The Master of Death

Fight to the Surface

Harry slide quietly out of the remains of a dead man's mind and sagged upon himself as his corpse glared at him in hatred.

It was something he was painfully familiar with—the simple truth of the world was that, in the end, you couldn't save them all. Whenever one of his new Aurors had failed for the first time, he'd given them a speech about how it would get better with time, but it was a lie. It was a lie when he said it to them, just like it had been a lie when Kingsley had said it to him.

It hurt when you weren't good enough. When you weren't fast enough or smart enough. And you never were—at least, not all the time. Sometimes you can make it and other times you only find the bodies.

Even so, he couldn't let that affect him. There were times to grieve and mourn, but while you were trying to rescue hundreds of innocent people wasn't one of them.

This was why he'd learned Occlumency, after all, even though he'd had absolutely no natural skill with it. This is why he'd made it a standard part of the Auror curriculum during his time in office.

"I'm sorry," Harry said honestly, forcing himself to straighten. "There is nothing I can do to help you. And…if I just leave you here, they'll continue to use you like this, forcing you to kill and torture. They might even send you after the people you…the people you once cared about. So I'm sorry; that I was too late, that I couldn't help you, and because I have to do this. Goodbye."

Not wishing to warp the man's body any further than it already had been, Harry ended the man's life instantly and painlessly in a jet of green light. Without so much as a hair out of place, the man sagged forward, the life stolen from him. With his sense for magic, Harry felt the death sharply, but ignored it, lifting a hand to gently close the man's eyes.

"I hope you have no trouble finding your train," He murmured, already moving.

Not knowing how much, if any, time he had, Harry quickly moved among the former men, peering quickly into their minds, hoping they might be in better shape, that he might have a chance to save some of them.

They weren't and he didn't. He took each of their lives in flashes of green and closed their eyes, before shrinking all of them down, conjuring a small box, placing them inside, and slipped them into one of his pockets. At the very least, this way their families would be able to give them whatever funeral rites they saw fit.

Sighing slowly, Harry glanced above him, where his creations still hung on the ceiling. With a gesture, the spiders began to gather around the water pillar that pierced through the center of the room.

"We're leaving," He said as he raised himself into the air. He came to a halt near the spiders, beginning his explanation. "We're all getting out of here all at once. There are others on the floors above; I've already freed them and they're ready to fight. They'll be joining us as we rise."

Harry took a quick glance around. All of their wounds seemed to have healed, but that didn't change the fact that they had been tortured for an extended period of time. He doubted any of them had been particularly well feed, either.

He couldn't expect them to fight. Hell, he didn't want them to fight—even if he wasn't an official doctor, not letting someone that had been horribly injured and malnourished enter combat was just common sense.

"You'll bring up the rear, with the other non-combatants." He decided, gesturing at the spiders. One immediately stepped into the water, its eight crystal legs elongating and thickening around the orb that served as its body, until it was something vaguely resembling an octopus. It swam easily for a moment, allowing Harry to make sure there hadn't been any flaws in its design, before slowly sinking to the bottom of the pillar, tentacles gathered neatly beneath it. One by one, the other spiders shifted into octopi and began to stack themselves vertically atop one another, until all of them were in place.

Giving a nod of professional satisfaction, Harry entered the water himself, moving close to the top most sphere, which held Beansidhe inside.

"Don't worry," Harry said, shifting to Mermish to communicate underwater. "This won't take long."

Giving her a final nod, he began to ascend through the pillar once more. He made himself grow sets of gills with a tap of his wand; he was probably the only one who could properly communicate in the water and if anything went wrong, he wanted to be able to give orders.

Taking a moment to prepare himself, he tightened his grip around his wand. He double checked his plans, trying to make sure he hadn't missed anything—but if he hadn't, he couldn't think of it now, either.

This was it. The tension before a plan went into motion was always the hardest part, but it was just about to come to an end.

Getting everyone to safety was his first priority, but it wasn't the only one. After everything the giants had done, he wasn't going to let them off lightly; they were going to pay for the lives they'd warped—and for making him mad.

"Okay," He murmured. "Let's do this."

He lifted his wand, swept it once through the resistant water, and a purple light escaped from its tip, whizzing up the length of the pillar like a firework, smaller lights breaking off as it travelled up each level, before it finally disappeared right before reaching the ground floor. The smaller lights broke the surface of the water, leaping to the doors, their magic twisting into the stone and wood.

And as one, the doors swung open.

Harry swept up the pillar in a blur of motion, hardly even slowing down to create larger versions of the Crystal Octopi on the next five floors. When he reached the floor the large animals were held on, he slowed to a stop, knowing the men and woman on the floor below would need a while to respond. Moving quickly, he quickly found the largest animal's sphere and tapped it several times with his wand, causing a layer of white crystal to grow over it, abruptly quieting the hissing of the animal within it. A moment later, a horizontal slit opened on its surface, creating a makeshift mouth that opened wide as it grew animalistic arms and legs.

It immediately moved towards a nearby sphere, opened its mouth even more until it was wider then its body, and swallowed the sphere whole, along with the squawking animal inside.

"When you finish here, move onto the floors above," Harry said, already moving back towards the doors. "Meet me on the ground floor as quickly as possible."

The mobile container didn't even pause in its feast, sucking down sphere after sphere in short order. Harry wasn't worried; he'd put an Undetectable Extension Charm on it. There would be room enough for all the animals inside. They probably wouldn't be super happy about being eaten and transported, but they'd get over it.

Jumping back into the water, he landed atop the hard surface of one of his octopi as it began to rise, startling the warriors within until they noticed that it was him. They spoke to each other, quiet and breathless as he stood upright against the current, unbothered by the pressure. Harry couldn't hear them over the rushing of the water, but was too focused on the matter at hand to worry about it, either.

"Prepare yourselves," He said instead, his voice as beautiful and musical as it always was when he spoke Mermish. They hushed, as if entranced by the sound of his voice. "This is our stop."

Harry leapt from the animate crystal, stopping himself in midair before he hit the ground and levitating his way out of the room, gliding fearlessly around the corner.

The giant who had welcomed the hunters back before stared at him for a moment with startled eyes, before opening his mouth to say something. Harry didn't know whether he was going to call for help or shout at him and he never would, because a section of his chest the size of a dinner plate disappeared before he could say word.

On a human, it would have taken out his heart, as well as most of his lungs, but Harry had no idea what the anatomy of a giant was, so he made his head disappear, too, for good measure.

Or that's what he told himself. As the body quivered and fell, he acknowledged that it might just be because he was still a bit upset.

Flicking his wrist, he closed the gills on his neck before glancing back into the room at the crystal octopus that was serving as an elevator.

"Come on," He said. "We have work to do."

A section of it slid opened into a doorway and the nervous looking warriors quickly stepped out of it. The door closed behind them, before the Octopus scrambled clumsily from the pillar a moment before the next 'elevator' rose to take its place, filled with another group of warriors. Once all five groups had reached the surface, he spoke.

"Here's the plan. We all stick together—no wandering off." He emphasized that as he always did before a mission, not necessarily because he thought it would happen, but simply because it could get them killed if they did. They all quickly nodded beneath his glare and he continued. "We search this floor. If we find any giants here, we kill them. If any more giants appear, we kill them, too. If you see a giant, shout a warning to everyone else, too, and call for me. If you see more than one, don't attack by yourself; call for help. Any questions?"

They were silent.

"No? Good. We'll search room by room. They have food stored in their kitchens; after we're done with the giants; we'll get it ready for transport and take it with us. You can take anything else you find, as long as it's easy to carry." He glanced towards his octopi. "Go get the others, but stay down there until I call you. Everyone else, follow me."

Without waiting to see if they were following his orders, he strode back into the hall, stepping over the giant's corpse to reach the next door. Opening it quickly, he stayed behind the door as he peaked his wand in, ready to attack anything he found.

But it was as empty now as it had been before.

Closing the door again, he moved towards the next one, pausing when he noticed that the men had stopped behind him, gathering around the giant he'd killed. They whispered to each other over it.

Harry lifted an eyebrow at them and watched them quietly for a moment. They went silent again as they noticed his gaze.

"Done?" He asked, receiving embarrassed looks in reply. "Stay focused; there are plenty more where that one came from."

The next room was empty. And the one after that. And the one after that. A part of Harry wondered if he was lucky enough for all of them to have already left and they'd all be able to just walk out of here, but he knew better then to drop his guard.

Pondering it for a minute, he realized something.

"They all just came back from a hunt," He whispered. "They're probably in the kitchen eating. Follow me."

He led them towards the kitchen and used a Supersensory Charm to listen at the door, before nodding and standing up straight. He lifted a hand towards the men behind them, gesturing them back.

And then he blew the door in.

"Hi," Harry said, smiling at the stunned giants inside. "Remember me?"

To their credit, the giant's reacted fast. The goat man immediately grasped the table they were eating at and lifted it, sending dishes and food clattering to the ground before throwing the table at him like it weighed no more than a baseball.

Harry stopped it before it reached him, halting its forward motion with a simple Impediment Jinx, before stepping up to stand atop it, lifting himself into the air in order to rise high enough to rise onto the giant's table. On top of it as he was, he stood even with the Goat in height.

Snarling, the taller of the two humanlike giants, a man with eyes the color of seaweed, rose from his seat, acrid green light gathering between his hands.

But the grey-eyed giant just pondered Harry and the men behind him, rising much more slowly. He lifted a hand to stay his underlings from attacking.

"In fact," He said, speaking in slow, amused tones. "We were just talking about you. But I must admit, I hadn't expected to see you again so soon. However, perhaps this is for the best; I had wished to speak with you about—"

The giant cut himself off, throwing himself out of the way of Harry's curse, which instead hit the wall and reduced a section of it to fine powder. The taller giant's snarled and he had to react quickly to block the sphere of acid that had been meant for his face.

"I know literally hundreds of languages," Harry said, transfiguring the acid into water and letting it splash harmlessly against him. He twitched his wand and all but one of the dishes on the ground sprang towards the giant's face. The giant stumbled back, startled by the unexpected form of attack, and that was more than long enough for the remaining dish, a huge plate that the Goat had been eating of off, to sprout eight legs and shifted into a massive, hairy spider. With a gesture, Harry threw it at the giant's face and the creature was so enormous that its thick legs wrapped all the way around his head and met in the back. "And I can't think of words in any of them that would properly express how little I care about what you have to say."

He was about to transfigure the spider into a helmet that was spiked on the inside when the Goat charged at him with an enraged roar. Snapping his wand down towards the table instead, it twisted and began to match the Goats charge, even as Harry's feet left its surface and he slid back through the air.

"Let's try this again…" Harry murmured as the table leapt to tackle the Goat, even as its form shifted, growing into a mass of strong, hard muscle, thick fur, and sharp claws and teeth. "Goat Man vs. Man Bear, round two. Rip him to pieces."

The enormous creature only snarled in response, but it was quick to try to obey. Where before its attacks had been glancing blows and light wounds meant to intimidate and drive back, now it sought only to kill. Its fangs sunk into the flesh of the goat's shoulder as its claws left bloody gashes in the giant's flesh and it tried to sink them deep and get a good hold with which to rip its prey apart. The Goat gave a scream in reply, not of pain or of fear, but of animalistic bloodlust, and its hand's quickly sought the Bear's throat.

With agility he would not have expected from someone with only one leg, the fourth giant was looming over him, swinging a cabinet that it had literally torn from the wall in a blow that would not so much kill him as give the walls around him a red paint job. Not even giving thought to attempting to match that power, Harry willed himself away, feeling himself being crushed into an impossibly small space before reappearing on the other side of the room, facing the giant's back with a curse on his lips—but before he could say a word, the giant began to scream.

One of the warriors—Eogan, Harry realized—had run up behind the giant and stabbed it in the back of the knee with a wordless cry. Without pausing or even taking a breath, Eogan tore his sword from the giant's flesh and began to furiously slash at it, opening deep wound and lacerations as he swung, not with control or skill, but with the simple raging passion of a man who wanted nothing more than the death of the thing in front of him.

As if Eogan's fury had broken the spell that had kept them in place, the other warriors rushed forth as one, joining him with their own wordless cries. They amassed around the giant as it fell, its one leg giving out, and they stabbed down at it again and again, pouring out their wrath upon it in stab after stab, screaming until it was impossible to distinguish the giant's cries from their own.

With a shout that Harry just barely heard over the screaming around him, the seaweed-eyed giant tore the spider off his face, ripping it body from its legs in the process. Throwing away the spiders now spasming body, the giant rushed at him without even pausing to brush the legs out of his hair.

Harry flickered out of the way of the first blob of acid, letting it splash uselessly against the wall behind him, before swatting the second away with a flick of his wrist. Standing firm before the giant's charge, he swung his wand in an arc, producing a whip fire that struck the giant across the chest. The giant gave no more than a hiss of pain, not slowing down in the slightest, even when the whip became a snake and lunged towards his throat.

Grabbing its head in one hand, the giant crushed it like it was no more than a paper cup and swept up something that had been leaning quietly against the wall, swinging it as he ran. As he swung it towards him, Harry saw what it was—a beautifully crafted sword, made out of some sort of coral.

"You're dead!" The giant shouted, spittle flying from his mouth.

But his sword passed through nothing but air.

Behind him, Harry swung his wand as if it was a sword as well—and its slash rent an arc of nonexistence, as if it were an invisible blade that erased anything in its path.

The giant's left arm fell off, then, cut several centimeters below the shoulder, before the rest of the giant's body fell, cut in two as everything that had been in the path of Harry's wand disappeared.

"No," Harry said flatly, swinging his wand once more to remove the giant's head. "You are."

Almost immediately, the men around him began to cheer, but Harry didn't join them. Narrowing his eyes, he confirmed what he suspected.

The grey-eyed giant had decided to cut his losses and run.

Narrowing his eyes, Harry thought quickly. It didn't take him much thought to realize where the giant was going and he Apparated a moment later, reappearing with his back to the magical curtain that kept out the sea.

Right in front of him stood the Giant, face startled as he quickly tried to turn his run into a backpedal away from the enemy that had suddenly appeared in his path.

"Going somewhere?" Harry asked flatly as he slashed his wand horizontally, releasing a wave of ghostly purple flames. The Giant, moving with more agility then he would have given something so large credit for, leapt completely out of the way of the flames, turning the leap into a cartwheel to return to his feet.

Frowning after him, Harry lifted his wand again. Slashing his wand vertically, gouges appeared on the ceiling and floor, but the giant had already realized how dangerous it was to be anywhere his wand was pointing and quickly slid out of the way before he was erased.

Harry saw the Giant's eyes dart around quickly, as if searching for a way out, before his eyes landed on something behind him and narrowed dangerously.

Harry swung his wand toward the giant's face, intending to relieve him of his head, but the Giant spat something in a hissing, guttural language and a tremendous force hit Harry in the back and knocked him to the floor.

Pressed to the floor by a rushing torrent of water, it took him a moment to organize his thoughts and realize what had happened. Somehow, with either a password or a spell, the Giant had turned off the curtain that was holding the water at bay and with nothing holding it back, the sea was quickly rushing in.

The giant ran towards him, either trying to get out of the building or attack him, and he Apparated out from under the rushing water. Reappearing several meters down the hallway in a vertical position, he couldn't help but stumbled as the rush of water hit his knees, throwing off the spell he cast.

Swallowing his annoyance, he tried to readjust his aim before the giant fled from sight, but in the water, the giant had the advantage of both three-dimensional movement and room to make use of it. The giant grabbed the upper edge of the doorway and pulled himself up out of sight before he could hit him.

Unable to repress a snarl, Harry Apparated—

Back into the kitchen.

As much as the mere thought of letting the giant get away pained him, killing him wasn't Harry's first priority, no matter how much he wanted to.

He was here to save the captives. Including the warriors who would drown if he left them alone while the water came rushing in.

Appearing amongst them as the water flooded in, he whipped his wand in a wide circle above his head—and a moment before the knee-deep water could reach them, it arced up, curving in mid-air to connect above their heads, and then hardened into a massive crystal orb that shielded the entire group.

"There's been a change of plans," Harry said. "We're getting out of here right now."

The tip off his wand lit up with a bright blue light, sending a silent signal to the transporters down below.

"I'll go on ahead to get our ride prepared." He continued. "The others will be coming up momentarily and then we're going to leave as quickly as possible. I'm going to break this thing into smaller crystals, so break up into groups."

Apparating out of the sphere, Harry gave them a moment to separate into smaller groups while he gave himself gills again.

"I've set your pods to follow me in just a minute. I have to make sure our ride is ready for us, first." Harry told them as the sphere broke into smaller sets of octopi. "I'll only be a minute."

Appearing outside, he quickly looked around, in hopes of finding the giant who'd escaped. He was nowhere to be seen, however, even after Harry Apparated a hundred meters straight up to look around. On the Brightside, none of the other giants flitting about the city seemed to be responding in alarm yet.

That almost surely wouldn't last. The giant that had escaped would probably be back soon, likely with a few dozen other giants at his back.

For a moment, Harry gave serious thought to waiting around for them. He could wait invisibly for them to come back and set up an ambush. If he had time to prepare, he could transfigure a number of helpers and then he could introduce those giants to some of the most horrific creatures of the sea.

He wanted too—he couldn't deny that. He wanted them to pay for the lives they'd stolen and ruined.

But that wasn't why he was here, was it?

He had people to save. Maybe he could return later, to keep them from hurting anyone else, but here and now he had to concentrate on saving lives. He'd been arrogant with Harry and Elaine and it had nearly cost him—it had been so long since he'd entered a battle he wasn't certain he'd win that he'd taken his victory for granted and assumed nothing could stop him. But he was in a new world now, with new rules, and while he powerful and he knew it, but he couldn't let himself assume his opponents didn't have any tricks of their own. He knew everything his magic could do, but he wasn't dealing with his type of magic any more.

Entering the giant's ship, he immediately focused on his first concern and began to make it bigger on the inside. It would need to be large enough to hold everyone and he made sure it was. Then he checked the ships controls, wincing as he didn't recognize them in the slightest. But then, he'd expected that—and even if he'd known how to steer it, it wouldn't have changed anything. He couldn't well steer it himself, when problems were almost guaranteed to arise outside of the ship. So he began weaving Charms, animating the ship's controls, readying it to steer itself.

With that done, he opened the ships doors, and saw the first of the transports and the towers doors. He gestured at them to come as he stepped through the 'curtain' around the ships entrance, re-entering the water once more.

"Hurry up," He said in Mermish. "We haven't got much time."

At once, the transports responded to their Master's will and flooded out of the tower. They entered the ship one by one, not getting in each other's way and for a moment, everything seemed to be going well.

And then, he heard it. A sound like something rushing through the water.

Or a lot of something's.

Half-knowing what he would find, Harry gave the still boarding transports a glance before Apparating high above, expecting the worse.

He was not disappointed.

A dozen ships, larger and better armed than the one he'd stolen, swam towards them. Around them, hundreds of giants swam, clad in armor and baring spears and swords of coral in their hands. As they swam, more forces joined their ranks—and leagues behind them far off in the distance, more ships were gathering.

'How?' Harry wanted to ask. 'How did they get ready so quickly?'

It should have taken longer than this to get them all ready. Maybe even an hour or two, since they'd been caught by surprise. Harry had expected them to respond in force, but not like this—with his surprise attack, it shouldn't have been possible, from a logical point of view!

Yet, here it was. And who was he to speak of logic in the first place? He knew full well how illogical the world could get.

And in the end, how it had happened didn't matter. One way or another, their army had come for him.

He had to think fast; he started, as he always did, with a check of the current situation.

He was greatly outnumbered and none of the warriors he had with them would be of any use to him in the sea. Everyone he wanted to protect was on a small ship that was almost certainly slower than theirs and just as certainly much less armed. The sea was his enemies' domain and if he wanted the men and women he'd rescued to be truly safe, he'd need to take into account that he would have to, at the very least, get them completely out of the water.

He could do that, once he got to the surface and had a chance to work his magic. With his skill and the Elder Wand, a flying boat was completely possible.

But the surface was very, very far away, and getting there meant he'd probably have to go through most of an armada to do it.

Which meant he better not hold back.

With a wave of his wand, the clear water changed slightly in color. At this depth, it was hard to see them, even for him, but he'd conjured a swarm of Box Jellyfish as he retreated and ordered them quickly towards the oncoming swarm. He wasn't sure of the exact details of giant physiology, but he was pretty sure a bunch of poisonous Jellyfish would ruin their day.

Of course, if he ended up to close to them and accidentally brushed against one, it wouldn't do wonders for his day, either, so he magically ordered them to stay far away from him and put a respectable distance between himself and his creations before starting to enlarge them.

As he continued to retreat towards the boat, he began to conjure more and more creatures. He was careful not to send them to attack, knowing that it would be pointless if he got them too close to the Chironex he'd conjured.

Instead, he conjured them in waves and allowed them to spread throughout certain areas. A wall of tiny Blue-Ringed Octopi that he left the same size, before creating swaths of much larger and more dangerous looking creatures as the next line of defense. Sharks, Stingrays, and Sea Snakes may not generally attack unless provoked, but his control had them ready to kill.

Harry took a deep 'breath' through his gills as he lowered his wand for a moment to hitch a ride on a Great White Shark he'd made. He kept his eyes on the approaching giants as they ran into the first line of creations.

Almost immediately, horrible looking red markings spread quickly across the flesh of the foremost giants, as they tried to push roughly past the Boxes of Death and were promptly put in their place for their folly by thousands of microscopic poisonous darts. If they had been normal Jellyfish, pencil thick red lines would have appeared wherever their tentacles had touched.

His creations, naturally, inflicted wounds that were significantly larger than that, leaving agonizing, ropelike marks on the giants flesh.

With them close enough, Harry urged his creations to attack, rather than simply wait, and large tentacles began to brush against the giants in deceptively gentle strokes as the Boxes of Death floated forward. Panic was immediate as mere contact with the creatures caused horrific pain, and for a moment it seemed like they would break rank and scatter—

But a firm, but almost musical voice slid through the army, carrying smoothly through the water.

No…it was like it coming from the water, speaking from the liquid all around them. The sea called out and demanded to be obeyed.

As one, the giants on the frontline moved back away from the Jellyfish and a series of other giants, wearing strange cloaks over shell-like armor, and strange light began to gather around them, before the water started to blur.

Harry looked away, knowing before they even cast their spell what would happen. As he reached the ship, he was pleased to see the last of the transports entering the ship. He had his shark pull up by the doorway.

"Are you the last one?" He asked.

A young boy with slightly tanned skin nodded back and said something that the water distorted. Harry nodded and gestured the doors of the ship shut, before sending a spell whizzing down into the tower to double check, just to be safe. If there was anyone else, he could quickly Apparate them up, but he didn't receive a reply.

Harry patted his shark's head and gave it a nod before Apparating up to stand atop the ship. As the shark rejoined its fellows, Harry looked around from his new vantage point, working his jaw.

The giants had annihilated all of his Jellyfish and were making quick work of the larger predators he'd created. He imagined they were still having trouble with the tiny octopi, but they seemed to be bearing the poisons that were running through their systems fairly well—at least in that no one had collapsed yet. It would take at least several minutes for major symptoms to appear, though, if they did at all.

That was fine. He hadn't really expected the aquatic giants to be unable to deal with the dangers of the sea. It sort of went with the territory, he figured. They were just there to buy time for everyone to board the ship and they had.

The ship lurched into motion beneath him, slowly beginning to rise, but Harry ignored it. With everyone safely aboard the ship, it was his turn.

Taking one last breath, he prepared himself for what he was about to do, lifting his wand like he was a maestro before an orchestra. He held it there, at rest as the first of the giants broke through, before he dropped it low and then brought it sharply up high, a gesture that demanded response.

The only warning was a roaring, bellowing noise, perfectly audible even beneath the sea.

And then the Fiendfyre leapt eagerly to its master's call and he set the sea aflame.