Heroes of Magic and Might
Chapter 30 – Leveling up
…
The door had horns.
After a narrow escape through the last door, the invaders, that being Harry and company, had traversed a long spiraling staircase that seemed to go on forever.
This was a trick, a minor bit of magic but well applied, it would have had them walking for days, or till the kobolds broke through Harry's barricade, if the fairy hadn't been along and able to fly to the end of the hall where the focus, a small orb, kept the illusion running.
The orb, now shattered, sat on a sort of wall sconce, right next to the door, you know, the one with the horns.
"I don't like it," said Gabby, "why put horns on a door?"
"Decoration?" Harry offered.
"Bragging?" said Rosebud.
"I'll bet there's a minotaur in there," said Bill with far too much enthusiasm.
"What makes you say that?" said Harry.
"Call it a hunch."
"Are we going in then?" Hamma asked with a hint of impatience.
Though why he would be impatient was anyone's guess. It wasn't like they'd been standing there five minutes just looking at the door.
"I don't like it," Gabby reiterated.
"Stay close then," said Harry.
Leading from the front, Harry grabbed the large brass ring that was the handle and pulled. The door opened readily, a loud creaking groan of protesting hinges making for an effective doorbell, and Harry heard the half-goblin mutter behind him, "don't like it".
Perhaps letting her unease infect his own judgement, he drew his sword before entering the room. The smell was the first thing to hit him, though certainly not the last. It was like a barn, and no mistake; the floor was covered in matted straw mixed with what he could only assume was dung.
"Ugh, what is that stench?" Gabby complained as the others began to fill in behind him.
"Cow dung," said Rosebud, daintily turning her nose.
"I told you," said Bill, "there's a minotaur in here."
If so, Harry didn't see it. The room was empty save for them, but a gated doorway on the far side of the room gave a clue as to why. The gate suddenly raising of its own accord gave a lot more than that.
Heavy snorting and clacking hooves preceded a large shadow and the whole group tensed when a bovine beller shook the room.
"Here he comes," said Bill.
And come it did, stomping into the room, red-eyed fury.
"You were wrong Bill," said Harry, "it wasn't a minotaur," it was five minotaur, each as big as Hamma.
And what an odd-looking bunch.
When most people think minotaur the image to be conjured is typically of a beefy human man with a bull's head in place of the usual sort, and this was the case, for two of them. The point that distinguished these was the length of their horns, one having short thicker horns while the other had longer thinner horns.
The other three were something else entirely. At the center of the group was a shaggy man beast, his head looking something like an ox rather than a bull, and the other two were topped with what Harry recognized, though only vaguely, as the heads of bison.
Diverse in head, the rest was fairly standard. Thick hooved feet, bulging muscular frames, glowing red eyes, and thick metal collars around their necks.
"What are they waiting for?" after coming into the room and lining up the five bully boys had done nothing more than scuff the floor and look menacing.
"They probably haven't been ordered to attack, just defend," said Rosebud. "Those collars are slave control collars. All they can do is follow the orders they're given."
The idea of 'slave collars' caused a certain outrage in Harry's soul, but it was put aside when a disembodied voice filled the room, "KILL THEM YOU FOOLS!" and the fight was on.
The minotaur charged as one, showing much more unit cohesion than the invaders who leapt to the battle in disorganized groups. Harry went straight for one of the bison heads, swinging his sword in a downward slash at the beefy beast's head, only managing to catch, and lock, into the horn.
A quick vicious twist, his sword was wrenched from his hands and sent flying across the room. Staggering at the disarmament he was within easy reach when the minotaur grabbed at him, crushing him to a massive chest in an embrace that seemed to define 'bear hug'. It certainly felt like he was being hugged by a bear, if only slightly less hairy.
With all the others occupied Harry found he was facing this one alone, a remarkable show of faith in his abilities or a sign of their total lack of coordination in a fight. His ribs protested at the state of things and to oblige the need for change the minotaur squeezed harder.
Quite suddenly it was found to be hugging itself and the bison man looked down in confusion at where his huggy doll had just been, finding a strange looking squirrel instead. The squirrel in question, being of the type with way too much attitude for a creature its size, flew up his chest and attacked the head with vicious scrambling claws and nasty gnawing teeth.
The minotaur bellowed and flailed, snatching at the tiny attacker who managed to stay just out of reach of the large but slow and uncoordinated hands.
He was viciousness incarnate, claw and tooth, scratch and bite, fury swipes and crunch… he scampered around the bovine head with such ease as to be called swagger, but for all this conceit, he did not seem to be doing any damage to the minotaur, save in what he was causing the minotaur to do to itself.
Even this was barely worthy of mention, though the moo man had punched himself several times in his attempts to smash the squirrel, he showed no sign that this hurt him, and as he had missed every time it was no harm to Harry either.
Stopping for an instant at the very top of the head, sitting lightly to confuse the bison who had lost track of him at that point, he considered his options.
There were a number of things he could do; turn him to stone, or wood, or really anything that was not a big angry cow man, that was an option; the sleeping spell had been put to good use recently; a full body petrification would probably hold him; even just hovering him off the floor so he could not bring his massive strength to bear in any meaningful way was an option, not his favorite, but still an option.
All of these, however, had one major drawback, time. He would need time to do any of them, even his quickest transfiguration still took a few moments to accomplish and there was a lot of him. Moreover, he would have to change back to do any of those, save the sleep spell, and for that he would need to look the beast man in the eye, a problematic position to be in when he was under the orders to 'kill them you fools'.
He had yet to meet this person giving orders, but he already didn't like them. Not simply as they had commanded him to be killed but he felt it safe in assuming they were the one who had enslaved the ones now trying to kill them. That irked him, irked him deeply.
Coming from a time and place that was against the very notion of owning another person, it was natural he should feel some sense of outrage at seeing another sentient being enslaved, and by magic no less. But for Harry, it went deeper than that. He'd been a slave, in all but name, for as long as he could remember.
He'd done for his relatives as best he was able and more since well before normal children are even helping their parents with little chores and what had he gotten, a broom cupboard and table scraps. The dishes were washed because Harry washed them. The lawn was mowed, and the garden was tended because Harry mowed and tended the garden. He knew what slavery looked like, and the sight of it burned him like white hot embers.
Scrambling down the back of the head he came to the metal collar, staring at the artifact even as the minotaur tried fruitlessly to reach round to scratch his own back where Harry sat, right in that spot you can never reach.
He knew nothing of how the collar worked, could only guess what it was made of, but none of that really mattered because Harry had a plan, a crazy, stupid, reckless plan, which meant it was totally going to work. Well, addendum, it was totally going to work, or he was totally going to get killed. Seeing as he was headed that direction anyway if he didn't do something there seemed no good reason not to.
Glaring at the collar with an intensity that would have shamed most lasers, he focused his mind, then focused his magic. This was the stupid part. He'd learned, after much practice, to cast a sleep spell with his eyes. He'd also learned, through much training, to perform transfiguration without the assistance of a wand. Never once had he attempted to perform transfiguration with his eyes, while in his animagus form.
There was actually copious amounts of literature that stated emphatically that performing magic of any kind in the animagus form was completely impossible. To his benefit, Harry had never read any of that literature, and its amazing what you can do when you ignore the 'experts' and just do it.
He didn't know what he should turn the collar into, so he settled on a simple form shift, open it up and get it off, peel it like a banana. This, you could say, was the crazy part.
Having a clear picture in your mind was vital for a proper transfiguration, and given everything else he had working against him, lacking a solid picture of what he was trying to do almost guaranteed failure.
And this is where we get to the reckless part. Harry knew this, and he tried anyway. In the end, it's probably the only reason it worked.
The collar as it was could not be transfigured, such was the quality of the thing, but his attempts to do so, to warp its form did have an effect. The metal band shifted slightly under the wizards attempt, and that shift created a short in the spells which started a cascading backlash that caused the collar to explode like a hand grenade, spewing shrapnel in every direction.
One of those bits of shrapnel was squirrel shaped and went splat against the wall with a pitiful squeak. More pitiful still, when he tried to slide down the wall, as gravity dictated, his teeth caught on one of the bricks and he was left hanging like an embarrassed wall ornament.
I'm almost certain I didn't do anything to deserve this, the squirrel thought.
When gravity refused to finish him off, he collected his wits, and a few straying brain cells. Shifting back to human, he found his sword just within reach and slid it back into its scabbard.
Surveying the fight, he found it was mostly over. Three of the others lay dead, as did three goblins and one of the lizard men. Everyone else was engaged with the ox headed minotaur. Hamma was on top of him, holding him down, while everyone else had piled onto his extremities or taken hold of his horns trying to hold him still while Bill scampered around looking for a place to put the sword in.
"Wait!"
Bill stopped so fast he tripped.
"We can't keep him down much longer," Hamma shouted.
Which was readily evident. Even with all of them piled on top the minotaur was still moving them with each frantic burst of muscle. But they still had him, which made things easier for Harry, as did the discovery of solid stone flooring underneath the straw and shit.
Head clearing, he used the floor to mold crude bindings around the minotaur, holding him down tightly.
"Plug his ears," Harry ordered.
Lacking nothing in materials a pair of goblins grabbed hands of straw and dung and packed the ox man's ears.
Motioning everyone to stand back, Harry seized the minotaur by the horns and forced him to match his gaze. Madness burned in those eyes, but magic burned stronger in Harry's. It took longer than any of the others, but eventually the minotaur stilled, his body relaxing as his mind wandered off to the sheep pastures.
"That seemed like more work than necessary," said Rosebud, standing hands on hips, a clear indication there had better be a very good answer forthcoming.
"They didn't ask for this," said Harry. "You said it yourself. Slave collars. There was nothing I could do about those four, but this one didn't have to die."
"Uh, I think you mean three."
Following the path directed by Gabby's shaking finger, he found the minotaur he'd been fighting was not dead, at least, not yet. It bled from several wounds around its neck and staggered as though in a daze, but it staggered on its feet, staggered their direction.
Weapons were raised only to be lowered when a hand was raised, and Harry put himself between the group and the minotaur.
"Can you hear me?" he asked.
The minotaur looked at him, shook its head then staggered. It may have heard him speak but it didn't appear to understand.
"Please, you're free now. You don't have to fight. We're not going to hurt you."
The minotaur staggered and swayed, his balance at odds but his eyes never leaving Harry as he stepped closer and closer.
"Please, if you'll let me, I think I can help you."
But not quick enough. With a single staggering step back the minotaur toppled, hitting the floor with a meaty whoomph.
"Well, I guess that's the end of… oh no, is he doing what I think he's doing?" Rosebud grumbled through her hand.
"If you mean he's got his wand out and doing something around those holes," said Bill.
Ignoring the peanut gallery, Harry waved his wand in rapid, well-practiced motions. He'd gotten the knack for the simple healing charms while training with the goblins who, while eager, were no more coordinated with a weapon than he when they started. He'd gotten more than a little practice which had also served to increase his already healthy respect for Poppy Pomphrey and the work she did.
At least he only had a handful of goblins, she had a whole school full of stupid children, and they had magic.
The holes sealed shut slowly, he could feel them resisting his magic. He considered it a miracle they were as small as they were, given the strength of the explosion that made them, enough to make a squirrel go spalt on the wall.
"Do we really have time for this? The longer we take the more time they have to prepare for us."
The vampire was right, he knew. But his conscience would not allow him to just leave the minotaur to bleed to death. There was nothing he could do about the blood already lost however, and they left him there, patched, breathing, but still unconscious.
There was no trap on the next set of stairs, logically if you'd gotten that far you were smart enough to see through such things, and anyway, the next room would stop you. This seemed to be the attitude, and not unjustified.
The next room was full of water, and that water was full of snakes. So full in fact you could barely see the water as they roiled in coils like a single living mass of rope.
"My word!" exclaimed Bill.
"Where did they get so many snakes?" said Gabby, voicing the thought for the entire group.
"It doesn't matter where they came from, how do we get across?" said Rosebud.
"You have an idea," said Hamma, observing Harry staring thoughtfully at the slithering mass.
"A couple. And given how conversation went the last time, I think I'll just skip ahead a bit," said Harry, holding up his wand which sparked meaningfully.