The Lord of Stone Tower
A/N: Right now this story is going to get a bit more jumpy if that's the right word to use. I am sorry about this is it is unclear. I will try to work out a timeline of sorts to put into my user area. If everyone hates my method in this chapter to fill in the gap please say so in a review and I may choose to rewrite it in another way. If you do say that though please suggest some better way.
Chapter 14; Spiralling into Chaos
The Fall of the Ministry; 31st December 2002
It had all happened during the Annual New Years Party at the Ministry of Magic. Amelia Bones, the current Minister was lucky to have survived the onslaught. It had been eight years since Voldermort's return but barely any sightings of the man had been reported and even though the Minister herself had tried her hardest to prepare for a war but the other under ministers and the majority or people in power had been lulled into a false sense of security.
It was their downfall in the end because out of most of the people at the Ball only a few of them survived, those that hadn't dropped their guards activated their portkeys to escape just as the Aurors flooded into the building.
The fighting lasted almost twelve hours in this one enormous room. Almost one thousand Death Eaters fought against the six hundred defenders, inevitably the Ministry were defeated caught completely unaware in their celebrations and were routed. In just twelve hours the British community had been defeated by inside terrorists.
Hogwarts; June 2003
Hermione, Minerva and Amelia Bones stood and looked out at the City in front of them. Since Harry had begun to change the school to be self standing it had changed so much. From the enormous castle that used be here in her school days several large sprawling wings had grown out of the ground but had clearly designed and built by the original founders. Outside almost as far as you could see were building housing tens of thousands of people.
People had begun to filter into the Castle over the last three years since Harry's first visit but since Voldermort took over the countries Magical and Muggle resources of Britain the influx of refuges had been enormous. They had quickly found out that none of Voldermort's spies could enter the main gates; they all seemed to be forced away.
Harry had visited several times over the last few years, mainly only to do with the few students that were part of his City, but every time he did visit he always made sure to visit the three students that were here and he always tried to bring Alex with him. Minerva was convinced that Harry had a slight hand in the pranks that always seemed to happen when he was here though and always tried to catch him and the three friends from his City red handed but couldn't.
"Headmistresses?" It was one of the messengers from the Auror Headquarters, every Wizard that sought refuge at Hogwarts was expected to go through half a year of basic Auror training and then weekly refresher courses every few months so that if Hogwarts was attacked every person in the City could work to defend it.
"Go ahead." Hermione spoke as they turned to the balcony door.
"There is a Death Eater force building up on the East of the City. At the moment there is a force of two thousand but more and more are arriving by Portkey."
After the man was dismissed Minerva headed inside to write a message on the Founders Board.
She touched the board and the words she wanted appeared, the message was to the Founders then they would have to contact Harry through their link and then forward his reply to them. It was still faster then calling him since Stone Tower wasn't connected to floo.
"We have a force building up on the west of the school of over two thousand Death Eaters; we are going to need some reinforcements to counter it."
It was only a few seconds before they got a reply.
"Hold on a second." The Board went blank.
The City of Stone Tower
Harry turned to Drale and the Heads of the Military Factions that he had built up. Quasir of the Dark Elves and Adrian Vale the General of the Muggle Military who were the major part of the Stone Tower forces. Also there was Lucus the Captain of the Knights, Harry's highly trained special forces, all of which were Muggles who were the only ones that could handle the Magic involved in becoming a knight as it was different to that of normal Wizards. Only one percent of Muggles had the special power in them and couldn't use it without it being unlocked and that was what Harry had done and then helped to train them to become his almost invincible force. He looked after them well though as he only had fifty of them fully trained with another one hundred in training. They had occupied one of the last three Spindles.
The second to last spindle had been converted into a University of sorts in order to train the many specialists of both Muggle and Magical origins. And the last spindle held the last part of his current Military represented by the four men on the Balcony. The Dragon Riders headed by a very introspective man with great skill called Rick Speltar. Again this force was similar to the Knights in that only a few people had the ability to speak to Dragons, but all were Wizards including Harry and his little brother Alex. Each 'Speaker' had its own Dragon that would go into Battle with them, but Harry didn't tend to engage on his Dragon preferring to use it to scout and Alex stuck near Harry and used his Dragon as a fighting platform for his Inferno Attacks.
Harry snapped his attention back to reality as Lucus who had no second name as he was abandoned by his parents eight years ago when he was ten spoke up.
"Sir? You had something to say," Harry looked away from Drale and at the younger man, he took in the glitter of his eyes. Knights were always led by the most powerful of them all. Each year there was a tournament and Lucus had won the first, second and third year in a row and therefore held the position of Captain until he was beaten in Tournament or was indisposed.
"Of course, my apologies." He didn't look too abashed though, "I have just received word from Hogwarts. They, like us, are about to come under siege. They are asking for reinforcements."
He paused as calculating looks came over his commanders faces. They chatted to each other before turning back to Harry, "We don't believe that splitting forces will help either City. We can still win against the force out there if we give anything up to thirty percent of our forces to Hogwarts but it will be slow and bloody. Our best bet is to use all our forces at our disposal to defeat this team and then take what we can to defend Hogwarts."
"Agreed," Harry said, "However I want one Platoon to go to Hogwarts to aid if they can and to show that they are not alone and also to report back to us on the situation there."
"Yes Sir," conceded Quasir, "I will have Omia and five Practitioners re-deploy and collect at the Dark Ring."
Harry raised a hand to hold off the meeting while he communed with the Founders, half watching as Quasir headed out of the room to give his orders.
He told the Founders to tell the Headmistresses that they had their own siege to counter and that they were sending a forward force to be used only as defence of the Castle itself and that once their own problems were sorted out he himself would be arriving will a large force to help them.
He turned back to address the leaders of his defence as Quasir came back onto the balcony. "I want that place turned into an inferno. I don't want them to even reach my City Walls."
He saw the nods across from him, but none said anything waiting to find out how they were to do that. Harry went to issue separate orders.
"Lucus, your men are our pre-emptive strike, you will use both speed and assassination to cause complete chaos in their ranks. By-pass their main defences but take out their air defences and artillery and also their main leaders." He turned to all briefly, "I am well aware from here that that is a Muggle army, I don't believe it to be allied and I don't know where it came from but there will be few Magical personnel."
"Quasir, since they are Muggle I don't want your troops directly engaged so station your men within the City in case, by some miracle, the troops get in."
"Adrian, I want your tanks ready to be used in case they get close enough to need them, but I want your artillery to open fire into their camps as soon as the Dragons are in the air."
"Rick, I want every Dragon into the air and to attack as soon as I give the signal, keep them circling the Tower for now or settled onto the Walls if they tire. As soon as the anti-aircraft equipment is taken out by Lucus' men then move to destroy anything that moves but remember to activate the Dragons personal shields that the scientists made."
Harry didn't need to dismiss them as he was interrupted by the distant sounds of artillery being launched, very obviously not Harry's own. Drale being the closest and, being an Elf, fastest stepped to a recently installed squawk box and after flipping one of the many switches this time labelled TDC or Tower Defence Control hit the 'press-to-talk' button.
"Shields Now."
Harry was only slightly shocked, firstly that they had started their siege earlier than expected and secondly that he wasn't entirely ready for it. "You have your orders!"
The leaders left briskly to see to their jobs. And without a pause the Squawk box came to life. But it was heard all over the city from PA systems. "Prepare for Impact in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1."
Over the five seconds he had heard the electrical whine build up around the city, the charge as the Shields tried to form. But Harry already knew it would take too long to form.
He winced as he imagined the damage this incoming salvo would do. It turned out that they were test shots they weren't willing to use larger shells when they didn't know the defences though nothing had been built to resist the artillery except for digging down. Harry watch as the few civilians not already in the shelters of the tower ran for cover, but with only five seconds warning it was a bit pointless. Harry didn't know it yet but the Military radar had picked up ten objects coming in.
The first five were the small bombs, timed and designed to penetrate the City's Walls and explode inside. Except that Harry hadn't built his Tower to be that easily destroyed. The five shots were designed to destroy the Tower by blowing the lower floors from the inside and therefore collapsing the rest on top of it, taking out Harry's supposed only weapon. His Pool. But instead they hit the outside of the Walls two floors above Harry on his third floor balcony and only penetrated enough to stick to the walls. Harry move like only a Mage can, he grabbed Drale around the waist and jumped over the railing to the floor hitting the floor cushioning Drale's fall.
As soon as he took the landing he flipped around as the shells exploded five floors above him. The blast didn't do too much damage, but was enough to make several holes in his Tower, not enough though to risk it falling. Harry felt the slight pull on his Stone Power as it began to automatically rebuild itself. But even as Harry had this thought he heard the other five explosions hit around the town, destroying several buildings and shattering a few of the windows on the end of the Spindles.
He was almost livid with fury as he felt his Tower almost grown in fury at its attackers. Even if he wanted to he couldn't have stopped the Tower from retaliating, he could see the Pool slowly draining the power from the secondary pools. Eight streams of green light crackled up to the top of his Tower.
Finally the shield snapped up. A new Muggle idea that amazed Harry, it took the power of a complete Fission power station placed almost a mile under his feet, courteously built by a force of new refuges. On the end of each of the spindles there was a crane like structure almost like the leg of a cricket that as the charge had built up had extended out and up so that the twenty metre disc that opened out on the end of it was held up almost three hundred feet above his head.
They worked together firing energy between them and fixing it as a physical barrier that formed a circle of impenetrable energy that domed out over his head. Each disc covered a quarter of the air over the city in a series of interlocking circles that reached down to the walls around the City. You could walk or fly through the energy barrier depending on your kinetic energy. The higher the energy, the scientists that had built it had tried to explain to him, the harder it was to enter so that a plane would be forced to slow and would be damaged but would get through but something like a missile, bullet, or shell would be effortlessly kept out of the shield. Harry had also tested it against his own powerful spells along with Albus and his resident Infernis and found to his delight that they held so much energy that they had no hope to get a spell through.
Fifteen more shells came at the City and they lit up the sky as the shield held up against them. Harry was happy, his city was safe.
On his way to the Dragon keep he saw the red flashing lights and the klaxons going off. He knew it was the artillery guns getting ready. They were designed like the World War Two cross-channel train pieces that sat on specially built tracks. His own ones sat in bunkers under the main streets around the City. The covers would now be sliding back to reveal them and they would already be loaded and all that would have to happen would be to pull them forwards on their tracks and aim them. When they fired they were the most powerful artillery pieces in use. But at the moment they were useless as their shots would just ricochet off of the bombarded shield. They would have to wait for the Knights and the Dragons to take out the Anti-aircraft and Artillery weapons that the enemy had. Only after that could they deactivate the shield.
He soon arrived at the Dragon Keep and stared up at his Dragon. The great beast had arrived two years ago after following the bulk of the Dragons that had been brought here. It had been thought that they were extinct and it and its female mate had bonded with himself and the almost seventeen year old Alex. The Gold Dragons were almost twice the size and height of the Norwegian Ridgebacks that made up the bulk of his force. They truly dwarfed the other Dragons and were extremely intelligent.
"Come on Bro, we're ready to go!" Alex's voice shouted from his own Dragon. Only a few metres smaller than his own. Harry spared him a grin as he stepped onto the offered wing tip from Griever and was soon being launched into the air and heading to the shield.
A/N; Thanks for the reviews. I should update soon!