Disclaimer: Hi there, I still own nothing as per usually. Glad to see you guys here, means chapter one was passable. lol. Read on and enjoy!
Chapter 2
I grabbed his hand, and my skin itched at the loud clap they gave clasping together. Surprisingly the grip back was quiet tight. The bubbles sparkling around us looked so magical and beautiful, which meant the utter cyclone of pure darkness that exploded out of it was probably deeply unexpected. As used to it as I was I still held my breath to keep the burning scream locked in my throat. In the end though, it only took one. Cascading into a hot mess, with that one bubble setting all the others off. The wind screeched so badly that it sounded like tearing metal, which made the tiny bones in your ear consider liquifying out of kindness. We were swept off the floor in a huge rolling gust that almost tore us apart, and I don't know how the older wizard was feeling but my arm ached something fierce. Still he was remarkably quick getting to his feet, even with a chill worthy of dementors settling in around us.
"Are you okay?" he asked roughly, eyes unblinking and almost unbelievably, fixed blue radars on the scene in front of him. I gave a tentative affirmative, and joined him. The building's around us were coated in black glitter, that shifted into monsters that roared, hollared and screamed, before disappearing back into the inky errie blackness. The smell of salt and death, of ocean but somehow fundamentally - yet almost unnoticeably, wrong. Everything shifted and festered like an open infected wound, in the drabest of blue-grey-brown scenery done in the finest oil paints lay an array of pavement chalk colours twisting around to alter the landscape around us to resemble a children's drawing. A young child's drawing. I burried that thought right on down deep, trying to limit the amount of damage that it could do. My gut clenched in a wave of nausea that dared me to lean over and vomit all over both our respective shoes. Somehow doing my best in a mad struggle to both draw in another inhale and look like I wasn't struggling here at all. 'Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! We are so unbelievably fucked.' His gaze darted to me long enough that he sent me a dirty look, of which I was too panicked to be arsed with currently, before it fluttered away again. Blearily I realised that the roaring in my ears wasn't just my heart beating too fast for my chest, it was water.
"Don't move," I breathed out, realising that this was supposed to be a beach or rather a beachfront. That it wasn't glitter. It was black sand and filled with nightmares. Nightmare sandcastles. Why is this even my life?
"Why ever not?" he replied, pulling me a little closer to his side as a street fair popped up. Like an actual pop-up book. 'I wonder how he's doing with all this?' Aged fingers gave a little flinch wrapped in mine, and I took a deep breath to ward off the implications. The air stung as it rushed into my lungs.
The way that the heat poured off of us, it was obvious. The temperature was dropping, and it was doing it fast. I fought the urge to shiver and ignored the instinct to do a little magic to make things more comfortable here. It would draw far too much attention. The people that faded into being softly were hard to notice at first and harder again to focus on once you had. People made of bright pastel flashes of watercolour. Features and details missing, they had no eyes or disconcernable nose. Only mouths that looked too big to fit on there faces, with too many wickedly sharp shards of bone that could vaugely considered as teeth, and shocks of blood red and raspberry pink lips. Lips that will later be the only detail reacallable about them.
"Because it doesn't know we're here yet," I hissed back. Rides came to life buzzing and humming a low tone that made it hard to focus, and the sound of carnival games that had made it clear they'd become cruel and unusual grew in volume with each passing second. The water that looked a dirty gunmetal grey frosted over everything in sinister patterns so devastatingly beautiful that I took a sharp breath. Fingers and toes numbing further and further up my limbs the longer we stood there. "It doesn't know we're here, and that's the way we need to keep It," I told him, suddenly tired again despite all the adrenaline I could damn well feel coursing through my blood.
"It?" he enquired sounding more dangerous than he had at any other point if the night, eyes darting in as many directions as possible. I debated in whether or no to answer him, then ultimately decided that I didn't even know what I was going to do. Answering to stall for time to decide whether to run or fight was the easiest thing to do. It would have to do because we absolutely did not have the time for complicated.
"Yes, It, and It seems to be sleeping so we may actually be able to get out of here," I told him.
"And where is here, perchance?" he asked fingers tightening so much that it hurt. I was almost sure I could hear my bones creak but there was no almost to the sure of which I remembered the first time I'd stepped foot in a witches labyrinth, and then proceeded to make the snap judgement that I didn't mind. The man was rattled so bloody badly that he was nearly shaking out of his skin. Previous exposure the only reason I was any better. 'He might not be so okay, when we get out of here.'
"Some place bad... come on lets go," I told him, looking him dead in the eyes and putting as much finality as I could muster. He quirked a brow, as if what I had said was funny. 'Please don't argue with me. I feel guilty enough... please just go.'
"Alright," he agreed breezily, as if humouring me. 'Patronizing asshole.' Any doubt I had about him having a peeping tom moments into my brain was long gone at the indignant snort he let out at seemly random when I had that thought. I let out a hum involuntarily at that, biting back the need to argue. Slowly, ever so slowly, we crept out avoiding the milling people-who-weren't-people. Calm and steadily making our way further and further to the more unpopulated areas. My whole body felt primed to explode, and so twitchy I worried that my muscles were going to start spasming. My legs ached and I could only imagine how the older wizard at my side felt. The ground a combination of something like quicksand, melted sludge mixed with dirty snow and ice. It sucked your feet in, and I worried so much about how quickly we'd sink if we stood still that I forced us to go faster, no matter how slippery and reliant on each other it made us. It had started to snow what felt like miles back, clinging to us refusing to melt and yet somehow managing to saturate us both entirely. Icy cold and sharp as glass.
"Almost there," I told him, resolutely ignoring the biting and bleeding slices of the snow flurry falling around us. Iced over with frozen water hardening his clothes and beard, and my hair. Covered in tiny cuts, he did a good job of seeming completely unbothered by while we got out of here. I didn't know whether or not to give mental points or be annoyed he was even trying - let alone succeeding so well.
"Good. Then we are, I believe as the turn of phrase goes, home free," he said good humoured, and as if this were an adventure or quest. Again something in me fought to be decidedly unhappy about this, but really in all honesty I had started it. I didn't have time to consider further. Music of some kind that had been playing quietly in the background, unnoticed and unspoken of started to crescendo. Good news I kicked him before anything bad happened. Got him right in the back of the calf, which would have hurt like a mother and didn't even have to listen to the backlash. An almighty scream, loud and blaring like a car alarm and a banshee had a baby tore through the air. Echoing louder and louder as it went on, over and over again and heartbreaking. On a basic and unexplainable level.
"Do you want to throw in a 'nothing bad can possibly happen' while you at it," I snapped, just loud enough to be heard over the din in irritation before letting the desperation of the situation fully seep in, "That thing isn't in the centre, the one screaming. It is the centre, and It moves, if It starts to chase us we will never get out. So I need you to run, now, and try not to die." All of this was almost yelled through the breaks It was using to take breaths in the ice cracking noise. Soon there was less opportunity to talk than even that. The screaming intensified into a hysterical noise that couldn't be clearly defined, not as anything other than sheer unadulterated madness. Hybrid of a scream of pain, laughter unstoppable and unstable, a God awful round of never ending sobbing, and shrieks of rage all thrown into a blender and turned into something that renders this explanation done incredibly poorly in comparison. My skin crawled so fiercely that I wanted to rip it off and demand it be burned. Before I can even begin to find a way to try say anything more, a snarling creature twisted into existence, mid-flying leap and shoved by a strong gust of brutal wind. We both dodge to the left, out of the way, falling to left into the thickshake constancy of the muck with surprising sped. I had plenty of practice, theoretically so did he. 'Still surprising he didn't creak like antique furniture falling apart.'
I'm sure the curses he spat, with great vengeance and furious anger, would have been quiet impressive. If his wand had let out so much as a spark, and we weren't forced to scramble away from the nightmare.
"I can't use my magic," he murmured at what I assumed was under his breath. I only understood because for the most part I read his lips. Dizzness struck again, a forceful reminder that I wasn't going to last much longer under this kind of wide spread attack without transforming. Due to my companion I was more than hesitant to do that though. There was a fear that was so stark and seemed to cloud over his entire form so completely that I pulled out my potion knife and let my magic shimmer over it. It glows purple and shifts into a sword. He didn't question, and I let out a breath that no one heard at my lucky stars.
"No... I was hoping to avoid you knowing about that," I said to him, "I'm assuming that you know how to use this." He snatched it out of my hand and I wasn't sure if he'd even heard me, Dumbledore just shoved it into another of the creatures that leapt at us. It disipated into sand, and he looked up with something like pride.
"I'm fairy sure the logistics are still the same, the pointy end always has gone in first. It'll take more than old age to forget that," he said lightly in tone yet not volume, but there was something like bite hiding underneath it. 'I didn't have the heart to tell him it was nowhere near that simple.' He faltered momentarily and I winced, knowing that I'd just as good as done it anyway.
"Wonderful," I shouted shortly, "Run." The mad dash we made must have been impossible. It had to be, because nothing else had any right to be this hard. Jarred, twisted and sprained ankles in the verge of snapping and giving out from under us wobbled as we tried to make it across the unsteady ground. That, rude much, seemed determined to be the end of us. The witch spun in circles trying to find us, going ballistic, and still letting out that continuous noise which seemed to take great pleasure in slowly forcing something fragile, deep inside, to bend, and tempting it to break. I was just glad that we were far enough away that details on what It looked like would be near impossible, forget the nightmares that were chasing us. That could break the headmaster permanently. It was a rush of claws, teeth, black grit that coated every small cut and every bead of perspertion. I might have been more help, but he refused to let go of my hand and we didn't have time for me to argue about it.
"You... said somet... something about an.. out," the professor panted, right arm swing resolutely at anything that came at us. Less and less so, as we seemed to be making some kind of headway. I looked around frantically, barely be able to see anything in the crushing darkness.
"We're near the edge. Look for a mirage. The air will move. Like in a desert," I said making myself able to be heard at all costs and searching as quickly as I could, "Like everything is disintegrating." He found it before I did, yanking me in the right direction. My feet slowly startling to find some purchase as our footsteps began to clack onto pavement instead of a lovely little case of nightmare sand slushy spillage.
We hadn't seemed so bad off, where we'd been, but back somewhat safely in London it was clear how much I'd been underestimating how hurt we were. Not that it mattered. Professor Dumbledore... he didn't stop until we were three blocks away from where we came out. I skidded to a stop as he suddenly planted his feet solidly on the ground. My chest hurt, it was hard to breath, and we where filthy. I wanted to heave, this shit was so fucking toxic that if we didn't get it off soon if wouldn't matter that we got out. The layer of sparkling grime felt a thousand time heavier than it should, and both of us were panting bad enough to be leaning over and clutching each other for support. 'This time it was my turn to laugh or ugly cry.'
Ouch, my brain hurt writing that. lol. The Madoka Magica world is so fun to play in, and Harry Potter universe pairs with everything, but damn if it isn't hard to wrap my head around. Hope you enjoyed.