years yet, your seat as a mage of this council, but despite however many years since you stepped on the soil of green England, you have spent much time on Malta and Gibraltar, sailed and fought with the Royal Navy, and far better to lead such a mission than a number of our more... set in their ways... mages." the Arch Mage sighed; "What would persuade you to agree to this mission?"
"We haven't had any involvement in Britain besides some covert assistance to the failed Jacobite Rebellions, so I want full diplomatic protection." Harry demanded; "The right also to call in reinforcements should I feel myself, my mission and civilian populations are put in jeopardy. The right to run my mission as I see fit without interference at any level."
There was a collective wince. It was a lot to demand, and the last time the young battle mage had brought in 'reinforcements', it had been in the South Atlantic, routing out a cult in Angola obsessed with human sacrifice. Finding himself out of his depth in the conflict, he'd taken a shortcut. Harry had decided to simply flatten the jungle around the target. He did check beforehand that all the spells the cult had in place had driven out all the wildlife before calling in the naval gunfire strike.
They'd all read the after-action reports, seen the plans, the maps. They divided the jungle target into sectors, a box laid out on a map, with a grid of 30-by-30 foot squares, laid out in a grid 40-by-40, or 1400 sectors, each of 900-square feet. The heavy cruiser employed for this destructive purpose laid down salvo after salvo for a mere ten minutes, putting down a 120kg shell with 10kgs of high explosive into each sector, completely flattening it with a total of a 168 tons of shells and 14 tons of explosives. The whole jungle target sector had been flattened in under ten minutes and when the reinforced mages went in for the clear-up, it had not been pleasant.
"With your status as Lord Inquisitor of the Holy Office of the Magical Worlds, I believe that your independence of operation can be guaranteed so long as regular reports are received here. The matter of diplomatic immunity should be already in place due to your work with the Sovereign Military Order of Malta." the Arch Mage replied thoughtfully; "However I would suggest holding off on bringing force to bear and attempt to cultivate diplomatic ties with the Court of St. James. I won't limit your use of your own staff and forces, but I will have to approve any mobilisation of mages of the Holy Office."
"Finally, as agreed, I will delegate temporary command of Rhodes to a person of my choice until my return from Britain." Harry laid down his last demand; "I will plan my excursion to Britain, and depart before the year is ended. In the meantime I will attempt to maintain contact with this council."
With the acceptance of his demand and the carrot that went with it, Harry took his leave. He had much to do, preparing to travel, taking a leave of absence from his home and command at Rhodes. He would soon be crossing to one of the hearts of magic, the British Isles. The place where the Deep Magicks were written.
Kudos to an anon. Guest who found a whole load of grammatical errors, parts left in random places during rewriting and other mistakes and corrected them for me.
ElMarquis.