Throughout my comparatively short second life, I had been in some terrifying battles. I'd thought nothing could compare to the combined might of the three factions warring overhead, and I supposed I was right, but this was a very close second.
As more and more eldrazi, for there was nothing else they could be, poured through the break in reality to feast on the life of the plane, I made liberal use of everything at my disposal to tear. Them. Apart.
When a large wave would make it through, I would sear them all to dust with necrofire. When a single, large and powerful one made it through, I would impale it with my sword, and cut through it as the flames from the blade scorched the monster from the inside. When dozens of small flying ones charged me from all sides, I summoned dozens of spell circles to fire bolts of dark energy to intercept them, smothering them in shadow and causing them to dissipate into nothing when they hit the ground.
For all the nightmares I'd had of these monstrosities as I cowered from shadows in Ravnica, as I twitched at strange noises in the Grigori's base, they were falling before me like moths against a hurricane. They were weak, and I was strong.
At least I was; up until a true eldrazi appeared.
The small hole in space rapidly expanded upwards until it was taller than the trees in the Forbidden Forest. My breathing stopped as it came through.
A hulking monstrosity as the Empire State Building, seven spindly legs holding it up in the sky, hunched itself through the tear, large tentacles waving off of its flat back.
As it lumbered through the breach, I realized just how outmatched I was. This….this thing could likely dismantle the entire plane on its own. And even still, this was far from the strongest eldrazi in existence. I knew of Titans. This one wasn't even their equal. What would happen if one of them came through?
In that moment, I was gripped by more fear than I had ever felt in either of my lives. This was what I had been dreading since realizing where I had been reborn. This was the face of all of my nightmares. This was the end.
Something inside me clicked, and I let out a surprised shout as my body exploded in green light.
I staggered as my feet found purchase, sucking in a surprised breath as I looked around. I was…. In a street? How did I….
I'd planeswalked. My spark was back. I didn't have to face that thing. I could….
The old man's eyes twinkled as he said, "I rather enjoy the change you've brought to the house points system. It seems as if there's a purpose to them again. Why I eve-
The young man shuffled uncertainly, unconsciously adjusting his glasses as he said, "Are you sure it will work, professor? What happens if I go underwater and the spell-
The door to my office was thrown wide as a young woman stormed in. "Teach me wandless magic!" she demanded. "You've shown the champions, so teach me as well! You said you would teach me and I am more than-
Well that was a problem. Since when did I start caring about people again? I thought I'd sworn that off after what happened to Vali?
Sighing, my grip tightened on my sword as my decision was already made. Once more I was enveloped in a green energy as I reappeared in the air above the eldrazi.
From my memories, I recalled a single way in which two eldrazi Titans were slain simultaneously. This monstrosity was not a Titan, we would all already be dead if it was, but if that strategy worked against Ulamog and Kozilek, then a similar, albeit far less powerful version was my best and only chance of stopping this thing.
Letting out a primal scream, I dove onto the eldrazi's back and speared into it with my sword. As I moved to pull out the blade and drive it back in, a large tentacle struck me with the force of a falling star.
I was sent careening into the air, the eldrazi below me growing smaller and smaller as my phoenix regeneration inflated my pancaked organs. Using my sings as well as my space magic to stall the momentum forcing me further into the air, I began rocketing back downward. The sight before me was terrifying.
The eldrazi had moved far enough away from the large breach to allow more eldrazi to flow through, and since the hole had been enlarged a dozen times over when the eldrazi tore through, dozens of eldrazi were into the world with every passing second. There was no way I could hold them back while fighting the eldrazi . I needed to use everything at my disposal.
Reaching forward as I neared the eldrazi , I summoned up magic that I had not touched since I arrived for fear of the issues it would cause me. If there was ever a time where such things didn't matter, it was right now.
The soil heaved and tore apart as century's worth of dead young wizards who strayed too far from the safety of Hogwarts climbed to the surface once more. As one my horde began throwing spells at the eldrazi and while they were not sufficient to hold the tide's approach for long, they bought me time to try to think of some way to stop the eldrazi.
Letting loose a wave of necrofire over the breach's entrance as I passed by to slag the eldrazi coming through, I flew above the eldrazi and began to hit it with every spell I knew.
Destructive spells to tear into its body, necrotic curses to dampen its movements, space spells to distort its form, phoenix fire to try and burn parts of it off - I threw everything I had at it. It was working, but I would need to keep at it for a week if I wanted to kill it this way, and I seriously doubted the plane had a week.
As I reared back to hit it with more necrofire, reality shifted around me, trapping me within its folds as the eldrazi noticed my presence and tried to unmake me from reality.
My fire snuffed out around me as I tried to teleport away, leaving me only one option. For the third time in mere minutes, a green energy pulsed from my body as I planeswalked, moments before my existence was sundered.
I fell to the ground and heard a car horn blaring at me. Looking up to see a semi-truck bearing down on me, I leapt onto the sidewalk to my right just as the truck roared past. I rolled onto my back and heaved in the air, trying to catch my breath. I was starting to realize that planeswalking was extremely exhausting, but I couldn't rest now.
Planting my feet beneath me, I forced myself to my feet. I took several deep breaths to prepare to planeswalk again, and realized that everyone on the sidewalk had their phone out and all of the cameras were aimed at me. My wings were still visible, so this was probably a world that wasn't too familiar with the supernatural. I'd deal with whatever came of this if I ever wound up back here. For now, there was an eldrazi waiting for me.
Roaring in exertion, I covered my entire body in flames and planeswalked back.
The sight waiting for me upon my return was complete pandemonium. In my brief absence, the eldrazi had more than doubled in number, and there was still an unending tide pouring through the massive breach. My zombies were doing what they could, but they were hopelessly outnumbered and being picked off one by one.
Before I had time to catch my breath from planeswalking again, new combatants joined the fray. Seven foot tall suits of animated steel armor charged down the hill in formation, pikes forward to skewer the eldrazi in front of them. Even more allies arrived as the area was suddenly filled with a multitude of popping sounds as witches and wizards appeared around the area and began flinging spells into the horde.
The eldrazi's numbers waned, but the eldrazi moved towards the school almost entirely unmolested. Any undead that went near it would crumble under the might of its presence, and any wizard foolish enough to stand up to it collapsed as they gripped their head, trying desperately to force its voice from their mind.
"Xarion!" a voice called as I was joined in the sky by a man riding a white trail of magic. Dumbledore looked down on the battle and said, "What are they?"
"Eldrazi. They exist between the folds of reality. Use overwhelming force to destroy them because they aren't alive in the same sense we are and are able to survive being cleaved in half in some cases. Leave the largest one to me. I'm the only one that can get close to it without going insane and I already have a plan working to deal with it; I just need to stall it a little longer. Good luck." Having had a chance to catch my breath and filled Dumbledore in on everything that would help him, little as it was, I pitched forward and streaked through the air after the eldrazi.
Its steps were lazy as it walked towards the castle. Everything in its path was a mere inconvenience to the eldritch being. With every step it took across the ground, the life of the earth beneath it was sapped away, leaving nothing but grey absence in its wake. I just needed to stall it a little longer. It should be time soon.
As I approached it, I angled myself lower and flew inches above the ground to come up beneath it; shadows gathered around my fingers as I lengthened them into razor sharp claws. Letting loose a battle cry, I latched onto one of its misshapen legs, shoving my claws deep into the mockery that was its flesh. Once they were as deep as they could go, I fed the corrosion spell laced into my shadows through the connection and rapidly fled the eldrazi before it could retaliate.
Another tentacle slammed into me before I was fully free, this one sending me into the ground with enough force to burrow down nearly one-hundred feet. The ground above me began to fill in to bury me so I cloaked myself in fire and teleported back above the eldrazi. Trying to stall it just a little longer, I summoned a magic circle larger than I was into being before my hands and unleashed my spell. A dragon made of pure fire leapt from my spell circle, roaring out a challenge as it descended towards the eldrazi.
The dragon corpse I claimed was used for more than just the advancement of my artifice and potion work. I also crafted a ritual to imbue myself with the powers of its blood, made far simpler by the fact that I once had a dragon within me. The result was exactly what I'd wanted; dragonfire. I could now control two of the most powerful fires known to exist. And when I brought them together, I could do this.
The eldrazi seemed to recognize my fire for the threat it was if its flailing tentacles were any indication, but they did no good. My fire dragon skillfully wove its way between each strike and landed on the eldrazi's back. It tore into the eldrazi's armored shell with its claws as it moved, but that was just another distraction. In truth, I wasn't targeting the eldrazi when I'd unleashed my spell, I was aiming for something entirely different.
The flaming dragon made one final leap across the eldrazi' back, bringing one of its large paws down onto a silver sword still protruding from its back.
Ever since I impaled the eldrazi, Yolos Kiin had been filling the eldrazi's body with a combination of phoenix and dragon fire, creating a vast network that flowed like a branching stream throughout its entire body. The eldrazi had yet to notice because the amount was so little as to be unrecognizable to the vast entity. It would know now.
The moment the fire dragon touched the sword, the flames were pulled into a maelstrom as the sword sucked them into itself, transferring them all into the fiery network it had created inside the eldrazi these painstaking past few minutes. The fire expanded and blazed brightly, visible even through the eldrazi eldrazi's sturdy armor, as my spell was added to the blade's network.
The ground rumbled as the eldrazi let out what could only be a shriek of pain, though it sounded more as if someone had thrown a jar of nails into a blender. It stopped its uncaring march, and its tentacles began to bat against its own back, searching for the sword protruding from its body.
Throughout this display, I hadn't been twiddling my thumbs. Instead, I'd been preparing another, even greater spell. I was just waiting for the eldrazi to be distracted, and it was now.
Fire swallowed me once more as I teleported directly on top of my sword. Grasping the hilt with both hands, I sent the spell I'd been casting directly through it, praying the blade wouldn't shatter under its power like Sil Du had under Ddraig's.
The necrotic fire strengthened by the power of both the dragon and the phoenix was violently pulled from my body as the sword drank it up, sending it down into the eldrazi's body the moment it was able.
The eldrazi let loose another mind-grating screech as its insides were sundered by flames hotter than the sun that corrupted everything they touched, leaving nought but decayed debris in their wake.
The flames roared through the entire network my sword had created, glowing a bright green as the fire passed through the eldrazi's body.
All too soon, the green fire died, but its work was done.
Large portions of the eldrazi came away from its body in chunks as its very body began to rapidly decay from the inside.
Showing the first sign of urgency I'd seen from the eldrazi, it started rapidly moving back towards the portal at at least seven times the speed it was previously moving.
Wizards and lesser eldrazi both dove out of the large monster's path as it tried desperately to reach the breach before its physical form crumbled to dust. If it was able to reconstitute itself in the Blind Eternities, it may return here to finish devouring the plane as it had started to do, or perhaps even led something even more terrifying to this plane. I refused to let it.
Receiving my mental command, all zombies under my command left their present fights and charged the breach, attacking anything near it with their magic before standing at the edge and stopping anything new from crossing over.
Teleporting through fire, I emerged at one end of the tear. Coating my hands in space magic, I gripped the distortion and pushed, using both my magical and physical strength. The end of the portal began to slowly move. Each second's worth of strain bought me an inch of ground. It wouldn't be fast enough to trap the dying eldrazi on this plane.
I heard something fly up behind me, but ignored it, trusting my zombies to defend me from whatever threat a flying eldrazi drone might pose. I was entirely surprised to feel a hand grip my shoulder, and my eyes lit on fire as power was transferred into me.
Redoubling my efforts, I screamed as I pushed against the breach. It rapidly closed under the might of my new strength, and that of whoever's hand was still on my shoulder.
The eldrazi screeched one last time as it fell towards the breach, only to land on solid earth, the portal having closed in the nick of time.
I grinned in triumph as I watched the results of my necrofire.
The eldrazi rolled on the ground, and I could feel the power it was directing towards itself in an effort to survive. But it was dying, its body crumbling away into nothing.
The witches and wizards still standing took to blasting the eldrazi with every spell they had, tearing pieces out of it with every strike.
"How do you know of these things?"
Finally, I looked to the one who had helped me close the portal and was surprised to find Dumbledore floating next to me, but I was surprised by how he looked. When we'd first spoken during this fight, he had looked exactly as he had during the second task. Now he was entirely different.
His blue robes had been exchanged for ones that appeared to be made of shining stars that snaked up and down his body, twinkling against the blue sky around him. In his right hand he held his knotted wand, and above the other levitated a small, octahedral stone. A translucent cape billowed in the wind behind him as he stared down at the large monster's crumbling body in something resembling fear.
"I've seen them before." I said honestly, leaving out the medium through which I'd viewed them. "They move through the space between realities and surface only to feast on planes."
"If that is true, then how did we win?"
"We got incredibly lucky. Most of its power was trapped outside of the plane. Had we given it time to constitute itself, there would have been no chance of stopping it. Something we wouldn't have been able to do if you hadn't helped me with the breach. Speaking of which; why don't you use the rock and the cloak more often? Even I'm kind of terrified of you right now." I said in admiration as I felt power that rivalled most gods from DXD drifting off of Albus. I honestly didn't think I would be able to beat him if the two of us fought right now.
"The cloak is not mine. I am borrowing it from Mr. Potter. And I had sworn never to use this power, but the situation seemed dire." he said, sounding his age for the first time since I'd met him.
"It was." I said seriously. "Had that thing escaped, it would have come back. And it wouldn't have attacked as casually as it did. The world would have died. I'd keep those things on hand in case there are any eldrazi left. The sooner you deal with them, the better."
"Will you aid me in this, Xarion?" Dumbledore asked.
I nodded. "I will, but I think I will leave the moment they are gone. In case you hadn't noticed…." Both of us turned to the ground where several witches and wizards were gathered together. The group looked between myself and my zombies in uncertainty and fear. "I really would like to avoid having to kill the parents of my students."
"Then we should endeavor to complete this task quickly. I will scour the north and east. I would ask that you take the south and west." Without another word, he flew off in the direction he had claimed, scanning the ground below him for eldrazi.
Throwing one last look at the rapidly decaying corpse of the eldrazi I had felled, I sped off to clear my own areas.
X
Why did I come back here? There was literally nothing I wanted to take with me. At the very least I could say I made sure.
Now, it was time to-
The door to my office was thrown open as Daphne Greengrass ran inside, her eyes panicked as she looked at me.
"Professor!" she cried. "You cannot leave! You are the only teacher that-"
"Okay, stop." I said, holding up a hand. "I'd ask how you knew I was leaving, but I know better than to expect an answer. Understand that if I do not leave, I will be forced into several battles with other wizards that will not end until they are dead. I'm not exactly looking forward to killing hundreds of wizards who are only interested in protecting their kids, so I'm leaving instead. You have plenty of teachers here who are capable of….. Okay, you have Snape and Dumbledore, but they are both extremely good at what they do." Maybe I was being too hard on the other professors, but the level of magic in this world was incredibly lacking. They were talented by Magical Britain's standards, but I measured magical strength by an entirely different metric.
"Neither of them have wandless magic." Greengrass said, her demeanor rapidly alternating between unhinged rage and on the brink of tears.
"Actually, Severus does. He would be able to teach you. Now, I'm sorry, but I really must be going." I looped the strap for my nifty, bottomless bag over my shoulder and moved to planeswalk, only to stop and think.
…..It certainly wouldn't hurt.
"Miss Greengrass?" I said, drawing the girl's attention. "Catch."
Even surprised, she was able to maintain the wherewithal to catch the small, leatherbound journal.
"That is the research journal I used while discerning how to transcribe wand spells to circles. It also has a fair bit of other stuff in it for fun. You're a hell of a mage, Daphne. I'll be back someday. Not tomorrow, or next week, or maybe not even this decade, but when I return, people had better be speaking of you in the same breath as Dumbledore and Merlin. You have potential, kid. Go make that potential a reality." I gave her a smirk and planeswalked before she could reply.
Maybe I should have let her say goodbye, but there was something I'd been eager to do since the largest eldrazi had fallen. I'd put it on hold to help Dumbledore track down the eldrazi because I knew how important it was, but I was done waiting.
It was time to find Kuroka.