Solving the mystery
Malcador the Sigillite returned to the hotel he had been staying that night after going to a restaurant to have lunch with a sense of dissatisfaction.
The room was relatively small, with a bathroom where one could do their necessities, a TV, a wooden table with an uncomfortably-looking chair and a medium-sized bed where to rest or sleep.
Arriving at New York yesterday, the man had gone to speak to some of his acquaintances. It had been a dead-end yet again. The streets of the city were full of people on their day-to-day lives as if nothing huge was happening.
He had spent too long wandering the globe on a futile quest to discover who had been summoning daemons and hadn't come closer to an answer than when he began. Due to the constant travel without pause, the second-in-command of the Imperium of Man hadn't a moment of rest.
Turning on the television set of his room, the man went to the bathroom to shower. After exiting, the companion of the Emperor sat on the chair. Taking one of the many books Neoth had gifted to him, Malcador opened it to resume reading the subject the object talked about.
"-And the police have declared the strange man was asking him about his daughters. We are now live to speak with him before the paramedics bring the Generálmajor to a hospital-".
Arching an eyebrow, Malcador turned around in curiosity, and saw that the news was currently covering a home invasion that it had occurred on Slovakia that same day.
He watched as the reporter walked towards an injured man sitting on a stretcher while paramedics dragged his wife to one of two ambulances waiting outside the home. Malcador squinted his eyes when the camera-man following the reporter caught the entrance in camera.
The door of the house had been completely destroyed and scorch marks had been burnt in the walls, tinting them with a black hue. He felt himself tense up. The Sigillite recognized those marks. There was only one thing that could produce such a strange damage. But the quality of the image made his guess be inaccurate.
Reaching the Generálmajor, Radovan was the name given by the news, the reporter put his mic to the man's face.
"Excuse me, sir, Mr. Mokrý. We are from Fox News, and will like to know what happened here. Who was responsible for the intrusion? How many were there?" The reported asked. A man beside them talked in slovak with a very butchered accent to the injured general, translating the questions.
Waving his hand dismissably at the police officer trying to stop the reporter, the man addressed them.
"It was a very weird man. Never seen him before. He was tall, wearing some kind of armour and with tattoos on his face" Radovan spoke in slovak, but thanks to his knowledge, Malcador understood him perfectly.
Deciding this was a waste of time, the companion of the Emperor grabbed the remote to turn off the TV. The next words he said made the Sigillite pause in surprise.
"He was also accompanied by some kind of monster. A giant fly that talked! The smell it gave off was horrid. Like a corpse left to rot in the sun covered in faeces!".
The smile the reporter gave when one of his companions translated Radovan's words told to everyone watching he thought the Mokrý patriarch was on drugs, senile, or possibly traumatized by the experience he had lived.
At the description of such creature and the characteristics it possessed, Malcador tensed up and baled his fist. From the sound of it, the man had not too long ago had an encounter with a daemon.
Getting up from the chair, he turned to pack his luggage.
"He threatened my daughters! Came looking for them and hit my wife! My leg is like this because that man!" The voice of Radovan was incensed with righteous anger.
After those words, Malcador knew he would have to go there. It was the only way for him to be sure. Looking to see where the recording came from, the man saw that it informed that the house was close to a military base, and planned his next course of action.
Exiting the room of the hotel with all his things, Malcador went outside and raised an arm in the air. Not soon after, a taxi stopped in front of him. Entering the vehicle, Malcador sat and turned his attention towards the driver.
"To the airport, please".
XXX
"~Vvvveeeeeeeeennnnnngaaaaannccceeeee~".
Harry was walking towards the portrait that served as the entrance to Gryffindor's Common Room after speaking with Daphne Greengrass, when he heard it again. The boy paused in surprise and looked around to find from where it came from.
It was the voice he had heard in the hallway many days ago.
"~Yoooouuuu wwwwiiiiiiiilllll dddddiiiiiieeeeee~".
Walking around, with the echo of his steeps filling the hallways of the castle, the famous Boy-Who-Lived tried to locate from where the voice came from. It sounded far away in the distance and not like last time when it seemed to come from inside the brick walls of Hogwarts. He hurried along, fearing it would banish once more.
"~Sssstttttuuuuuupppppiiiiiiiiidddddd pppppprrrrrreeeeeeeeyyyyy!~".
Harry frowned at that. The more he listened to the echoing voice, the better he could have an idea of the characteristics of its owner. He tried to discard the many possibilities and concluded that it belonged to a non-human.
"C'mon, where are you...?".
"~Dddddddddddiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee~"
There was also the familiarity with which the voice pronounced words. Trying to recall where he had heard such inflections before, Harry continued searching. Once he arrived at the entrance of the castle, he paused.
"~Ddddiiiiieeee~".
The voice echoed faintly in his ears. Harry looked in the direction he estimated it came from and his face made an expression of displeasure. In the distance, the Forbidden Forest stood. A dense fog had formed, covering the trees. And the owner of the slithering voice was present in its depths.
He cursed his luck. Harry wasn't prepared yet. Searching for the source of the voice in the Forbidden Forest without a plan was risky. His near-death experience against Aragog had made him cautious. With the sheer number of acromantulas nesting in it, the boy would need to bring weapons with him and his friends. Alone at the moment, he wasn't sure enough to walk away unscathed.
Harry ran towards the forest and mentally prepared himself for the clash it would surely happen. It was a split-second decision. He couldn't afford to miss it again. Dumbledore or one of the professors would have stopped him from entering again. And with his friends safe Harry could allow himself to be as reckless.
'Besides', He thought. 'There's always time for some sweet krumpin''.
XXX
In another part of the world, the patriarch of a slovak family found himself desiring for the tedious proceedings to end so he could finally get some rest. Once the new reporters had left, the police had spent the time investigating the scene of the crime in search of any clue that could help them solve that strange case. It wasn't a normal occurrence that someone could barge in the house of a member of the military and fled from there without being found.
Radovan Mokrý had watched as a pair of nurses carried her wife's stretcher towards the ambulance. She mouthed an 'I love you' while being guided inside the vehicle. Once inside, the paramedics went to the front and drove it towards the hospital.
After answering questions for a couple of reporters that had arrived, he turned around to finally continue his conversation with the police. The man winced in pain when the paramedic beside him touched his broken leg.
"-so, you don't have any idea why this Erebus wanted to find your daughters, sir?".
"No. That psychopath didn't tell me".
"There's still a part of your story we can't understand. What did you mean he was followed by some kind of fly monster?" The tone of incredulity of the man questioning him didn't surprise him.
If anybody else told him what he just saw, Radovan would have called them crazy and called an asylum to bring them. But he and his wife lived that story. What worried him most now was contacting his daughters and warn them of the danger they were in.
"I don't expect you to believe us, but is what we saw".
Looking at each other, the policemen decided to change the subject.
"Understood sir. It's just that... Monsters like you described are only found in books and films. This is reality, sir. No offense".
He made a hand gesture of dismissal and decided to ask what he was most worried about.
"Has somebody gone to check on them? My daughters are in danger. There's a maniac loose and they don't kn-".
"We have made a call. We have also sent people to protect them. There's no need to worry. With the description you gave us, it will be easy to spot somebody with their features. We will catch the son of a bitch".
Even though their voice was reassuring, it didn't make him any less worried.
"We have all we needed. You can take him to the hospital now" One said. Turning around, he addressed his colleagues "Register everything. Check the security cameras and see if there's at least an image of the culprit...".
The injured man zooned out the rest of the police officer's speech and rested in the stretcher. He felt himself being brought to another ambulance and carried inside.
The drive to the hospital became monotonous. He looked through a window and watched the scenery pass by.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they arrived at the hospital. The next few hours became a blur. Radovan was drugged and carried to an empty room where Petra was waiting. The two smiled at each other and talked about nothing. Sometime later, a couple of nurses arrived at their room and dragged to somewhere to do test and see she had nothing wrong or damaged. He waited to hear news of his wife's condition and felt happiness when the carried her back to the room and told them she was fine.
Then, with surprising speed, came his turn.
The doctors told him Erebus had snapped the bone in his legs with a physical strength, when it should only be possible to do with a blunt object. They told him he would need to be operated and lamented his luck.
A couple of hours passed in the operating room, after which he was brought back to Petra and their shared room.
It was at that moment when their daughters arrived at the hospital.
XXX
Harry walked without pause in the direction the voice was coming from, but paying attention to his surroundings to make sure he would not be caught by surprise. The boy would have looked for the trail of spiders like last time, but found they were suspiciously absent.
I could simple be that he was wandering on the opposite direction of where Aragog and their progeny lived, but seriously doubted that was true.
Harry remembered the time when he encountered the unicorn and how peaceful the forest had seemed. Now, looking around him, the boy noticed there wasn't any sound reaching his ears. Even the voice had ceased speaking.
Something caught his attention at that moment. At approximately five metres Harry noticed scattered pieces of something that had been crushed, from where a liquid dribbled into a puddle of a dark oily substance. He walked closer to it and squinted his eyes to see it better. The young wizard stopped in his tracks when he recognized what it was.
A dead animal. It was an acromantula's corpse to be exact.
Kneeling to inspect it, Harry hummed. From the look of it, the creature had died not too long ago. That same day to be exact. Whoever was responsible, they had killed the magical spider with ease. He concluded so due to the absence of blood, beside the one belonging to the dead arachnid.
It was then that Harry saw the track the perpetrator had left in its wake. Part of the ground had sunk a good two metres and formed a slithering line, like somebody had dragged a heavy cart through the forest. It wasn't even in a straight line either, it wormed side to side as if the person that had done it was heavily drunk.
Clutching his wand tightly, the boy walked with firm steps and followed the tracks. The more he went forward, the more corpses of acromantulas he found. Harry prepared himself mentally and recalled all the lessons his friends had taught him. The young psyker reached into his soul and weaved threads of his psychic power, in preparation for unleashing a surge of energy in a blast to anything it dared to attack him.
CRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!
A violent cracking sound like lightning reached his ears and the boy tensed his body. It had sounded like it was close.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!".
It was at that moment Harry almost lost his concentration. The roar came from a throat he was very familiar with. Mentally cursing, the boy picked up the pace. Harry jumped a fallen branch and dodged a boulder that stood in his way.
Of all the possibilities Harry could think of, he was being honest saying this wouldn't ever be one of them.
In front of him were two monsters clashing. A pair of beasts of legend fighting to the death.
One was Aragog. The other was something Harry had never seen before.
It resembled a snake the size of a train, most of its body length lost in the starless night that permeated the dense forest. The colour of its' scales was a gem-like green similar to darkened emeralds. The maw of the creature was full of rows of sharp fangs the size of an adult's arm. A forked tonged tasted the air a few times and from the monster's throat came a growling sound of vicious fury.
But what was most striking of the creature were the pair of eyes looking at their enemy. They were of a golden colour and something about them made Harry feel like it would be a very bad idea to look at them directly.
Harry noticed the body of the snake-like creature slithering around and the tracks it left in the ground. The connection between the trail he had been following and the beast formed in an instant.
The surrounding area had been decimated. Shattered stone and crushed wood lithered the ground where Aragog and the other beast stood. It was a scene of war where once it had been a peaceful part of nature. Aragog's brood had been slaughtered almost completely.
Harry watched the enormous snake slither, trampling trees in its way. The hardened scales of its hide protected the ophidian creature from being injured by the acromantulas' fangs. The cave that was used as Aragog's nest had the entrance blocked due to a collapse.
Aragog's children attacked, trying to distract the beast from killing their parent. Meanwhile, Aragog snapped its mandibles that dribbled venom to the ground and used the opportunity to tackle their opponent.
Ghazghkull had said to him once there was proper to join a good scrap. And now, standing in the middle of a battle of behemoths, Harry would admit his heart beat in excitement to join such a beautiful fight with enormous beast that posed mortal danger.
The only possible obstacle that made him hesitate was who to join in the fight. Attacking the two risked them joining forces to kill him, but siding with one risked that the other would turn on him when weakened. Aragog most likely.
"~Ddddddddddddiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee!~".
Harry's head snapped towards the place the voice had come from and smiled ferally.
"Of course... It was obvious since the beginning" A sense of satisfaction grew in him at finally having confirmation of who the voice on the walls belonged to.
Stepping in the battlefield, Harry took the attention of the two and made the magical creatures pause. One eager acromantula the size of a dog tried to bite Harry, but with quick reflexes the boy spun his leg around in a kicking motion and ended up with his feet stomping on their head, leaving the beast unconscious.
"Aragog. I have come here once more" He declared.
The acromantula snapped its fangs aggressively and its black eyes seemed to look at Harry with hate that would be the envy of the evillest of daemons. The giant snake tilted its head in curiosity but didn't make any aggressive gestures towards the young wizard.
"YOU!".
"Yes, me. I just wanted for you to answer my questions" He remained calm and walked closer to the magical spider "This time I will not leave before krumpin' ya'!" His last words slipped into an orkish accent. An irrepressible instinct made him spout the next sentence in Parseltongue "~Surrender to me, or die!~".
"YOU HAVE NO POWER TO ORDER US! YOU WILL PAY FOR THE PAIN INFLICTED UPON US SOON ENOUGH!"
To show Hagrid's friend he meant business, Harry raised his arms and crackling sparks of psychic energy arched between his fingers.
"Last warning".
"NEVER HUMAN CHILD! I WILL KILL YOU, AND AVENGE MY BROOD!".
Before Aragog could attack him for his insolence, the enormous snake moved its body so they stood on the way. Immobilized by their weight, the acromantula thrashed and moved its legs in an effort to free themselves.
"~Sssssppppeeeeeaaaaaakkkkeeeeerrrrr~"
At the giant snake's words, Harry looked at the beast and locked eyes with it. A tingling sensation ran down his spine. Approaching the young wizard, the monster moved its head until it was at eye level with Harry.
They were currently covered by a thin veil that clouded their colour. The feeling of the unnatural power made Harry know for certain that should he had gazed upon them directly; he wouldn't even have had time to regret it.
"~Maaanyyy-Leeeegs-aaaand-Eeeeyeeees eeeegs aaaareeee deeeeeaaaaad~".
"~Why did you do this?~" Harry found surprisingly easy to use the tongue of snakes to speak. Though it sounded unnatural in his ears, it wasn't as bad as he had heard described by Ron and the rest.
"~Pppprrrrooootteeeeeccctt Speeeaaaakkkeeeeer. Huuuuuurrrrrttttt. Veeeeennnngaaaannceeee~".
The boy blinked in surprise. He hadn't expected this creature to be aware of the other night's scuffle. Harry wondered if it was because his capacity to speak Parseltongue.
"~Thank you~" Turning around, Harry walked closer to the acromantula's prone body and raised his arms "Don't worry, for your biomass will serve the Star Children".
With strength gained from training since very young and a good help of his abilities as a psyker, Harry punched a hole through the giant spider's head, right in the section where the magical snake of incredible size had hurt Aragog during their fight.
Crroouuuucccckhhhj!
"GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGHHH!" Aragog roared in pain and its body thrashed side to side from the agony he was inflicting it.
The boy didn't relent and continued pushing the arms further into the beast exoskeleton. A slimy sensation travelled through his body, sticky and dense like honey or tar. An ocean worth of black ichor that smelled very strongly formed a pool at the boy's feet. Feeling the internal organs of the dying acromantula, Harry pulled.
The supraoesophageal ganglion of the acromantula progenitor, what constituted the brain of Aragog, involuntarily left the protection of the cephalothorax in a shower of ichor and gore.
"DA...M..N Y...O...U..." Aragog spoke one final time, and the light of its black eyes dimmed.
Harry laughed while ichor stained his arms and clothes. The satisfaction of having been triumphant bypassed the sadness of the acromantula lying dead at his feet.
He turned around and looked to see if there were any acromantulas still alive. Seeing it wasn't so, Harry wondered what to do next. Noticing Aragog former's nest, he decided that it was best for him to explore and see what the magical spider had in there.
Approaching the collapsed entrance of the cave, the young wizard rubbed his hands a couple of times and began taking rocks, and throwing them to the side. Once he had a decent amount of space, the famous boy peeked inside.
With more energy that what he seemed to have spent killing Aragog, he hurried the process until the entrance was finally cleared. He entered the cave and sighed in relief.
Nesting atop a bed of web, more than a dozen acromantula's eggs remained unharmed and undisturbed from the fight outside. The smooth surface was
Harry grinned in satisfaction. Not all was lost in the fight. Surveying the treasure throve hidden in the cavern, the boy crouched and inspected one of the eggs up close. They were the size of a tennis ball and semitranslucent, allowing him to see the contents of each one. Inside, an amorphous shape with eight underdeveloped legs floated in some kind of clear fluid.
He heard the scaled beast slither behind him and hiss in hunger.
"~Huuuuuuunnnngggggrrrrryyyyyy...~".
"~No~".
The serpent didn't seem to understand his command and huffed in frustration at the denied meal.
"~Wwwwwhhhhyyyyy?~" The magical snake's nostrils flared.
"~I want them. They will become part of our group~".
"~Prrreeeeyyyy aaaaareeee weeeeaaaaak. Prrrreeeyyy huuuurrrrt Sppeeeaaaakkkeeeer~".
"~None the less. They will not be your food. It would be a waste~".
"~Preeeyyy aaarrreeee uuuusleeeeess toooo tttthheeee neeeeeesssstttt. Caaannn't prooooteeeect neeeesssttt. Caaaan't deeeeffeeendd ccllluuuuuttttcccchhhh. Caaaannn'tt ffffiiiigggghttt foooor Speeeeaaaakkkeeeer maaaaateeees~".
If Harry understood correctly, the creature thought the acromantula only served as food for it and him, and were too weak to be of any use to them. He couldn't blame the enormous beast, since it must be fighting its animal instincts even now.
"~Then we will make them be strong. For the nest. For my clutch. For my mate~".
"~Yyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssss~".
Harry noticed the tone of the monster's voice had changed. It seemed his words had conviced it of sparing Aragog's offspring. The acromantula quick thinking and actions had secured him a marvel to bring home once the school year ended.
Turning around to the snake, Harry decided to address the elephant in the room.
"~Well, then. There's only one thing for me to ask you~" Harry brought a hand to the beast scaly hide and began petting it.
Growling in pleasure at his actions.
"~What is your name?~".