Charlie woke up in a dark, dusty place, estimating from the ache in his back that he had been out for a while, possibly hours or days. The rustic had turned on them, and he was still annoyed about that, but he was not the threat. He could not see anything around him, and it was weird that he still had his wand, but not hearing any other voices in his mind meant that he had been taken out of the city. We were more trouble than it was worth keeping us there. If either of us knew anything of the mind arts, we could've used it to our advantage. He sighed. I reckon they figured there were fewer variables wherever this is.

Getting up, he could not detect Sirius anywhere, though his wand was where he left it, he thought. Remembering that Goldstein had hidden in an impossible space one time, he guessed that he could be trapped in one, though there was a simple way of finding that out. Casting a light charm and moving it up until he could no longer see it, he concluded he was either outside, or in an impossible space that was so voluminous on the inside that he might as well be.

"Sirius?" he called out. There was no response. He had not paid attention in Charms well enough to remember how to expand a light charm, so he created new ones, moving them around in hopes he would see his companion somewhere. Starving, he figured the best thing to do was to grab him and regroup somewhere, counting his blessings to have woken up at all.

"Put that light out, you damn mong; you'll give away our position." Recognizing the voice behind him, he hardly hesitated.

"Where are we?"

"I don't know. I already tried to disapparate." In darkness once more, Charlie felt alone, though their enemies had to be around somewhere. They had to have a reason for not killing us.

"We're near the city, then. Any idea about our targets?"

Two bright blue lights flared in front of them and he instinctively threw up a shield charm, mistaking them for a pair of memory charms. The lights were moving toward them, but it was clear they were not spellfire.

"The bloody hell is that?"

"It's something that doesn't need light to see. Avada Kedavra." The green flash unnerved him as it passed him by, going through his magical shield and right in between the two lights, both about seven feet off the ground. "Damn. Lumos," he incanted, moving the spell toward the threat. Slowly the charm illuminated the a monstrosity of molten gold, the lights serving as eyes as perhaps the older wizard had expected, if not for a statue. Reckon he's also right in thinking it's not harmless.

A voice came from nowhere.

"A pity you had to wake up at night, but no matter. My father's master work took me years to even replicate, and another few months to improve, but the Death Eaters didn't take all of his notes, and they'll have to answer to me for that misstep."

There was no point in answering, and serious doubt the young wizard could hear them. He was probably still in the city, with Regulus, where it would be almost impossible to get at them, and before that they would have to deal with the statue of metal as it moved toward them. Charlie cast an explosion charm at center mass, but all that did was expand a sphere of metal, which shrunk back down.

"Ice! Know any ice spells?" he asked.

"One," Sirius responded, a slashing motion of his wand causing a haze of light blue to move toward the target. Its eyes burned brighter and the metal started to glow, resisting being frozen. If it's just a hunk of metal all the way through, how the hell does it respond to spells? He had seen objects enchanted to dance around, but it was all pretty simple; there was no spell that could dynamically assess threats, because the incantation would be a mile long.

"Does it work like a painting or something?" he asked, backing up.

"I doubt it; that would give it something like a brain to attack. This was their worst case scenario in case they couldn't Imperius the whole city." The older wizard tried casting a memory charm, but if he knew it well enough, it failed to work as intended. "Doesn't it seem obvious, though, that the first thing you would try to do when a golem made of molten metal attacks you, is to freeze it?" he asked. The magical shields they were putting up only seemed to delay it; its liquid fists punched through them.

"Well how could you set it up so that-"

"There are two options. One, it's being controlled somehow, but then we could just block the spells and sever it from its master. We're dealing with an Automaton."

Charlie gulped, realizing he no longer had his broom in his expanded bag. These things were not exactly magical creatures, but he had heard about them, since Talos was usually mentioned in the same breath as many of the other Ancient Greek monsters. He was relatively sure they mostly served to protect the kingdoms against dragons. We definitely have to go after Goldstein, I just can't bring Sirius into the city.

"What was wrong with you back there?" he asked, casting a beast detection charm to see if there was anything useful nearby. "It was like you just got overwhelmed by the voices everywhere." He was making an attempt to be sympathetic, but more than anything, they needed some way to get the advantage back from their targets, whose targets they had become.

"I've already figured it out. Distract the golem," Sirius ordered, disappearing into the darkness. Despite himself, the younger wizard had hoped his traveling companion would have been willing to test out more of the dark magic he had been using. There's got to be something they didn't think of... Continuing to back up and cast shield charms, he had a thought to try transfiguring it, but he had hardly practiced that since McGonagall's class, and he was pretty sure there was some rule about transfiguring gold.

Merlin's pants, how did they get all this gold in the first place? He had some idea that the Black family was wealthy, but he had not known Regulus ever existed, so he must have been in hiding for a while. Raising trees out of the ground to slow down the automaton, he remembered learning of a massive withdrawal from the muggle bank the Goldstein family used, around the time the escaped Hogwarts students disappeared. Damn it all, if only we still had Wahde.

The golem was going through the conjured trees, setting them on fire in the process. Charlie had not interrogated his old partner on everything there was to know about the general case theory of Transfiguration that Uagadou kept as a closely guarded secret, but since there were not inordinate amounts of gold pouring out of Uganda, he doubted it was so simple. Conjuring birds and trying to get the automaton to focus on them instead, something that worked on hippogriffs sometimes, was proving completely ineffective. The mass of metal seemed indefatigable, while he knew he would run out of energy at some point, especially on an empty stomach.

More creature detection charms resulted in more eerie silence in every direction, though he cast attraction jinxes all the same. If something's out there, it'll be here before long. I'm not even hoping for much, just something that can get me out of here, like a griffin. A runespoor might distract it, but they're in unplottable forests. One of the great automaton's fists landed right next to him, causing him to have to leap backward. He tried a levitation charm, hoping he could at least get it of the ground, but liquids were not meant to be levitated.

Right as it seemed the monster of molten metal had caught up to him, he cast a severing charm on each of its arms, causing them to fall to the ground, then a shield charm he hoped it could not just punch to pieces. If Sirius is right about the instructions, there could be wards in the hands... no idea how you ward a liquid. The gambit managed to delay the statue for a moment, but as he put up more shields, the golem stepped on its own severed hands, new ones growing from the stumps right after. To his surprise, it started kicking through the next few shields.

"The wards are on solids inside the liquid!" he called out in case his partner was listening. "Gold melts easy, it could be a diamond or something..." He had a thought to cut the feet off and then separate them from the body, because summoning the unknown ward surfaces was not working. "Diffindo!" he incanted, almost at the limit of his strength. The golem tripped and he banished the foot before it could re-form.

Charlie's eyes widened as a new foot grew from where the old one had been. It'll keep chasing me forever... but it has to be getting smaller. Scrambling to his feet to get more distance, he cut off the other foot, banished it, and put up a shield charm at the last moment. Breathing at last as the golem beat against the magical barrier, he felt something poking him in the back. It was a wand.

"You did well, Weasley. I'm actually quite impressed; I tried everything I could think to do to render this walking statue mortal, and yet it continued to pursue me. Goldstein and I have had weeks to perfect the design."

"You used the... people of the Lost City, didn't you?"

"Yes, there were able to think of quite a number of ways the golem could be defeated. It truly was a wonder, working with them to come up with the warding for the instructions, as he calls them. They have never seen a written language, and yet, with our minds, it was almost too easy for them. They perfected what his father had started in his early notes, and now we have a weapon no one can defeat. You were only just able to contain it, and I doubt you would have done as well against a million of them." The younger wizard felt the wand leave his back, but he was in no condition to fight. Any sudden movement would be met with a killing curse. I need a breather. I need to keep him talking.

"What do you intend... to do... with a million of them?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing, just keep expanding our powers forever. At some point I realized Goldstein had the right of it. Even if all you want is to be left alone, other people don't leave you alone, or that is the the way he puts it."

"He's a criminal. He kidnapped people and murdered them." I shouldn't bother justifying why we're chasing them. "You were a Death Eater."

"That he well knows, and yet I left my master's service for the same reason he left Hogwarts, the same reason he hates the more loyal servants of the Dark Lord."

"And what's that?" Charlie asked, his wand flying out of his hand. An old Seeker, he might have leaped for it, but he would have been killed immediately.

"They don't care about us." Waving his wand, Regulus destroyed the shield, clearing the way for the mass of molten metal. "Please cooperate; we have yet to see the golem kill anyone."

They both turned to the sound of a thump. It was the corpse of a boy, almost immediately recognizable as Goldstein. A stunner hit the former Death Eater in the back, and another shield charm blocked the automaton.

"Accio wands," Sirius incanted, surfacing from the darkness and tossing one to his confederate.

"You- how did you-"

"I should start by explaining what they expected to happen, and why that did not happen." The older wizard put conjured chains around his brother. "They expected you to go after them. They took your broomstick, and they figured you would leave me to distract the golem, because they knew the Lost City reminded me of Azkaban. When I went after them, they decided it would be child's play to stun me and throw me back to their creation after it killed you, so Regulus went out to see how you were doing. I expect he remembered that I am an Animagus from our last encounter, but neither of them would have known how this would be an advantage to me."

"Are you immune to the mind arts as a dog?"

"Not really. An animal's thoughts and feelings work differently from those of a man, but there are records of people communicating with Animagi whilst in their other forms. I was able to filter out the noise of the city by waiting for my brother to leave, hiding in a corner. When I no longer felt his presence, he would have decided that I either ran off or was paralyzed somewhere in the city, and in either case Goldstein would not need his help. I know him well, and I suspected he would have a greater interest in gloating as the golem reached you."

"So you sneaked up on Goldstein and ripped his throat out?"

"I would have preferred that he would have been sent back to Liberia on kidnapping charges, but I don't have a lot of options as a dog and time was of the essence. Regulus would not be going out to visit you if he thought you had the slightest chance of defeating him in a duel." It was pretty much over when he found me. "I reasoned that you would be as hungry as I am, and your strength would be flagging soon."

"So what are we going to do, put your brother in a box and go eat somewhere?"

"First we have to do something about the city," Sirius decided.

"Oh, come off it, I'm starving."

"Have a summoned cherry or something. I was in prison for most of your life."

"Accio cherries," he incanted, seeing nothing flying in his direction. Huh. I guess if they could just summon the crops from the farms, they wouldn't need the farmers to come and sell them. There must be some jinx that helps to hide this place.

The city was around a hundred yards away, and it was a painful hundred yards, but a relatively short trip. The gates were not opening for them, so the former prisoner shrugged and climbed the walls by the narrow logs sticking out of them. I reckon that's how he got in earlier.

Charlie suggested that he enter by himself, so he could stun someone, drag him out, and they could begin to diagnose the problem. The older wizard agreed to it, probably guessing that he would steal some food on a detour, but allowing it all the same. I'll get something for him on my way back.

There were grapes hanging from a vine, which made for a good snack, but the trouble with trying to stun someone was that everyone knew his intentions. He tried to communicate that they were under the Imperius curse, and Regulus would have cast it, since Goldstein was already dead, but they appeared to disregard the notion. To make matters worse, they seemed to have some kind of loyalty to their captor, and they knew he was a personal enemy. Best be on my way.

Outside, Sirius had been placing a few more charms and curses over his brother.

"Bad news. He was the one who cast the curse, so they're not going to get out of it as long as he's alive." He tossed a cluster of grapes to his partner, who nodded. "I reckon they don't have any kind of resistance to the mind arts."

"The rustic we met earlier resisted it, but only whilst he was outside the city. The community as a whole is quite powerless if so much as a majority of its people are being controlled." He recalled that the wizard who led them to the city had led them into a trap for the sake of his children. He didn't really trust us- he just needed to resist the curses Sirius was using on him so we wouldn't suspect the city would be dangerous. It would've been the easiest bloody thing for Regulus to put out a description of us on the mental grapevine.

"Well, yeah, and they managed to get to a majority because people don't have any kind of mental shields- before that, they really don't have any individuality. The bloke we met just happened to be an exception. Are we going to ask him some questions?" he asked, gesturing at their prisoner with his wand. The grapes tasted about as delicious as food could be expected when he was starving, but he would need something else pretty soon.

"Always in a hurry," the former Azkaban resident murmured. "Rennervate." The wizard's eyelids flitted open, but those were the only parts of his body that moved. "Good evening, dear brother." As Charlie stared at the two of them, mere feet apart for the first time, the resemblance became all the clearer. Hope I never have to meet Bill or one of the others like this. "As I was levitating the corpse of your old confederate, I might have heard you mention something about leaving the service of the Lord Voldemort. Perhaps you could shed some more light on the subject."

"You mean to kill me." The younger wizard tried to think of some way to prove that they would not, but they lost nothing by doing so. Sirius seemed in less of a hurry to deny it.

"Eventually, yes; it's a matter of when. If you would like to extend your life, tell me what I wish to know."

"Ah, but what is it that you wish to know?" I guess his first question wasn't that specific.

"Why did you leave the Dark Lord?"

"He does not care about us, Sirius. For your information, I did care about you, for though you were a wayward son, you were one of us. The world of magic matters to you, however you pretend, more than that of the muggles. Our master gathered us almost exclusively to protect us whilst he destroyed both, though he seemed inclined to start with our own. I suspect the others are hedging their bets in some way, perhaps waiting for an opportunity to turn on him, but I believe it an opportunity that will never come. I was a cunning Slytherin, of the variety that the Lord Voldemort never wanted in his service in the first place." He glanced toward Charlie. "He and I were too similar to get along."

"You seem to believe that it is impossible for your master's followers, those closest to him, to ever kill him," Sirius prompted. He's willing to indulge his brother's way of talking all around things until he gets to the point at the end. "Perhaps you could tell us more about that."

"Most of his enemies know of the curses and enchantments on his person, the charm to fill his lungs with air if he were suffocated, the dark shield around his heart that allows only his own blood to pass to prevent poisoning, in truth I would not be astonished to find some of those were lies. What most of his enemies do not know, is what they have not experienced themselves. The Dark Lord does not intend to die. His priority is removing threats to his life. If something seems like a threat to his life, he removes that first. If something seems like a threat to a measure of his own preservation, he removes that second. It something seems like a threat to his ability to remove threats, he removes that third."

"Okay, we get it, he wants to go on," Charlie said, annoyed. "That's not the only way to lose the damn war. If he's the only one left and we can't do anything about him, what's he going to do all on his lonesome?" He was beginning to believe Regulus in that he could predict the moves of his former master, as annoying as both of them were. "He'll have to die eventually, right? If he didn't have his allies, he'd just seal himself up somewhere and do whatever it is he does for the next five thousand years."

"With the Philosopher's Stone I would not be so sure; without it, yes, like any other mortal he would perish."