A DAY'S WORTH
Chapter 13
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to their respective owners.
-ADW-
Harry sent a Reducto into the midst of the demons sending them flying in all directions. He saw the ones flying and knowing that none of his companions was capable of flight, he knew he would have to be the one to deal with them and with that in mind he shot into the sky.
He conjured a whip of lightning and spun around, letting the whip make a clockwise slash that cut every demon close enough in half. Seeing the fate of their comrades, the other demons were hesitant to attack Harry but he didn't give them a chance. The whip transformed into a sword if pure lightning and he fell on them.
They tried to fight back but he was too fast for them. Weaving with in their personal space was child's and soon those that were still alive were trying to avoid him, flying back into the castle. Well, if they wanted to go to the castle, it was their right and he couldn't deny them.
Dispelling the lightning sword, the wand disappeared as well and Harry slapped his hands together. A shock wave of condensed energy stored in his suit erupted from his hand and hurled the demons, about thirty of them into the castle walls crushing them to death. This was a feature he included in the suits to enable the person wearing the suit to create space to escape through the port-key. Well at least for Jack who couldn't teleport without his suit.
With that taken care of, Harry looked down to see the Sorcerer Supreme and Illyana were handling themselves and would be fine. He turned to the castle, the sun had almost disappeared but the flames were enough to illiminate everything well enough. Harry felt for his friend's ring and when he pinpointed the exact location, he suppressed his magic, cloaked himself with the magic of the Invisibility Cloak making him entirely undetectable and teleported.
He arrived in a large empty hall that was almost as big as Hogwarts' entrance hall. Well empty except for a huge throne at the front of the hall and sitting on it could only be Belasco. There were no windows but the room was well illuminated from what seemed to be hundreds of torches on the cieling. Sensing no other presence in the hall, Harry dropped his cloaking magic and lowered the hood of the cloak.
"Ah, I was wondering when you would show up." Belasco snarled.
"Where is Jack?" Harry asked with a calm he wasn't feeling, trying to suppress the urge to kill the fool on the spot.
"You forced my hand, Potter." Belasco gestured with clawed hands and a deformed pile of flesh lifted from behind him and floated over to Harry and landed with a disgusting squelch. "All I wanted was my apprentice, but you just hard to make things complicated didn't you?"
He leaned down and studied his friend's body. There were numerous slashes all over the body and he had lost so much blood his skin was white. The angle at which he was lying also showed that a number of his bones were broken, very vital ones and he knew without a doubt that this body was definitely dead.
He had expected as much. He gestured with his hand and grimaced at the sound the bloody pile of flesh made as it turned so he could find what he was looking for. He squatted down to check on Jack's left hand and froze.
"Looking for this?" Harry's head snapped up to see Belasco holding Jack's ring. "I have to admit I haven't met magic like this before."
"Portus." Harry whispered and the pile of flesh disappeared. He almost lazily closed his palm and the ring disappeared from Belasco's hand only to reapear in his. "I am going to kill you very painfully."
Belasco's demonic features almost looked amused.
"Nice trick, but we both know nothing can leave this place without my permission." He gave Harry a grin. "At least I hope you do."
Harry stood up and started walking towards Belasco.
"You seem to be under the impression that you are invicible." He started conversationally. "I'm told that you believe that if you die, this dimension will collapse on itself. Well, let me break it to you, you are wrong."
"You think you know my home better than me?"
"You formed a master-apprentice bond with Illyana you idiot." Harry told him. "Now I am not sure how demons work but I know that when someone considered a 'Master' dies, the ownership of all his possessions magically trasfers to their Apprentice."
"Lies!"
"Simply put, when you die- and it will be very soon- Illyana will be ruler of Limbo and all that you own will belong to her." Harry grinned at his enraged face. "And won't that be the irony..."
"I will not have you speak your lies in my presence!"
"And there is that mentality where if one is confronted with something they don't understand then it automatically becomes a lie." Harry tutted, shaking his head. "Then again, we can easily put that to the test."
"You think you can beat me?" Belasco laughed.
"Well, let's find out." Harry replied and the next instant, the Elder Wand was in his hand. He fired a bolt of harmless light at Belasco but by the time the bolt impacted the throne, no one was there.
"You will die if you don't leave this place Harry Potter." Belasco's disembodied voice came from all around the room.
Harry didn't answer, he dispelled his suit, leaving him in his normal clothes and gestured at his hand. A small cut appeared and he got some blood on his finger. Bending down, he traced a rune on the stone floor and charged it with magic. When it was fully charged, a bubble of magic exploded outwards and covered the entire room. The next instant, Belasco appeared a couple of steps away from him with a grunt.
"What did you do to me?" He snarled at Harry who shrugged unrepentantly.
"You seem to be under the impression that you know a lot about me." Harry smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"I don't need to know you to beat you." Belasco answered. "You are with no doubt powerful and most definitely an able fore. But it need not be like that."
"Is this where you ask me to join you, after what you did to my friend?"
"No. And I wouldn't wish anyone to go through what I did to get here." Belasco replied. "You see, I was once human like you. An ambitious and cunning human if I do say so myself. However, I felt that there was something missing in my life, like I was made for a greater purpose, to be something greater than the world was offering me."
Harry was intrigued.
"I wished to be more, to have the power to change the world." The demon was quite passionate about the topic. "Unlike you, I had no power and I knew without power, I would never be more than the little boy everyone saw me as. So when I came across a chance to get that power, I grasped it with both hands and in the process lost my humanity."
"It was a high price and I paid it." Belasco continued. "And I would do it over again because now, I can change the world. Now I have a higher purpose and with all that comes with it. You, Harry Potter have power and would not have to pay the price I did. You could be even more powerful, you would make the lives of your loved ones better than you could imagine. You would be a King!"
Belasco's exclamation echoed around the hall while Harry just stared at him.
"You will be immortal." Belasco said more quietly. "And I know that you are a smart man and understand what exactly that entails."
"You make a... compelling argument." Harry commented. "All those things you are talking about, power, a purpose in life... immortality?"
Harry walked forward untill he was standing a few steps infront of the demon king and looked up into his black eyes. "I have them all and much, much more."
They stared at each other from what felt like forever untill Belasco sighed.
"I respect power, Harry Potter." He said almost sadly. "This needn't end in a fight."
"Well, you should have thought of that before involving my family." Harry took a fighting stance.
"Very well." Belasco. "I'm going to strip your soul from your body while you're still alive - and offer it to those I serve, the Dark Ones, as a sacrifice. And then I will transform all those you love into my servants."
"Right. But you are forgetting one thing..." Harry said, just as his suit reappeared and emerald orbs looked back at the demon king from under the hood. "You need to be alive to do that."
Harry fired a Reducto at the demon but Belasco, who was now holding a battle-ax, almost twice the size of Illyana's swatted the spell with the flat end and charged at Harry. He ducked into a roll barely avoiding the swing directed at his chest, before he could straighten up, Belasco used his tail and wrapped around Harry's leg and flung him across the hall.
Harry landed on the stone floor and almost immediately, his instincts flared and he rolled to the right just as the battle-ax landed in his former position with loud bang. He rolled onto his knees only to be backhanded on the side of his head and he was sent flying again right into the wall.
The suit absorbed the impact but he was still slightly disoriented and sunk to his knees. Belasco was already in front of him and lifted him by his cloak and peered at him. With how tall the demon was, Harry found himself handing in the air a couple of feet off the ground. He looked into Belasco's black eyes and almost instantly felt a force slam into his occulmency barriers.
That more than anything was enough to pull him out of the haze he fallen in due to Belasco's assault. He barely thought as he expelled Belasco from his mind. Harry glared at the demon from under his hood as he staggered from the expulsion and he lifted his wand.
A bolt of lightning erupted from Harry's wand with such force that it pushed him back as it slammed into Belasco's chest. The demon screamed as he sent flying across the hall leaving the smell of burning flesh behind him. Harry didn't let on the assault and fired bolt after bolt of lightning at the demon as he flew closer, revelling in his screams.
When he got near enough, Harry suddenly realized something wasn't right about the demon before him and he barely had time to encase himself in a dome of magic when a bolt of mystical energy slammed into the shield with a resounding bang shaking Harry to the bone. Another red bolt slammed into the shield, jarring Harry again and when he saw Belasco preparing for another one, he knew he had to act and expelled the shield in an explosion of magic.
Belasco conjured a shield in front of him to protect himself from the wave of magic but Harry wasn't idle. He flicked his wand and a stone fist rose from the floor behind Belasco and punched him in the spine. The demon was sent flying towards Harry right into the path of an exploding curse in the face.
The resistance to magic made sure that his head didn't explode but he was sent back to the stone fist. Another flick of his wand had the fist trasfom into a very sharp spike and Belasco embedded himself through his back and it came out from his torso. The spike then grew other sharp spikes allover it's sides and Belasco screamed as his vital organs were destroyed by the spikes.
Harry slowly walked forward and stood before the dying demon. He stopped a couple steps away from him and watched the Belasco's black blood flow down the spike and collect on the floor. He lowered his hood and peered at him.
"You are dying." He observed dryly. "If I had known it would be as easy as this I wouldn't have bothered using magic."
"You think you have defeated me?" Belasco laughed before his laughter cut off with a choke. "I am immortal, Potter. You cannot kill me."
"You don't have to die to be dead." Harry said philosophically as he dispelled the suit and reached in the pocket of his trenchcoat.
"That doesn't even make sense."
"Well that's magic for you." Harry retrieved a clear baseball sized crystal from his pocket. Something he and Luna had come across on their travels and after hundreds of failed attempts had managed to recreate in case he ever faced someone he considered himself immortal. When Larry told him of his task, he knew the possibility of facing an immortal was very high and he created one for himself.
"You see, Illyana was quite convinced that you were unkillable." Harry said conversationally as he carefully placed the crystal in the puddle of blood next to the spike. "On principal, I just had to prove her wrong you see. But then you killed my friend and here we are."
Harry stepped back and concetrated on the crystal while at the same time tugging at his magical core. The crystal glowed an eerie green as the blood around it started getting sucked into it. Harry continued pushing more magic into it and the clear crystal started taking on the black color of the blood as it continued to absorb all the blood that had come out of Belasco.
The demon king was watching Harry with wide eyes as it finially downed to him what Harry was doing.
"Oh, by the way I invoke right of conquest." Harry said and started pouring as much magic as he could into the crystal. Belasco's magic fought back trying to stop the crystal from draining his life force but Harry was way much stronger. Perhaps another time Belasco would have been able to win the tug of war given that he was in Limbo and his magic came from all around him but with Illyana or Darkchylde also pulling her magic from Limbo, it wasn't enough.
Belasco screamed as his life was sucked into the crystal no matter how much he fought. The demons outside all fell down, spasming in pain as their master tried to feed from them to fight the inevitable. Slowly, Belasco was drained of life and magic, his body shrivelling untill all that was left was a husk of a human being impaled on a stone spike.
Outside, the demons all fell still and the Ancient One was left panting next to Illyana amidst piles of dead demons. The number of demons seemed to be endless and despite herself, she had been starting to tire while the girl next to her just continued to gather momentum. The Sorcerer had been moments away from using the Eye, something she tried to avoid as much as possible.
"What just happened?"
She turned to look at the different voice to see that the half-demon had disappeared and in her place was a normal looking girl. As if that was not enough, the air seemed clear, and the red sun that had just been about to set seemed to have changed was now looking more like the one in their home direction.
"Belasco is gone." She turned to see Harry Potter in casual clothes standing there with his hands in the pockets of the trenchcoat. "And now I own everything of his."
"Harry!" The girl exclaimed and ran up to him. He caught her in a hug but stumbled slightly.
"Hey kiddo." He said and The Ancient One could detect a hint of wariness in his voice. Not to mention he was looking very pale. "I see the other one has disappeared."
"She let me take control when Belasco tried to siphon her magic." Illyana replied. "What happened? Where is Jack?"
"Belasco is dead and now Limbo belongs to me." Harry then smiled at her. "And it would seem magic also recognises you as my apprentice."
"Really!" The excitement was clear in the girl's voice and the Ancient One could understand, learning from someone who is capable of killing an immortal was an opportunity she wouldn't have passed on if she had the chance.
"Yep." Harry replied. "But I won't be some time before we start any serious apprenticing. There are number of things I need to get in order first."
Harry turned to the Sorcerer Supreme.
"It has been a pleasure fighting alongside you." He shook her hand. "There a number of things we need to talk about and I am sure you have questions of your own. I will make sure to drop by and we can talk."
"I agree." She opened a portal on her side. "And I am glad I came here today, Mr. Potter."
And with that, she walked into the portal which soon disappeared leaving Master and Apprentice standing in a field of dead bodies. Harry closed his eyes and tapped in his connection with Limbo and the ground warped and seemed to fold on itself. When he opened his eyes, all the bodies had disappeared.
"Interesting." Harry observed. He hadn't even tapped on his own core and had barely felt any strain to perform such a frat. He could feel that his magical core was already replenishing fast, something he was glad for as he was soon going to need it.
Turning to his new apprentice, Harry blinked at the look she was giving him, one he had seen too much on her other self and had never expected to see it on the girl. She blushed and looked away, apparently having realized what she had been doing.
"Sorry, I guess she is rubbing off of me."
"Never mind that." Harry shook his head and ruffled her hair. "So, you told me you can teleport, why don't you take us back to the Mansion."
"Uhm, I haven't really mastered it."
"When I being taught how to teleport..." Harry started. "I was told to think of the three Ds. Destination, Determination and Deliberation, think of the place we are going, cencetrate on that place and the magic take control. Trust your magic to do what you want and don't worry I will be right here with you."
The girl closed her eyes and her face relaxed. Harry felt a shift in his connection with Limbo and the next instant they were standing on the X-masion steps.
"..stop us." Harry blinked as he saw two versions of themselves disappearing from right in front of their eyes.
The professor continued looking at them and Harry realized that from his perspective, it was still him and Illyana standing before him and Illyana had just dared the man to 'try and stop them.'
"That will not be necessary." Harry said when the professor raised his hand to touch the side of his head. "Perhaps it's better I do this on my own."
Illyana looked at him in confusion and Harry put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
"Did we just_"
Travel back in time, yes. Harry cut her off sending a mental massage. But he doesn't know, just play along.
"I apologise for bothering you, I will be taking my leave now."
Harry squeezed her shoulder one more time and spun around. He walked away from the two mutants and when he was far enough, he teleported to his study at the Potter Cottage. He conjured a small dagger and sliced his palm and let seven drops of his blood drip on the stone floor.
~open~
The hiss in perseltongue seemed to echo throughout the study before the place started rearranging itself untill it formed into his Safe. So far, he had not yet got anything dangerous enough to store here but the crystal containing Belasco's life force was too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands. Or any hands at all for that matter.
The room had no windows but had enough oxygen for anyone to breathe thanks to liberal use of runes. Torches flared into life even though they gave off no smoke and Harry walked towards one wall. He place his palm on it and released some magic creating an open space with a platform to hold the crystal.
When he removed his hand, the wall returned to normal and Harry stepped back. There was an imprint of a horned head on the wall directly where the crystal was and nodding in satisfaction, Harry let the room return to normal.
He walked out of the study into the small infirmary which was mostly a room with a single bed and hundreds of potion vials. Harry got a box from a shelf and filled it with vials, closed it and shrunk it before he put in his pocket. He reached into his left pocket and pulled out the ring which housed Jack's suit, the sign of the Deathly hallows gleaming slightly on the gem that now housed Jack's soul.
He looked at his friend's corpse that was lying on the table and sighed. "Time to wake up, mate."
-ADW-
Temple Penthouse
Hell's Kitchen
New York
Harry arrived in Claire's dispensary and deposited the lump of meat that was Jack's body on the examination table. He retrieved the potions case and returned it to it's normal size, opened it and placed it on a table. He straightened the body as much as possible and vanished the clothes as well as any remaining blood or anything that was attached on him.
When he was finished, he went and checked on Jenny and found her sleeping with her mouth open and a line of drool going upto her ears. He shook his head and went downstairs calling Claire.
"Harry!" Claire answered. "What's up?"
"Are you too busy?"
"Not really, what's up? Are you in prison?" Claire asked. "Or is it Jack?"
"It's Jack and he has been hurt." Harry said. "I could really use your help here before I pass out."
"Harry, what's wrong? Are you ok?"
"Yeah, me am fine." Harry sighed. "Jack, not so much."
"What happened?"
"A lot." Harry said. "I feel like this day has been going on forever."
"Alright, I'll be right there." Claire hung up and a few seconds later she landed on her arse in front of Harry and cursed quite colorfully. When she saw Harry, she gasped.
"Oh my God, Harry you look like a walking corpse." Claire hugged him. "Bloody hell, you are shaking!"
"I'm fine, Claire. I just used a bit too much magic some moments ago but I am fine." Harry assured her. "It's Jack that needs your help."
"What happened?"
"He is...well I think it's better if you see for yourself but you have to promise me that you will not freak out on me."
"Harry, I am a professional Doctor and I have lived around you and Jack all these years." Claire gave him a glare. "Do you honestly thinkthat there is anything out there that could make me freak out?"
"Yes." Harry replied firmly. "And what is in there is most definitely one of them."
"Fine." She snapped. "I promise."
"Good." Harry led her to the dispensary and paused at the door. She rolled her eyes and walked past him and entered the dispensary only to pause in the doorway. She gasped loudly and promptly faited.
"I guess that doesn't count." Harry sighed before he walked over her and retrieved a calming draught from the potions case and woke her up.
"Wha_"
"Drink." Harry ordered, shoving the vial in her face. She took it obediently and grimaced at the taste just as her brain rebooted fully.
"Was that_"
"Calming draught, yes."
"What happened?"
"Well I showed you Jack's body and you fainted." He said with a completely blank face. "Quite dramatically, I might add."
"Is he dead?" Harry helped her to her feet and she slowly approached the corpse.
"The body is dead yes but I have a way to bring him back." Harry said pulling out the ring from his pocket. "When Jake died, I didn't want to lose any one of you again under such circumstances again. I made each of you a port-key and in that port-key I put an anchor of sorts."
"I don't understand."
"Those port-keys make sure that if you die, your soul is transferred into the item and stays there until I either release it or bring it back into the body." Harry explained and knew that if it wasn't for the potion, the woman would have been freaking out already.
"That's...that's insane."
"I know." Harry easily agreed. "I know it is selfish of me and I am sorry that I didn't tell before this but all my life, I watched people I care about die without me being able to do anything about it. And then suddenly, I have this ability to communicate and manipulate souls and I decided that I won't let it happen again."
"Harry. It's fine." Claire said giving him a hug. "You are human Harry. And it's fine to be selfish every once in a while especially when it concerns people you love. That is human Harry. And this may be the potion talking but I am glad you did that."
"Thanks I guess."
"But make no mistake, we shall be talking about this when all this is over." Harry gulped.
"Of course."
"Good." She nodded before her face took on the stern look that only medics could pull off. "Now, what do need me for?"
-ADW-