Chapter 4
His bearings return to him in a riot of color. The links to his warjacks continue to throb in his head. The war engines fan out instinctively in a protective circle around him. They display nothing to the enemy except for battle-scarred hulls and snorting, snarling faceplates.
It takes but a split-second for his senses to re-orientate. His vision steadies. His hearing expands. Reflexively, his hand tightens over the grip of his sword.
Focus.
He regards his surroundings with a clinical eye. The environment has changed. The terrain has changed. What constitutes an ally and an enemy has changed.
Others might have panicked had they been in his place. To be wrenched so suddenly across time and space. He does not. The warcaster in him has already taken control. The cold rhythm of battle logic clamps down on any wayward hint of emotion. He analyzes. He scans. He bases conclusions off what he sees and hears and not what the fallible mind wants him to see and hear.
Two sides. Locked in combat. One side contain familiar faces. He recognizes them from the dreams that haunt him and the memories that plague him. Sentiment threatens to bubble forth. He shunts it aside. Compartmentalizes it deep inside him until it is an afterthought.
Battle first. Questions can come later.
The other side are plainly enemies. It is laughably obvious. The pale white masks. The dark, billowing cloaks. Whatever joke Fate has decided to play on him has at least clearly differentiated between what he is supposed to kill and what he is not supposed to kill. That, and the ones wearing the masks are threatening the faces familiar to him.
The decision is made. The command is given.
He is still angry with himself for falling into the Khadoran trap. Therefore there is a physical component to the command when usually a mental one would have sufficed.
"Engage," he hears himself growl.
Unlike most wizards, Sirius Black was familiar with muggle technology. His friend, Arthur Weasley, was what wizarding society termed a "muggle-lover" or someone with an unhealthy fascination with muggles. This fascination involved topics ranging from their culture to their mannerisms to their technology. Especially their technology. Though Sirius held no distinct interest in the subject matter, Arthur's close involvement with the Order had, over the years, instilled within him an appreciation for how the magic-less made do. On one occasion, he even allowed himself to be led by the elder Weasley into a muggle museum dedicated to the past few centuries of warfare. And while he walked away none the wiser about how muggle technology worked, he at least left with an idea of what they were.
So when the giant metal thing swiveled to face him, the barrels of the gatling cannon under each arm distinctly speeding up, Sirius knew he had to duck.
The heir of Black hurled himself to the ground.
The Death Eaters who were fighting him held no such compunction. The men behind the masks were purebloods in the truest sense of the word. They did not understand what was about to happen even as it was happening. They stood their ground and continued to stare at the blue and grey machine with a form of horrified fascination.
The chain guns opened up and suddenly the Death Eaters were no longer standing.
A single sustained volley scythed them down. Cloaked figures jerked and twisted as the fusillade found them. Blood fountained into the air. Limbs were torn from shoulders and hips. Bodies crumpled, then came apart as fist-sized holes were blown through them. The exit wounds were so large and gaping that Sirius could see the sunlight shining through them.
The older man rolled out of the metal monster's path as it advanced. It was firing in bursts now. Picking out individual Death Eaters and gunning them down with practiced ease. Shot and shell kicked up clouds of dirt and debris. Spent brass casings cascaded on to the ground like rain.
Sirius stared after it. His stunned mind had finally started to process information in detail. The giant war machine striding unflappably through their midst. The three others just like it, similarly huge yet visually different. The boy who advanced alongside them, barking curt commands in some indecipherable tongue. The boy who was so young yet wore armor and combat harness fit for men many times his age.
The boy who looked so like James Potter that it was painful.
He had so many questions to ask and not enough time to ask them. So he asked the most pertinent one.
"Where the hell did they come from!?"
The Death Eater turned back to Lily, intent on what finishing what he started. His wand hand rose again.
The spear burst out of his chest like a spike hammered through a rotten fruit. The man looked down in disbelief. He reflexively pawed at the lance hideously transfixing him. A wet, gurgling sound escaped his throat.
Lily snatched up her own wand from the ground. In the time it took for her to do so she realized that the spear was not so much a spear but a harpoon. The barbed serrated tip was as long as her arm. Complete with a length of chain that extended away from the stricken Death Eater and towards the most sinister looking of the four golems.
The Death Eater locked gazes with Lily. Behind the vision slits on his mask, the man's eyes were wide open from traumatic shock. The harpoon had split his chest apart at the seams and exploded his ribcage out the front of his body. Nonetheless, he still seemed to be dimly aware of what was going on.
The chain grew taut and the doomed man was jerked back with bone-snapping force. He hurtled away from Lily, reeled back like some catch by a demented fisherman. He screamed all along the way. Screamed as he was bounced him painfully off the ground at uneven angles, screamed even as the chain finally dragged him to the hunchbacked, carapaced form of his captor.
He was still screaming when the golem raised a massive, mantis-like forelimb and jabbed the sharpened end directly into his stomach.
The monstrosity lifted the spasming body towards its tusked face. It huffed in predatory curiosity. Then it flicked the Death Eater's corpse away like it was nothing more than a broken toy doll.
If this was any other circumstance, Lily should have been horrified. She should have been horrified by the massive hulks of steam and metal as they tore their way through Voldemort's followers. She should have been horrified by the manner in which the Death Eaters died, for they were anything but clean.
But she was not. She had only eyes for the boy.
Figures in black cloaks continued to accost her but she blasted them back with hexes and curses she didn't think she knew.
Getting to him was all that mattered.
James spun on his heel, his mind reeling. The speed at which things had changed shocked him. A minute ago and they had been fighting a losing battle. Now they were still fighting, but it was an entirely different type of battle.
What were those things? Where did they come from? What was happening?
The Death Eater he had been dueling took advantage of his disorientated state and tried to hit him with a Confringo. Auror training kicked in and he blocked it with a reflexively cast Protego. His own wand twirled in his hand. The hex was on the tip of his tongue.
The great flaming mace came out of nowhere.
The weapon's head was adorned with brass spikes. Orange fire licked hungrily from the gaps in its surface. It smashed into the Death Eater in an overhead arc and turned the hapless man into an unrecognizable smear against the ground.
The monster lifted its weapon from the pulverized floor. A loud squelch followed. Pieces of liquefied Death Eater dribbled down the cruel, punishing thorns.
James winced.
The monster itself stood twelve feet tall. Massive ablative plates ran down its shoulders and body. The smokestacks on its back billowed out twin streams of choking smoke. It was as though some crazed mechanist had taken what a medieval knight was supposed to look like and replicated it on an armored bipedal chassis.
The thing lunged, impossibly fast for a being of its size, and backhanded an oversized gauntlet into another cloaked figure. The Death Eater careered away with an undignified squawk before smashing into the side of Potter Manor. The woman's broken body slid down the brick stone wall and crumpled into a lifeless heap below the crater her impact had made.
And then the boy was there. In front of him, sword bared and coruscating with tendrils of lightning.
James had dreamed of what his long lost son would look like. Every year without Harry and he had envisioned the missing twin aging, changing. He would have been fifteen this year. Fifteen. His feverish mind had tried to imagine what Harry would have looked like at that age. Not yet a man but so much more than a child.
Now a spitting image was staring him in the face.
"H-Harry?" he croaked out, not daring to believe.
The boy looked at him strangely, then grabbed him by the hem of his robe.
I am aware of the similarities between our facial structures.
He grabs the man's robe.
But now is not the time.
And tugs him back from the angry red beam of light that was a millisecond away from connecting with his head. The man staggers and he lets him fall. There are more important matters to attend to.
He advances on the masked form. Whatever these men and women are supposed to be, they are not the disciplined soldiery of the Iron Kingdoms. There is none of the élan of Cygnar's Stormblade Knights in them. Nor is there the doughty bravery of Khador's Winter Guard. Not even the fire and brimstone zealotry of the Protectorate's Exemplars. They act like individuals rather than a cohesive whole. They behave like opportunistic wolves rather than a unified pack of hounds. And when they try and cast their spells from the wands in their hands, they unwittingly telegraph their movements to him.
Which makes it absurdly easy for him to dodge.
His enemy tries to hit him with the same spell. The angry red beam shoots out the wand tip. But where the wand is pointing gives it all away. He swerves to the side and the spell hits the area where he was instead of where he is.
The cloaked figure tries again. This time the hue of the spell is fiery orange, the same color as the fires from his Crusader. He tilts his head and allows the hissing beam to whizz harmlessly past his cheek.
And all this time he is closing the gap in measured, purposeful strides.
The man is panicking now, backpedaling from his inexorable advance. The last spell is cast out of desperation but the distance has now close enough between them that dodging is no longer an option.
His sword comes up. It's of Cygnaran make. Based off the ancient blades the revered order of Caspian Sword Knights still used today. He has layered intricate runes inside the mechanikal housing and on the surface of the runeplate itself. He has tuned the arcane capacitator to the flow of his own magical core through years of unstinting use. It has turned the sword into a spell-killer as much as a man-slayer.
He whips the blade up and deflects the curse away in an explosion of sparks and incandescent light.
And then he is there, in front of his quarry. The sword flashes down.
The man sinks to the ground. His hand instinctively clutches at the massive gash cleaved into his shoulder. The blow has collapsed his clavicle into his internal organs. Thick arterial spray spews out of the gory wound like oil from a perforated drum.
He steps past the man. He is as good as dead. Ergo he is no longer a threat.
The Reaper, always his shadow, comes up from behind him. It slams its helldriver spike repeatedly into the dead body in a fit of murderous pique.
He frowns slightly. The correct terminology for Cryxian heavy automata was not warjack but helljack. The necrotech forges beneath the Scharde Islands imbued necromantic energies into the armored frames of their creations to mass-produce hellish engines that were an anathema to all things living. And while he had purged his personal helljack of the worst of the Cryxian corruption, a lingering, vindictive malice still resided within the metal shell of its hull.
The mechanikal sword in his hand hisses as it emits faint trails of steam. The lightening field surrounding the blade is evaporating the blood coating the runeplate surface.
His mind recalculates priorities. The immediate threat is neutralized. This gives him time re-orientate himself with the battlescape. He gauges ranges and judges distances. He issues new target algorithms to his warjacks via the cortex-brains installed beneath layers of thick, jack-grade steel.
His presence is a dynamic combat shift. It is a fundamental paradigm change. It's not his skill with a blade or his innate ability to command warjacks. It's not even the warjacks themselves. It's the simple fact that no military force, large or small, can ignore a warcaster and the multiple twelve ton behemoths he commands when they are present on the battlefield. You can't wish such a potent force away. You can't ignore it either. You have to do something about them.
And what the masked figures are doing is apparently dying in droves.
He does not understand. Where are the steam-powered armored suits most journeymen warcasters wore into combat? Where are the enemy warjacks, the massive hulks of steam and anger matching his own? Where are the massed ranks of common soldiers arrayed in formation, protecting the most valuable resource in any Iron Kingdom field army, the warcasters themselves?
The enemy has none of these things, so they die ignominiously and ignobly.
They are caught between the hammer that are his war engines and the anvil that include the ones he has dreamed about for the past fifteen years of his life.
He nods to himself, satisfied. An impulse command powers down the arcane capacitator in his blade.
His personal participation in this battle is no longer required.
Lily was scant seconds from reaching him when the distinct cracks of multiple Apparitions sounded into her ear.
Albus Dumbledore, along with the rest of the order, emerged out of thin air. On the aged headmaster's face was an expression of fury that Lily had rarely seen before. Looking at him now and it was easy to remember that this was the man who had brought low the Dark Wizard Grindelwald and saved both the wizarding and muggle world.
The Death Eaters, reduced to a paltry few, did the only thing that was left for them to do.
"Albus!" Lily heard Sirius shout, "They're going to Apparate!"
Behind his spectacles, Dumbledore's eyes flashed. The venerable wizard flicked his wand wordlessly and Lily felt something clinch shut inside her. Whatever the old headmaster had done, something told her that Apparition was no longer a possibility for the time being.
The Death Eaters realized it too. The half a dozen that still lived. They huddled together, eyes wild and desperate. The way their bodies jerked when they moved suggested they were approaching a state of catatonic shock. The sudden and abrupt way the battle had changed course had shattered their illusion of invincibility.
Nonetheless, they point their wands back at the Order of the Phoenix.
Dumbledore stepped forward.
"Surrender," he said firmly, but not unkindly.
The Death Eaters' hands shake, but the direction of their wands didn't change.
Lily idly wondered what Voldemort could have possibly promised these men and women for them to stare in the face of such odds and remain defiant.
"Surrender," Dumbledore said more resolutely, "and there need not be any more bloodshed."
The lead Death Eater growled out something incomprehensible. His wand hand looked like it was about to move. And then his entire body seemed to burst as the fusillade of rounds tore into him. His companions twisted and lurched as the sustained volley scythed them down. Successive impacts from the hail of lead kept their corpses standing for much longer than necessary. The incessant retorts of rotor cannons firing on full auto was akin to the continuous booms of an enraged thunderstorm.
Merciful silence fell. Some of the Order members lowered the hands they have instinctively clamped over their ears. All of them stared at the one responsible.
The chain guns attached to the metal golem's arms cycled slowly to a stop. Spent gunpowder smoke snaked out each of the multiple, steel barrels.
The boy stared back at them. His emerald eyes, her eyes, gave nothing away.
He shrugged at them.
Words they couldn't understand came from his mouth.
How could they not see it? It is as plain as day.
The old man in grey robes is obviously a powerful caster. The magic that emanates from his aged frame is palpable. He has brought reinforcements to the battle as logic dictates. It's what he's trying to do with those reinforcements that is all wrong.
They have cornered the enemy against some invisible magic barrier and yet the enemy has made their defiance clear. He can tell from the caged, animalistic tension in their body movements and the way their eyes dart desperately behind their masks.
The old man says something again with no discernable effect.
He sighs. If they weren't going to finish it, then he would on his own terms.
He tilts his head towards his Cyclone.
End this.
The Cygnaran warjack lets out a rumbling growl of acknowledgement. The Metal Storm Chain Guns affixed to its arms wind and spin.
The results are as bloody as they are predictable. The masked men twitch and jerk before they fall. When the work is done, there is a tangible mist of blood in the air that takes several full seconds to dissipate.
They are all staring at him now. The ones his intervention has saved.
He shrugs.
"They weren't going to surrender," he tells them.
