Flashes of crystalline light, molten fire, blinding lightning, sprays and showers of jagged earth and stone, torrents of blistering water and thunderous cold sleet, and ruptures of iron and steel all crashed together in a display of primal, elemental warfare.

Harry scrambled behind his Fidelius Charmed shield, grasping the same-protected wand attached to the back of it, as he tried to find a single place that wasn't about to be consumed in the ungodly maelstrom.

Somewhere nearby several combatants were stupid enough to scream out the incantation of Fiendfyre, and just as soon another two roared the Zephyr spell, one of a very select few capable of smothering those cursed flames.

He did not understand how so many Enchanters, Elemental Lords and Mages had appeared after Lord Voldemort had extinguished so much of the life in the world, but it seemed likely to be that it was that very cause that had broken the conduit keeping the walls of reality solid- magicks that had never before been seen or known began to suddenly come to the mind as if by a stray thought, all across the earth.

And now they were all being used in an attempt to become the one, reigning master of the planet.

But while they were desperately trying to eradicate one another, it was soon determined that a general agreement had been reached to prevent anyone from interfering in that goal. And Harry had not only interfered, but he had killed his handful of upstarts near the beginning.

It might have also been the fact that Words of death began to appear to him in the same way that Words of fire, water, and so on had come to the others. Even still, he had not fostered the talent like his many nemesis' most apparently had, and they had been pushing him harder and harder when they clashed in the streets, hills, and anywhere else.

Dragging his wand through the air, Harry thought and silently cast the first of the tiers of death-Words. As he did so a cold surge gripped his heart and squeezed for all it was worth, making him temporarily choke, as a pair of Elemental Lords of ice and air took note of him. In the next moments the energy slipped away from their will, denying what spells they were in the effort of utilizing, though it would not last. They were growing smarter, taking notes and learning from one another even as they killed the opposition relentlessly. Abruptly two of them linked together, wands crossed at the base, tethering their mind and magic into one another to form a chain-reaction. It would not last long, and they would suffer for it afterward, but the results were seen immediately as sparks of energy began to manifest once more before them, and he gritted his teeth as he resisted the urge to chant from the higher tier vocabulary he had acquired; that was one thing he could never allow himself to do, to allow these mad fools to learn the Words of death as they had the Words of their current element.

He mouthed the spell he dared not say aloud to counteract the union, seeing the Elemental Lords of air preparing to link as well. The chill in his veins vanished altogether and fresh air flooded into his lungs at last as the magic in their wands twisted itself apart and was repelled, rejecting the wooden construct and the core, and in a surge of flaming tinder's, exploded in their grips. He had won a momentarily battle amidst a far greater war; others turned to face him then, recognizing the intruder to their midst. He ducked and rolled into invisibility to avoid the ozone-scented bolt of lightning that raced for his chest. His shield settled across his chest when he stopped moving some seconds later.

His breath came deep as his mind recovered from the previous attempt to kill him, and he waved his wand to obliterate the signs of dirt and gore that had kept with his body and would be as sure a sign of where he stood as if he was still entirely visible at that point.

Just when he felt a moment of relief, a shower of black and green shards fell out of the tumultuous sky and rained down jagged blades of obsidian and jade across the field.

Dread rushed through his body at that sight, and he turned away from the rest of the battle to face the late-comer; and sure enough, there the most potent of the other Mages' stood in his gray armor.

Among them all, he was the only one that seemed to have studied the aspect of war thoroughly enough to capitalize on it as he grew in power. He fought with a militant precision and combative strategies that often times swept the board clear, and his defenses were better than anything observed since the fall of Camelot. An Egyptian-flavored spell propelled the summoned stone missiles through the air again as he raised his steel rod and slashed it outward before his body, ripping up walls of iron and steel from nowhere to block the counter-assaults of fire, ice, and plants that came after his initial volley.

As soon as the walls first purpose was served and as the second volley crashed through the survivors, he banished them and splintered them into millions of jagged grains.

Four plumes of Fiendfyre charged together to nullify the deadly metal, but the other Mage still held the offensive, as he thrust the rod up and out in time with his natural wand, spinning out spirals of bladed chain a foot thick to call on and reflect the bolts of thunder aimed at his body.

Standing up straight and gritting his teeth, Harry set the timer on the portkey charm and applied it to his shield, then gripped his wand with both hands to prepare himself for what was to come.

Alright, you sodding bastard, he thought, you're the worst of them all.

The rest of the opposition was crumbling as it was wont to do before the Mage's superior ability, and they were banding together for strength just to try and hold him off, but like all of the other encounters, it was just a matter of time before this batch were wiped out.

Normally Harry would have welcomed a purging of the madmen and women, but when it was down to just the other Mage and himself down the road, he honestly didn't know if he would have the resources to keep himself alive for the final showdown.

Directly confronting him would be suicide, even with all of the others doing just that merely to try and survive. The volleys of stone and crystal had the advantage of being thin, hardy, and swiftly propelled in massive numbers. It was the reason that they were cutting through shields as if the blue domes were little more than warm butter, and if the Mage was truly acting as he was wont to do, than the runic cuts carved in solid steel into the surface of each one to negate the known defensive aspects only solidified his advantage against the lesser spell casters.

But there was one thing that he lacked, despite all of his other measures of offensive and defensive efforts; he had yet to truly clash against Harry Potter, Elemental Lord of death, Master of Death, and hidden Mage, outside of the slightest of encounters. Harry had often taken the wiser route to step back and observe who this new-comer was and what he could do- but no more. The time had come to put a stop to him before the Mage grew beyond any boundary to restrain.

Silently, Harry broke apart a section of the earth before him into a hundred small pebbles, and with great concentration, he cast the same derivative-Portkey Charm on them that he had done on his shield earlier, and banished them to every stretch of the four-corners still traversable in the rapidly crumbling field.

By the time he was done with that, three dozen more men and women had fallen to the greater Mage.

At last his own defensive measures were settled into place, and slid one arm through the straps of his shield before gripping his wand once more in between each hand and cancelling his Disillusionment Charm.

As he flickered back into view, he turned his head just over one shoulder and spoke aloud. "Rally to me or succumb," he ordered, never once taking his eyes away from the man further ahead of them on his pedestal of upraised earth.

Numerable eyes fell upon his back and just as many minds considered killing their next-nearest-mortal enemy, but compared to the Mage spewing out torrents of energy and death like it was nothing, Harry Potter was by far the lesser threat to their survival that night.

A thousand stones converged upon his body from the sky in a mocking-salute and welcoming salvo, confirming that he had gathered the other man's attention for the first time since his arrival there, and Harry clenched his teeth together as he pulled the trigger of the chained-timer.

With a terrible jerk behind the naval, he vanished and reappeared seventy feet away, gathering his magic together and thrusting his wand up. It was apparent that the foe had first mastered earth-based magic, but the iron magic had not been very far behind, even if he had to utilize his rod as a conduit of focus not unlike the wooden stave's of olde.

Harry thought the second-tier of death-Words and pushed it into the air where the Mage was conjuring his stones from.

The flow of energy pulling the shards into materialization slowed, but to Harry's surprise, they did not cease altogether. He had never had such a thing happen in all of the years since Voldemort's fall.

A wry laugh cut through the air above the soft whistle of the stones rushing toward his body again, and he was jerked once more to another span of the field.

"What is the matter, o' Master of Death?" The Mage called out as he thrust the iron rod high, and a burst of liquid metal plumed above his head like a silver sun. It began to grow and spin as it did so, rippling and splitting off miniature dewdrops as if they were tiny stars.

Harry renewed his effort to cut off the other Mage's summoning of earth-base magic, but a wall had cemented itself around them, proving between the two of them which had trained better, harder, and solidified their will properly.

For the first time, Harry regretted not practicing his mastery of the death-Words. He had grown too reliant upon his other skills and fields of practice with magic, and as he had never struggled to destroy another wizard or witch with the first few tiers, unless there was more than one pooling their strengths together, he had given the issue little enough thought.

Exhaling harshly as he was portkeyed away to safety, Harry ground his back teeth together in stubbornness. He would not lose like this! With a sharp gesture he yanked two of the Elemental Lords forward and held onto them despite their surprised shouts and struggles, and vanished with actual disapparition some ways off.

"Listen to me!" He ordered quietly, making sure that they were properly covered by the terrain and obscured from view. "He's stronger than all of us - alone. I need you fire Lords and earth Lords to work together and brew a pot of magma beneath the surface. If I'm right, he's only concentrating on his fields of specialty, which means he'll have to try and divert some of the magic and maybe even pull it off, but while he's wasting time doing that, it will kill his summonings or at least slow them down. I can stop them altogether if he releases enough concentration." He told them.

Harried silence met his words, but the nearest swallowed dryly. "And when we dispose of him?" She asked. It was a voice that Harry found himself leaning back from in recognition, as much as dismay.

"When he's dead and erased... we leave this field in truce. There's too many of your kind in this world, but there's also too many casualties already this night. Maybe it would be best to just let him kill you all and become the last Mage standing, but what then? He could be Merlin incarnate or the next Voldemort, and this time I don't have 'the power he knows not' to slay the bastard with." Harry answered her, and turned back toward the field.

Grimacing, he copied and recreated the keystones for the portkey spell that he was using, and pressed two into their own hands.

With a jerk all three of them reappeared near the rest, and Harry grabbed several more in the same manner to scatter them across the area. He was taking an extreme risk in passing on the method of travel, but if they were wiped out now, he was out of options altogether.

July, 2005, 8 years after the fall of Voldemort.

Pain washed through the sensations he had spread out into a spiderweb network, forcing a ragged gasp past his lips as every enchanted pebble, every grain of soil, and every root of grass for a league around dissolved into a churning inferno.

Heat to surpass the depths of the sun, fire more potent than the natural breadth and width of Fiendfyre, blossomed into being and ravaged the earth where Harry had attempted to establish a means of sabotage and subterfuge, to worm his magic inside of the protections of the Mage.

An agonized realization that he was, again, the lesser spell-castor where it came to the Words, struck at him even as he leaned against the stone barrier and tried to gather his wits together.

It was impossible to win like this, he also realized, after another few moments. He simply lacked the experience and skill, no matter what efforts he put into it, no matter what accomplishments the Elder wand bestowed upon him, he was out of his league, and without any of the Elemental Lords to challenge either of them, with they two being the last surviving Mages, and with too few Enchanters barely emerging any more over the last three years, Harry could find no way to overcome his opposition.

Which was exactly what he had first feared, that night of first contact.

They may have managed to surprise and overcome him with volcanoes at first, but when he figured out how to blend the Words of earth and fire for himself and actively invoked the same in the next few clashes, despair killed as many as the actual damage. But the kicker, the grand-all-finale, had yet to be unveiled until that day.

A shadow spread before the sun as the enhanced, amplified Fiendfire was wrangled back under the Mage's control and extinguished. As Harry was released of the ties to his failed network magic, he turned to examine the field and found his eyes unable to account for the emptiness of the hole before him, not until he took in the black creeping over the land far beyond it.

He found his neck craning back into the sky and gazing at the vast orb of dark stone and earth descending amid a burning corona toward the field.

Words escaped him, both magical and mundane- his mouth went dry, his pupils dilated, and a sense unlike any save that of his earliest encounters with Voldemort, of with Dementor's, brewed in the pit of his stomach and rushed up to the top of his spine, spread out along every bone in his body, and numbed his mind.

"Hail, o' Master of Death," the Mage greeted him warmly in the same old manner as he descended from across the field, touching his black and green leather boots to the ground even as he kept one arm raised high toward the sky with the iron rod clasped in between his gloved fingers tightly.

Harry could not take his eyes from the meteor pulled into existence by the Mage's Words. It seemed impossible, even by magical standards, to create such a force of nature by a single man.

He honestly doubted if even Dumbledore could have wrought such a thing in his prime.

"I must admit, it is quite spectacular, is it not? From a physical standpoint, the threat it imposes, the gravitational pull and effect upon the rest of the world in its awe-full wake, invokes a sense that few other sights can accomplish." The Mage called across to him, standing exactly where he had descended.

"From a visual standpoint, however, it is a thing lacking the beauty of other earth constructs. Like most metal workings, the iron undermines the rich baritone of energy and sublime art, lending a credence and creed of ugliness- the flaw of crafting from the empty cold of space, where the eyes may not see and shape the final product. I am afraid that the third eye is good only for gazing upon the matrix and layering process," he continued as if there were nothing at all amiss by a hurtling meteor vastly dwarfing out the sunlight.

Harry could barely comprehend the act, or the strange openness of the other Mage.

"Do you understand why, more so than how, I have shown you this act, Harry Potter?" The Mage finally asked, and all Harry could do was to shake his head slowly. He had nothing in his repitoire that could slow down the sphere, let alone destroy it, before it impacted against the earth.

A mirthful sigh escaped the other wizard, and with his free hand, the Mage drew aside the iron mask protecting his identity, and pulled the hood about his head back to his neck, so that his aged face was revealed. The numbness Harry felt increased into a bitter cold, leaving him gasping for breath as the strength bled out of his limbs and sent him tumbling toward the ground on both knees.

"Aye, my youth. This is what you had to become to eradicate the threat of the Elemental Lords and Mages, the first time around. This is the end result of fifty years of trials and tribulations in a realm of never-ceasing conflict, of endless disaster and the reshaping of the earth every few dozen months. This, I am afraid, is what happens when you do not educate yourself in the strengths of the Words gifted you by Voldemort's careless measures." The elder Potter stated in that same calm, slightly pleasant tone.

"It was worth it, of course. To rid this past of their threat. I intend to rule here to ensure that the youngling Enchanters do not grow into the same Elemental Lords that I have fought so bitterly in my own time, this I tell you freely. Likewise, I offer you the chance to contest my will, though I believe we both know how that is liable to fair; I can not kill you, for risk of erasing myself, at least just yet. Given enough time to alter this past even further, I may completely self-establish myself as a reasonable singularity and separate all ties with you," He continued in the same vein.

Harry could hardly believe it. He could have accepted it, had the Mage been some form of Voldemort called back from the ether by some unseen, unknown cost to the usage of the Words. But for the mass murderer, the war-criminal by all accounts, to turn out to be some haunted version of himself from a terrible future?

It was almost too much for him to handle.

Of course he would never overcome the other man in combat; he was at least fifty years younger and inexperienced, and all of the tactics he could, that he would eventually develop, were already well known and probably old hat to the Mage.

His stomach twisted into a knot and he turned and threw up at the implications, at the unfairness of these last three years and the countless death toll assumed by both sides, all because of him, ultimately.

"Yes, you finally see it, too. All of it could have been avoided if you had merely studied up on your Words of death and taken a more proactive step to eradicate the early Enchanters and first Elemental Lords, before they could become the threat to the world that they did." The Mage told him. It was easier to block out the face and try to ignore the familiarity of the tone if he thought of the other man as not himself, but as the Mage, as the wizard he had fought against for all of these years.

"Please, just put the mask back on," Harry finally asked, unable to look the Mage in the eyes any longer.

"No. No, you made me who I am, Harry. It is the price you must pay for your negligence; here, at least, the billions of lives lost to my future will be spared, for the cost of a few thousand lessers. What you could not do, I have done for you." Stepping forward as the meteor grew ever closer toward the earth, the Mage gripped him by the shoulder and forced Harry to his feet.

"Neither of us believe that you could possibly best me in combat, and truly, killing you has never been my intention. Step aside and allow me the freedom I deserve, uncontested any longer, and I will allow you to learn what I have and join the future I intend to brew into being." The Mage offered him not unkindly.

Harry couldn't force himself to look at the aged face of the elder wizard. "Why would you allow me to do that? And what if I refused?" He asked.

The Mage pressed his iron rod to Harry's throat, and with a silent Word of the second tier of ferromagic, cuffs and chains and manacles of bitingly cold steel slithered into reality and engraved themselves into his skin, replacing the first layer of flesh so tight were they bound.

Harry hissed in pain as he was captured and taken prisoner, twisted into a pose that arched his spine terribly and forced him to look up at the overhanging sphere of burning stone.

"If you refuse, Harry Potter, I will make you suffer as Voldemort never has and never could. This is just the lightest of the iron maiden spells I have invented to torture information from my enemies. I could turn your blood-cells to iron barbs, replace your muscles with wire-wrapped stone, and fill your veins with molten silver." The Mage told him quietly, as if disappointed. "And none of this would kill you for several hours of time. More, if you will held out and your magic gradually fought it off and preserved your heartbeat against all logic; several Elemental Lords have endured for days in this manner, so great was there will and control over their bodies," he added after a moment.

Pointing the rod at the sky, the Mage halted its forward passage and reversed the gravitational pull upon it, so that it was instead pushed away.

"If anyone dares challenge my rule again, let the new moon be a warning to them of what I will do and what I am capable of performing when tried."

This is, quite possibly, one of my favorite pieces. Its jumbled in the beginning but I got a lot of satisfaction out of writing it back then. I never did expand upon it much further than this, unfortunately. And for bonus points, all of this was meant to be flashback-sequences for a HP/Dresden Files XO around the time of Dead Beat, which I wrote a few pitiful scenes for and abandoned to expand on the Words era stuff instead.

And an edit! I see now that quite a few words were lost in the process of copying the original italicized scenes over and saving the de-italicized remains. I don't know why the Doc Manager does that, but its screwed with me before with I import italics. I've fixed the main errors I noticed going over this again.