"Take cover!" Claudia yelled to those outside from within the last wagon watching the scene before them unfold in the valley below.
Uriel and Emerick knew what was coming their way and their fears were verified when they saw debris levitate from below as an umbrella around the train, and they tried to aid to it by floating more large objects to surround them, rocks, boulders, and even some of the empty carriages.
Others mimicked them helping as best they could, and a moment later like inescapable missiles the killing curses' bright green jets impacted them, breaking stones apart, as a number of them went through to the second layer of boulders and train parts and then to impacting the soil beneath their feet and students, striking them dead.
An explosion cleared the last of the mist below them and the full moon's light allowed them to see Felix stand before Azrail, two figures in the valley ready to commit to battle illuminated in silver light.
"What did you do to me! What was this spell!" Azrail demanded in a demented voice, bereft of sanity.
"The more you tried to escape the Prophesy, the more you assured of its fulfillment. What did I do? Forced the matter in a way that fulfills both our Prophesies without me having to kill you because you aren't worthy of a piece of my soul. My love for Claudia, for my friends and family opened my eyes to how I don't need to hate me or you. You have ten minutes, Azrail brother of mine!"
They circled each other like cats ready to pounce, wands drawn at the ready. "We are your family! Father did EVERYTHING for you and you shunned his love!" Azrail cried maniacally.
"That poisoned chalice wasn't love. You know not the meaning of the word!" Felix spat at him, pressing his wand on his chest.
"Everything was done for your benefit and you squandered it away!"
"Oh, Azy…you submitted to your torment as self-evident truth…us three, we could have defeated him together. Can you imagine the things we could have done together?"
"DON'T CALL ME THAT! Only mother was allowed to! Only she until she tried to kill me!" Azrail shook and trembled in rage.
"What does it matter, Azrail? You have nine minutes left to decide, after that all decisions will be made for you for the rest of your miserable life."
"Nine minutes to what? Will you kill me little brother?"
"That is what you want, what you have desired of me ever since before I can remember. Torturing me, killing people I love, you and Ernaline have been conflicted of what you wanted since the start. But everything you have done has had one goal in mind. Make me kill you, even your search for the Old Gods' spells has the same ending. Without Life there is no Death, without life and death you and your suffering cease to exist."
"SILENCE! GIVE ME THE SHADEGLASS! Give it to me and I'll make your death a quick one."
"And what of my friends? Do you guarantee their safety and afterlife in the Crossroads?"
"You ask too much, Bloodfang and Sandra desire them, Lilith desires that wizard from Atali and Marigold wants her old "love" dead. One big happy family!"
"Yeah, I thought so. You have eight minutes left, brother."
"What is that!" Azrail would not admit it to himself but he was worried of what he did not understand, what had happened to him.
"Do you remember the House-Elf called Norma? Do you remember what spell you cast to her and what it did?"
"NO! That spell failed! It is my only failure!"
"Oh, Azy. It didn't fail, you just never bothered to understand that which you consider inferior. Unlike Humans, House-Elves cannot live without their link to Magic. Norma the House-Elf died ten minutes after you cast that spell, that's how long it takes to take effect, to sever your connection to Magic and make you nothing more than a common Muggle."
"NO! Angels of Death to me!" One by one, first appeared Bloodfang, Marigold, Sandra and Lilith standing behind their Master, then Cillian's remnant army appeared. "Felix is mine, kill everyone else."
"I also have friends who thirst for your blood, Azy", Felix stretched his wand above his head sending a pillar of silver light high up in the sky.
"STOP CALLING ME THAT!" Azrail bellowed as Wizards and Witches begun to apparate behind Felix. Professors from schools across the Wizarding world, Bellerophon and his father, Socrates, his sister and father, Miremba and her family, and every Auror from every country in existence.
"ANG…" Azrail tried to cast but Felix was faster.
"Legilimensia!" Azrail staggered back as Felix invaded his chaotic mind searching for memories and placing some of his own in there. Around them night turned to day as the two armies clashed.
"My dear Professor", Marigold giggled. "My love, how good to see you aga…"
"I've a blood feud to fulfil, Marigold. A blood oath that haunts me sleepless. The time for words is long past, time to send you beyond the veil. Avada Kedavra!" Marigold dodged his attack repaying him in kind.
Sandra had engaged Atreus and Bellerophon. "Atreus my pursuer, you have brought me your other son, thank you", she laughed as Aristides clad in his Wareater's garments looked at his youngest son, wearing a black battle cloth around his legs and a red set of robes above with his face painted red and black, tattoos glowed all over his chest and arms. He was holding his very own dueling Xiphos in one hand, a long sword with a simple grip ending in a pommel with his family's crest embedded in it, and his wand placed in a hole in the middle of the long, slim blade adorned with runes. In his other hand he held Odysseus' shield.
"My son, trust in your training, trust in yourself. Send her beyond the Veil", Bellerophon looked at her with a face of death and disgust.
Bellerophon brought the shield just beneath his eyes in front of his torso and banged it with the sword thrice. "Blood for blood. Blood was taken and blood must be repaid. My childhood is at end and so is your life forfeited, Sandra. May the Ferryman find your offering worthy", he banged the sword on the shield once more.
"Avada Kedavra!" She sent it his way bouncing off the shield as he cast a curse back at her.
"Eight minutes, Azrail! Decide! My life or the Shadeglass, you can't have both!" Felix taunted his brother dodging his curses and firing back his own.
"Guardians of Azkaban! I call upon thee! I 've souls for thee!" Azrail cried and out of nowhere Dementors appeared in scores blotting out the sky.
Meanwhile back in the train bloody, gory battle was taking place, as Cillian's soldiers lead by Bloodfang had apparated around it trying to gain entrance to the remaining carriages.
Emerick and Miremba were cooperating to bring down a tower of a man casting killing curses at them and Uriel was fending off a dark witch with a distorted face and sparse strands of black hair in black and green robes.
Uriel misjudged the situation sending a curse at her which she deflected sending one at him catching him on his left arm, snapping bones and tearing muscle. He felt his skin burn and peel off as he howled in pain.
"URIEL!" Ariana cried, "secarius!" The curse caught the dark witch straight on her throat and she fell on the ground with her throat slit and copious amounts of red blood oozing out in spurts.
Three men were battling a seventh-year Gryffindor boy felling him before turning their wands at a Ravenclaw seventh-year girl and two Hufflepuff students, a fifth and a sixth-year boy and girl. The Ravenclaw girl legilimensed one of the men making him lose the ability to use his muscles and the two Hufflepuffs united their spell in a cooperative effort sending the other two men flying off the cliff and plunging to their deaths.
Bloodfang made an apparition jump grabbing Ariana by her hair dragging her down to her knees. Uriel tried to fight him but Bloodfang blasted him back against a coach's door and cast the killing curse at him.
Miremba apparated between them. "White devil, I have come for you", she told him removing her top robes, remaining in her yellow and red pants and orange shirt.
"Your sister…what delight she was to consume, and your mother! For woman and a mother of four she sure was…" Miremba sent a curse at him making him drop Ariana. He attacked her back.
All around them chaos ruled as students and Professors battled Cillian's soldiers, and the kids within the last coach did their best to aid casting any spell they knew from the windows, as did Claudia.
Down in the valley Socrates, Lydia and their father were fighting their way through the enemy ranks trying to engage Lilith. And the Headmistress fought soldier after soldier, none able to withstand her wit and knowledge in all things eruptive.
The Aurors had joined the fray fighting, killing and dying.
The Dementors fanned out attacking at will and discriminating no one, Azrail cared not if they consumed the souls of Ministerial Aurors or his own father's army.
Ten of them hovered over Felix, swooping in for the kill as Azrail seemed unaffected by them, reveling in the brutal chaos.
Felix spread out his arms by his sides, right hand holding his wand pointing upwards the other open with his palm up and his fingers lightly curved inward. "Expecto Patronum!" He stated with confidence and awe-shattering emotion. A winged leopard came bursting forth from his wand while from his left hand wrapped in silver glow and extruding outwards until a white-silver dome covered Felix whole, then it imploded forming a narwhal.
Felix looked at his spirit guardians. "Drive this filth away", the two Patronuses attacked the Dementors in a dome of white silver light.
"Six minutes, Azrail! What'll it be?"
Azrail attacked him with killing curse after killing curse. Felix kept defending himself by placing debris in front of him. "You can do better than that Azrail, accept what you desire above all else. Were you serious in killing me you'd not leave your mind so unguarded! I know every spell you are about to cast before you cast it!"
Up in the hill above them parents apparated in around the train attacking the people assaulting their kids without mercy.
"A muggle in a wizarding prison, you won't even be able to see the Dementors devouring your soul little by little!" Felix taunted him.
"You'll run out of rubble soon enough!"
"Not before you run out of time!"
"I am Death incarnate! My connection to Magic cannot be undone!" Azrail stammered. "Avada Kedavra!" No curse came out of his wand.
"Five minutes, Azrail! Your connection is slowly severed away by your own invention! You are Death without a scythe!" Felix replied placing his wand in Bellerophon's brother's dueling xiphos.
Azrail created a black liquid from ash attacking him with it. Felix turned it to rose pedals attacking Azrail with Sectusempra striking his left shoulder. The wound started to heal but stopped before the wound was gone.
Miremba deflected Bloodfang's curse back at him destroying his silver hand and before he could react she animagused into a lioness leaping onto him with her jaws locking onto his throat and begun to jerk him around violently.
Emerick lay on a pool of his own blood, his leg torn off at the knee, and yet he still fought. Two soldiers approached him, a man and a woman in black hoods. "Kiab!" He cast at the man dropping him on the ground convulsing in pain. The woman begun casting the killing curse at him when Claudia's father snapped her neck from behind with a spell then proceeded to incapacitating the man-soldier on the ground.
"Sir! Behind you! Energia Mortis!" The very air behind Claudia's father combusted sending mud and rock shrapnel every which way and the soldier taking aim at them off the cliff's edge.
A few meters away from Felix and Azrail, Socrates fought Lilith with his father, Lydia busy with another dark witch, keeping her family's flanks safe.
Lilith tried to cast the killing curse at Andronikos which he avoided with ease giving Socrates time to throw a vial at her. She tried to deflect it before it smashed against the floor but managed only to shower her with its contains, a gassy, black liquid burning away at her flesh and face like putrid acid.
She dropped on her knees trying to claw away her own skin.
Socrates threw a second vial at his father who grabbed it and with a roll on the ground grabbed at her decaying hair pulling back and emptying it in her throat.
Her screams filled the air around them for a minute before she lay dead.
"Socrates, what was in that?"
"Styx as displayed to us by our Potions Professor, he did suggest we have a vial with the antidote with us….I didn't think she'd need it."
Andronikos gave an approving nod and turned to face the witch battling his daughter.
"Two minutes Azrail! DECIDE!" Felix yelled at his half-brother.
"Fiendfyre Ultima!" Fiery chimeras, dragons and grim reapers exploded from Azrail's wand like a torrent of never-ending fire, enveloping him and Felix in a circle of magi-fire.
Then as suddenly as the flames had appeared, they extinguished as if the spell had never been cast.
"Wh-what…happened to the fire!" Azrail cried with fear in his eyes as Felix moved the wand above his head in a perpetual circular motion.
"You want to see fire, Azrail?" Felix gave a low, pained cackle. "Divinum infernalis."
Azrail's eyes registered a bright, blinding flash of pure white light then when they readjusted two six-meters long wings extended behind Felix, from between his shoulder blades, his eyes and hair had become silver fire and his body was enveloped in bright orange fire with a Hellenic Θ in front of his chest. Only Socrates knew it was no Theta, yet Azrail would only see what he wanted to see.
Felix towered above Azrail fallen on his knees.
"Wh…what are you!" He asked afraid and shaken.
"You know how father undid your years of torture…I've drunk a page from the Book of Leaves. What am I? Magic made manifest", Felix replied in a hollow, otherworldly voice not entirely his own.
"NO! It cannot be…" Azrail whimpered.
"Still you are unable to believe the truth, how could you ever hope to outrun Achronia's sight?"
"Father…were you correct…noo…" Azrail's voice faded.
Felix returned himself to normal and retrieved the Shadeglass from his pocket inside his robes. "Time is out, Azrail, ten seconds, what will it be? You can kill me, or you can take the Shadeglass and attain your desire. Decide", Felix told his brother, lowering his wand and stretching out his other hand. The portion of the Prophesy containing his third battle glowed gold, but overall it remained unfulfilled.