A/N: Been a while guys. I just finished my exams a few days ago, then spent a lot of my free time playing Fallout 3 and Red Alert 3. Notice how a lot of awesome games coming out have '3' at the end? Here's chapter 8, which has been up at DLP for a couple of weeks now but I was too lazy to upload it here. I'm gonna start writing the next chapter right after I post this, so hopefully you'll see it in a couple of days...unless I get distracted by my games again.
A sweeping tsunami as high as Harry raced at him, water splashing and spraying across the grimy rock. Harry spun around and he held up his wand. Hellfire flared in his mind, rushing through the runes on his wand and bathing him in a dim red light. The tsunami swept at him and Harry saw a flash of streamline grey before it was upon him. It crashed on him and there was a blinding flash of light as a curious buzzing filled the air. The tip of Harry's wand glowed with a strange grey light and the surging water buckled and fell back, sweeping by on his sides and wetting his feet but doing little else. It was as if Harry had placed a wall directly in front of him, forcing the water to go around and deflecting most of the force behind it. At the same time, an opaque dome shimmered around his head, a bubble-head charm cast merely by reflex.
'You know, Moses could to do this with one hand,' Meciel mentioned casually. 'And it was an entire sea too.'
"Why don't you go and marry Moses then, if he's so great?" Harry snapped, a bead of sweat dripping down his forehead and into the surging river below Harry's feet.
Nonetheless, Meciel's moment of levity made Harry relax somewhat and he took a deep breath as he sighed. The water was raging around him, sweeping past his form and crashing at the other end of the giant cavern, but it would be back and it would likely sweep him off his feet. Harry estimated that he had twenty or so seconds left and his keen eyes glanced around the room.
"Plans?" He asked out loud, turning his head but keeping a firm grip on his wand as he held back the tsunami that threatened to crush and batter him on the hard, rocky walls.
'We could stay and pursue Rosanna, although she has likely set up more traps, or we could leave,'
"Getting the fuck out of here sounds good," Harry said grimly. "I-"
He paused as a streak of grey hurled itself at him down from the waters. Harry caught a flash of sharp, white teeth and little beady eyes before his wings shot out from his back, speared into the shark and tossed it aside like one might do with an empty can. The body disappeared underneath the raging waters around him, the only indication of the shark's death bubbling up to the surface as a pool of blood.
"Is it bad that I'm suddenly remembering those old Animal Planet documentaries I used to watch when I was six?" Harry asked, cocking his head thoughtfully. "Because I remember there was something about sharks and blood."
Another large maw burst from the surface from behind him and Harry instinctively ducked, his wings swinging behind him and slicing the shark from head to fin. The shark flopped onto the ground and was taken along by the current. At the same time, a large resounding boom roared throughout the chamber and Harry's head shot up, his eyes widening with surprise.
"Well… shit," he deadpanned.
Large explosions were ripping through the roof in a series of timed, consecutive blasts- no doubt more of Rosanna's explosives at work. The roof began to crack and break apart, rocks and debris the size of a car dropping down and into the water. Smoke pumped through the air, making everything hazy and blocking Harry's sight, even as the surging water rose to his knees. It seemed there was no limit to the tide, and Harry recalled seeing a lake by the house.
"You had to admit…" Harry started, still keeping the majority of the water at bay with a single and constant spell. "Rosanna's really outdone herself. What a sneaky little bitch she must be to pull this off."
'She's never been strong and she's had to offset this by being craftier and more devious than the rest of her kin,' Meciel told Harry. Even she sounded a tad worried, although that worry was tinged with something like disappointment and an utter fury. The emotions made sense by her next words, which sounded like they had been forcibly dragged out of her. 'Go. Leave. Let her have her victory today. Who knows what else she…'
Whatever Meciel was going to say next was cut off as three things happened simultaneously. From the smoke-hazed air came a falling piece of debris, at least three times the size of Harry himself. His wings swept up in a single, clear movement, chipping into rock and then using the momentum to hurl the piece of debris aside. At the same time, long snapping jaws burst out of the water and Harry's free hand grasped the sword of the cross and met the crocodile's teeth with a blaze of silver fire and gleaming steel. The debris crashed on the ground with a boom, causing the rock beneath Harry's feet to shudder, but the crocodile's momentum was powerful enough to send the now-headless beast crashing into Harry. Half-a-ton of big, scaly and smelly flesh slammed into Harry. Although Harry was able to shrug off a blow that would have rendered a normal man useless, he was knocked off his feet and his wand fizzled out with a puff of grey smoke. Before Harry had even hit the ground, he was swept up in a powerful current as the built-up water slammed into him and sent him under. The bubble-head charm flickered around him and promptly collapsed, dissipated by the powerful torrent.
He fought the urge to take in a breath as the current pushed him along the jagged rocky ground, his wings scraping against the slippery rocks in a vain attempt to slow him down. He kept a firm grip on both his wand and the sword, clutching metal and wood tight in his respective hands. Sleek bodies darted around him and one of Harry's arms brushed against something rough and leathery. Harry quickly brought his arm back in, a flash of panic entering his mind for a second, and his wand came up. His mouth opened uselessly, a trail of bubbles rising to the surface as he reflexively mouthed the incantation, and a streak of green light shot out, sizzling water sending a pack of sharks scattering. The current pushed him along and Harry groaned as he was slammed into the rocky wall on the other side of the cavern, his voice sounded distorted in the water that surrounded him. His wings swept back, smashing into stone and lodging him in place as he twirled his wand, pushing the water back away from his head.
As air hit his face, he took in a gasping breath of fresh oxygen, panting. The smell of smoke and dust was thick in the air, almost stifling, and there was something sticky trickling down the back of his head. Harry didn't need to feel it to know that he was bleeding from a head wound.
"Fix that, could you?" He asked with a sigh, spitting out a mouthful of water and coughing. Without waiting for a reply, Harry concentrated and attempted to disapparate. "Figures," he sighed when nothing happened.
A floating piece of rock became his next attempt at escape, but it failed as well and Harry threw away the potential portkey with a scowl.
"I'm going to kill this bitch!" he snarled, his anger and annoyance increasing by every second He spotted something from the corner of his eye and growled. "Oh, fuck off! Carnifico!"
A shark went limp as a glimmering arc split it in two and the water was stained with blood. True to their nature, the other sharks ignored Harry and dove in on their dead comrade, tearing into the newly bloodied flesh with relish. Harry ignored them and tried to get a bearing on his surroundings, but it was too dark and there was too much smoke for him to decipher where he is. He could feel his limbs shaking but Meciel's handy manipulations of his nervous system made it felt like he was toasting in a sauna.
'Wait a moment,' advised Meciel, her voice distant.
A moment later and his view on the world changed. To Harry, it was as if he were standing back in the same spot he had landed after falling into this cavern of death traps, except that everything was glowing in a silvery light, making it easier for him to perceive through the darkness. He quickly found what he was looking for, the entrance to a small tunnel that appeared to lead upwards into what was no doubt more traps and sharks and high-explosives and other annoying little things like that.
"Good," Harry murmured. "Where are we now?"
His vision changed again, his surroundings becoming a silver blur, shooting towards one of the sections on the eastern wall. Harry took careful note, his mind already rehearsing the spells he'd need to make the hundred-metre distance between the exit and where he had pinned himself. Around him, a series of brightly glowing figures burst into existence. Meciel had literally painted all of his enemies- if you could say that about some mindless animals- for him.
"Let's go, then," Harry declared.
With a few flicks of his wand and the complete evisceration of a shark, Harry managed to make it to the small entrance and clambered up onto the rocky ledge. A split second later, another shark leapt at him from the water but was batted aside with a sweep of his wings. Harry let out a huge sigh as he shook his head, spraying icy-cold water around the narrow, damp tunnel and feeling a lot more relieved- and excited- than he showed.
"You know, these wings are actually pretty cool," Harry commented, flexing his wings. They shot out around him in a disturbing visage of a featherless angel, scraping against the jagged walls. "It kind of makes up for..."
There was an odd clicking noise and something shot out of the wall in a blur of speed. Harry's reflexes, however, were superior to most beings on the planet and a few that resided elsewhere, and he curled his wings up around him. Something sparked as it struck the bone and there was a clatter as it bounced on to the ground. Harry smirked, before his face froze and pain lanced through his side. Three more objects had shot from the walls, two of the thin, jagged darts bouncing off his wings but one taking advantage of the distinct lack of flesh on the bones to shoot past and slam into the side of his ribs. Harry's eyes widened in shock and he squeezed them shut, letting out a loud hiss of pain.
"Ow!" he declared flatly, in a strained voice. He glanced down and winced at the sight of the jagged dart protruding from his torso. "Do I...oh, that smarts! Do I leave it in or do I take it out?"
'Make no sudden movements,' Meciel said sternly. 'This is not a good situation to be in.'
Harry felt her on the top of his subconscious, analysing everything he sensed with a mind far greater than his own. Still, the throbbing pain in his side wasn't dimming down at all and Harry grimaced as he slowly reached over with his wand-hand. When he didn't receive a complaint from Meciel, he pulled the spiked dart out and winced as his ribs flared.
"Tricksy little bitch, ain't she?" Harry grumbled.
There was a blur of movement in front of him and suddenly his mind was ablaze with Hellfire, Meciel taking control and slashing up with one of his wings. Harry blinked in surprise even as the wing blocked a large blade, which had swung from the ceiling faster than Harry could see. He only had a moment to feel astonished before Meciel brought up his other wing, blocking another blade.
"Shit!" Harry snapped, bringing up the sword of the cross across his head, just in time as yet another blade swung down, threatening to take off his head. The force behind the blow that slammed into his sword was too great to be just gravity, and the clinical and detached part of Harry's mind wondered if there was some kind of propelling mechanism involved.
The rest of him focussed on the loud, ominous 'click' as the blow sent him reeling backwards, his foot touching something small and hard. There was a whirring a noise, something exploded upwards from the rocky ground and suddenly the entire tunnel was full of pinging noises. The mine exploded in a shower of little metal balls and the walls erupted in a shower of sparks as metal bounced off rock.
The next few moments were a frenzy of movement and brief flashes of what could only be described as sensory overload. Surrounded by a hastily constructed shield and ignoring the dozen or so ball bearings that had ripped through his body, one coming dangerously close to his head as it had taken off half his ear, Harry practically sprinted forward, his veins surging with adrenaline, Hellfire and panic. Fiendfyre formed around him, crushing through the walls and floor. The powerful cursed flames undoubtedly set off the traps that caused the roof to start collapsing in on him but it deflected and protected him from dart-like projectiles and pendulum-like blades that swung from the roof at every interval. The attack came from everywhere and even Harry's enhanced reflexes couldn't block all of them at once.
More explosions went off, ball-bearings shooting past the fiendfyre, coated with the cursed flame and little more than molten steel but still bouncing off Harry's hasty shield with loud pinging noises until the sound was ringing painfully through his ears. Some of them broke past it even as Harry pumped more and more magic into the half-formed shield, but there was no time to stop, no time to slow down or else he would die, so he took the pain with a face that could have been carved from stone and continued sprinting. Finally, there was something ahead of him, a glimmer of an entrance enhanced by the light emitted by the Fiendfyre. As the roof started to seriously cave down around him, Harry gritted his teeth, enhanced his limbs with all the Hellfire he could muster and shot towards the supposed safety at a speed that would put Olympic athletes for shame. His wings shot out around him, digging into the stone, and Harry rocked on his feet and pushed himself forward, soaring out the entrance of the tunnel amidst a sea of flame and rock.
He landed painfully on a increasingly familiar rocky ground and the Fiendfyre died down around him as the tunnel behind him groaned and shuddered, the roof burying the narrow space with rocks and debris. There was still the occasional muffled thump and the odd pinging noise but it became oddly silent as Harry lay there, his entire body radiating with pain that even Meciel had trouble in dulling. Hellfire ebbed from his aching limbs, leaving him feeling oddly weak and tired. There were certain aches on his body that Harry knew were serious injuries. Some of those metal balls had ripped straight through him, after all. He was just glad that Meciel had such good control over his nervous system because he did not want to know what he was really feeling at the moment.
"Damnit!" he hissed softly to himself, ignoring a pained ache from his heart. "Damn, damn, damn! I...that...Meciel...it hurts, fuck!"
'You're wounded, beloved,' Meciel told him, and her voice was worried. Hellfire was gathering in his chest and Harry was barely aware that he was only breathing at certain intervals, Meciel timing rapid bursts of healing with the gathering of precious oxygen for his brain. 'You're wounded badly.'
"It can't be...that...that... bad," Harry panted, his teeth gritting as he pushed himself up. He eventually settled on a kneeling position. "I still have my penis...after all."
He quickly took an inventory check, making sure he still had his trusty wand and the gleaming sword of the cross, which was quickly becoming a hindrance. If the stupid lump of metal wasn't going to help him out on this one then why cart the extra weight around?
'Consider this,' Meciel said quietly, even as Harry felt her expend all of her effort into patching his tattered body back together. 'To come through that relatively unscathed is nothing short of a, dare I say, miracle? We were lucky, perhaps too lucky for it to be just luck.'
"Ah," was all Harry uttered. He felt vaguely surprised as he continued his spot-check and frowned, suppressing the wince as pain shot through the right-hand side of his face. "Meciel?"
'Yes?'
"You haven't seen a couple of my fingers around, have you?"
'Can't say I have,' answered Meciel after a pause. 'I'll get onto them later, but forcing the tissue to regenerate entire appendages will take time. Hours, even.'
"Could be a problem," Harry agreed wearily.
'Quite,' Meciel answered, and she sounded concerned. 'Are you well, Harry? You sound rather off and I haven't the effort to decipher the chaos that is your mind at the moment.'
"I'm angry, Meciel," Harry said blandly. "Very, very angry. It's the type of angry you get when you get hurt and you want to punch somebody."
'I see,' Meciel noted carefully.
"I'm going to kill Rosanna, Meciel," Harry said quietly. "And I'm going to take my time. I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to make the bitch scream. I will do things to her I have never done to anybody else in my life. I will show her just how low I can sink."
'You are angry.'
"Yeah," Harry drawled out slowly, almost a hiss.
His breathing was harsh and there was a disturbing glint to his eyes and he rummaged through his coat, finally producing a pencil. He snapped it in two, dropped the sword (how he had managed to carry it with only a thumb and a pinkie was beyond him) and calmly shoved the broken wood into the bloodied stumps that used to be his fingers. Pain flared in his mind, but it was okay. Harry was in a lot of pain at the moment, what was a little more? Harry kept the pieces of wood there was he tied it down with some loose threads, ripping off the small patch of his shirt that wasn't bloodied or wet, until the broken bits of wood were properly jammed into his hands. He picked up the sword and experimented with his new appendages, gripping the hilt as firmly as he could. It felt odd, but it would have to do.
'Inventive,' Meciel offered.
"I'd use magic but her mines seem to react to it," Harry said quietly. "We could be surrounded and not know it."
'Here's what I was able to get from what I saw after we came in,' Meciel said.
Harry looked up and his vision flickered, another one overlapping the darkness he was seeing. Around him were crumpled bits of rock and debris and the lingering remains of Fiendfyre, seemingly frozen in time. The tunnel and the wall he had come out of remained shrouded in darkness, which was logical since he had had his back turned when he had came hurtling out of it. Harry glanced across the ground and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that it seemed relatively undisturbed. There were no indications of any traps there, no scruff marks that might have been a buried mine.
He glanced up, wincing as something inside of his made an odd squelching noise. Meciel murmured an apology as something dribbled out of one of the holes in his chest. A moment later, Harry felt the skin close up and Meciel moved to the next serious injury. He tried to survey the roof but Meciel had only got a glimpse of part of it through his eyes and most of it was shrouded and dark. There was something though, a curious trapezium-shaped object that Harry had to squint at for a few moments before his eyes widened. It wasn't a trapezium; it was a cut-off rectangle- an air duct!
"Meciel, ears!"
Meciel was ahead of him, following his thought pattern a little better now that she had repaired the damage to his heart. Harry cocked his head and stopped breathing, listening into the darkness as carefully as he could. One of his ears was throbbing madly so Harry cocked his head to the other side, his eyes fluttering shut. It was mostly silent, but there was a faint noise, yes. It was...hissing?
'Gas!'
Harry held his breath as he hauled himself up, clutching his wand and sword tightly. With a weak swipe, silver flames ignited at the edge of his blade and banished back the darkness that had surrounded him. He was in another large cavern, smaller than the other though. His eyes shot upwards and he scowled. There were four air ducts spewing out an almost transparent mist, a mist that had already reached down to his head height. He blinked as an odd burning sensation gathered behind his eyes, his vision blurring, before he snarled and swiped his wand. There was a rush of wind and a loud pop as Harry simultaneously banished the mist away from his face and cast a bubble-head charm over his head. He raised a hand, the bubble-head charm shimmering as his fingers felt the warm liquid dripping from the corner of his eyes. They came back stained with red.
"Explosive mines, swinging blades, hidden darts, attack sharks and now nerve gas?" Harry muttered. "This is a bit much, don't you think? There's enough stuff here to take out half a damn city!"
'And who knows how many more rooms like these there are,' Meciel pointed out darkly.
Harry stood there, strangely hesitant to take any action as the deadly gas filled the room. He still couldn't see through the pitch black and finally decided that if he was going to do anything, he'd need to know what was around him.
With an elaborate twirl of his wand, Harry cast a series of spells in quick succession .Light flared from the tip, blasting back the darkness that surrounded him. At the same time, he was suddenly surrounded by a thick, glassy-like shield of crimson and black fire, pure Hellfire solidified into a powerful defence. His feet stiffened as magic stuck them to the ground and the bubble-head charm flashed and became even more dense and suffocating. Behind his magical defences, Harry waited for the ball to drop.
He didn't have to wait long. There was a loud 'click' above him and Harry's head shot up; only to reflexively turn as a blinding light filled the air. The light was enough for Meciel to capture a perfect image of his surroundings and, even with his eyes squeezed shut; the room appeared in his vision.
'There's a doorway to your right,' Meciel noted quickly.
Harry was glancing at the ground, making certain that there were no hidden explosives or bear-traps or whatever else Rosanna had decided to throw at him. As a round of concussive explosions boomed above him, the sound strangely dulled by his shield, Harry flicked his wand and moved, his eyes remaining shut as the bright light flashed around him. The vision changed in his head, Meciel making minor adjustments as he moved to keep it constant, even as her voice instructed him calmly within his head.
'Two steps to the right....stride of 32cm....keep going for another ten paces...no, nine paces- you overextended over that crack...turn 32 degrees clockwise...now 10 degrees counter clockwise...another few degrees to the right...perfect!'
Harry could hear tons of earth and rocks falling behind him, concluding that the explosion must have caused a cave in- no doubt Rosanna's attention in the first place. The tunnel before him loomed closer and closer in his mind's eye until he was practically at the entrance. The powerful light that had been burning his eyes, closed as they were, dimmed down and Harry opened them but didn't slow down. He surged through the narrow entrance and up the slope, adrenaline and Hellfire pushing the pain from his mind.
There were more explosives in this tunnel but the scattered shots of ball-bearings pinged against his shield uselessly. Spears jutted from the walls around him, shattering on his shield- Harry even catching one lancing from the ground and crushing it with his bare hands. The runes of his wand flared with crimson light as he expertly weaved and dodged through the well-set traps, more than prepared for them after having had a few moments to regain his bearings. The ground shuddered and crumbled before his feet but his wings shot out and stabbed into the wall. Winds howled and raged from the chasm beneath him, bringing with it a thick scent of sulphur and other chemical smells, and Harry wrinkled his nose, using a combination of his wings and hellfire-enhanced limbs to push himself forward, only stopping to blast apart a large round boulder that rolled down the slope.
Harry reached the end of the chasm, dropped to his feet and darted on forward, his breathing heavy in his ears. This wasn't the most conventional fight he had ever been in but he had to admit that it was a little more fun now that he'd absorbed what was happening. As clicks echoed around him, Harry crouched down and used feet enhanced with Hellfire to jump forward and into the light ahead. Explosions roared behind him as Harry jumped into the next death-trap, tiny bits of debris pinging off his shield uselessly. He landed unsteadily on his knees and glanced up, his furious green eyes taking in everything at once. He was in the middle of several stories of ramps and scaffolding, dozens of men wielding large guns aiming at him. On the highest ramp staring down at him with contempt was a slender dark-eyed woman.
"Rosanna!" Harry hissed under his breath, rising to his feet. The rage in his eyes was only dwarfed by the appearance of fear in Rosanna's, who was staring into Harry's wreathed irises and paling. Perhaps she could see Meciel behind the teenage boy that she inhabited.
"Kill him!" The woman shouted furiously.
Gunfire exploded from all around him and Harry reflexively flinched as sparks exploded mere centimetres away from his face, bouncing off his defensive shield with little trouble. He stood up, his good hand clutching his wand and his mangled hand managing the sword the best he could, and glared up at Rosanna. He never broke his gaze as fire reared up around him and he lashed out at the scaffolding, searing through metal support frames and sending entire ramps of guards tumbling painfully to the hard ground. Most of them didn't stand up again.
There was a puff of smoke in the corner of his eye and Harry jerked his head back, surprise flittering on his face as a rocket shot past his head. It disappeared to the other side of the room and Harry felt rather than heard the explosion as the ground shuddered, the sound of gunfire roaring inside his head. More fire lashed out, enveloping entire squads of men and another metal frame gave way, sending the dozen or so men standing on top of it crashing to the ground. On it's way down, however, it glanced one of the other metal frames- the one where Rosanna stood on, and with a creaking groan it too tumbled to the ground in a surprising show of good luck.
"Protect the Mistress! Protect the Mistress!"
The shouts hollered from around him as a half a dozen little grey balls were thrown at his feet. Harry stared down at the quizzically, even as a glimmering arc of silver light severed a burly man into two. There was a sudden bright flash and the ground shattered under the concussive force of the powerful grenades, sending Harry flying. The crimson domes of defensive magic around him shimmered and flickered but cushioned most of the blow from Harry, leaving him feeling mildly bruised as he crashed into the ground. A wing lashed out even before he landed and a nearby man was impaled, lifted up and hurled at a comrade in the time that it took Harry to stagger back up again, his wand literally burning into his hand.
What happened was what Harry just loved in a fight, pure and utter chaos. There were bodies everywhere, all clamouring to kill him. Some continued firing from the distance, bullets hitting their own more than they shattered against Harry's shield, but most of them just charged at Harry with a fanaticism that could only be magically induced. Some of them used the butts of their guns as clubs; others were wielding knives, shovels, pickaxes- he even saw a damn chainsaw take off the arm of a maddened comrade as it swung at him. His wings lashed out around him, protecting his back and sides, while his wand literally whittled man after man, every second spell glowing with the deadly eerie green that was so feared in the Wizarding World. Still, there had to be hundreds of them, some storming in from doors to the side with loud battle cries and a complete disregard for their own life.
"Vorago Aquilus Exussum!" Harry roared.
Hellfire roared through him and into the ground around him, which cracked and shattered in a radius of at least three metres. Fire roared up from the splits as they widened to become a chasm of yellow and orange flame, which was only whipped up into frenzy as a ferocious wind howled into it from all directions. Harry stood in this searing bonfire as the men around him were all sucked into their deaths. Screams of pain and torment accompanied the howling wind in a matter of moments as new bodies rapidly clambered in, too absorbed in their quest to kill Harry to pay any attention to a little thing like fire. They died too, even as they stepped over the sizzling and blackened corpses of their friends.
"Fanatics," Harry muttered in disgust. Perhaps once, they had been normal men and women with jobs and homes and families. Now all they were witless servants, all but willing to throw their lives away for their mistress.
Harry stepped from the flame, his eyes trying to pierce through an air filled with smoke and bodies. Gunfire rattled off in the distance, some striking his shield and some missing him completely, and Harry growled out in frustration.
"Where'd she go?" he snarled to himself. He hadn't even wanted to do this in the first place and yet he had came all this way and endured all of those stupid fucking traps for a bloody reason! He was going to show that fucking bitch just how low he could sink!
Something shimmered in the smoky haze around him and Harry paused. A second later, a streak of wailing green light, only a few shades off the killing curse, zoomed past him. The noise left chilling echoes in his ears as another streak zoomed through the smoke, striking his shield and shattering instantly. In that split-second Harry moved as a barrage of green light literally pummelled into where he had been standing. One of them struck him on the chest, piercing the wards on his coat with ease and turning a good portion of his lower insides into pure mush. Blood spluttered from Harry's lips but he ignored the searing pain, his injured hand tightening around the Sword of the Cross, and leapt forward.
A silver bar of flame blurred, batting away two more of the strange piercing spells and striking something soft. There was a piercing shriek of pain as Harry lashed out with his wing, slamming into a vulnerable body and lodging itself in, little spiked ridges of bone grappling the flesh and holding tight. Harry lifted up his wand, his eyes glittering with triumph and spat out "Avada Kedavra!"
There was a sudden flash of green, a loud noise akin of a howling wind and the sound of a body thumping to the ground as the force of the spell literally pushed it off his wing. At the same time, the sound of gunfire came to a halt. Harry banished the smoke to the other side of the room and glanced down at the person he had just killed. Dark-braided hair had been bound tight to her head and her warm brown eyes were dull and listless. All in all, Rosanna was a beautiful woman, even dead. His head shot up as he heard choking and gagging noises and he saw the few remaining servants clutching their heads, blood streaming from their ears. He watched, gaping, as they all collapsed and stilled.
What had once been a raging battlefield less than ten seconds ago was now eerily silent. Harry stared down at Rosanna's body with an expression of extreme befuddlement, despite the suddenly glowing sensation that Meciel was radiating, which could only be described best as a liquid orgasm that flowed through him, banishing away his pains and aches.
"That's it?" He muttered.
'You sound surprised,' Meciel all but purred.
"But...it's...she's dead,"
'I am well aware of that, believe me,' Meciel said with a satisfied hiss.
"Kinda...anti-climatic, wasn't it?" Harry asked, glancing around sceptically. "All those traps and all that suspense and this is it? A simple killing curse to the chest and bam, we're done?"
'I'm afraid I don't understand,' Meciel said, although her tone was still too satisfied to sound like she cared. 'Rosanna is dead. We are alive.'
"But...nobody just dies like that in real life," Harry muttered with a scowl, bending down to pick of the silver coin that rolled out of Rosanna's mouth. "There's always an epic duel and lots of fire and witty backtalk. You don't just...die... like that."
"You sound disappointed," somebody said smoothly and Harry's head shot to the side, where Verrine was walking through one of the doors, looking pristine and smug even in her muddy clothes.
"I think I am," Harry muttered, feeling tired and weary as the Hellfire and adrenaline was leaving his body. "I went through all of that and there's not even an impressive duel at the end. She liquefies my stomach and then has the indecency of just dying so easily? Man, do you know how painful it is to grown a new spleen? The liver is easy, but the spleen? It's gonna be a painful night."
"Well done, milord," Verrine said instead, scanning the carnage and bodies around her with a visibly impressed expression. "I...didn't think that you'd be able to do this so easily. Nicodemus might have been able to, but nobody else."
Harry glared at her, his eyes narrowed. There was something entirely too smug about her, an arrogant tilt of the lips that he suddenly wanted to burn off her face. Rosanna had known he was coming, or suspected, at least. How loyal had Verrine been to Rosanna? His wand rose despite himself, he had more than enough left him in to take care of her, when she spoke, perhaps sensing his mood.
"You see, milord, this was your true test," she said quietly. "You've taken on a fortified position, which had been anticipating your attack, and won despite the odds. Had you failed, it would have been clear that you were not strong enough to deserve my loyalty." Her gaze surveyed his body and her eyebrows shot up in surprise. "I don't understand how you are still walking," she breathed quietly to herself.
"And Rosanna would have praised you as a hero, no?" Harry asked tightly, having the sudden urge to brutally maim the Denarian in front of him.
He winced as Meciel did something to his insides, her soothing power already beginning to mend what had been broken. He may not have some of the specialised powers that the other Denarians had but it'd take nothing short of losing his head or complete internal organ failure to put him down for good. Meciel was cool like that.
"It's like that when you play both sides," Verrine answered with a smile, although she was casting Harry a wary look with her beautiful blue eyes.
"Gonna do it again?" Harry growled, the runes on his wand glowing threateningly.
"No, milord," Verrine answered immediately. She cast another look around her, her gaze resting on Rosanna slightly longer than usual. "I don't think I'll need to."
"Okay." Harry nodded and all but snarled the next word. "Crucio!
Verrine collapsed in a heap, her screams ringing out through the room as the Cruciatus curse fully expressed Harry's displeasure. Harry watched with bloodied teeth and a menacing grin as she thrashed before him.
"You fucking bitch!" he roared. He flicked his wand, cancelling the curse on his victim, and summoned a fiery mass of Fiendfyre that hovered around his body. Several strands licked their way up his arm, apparently harmless for the master of fire, and morphed into vague representations of coiling serpents. The fiendfyre came dangerously close to Verrine's face and she swallowed, pushing away the lingering pain in her mind.
"Wait!" She pleaded. "Meciel must have known I'd try this, or something like this! It's what I did before! You've won! You have my loyalty until the day you die! Ask Meciel! Ask her how loyal I was after I tested her in the ruins of Babylon! You have it!"
'She's right,' Meciel added quietly.
The fiendfyre inched closer and closer and Harry wasn't budging.
"I fought for her! I killed for her! I'm loyal!" Verrine snarled, flinching at the unexpected heat. Her skin was shimmering, as if she were about try a demonic transformation out of sheer desperation. "Don't kill me! I can be useful to you! She knows it!"
Are you begging me for your life?" Harry whispered to her coldly.
"Yes!" Verrine hissed and the fire stilled.
"No pride or dignity or anything like that?"
"Only if you want it, milord," Verrine whispered. "Don't...don't send me back to the darkness. I couldn't take it. Use me. Use my talents and my knowledge. Use my body! Just...don't kill me."
"Use you," Harry repeated in a murmur.
There was a tense silence and the fiendfyre halted. Harry looked to be in deep thought, his lips unconsciously moving as he obviously conversed with Meciel. Verrine lay on the ground, trying to regain her composure as the fiery snake blazed before her. The dark magic behind that spell was enough to even frighten her. Finally, the young Denarian seemed to have come to a decision and the fire reared up. Verrine's eyes widened and she opened her mouth as fear flooded through her, but Harry merely gestured to the side with his wand and the fire washed over the battlefield around them like a giant wave crashing on the beach.
"Well, you do have a nice rack," Harry murmured. He smiled at her bitterly. "Maybe I'll let you live for a little longer."
You have walked into an enemy ambushed and against all odds, you have succeeded- to a point."
Silence reigned between them for a few moments, Verrine still shuddering from the after-effects of the curse. Her fury was easy to see now that the immediate threat was gone but there was also a healthy dose of fear that Harry found quite pleasing. Finally, she gave him a strained smile and stood up, straightening her shoulders and eying the Fiendfyre roaring behind Harry uneasily.
"Perhaps I would take you home, milord," she said quietly, far different from her pleading only a moment ago.
She moved forward but froze when Harry's wand rose, then slowly took another step forward. Her arm draped around his shoulders, only quivering slightly as the tip of Harry's wand dug into her stomach, and she took on Harry's weight and assisted him in hobbling towards the exit. She didn't even slow down when Harry's other hand curled up around her breast and roughly squeezed it.
"If I may say, you seem rather fixated on my host's breasts," she said. "Unusually so."
"They're kinda like stress-balls," Harry muttered, giving them another squeeze. "And no matter how much of a traitorous bitch you are, you're hot. Well, not hot, really, but not ugly. Well, maybe slightly better than average."
Harry removed the arm around him as they reached the door while Verrine's face flickered with displeasure. As he stepped through, he stopped and turned his head. Verrine met his cold gaze head on, her face becoming an emotionless mask.
"Don't you ever betray me again," Harry started softly. "If you do, I'll kill you."
Unease flickered over the female Denarian's face and her eyes unconsciously shot to the side, where the Fiendfyre was already blazing as it consumed all evidence of the battle. It wouldn't be long before the entire mansion went up in flames, much like Verrine's freedom. Still, there was no doubt of the power of Meciel's new host. Tessa was good- great, even, but she was no Denarian Lord. Really, all she had to do was help him remove the rest of the Denarians then kill him before he killed her- because she knew he would. She knew that once she had helped Meciel take her revenge, she would follow her former master's to the grave.
Verrine could find out where the prominent members of the Blackened Order were hiding, but she wasn't strong enough to kill them.
Harry was strong enough to kill them, but he couldn't find them.
They both needed each other. When that changed, Verrine had no doubt as to what would happen.
It was risky. But Verrine, Head of the Blackened Order of Denarius- now that had a rather nice ring to it.
