Hello, hello!
You know I still can't upload a new document for some reason. I don't know why FF is being so difficult. Oh well. Good thing I got documents already uploaded to cheat new chapters in. ;)
Onwards! Chapter 28.
***
Septima's hand trembled as the chart completed itself, and the havoc making the stone groan ensued just a little bit after. What was she to do? She was no dueller, she had no chance to be able to defend better than those already there, defending. Call in aurors? By the time they got here, everything worth stopping will have already taken place. What could she do? What could she do?
"Vector. Vector! Stop gawking and shivering and be useful!"
Professor Vector flinched at the voice- and turned towards Severus Snape, who was glowering in the frame hanging above her seat in her office. The original witch of the painting was cowering in the lower right corner.
"What do you want me to do?" she said, partly wondering at her own self that she was willing to take direction from a portrait.
"You must wake Galanos," Severus said, his hand working as if vexed he couldn't do it himself and had to have someone else fill in. "You must make him overcome Pomfrey's spell and wake before it's too late. He is the only one who can still get them to go away. Now, Vector!"
"H-how?" Septima stammered, although she already had an idea.
Severus Snape rolled his eyes but bit back whatever scathing rose instinctively to his mind.
"Begin with the sigil he taught you, and I will guide you through the rest of the Arithmancy when you need it."
Professor Vector dry-swallowed, and nearly winced like a student when Snape's portrait thundered:
"Now!"
***
Even as Isis' veins started becoming a black network of river pattern under her skin under Bai's Antahiga, she grinned, shoving one hand forward towards Bai and one hand backward towards Minerva. Minerva gasped, bringing her hand up to her throat as it seemed to seal off, choking her, and Bai was thrown with force off his feet and against the wall. Her eyes flashed, her pupils narrowing and becoming vertical like a cobra's. She laughed once, but her voice changed pitch and echoed in parseltongue.
Isis licked her lips and chanted in the odd language that only the rare, the few, the select chosen ones had been endowed with, invoking her mother's power to cancel out the strong spell of the ex-auror while keeping Minerva in the deathgrip of suffocation that also forbade her to speak any spell words. A low green glow began building around her body and the hand pointed towards Bai began weaving gently in the air, and Guiren Bai yelled, falling back to his knees.
The DADA professor writhed and fell further on his back, clutching at his stomach and torso. Blood began pooling, seeping through his heavy robes, but the man refused to release his wand.
"Durus Stupefy!"
The spell hit Isis as someone rushed up the long corridor. Professor Frideswide skidded to a halt next to Bai as Isis staggered, flipping over herself before she crashed on the ground, effectively releasing Minerva as well. The Headmistress rasped, filling her lungs with oxygen.
Isis swiped at the air with her fingers clawed as she appeared to simply glide back to a standing position, and Erna's wand snapped in two in her hand. Erna's eyes widened behind her glasses.
"You bitch!" she cussed, reaching behind in her jeans pocket, and pulling out a very muggle, antic looking revolver in one smooth move, squeezing the trigger in fractions of a second. The round echoed, the alien sound reverberating in the corridor, and Isis screamed as the bulled pierced through her palm in a blossoming of blood. Her fingers immediately looked crooked and off in position, the gold-tipped finger cap in one hissing acidically.
Bai groaned, his eyes tearing with the pain, but also flashing with insight.
"Take them… off!" he gasped, his grasp loosening. "Gold…fingers…off…"
Frideswide didn't seem to realize what the ex-auror was meaning, but she pulled the cock of her revolver back again to shoot at Isis' head, not waiting to try and puzzle it out. She got another round off, but Isis' reptilian-looking eyes flashed, and the bullet simply fell uselessly to the floor. Frideswide ducked to the side, avoiding the spell the prime witch shot at her with her other hand, and yanked Bai's wand from his slippery hand.
"Incendia Tellum!" she screamed and a volley of hissing darts were unleashed against Isis.
Losing use of her left hand was costing Isis, and what she would have simply swiped away she almost got skewered with, and so had to pay special attention to Frideswide's curse- and Minerva had her chance to use Bai's advice.
"Aufero aurum!" McGonagall rasped, and the typical jeweler's charm to hone gold assaulted Isis' golden finger caps, threatening to make them melt away. Isis screamed and in her fear and shock she stopped feeling the gunshot wound's pain. She clasped her hands together and cancelled out the spell, but she had lost advantage. She couldn't afford to play any longer.
And she couldn't walk away being a loser.
"Caedo Flamma!" she yelled and the air around her seemed to implode. Bai gurgled blood, his eyes rolling into his skull, Frideswide crumpled like a puppet that got its strings severed, an up to then invisible shield shattering into many glittering pieces, and it was only Minerva McGonagall that managed not to lose consciousness, and only because she had cast about three consecutive shields around herself. I am not going to let you have my heart, crone! She thought at Isis furiously as she watched her shields shatter one after the other under the powerful spell.
"Vartadhve maamaka ajiiva," the ancient witch intoned, and though Minerva did try to guard, she had no idea what was flying at her, and how to avoid a spell that had no direction or focus- and so it hit her, and she fell too, before the pain even registered.
***
Osiris twirled his wand as it was pointed towards the door, while his hand gripped his mangled leg, furiously calling upon the Heart to fix it. It had been lucky that the siphoning was nearly complete- the Heart had enough of Aello's son's life blood to protect his body from destruction of any sort. The pallor of the boy that was calling his wand to him, the shaking of his hand showed that most of his blood was within Osiris, that the waif had missed fainting and dying of exsanguination by a hair. He was done here, and with it. His real interest now was outside that door, that pumping heart in the dark haired fledgling of a man who had tried to kill him with a lesser curse, and kept trying as if repetition would somehow work.
Osiris fired a killing spell at the red headed man- he flew out of the way with a scream, and the scrap of a female behind the heart he wanted also screamed a name and rushed after the redhead.
"Give me my heart," Osiris purred with a slight grin, and jabbed his wand at the dark haired man's chest. The rapidly pumping heart within that chest called to him with power and light that he always loved to devour. Such a heart glowing with such force, pumping in his canopic jar base would see him through more than a century, of that he was certain.
To his credit, Harry did not waste time answering. The utter fear that Ron was dead somewhere behind him in the corridor mixed with the anger that was too scathing and raging to even begin to put into words. Rasmus had put a dent in this force that Osiris was, and Harry was going to make it as wide as he possibly could, and then shoot the damn Kedavra in it for good measure.
"Altus Confrigo!" he bellowed, ready to dodge and guard just in case, aiming at the bad leg of the tall ancient wizard. The spell traveled swiftly and smashed impressively against the very spot where the potion bomb Rasmus had invoked had initially mangled it. It had already begun to close up, creepily like an invisible hand was moulding flesh over the bone that had peeked through.
Rasmus growled his own curse to prevent Osiris from countering Harry's, using the same medicinal-type attack he had used on Bai to stop him from casting. It hit Osiris from the side, and it bought them yet a little more time. Rasmus couldn't understand why the wizard was not leaving. He had gotten what he wanted. What did he still have to get from- his eyes widened in horror. He had blasted Ron, was not interested in Hermione, and was looking at Harry Potter with interest.
"Watch it Harry!" he yelled. "It's you he wants!"
"What a big surprise," muttered Harry under his breath as he ducked again from another spell behind the wall. Whatever it was, it sliced right through the thick stone wall and cut into Harry's flesh nonetheless, and red began spreading down his pants in a slow, definite manner.
In the same time, Osiris threw his hand forward- he kept his wand trained towards Harry, trying to get a clear shot and yank out his heart still beating, like in the land of Aztec- and Rasmus flew off the floor again and slammed against a cloth blind that broke his fall and spared his ribs from bruising. He did land on his broken leg though, and it rendered him motionless for a moment- a moment too much, because Potter could die in less than that, with Osiris there.
A cold, nearly clammy hand closed around his upper arm.
"Don't… don't move. Wand."
The voice was soundless and raspy, but it was the stroke of hope that Rasmus had given up on. Nikos' eyes were heavy lidded and all of his body seemed to be moving with gravity pulling on his limbs twice as much as everyone else's. Rasmus said nothing, but slipped his wand into his godfather's trembling fingers. Nikos winked once, then turned his eyes to the prime wizard that was trying to hit Harry. He had already punched about four holes into the infirmary wall.
Nikos whispered and breathed upon the wand gently, as if he didn't have a care in the world. Rasmus hoped that the stutter and continuous panting that didn't leave his godfather's breath would not mess with whatever it was he was doing. The wand glowed golden- and as soon as it did, he began tracing an intricate looking knot on the air. The gold wisp followed his tracing as if unloading the golden glow like ink from a pen. Rasmus shivered- the wisp was very much like the one that had siphoned away his blood…
The knotwork looked soon very intricate, and Nikos paused, breathing in-
Osiris stopped and turned, eyes wide in hateful surprise, forgetting Harry-
Nikos simply flicked the wand tip forward and the golden wisp shot forth, snagging Osiris like a trap, then throwing him out of the infirmary window while the wizard yelled counterspells in panicked frenzy.
Silence reigned in the destroyed infirmary, and immediately the air began smelling like blood and debris.
Nikos' eyes closed and he lay back, exhausted, breathing in heavily with Rasmus' wand still in his hand. Worried shouts and talking was wafting from outside the infirmary now.
"Godfather, how…? Are- are you alright?" asked Rasmus in rapid Greek, ignoring his own pain as he looked upon Nikos' form.
"You… have a ton to explain," Nikos slurred breathlessly, looking at his godson and nephew from under his eyelashes, wand lying upon his chest under his loose hand and wheezing the whole time.
And though he had every reason to be horrified and shocked, Rasmus just smiled.
***
And that's that! It almost completes this skirmish. Aftermath comes tomorrow if I manage to write it due to schedule or the day after at the latest.
Sanskrit for Isis' spell that hits McGonagall is more or less saying 'you are dead for me'. The radial spell is a killing spell.
Now, the spell Nikos did is a Knot Spell. The Egyptians (and especially Isis cult) felt that knots were magical, and very important for magic to 'hold' when invoking the power of certain gods. Isis was one of those, and Knot Spells are very important for this story (as Nikos will eventually explain). The spell Osiris used on Rasmus is another knot spell, by the way.
Angeleye68: Thank you for all your great reviews! I greatly enjoy ones where readers tell me their thoughts and speculations about the plot and characters. I am happy you are enjoying it.
Sindie: See? It eats reviews! And I don't mind negative reviews. Like I said, sometimes an author is not a good match for a certain reader. And sometimes a reader is not ready for a certain author yet. ;) How do you like this chapter, eh?
Oryx: well, you can't deny that many feel that way, can you?
Mandya1313: thanks!
Zoe Bright: I'm glad you enjoyed! And that mental image about Osiris made me laugh- and think about the Hulk next. You know- if he was more cultured and liked to wear trinkets.
Till tomorrow!