Pulvis et umbra sumus - We are but dust and shadow - (Horace)
Chapter 1
It crept upon me,
As I sat in thought;
Never even noticed,
That it had hidden there.
Now my hope you see;
Is that it has not,
Ever even realized,
That you are also here.
-A Shadowed... Thing, Death and Bad Poetry
Death, the Archive and '96 Barry Callebaut... extra bitter
Now, let's get one thing clear, as the Master of Death I am neither omnipotent, nor omniscient. Heck, I'm not even immortal!
I am however, somewhat omnipotent, selectively omniscient, and...still not immortal. It's just that, for me, Death is well... meh.
Now I know what you're thinking, either he's all-powerful or he isn't, either he's all-knowing or he's not! I wish it were so simple!
You see, I know all that is known to Death and Death knows all that is known to the dead. The Dead, keep no secrets- actually they won't shut up, but more on that later...
People die every day, for example, when I said the word 'People' an elderly and quite distinguished gentleman from Ulvik, Norway died while skinny-dipping in the waters of the Hardangerfjord, a monk passed away while meditating on the side of a road in Nepal, a mother of four died of cancer after six years of struggle and a street hustler in Chicago was stabbed to death over a sum of two dollars and forty-three cents....
All that they knew is now known to me, how to make mean pineapple shortcake, what it feels like to swim in winter and for a moment, forget the past; the satisfaction of a hard but simple life, the outrage of being killed over spare change....
All this and more, the sum totality of all things known and experienced by those who are now dead and not just the human dead; living things die every second of every day and those that have understandable memories or a story to tell, pass on their knowledge and tell their stories in death; to me.
Beyond that, nada, it's all up to me to learn what I can, however I can, and the living world is for the most part, a blank.
Hence, selectively omniscient. I know a lot, just not everything...
On the matter of omnipotence, well it depends on what you believe, literally. I have no inherent power, beyond what is due to my own soul's nature as a wizard; and most of that is living it up, no pun intended, elsewhere.
I have no real power as the Master of Death. The nature of my existence lies in the fact that Death is inevitable, even for so-called immortal beings, even for gods, even.... for death itself. I am inevitability, and that's it.
Beyond that, with a few unwelcome exceptions, I am only capable of accomplishing feats solely possible through my knowledge and experience which, all things considered, is actually quite a bit.
But I can't do anything...
Finally on the matter of immortality, well that's actually a bit ironic really.
I am in essence, the anthropomorphic manifestation of the Inevitability of Death. I am a fact. Call me Doom, call me Karma, call me Fate or whatever you wish, facts don't change no matter how much we wish they would, no matter how much we ignore them, or what is said to the contrary, or even what is believed.
Well, the last one could actually cause me some trouble, but fortunately all that it takes to make a believer out of someone is to simply wait until they croak and go "SEE". Quite effective, but you don't have to take my word for it...
I do get some measure power from the beliefs of mortals, some foolish men and women who obsess over their end, seek to escape death, or to conquer and defeat it, the more they try, the greater the looming specter of my nature.
Others may go another route and seek immortality through fame or infamy, by building monuments, leaving chronicles, or most foolishly, by trying to cheat Death.
That's always amusing...
Those who know of the Master of Death often imagine the most absurd things. Thanks to those beliefs I often have to be careful when I speak, being able to kill with the merest whisper, sounds cool, but as a result, most of my attempts at conversation in the past often ended with the other participants either pissing themselves in fear...
Or in the case of my first and last conversation with War, ending with me being run through repeatedly with a rather big knife, because he didn't like my tone...
I avoid dark alleyways on principle...
Unpleasant, I tell you...
Oh, and don't let me get started on my eyes, His Murderous Look. His Deadly Stare. A Petrifying Gaze...
GAHHHH!
So, I'm not immortal, I have no need to be.
I AM.
Which was part of the trouble... Inevitability does not Change unless change in inevitable. Which is why, when I sought to give myself a makeover and inure my nature somewhat from the whims of belief, I hatched a plot some sixteen hundred odd years ago to use a trio of miscreants to give myself and edge.
And they thought they were soo clever... snerk
Now I have a soul, one that suits me perfectly and provided that I feed and water it carefully, I should be reasonably protected from some of the more, disenchanting aspects of my existence. Not that it worked the last time, but I'd just love to see the Gatekeeper try to Bind me to a Name...
-heh, heh, heh-
No matter what I said it wasn't as if I wanted a confrontation with the wise of this reality. Due to my semi-divine nature any such confrontation would eventually end in my favor, unless another Power intervened, although there weren't all that many who could and even fewer that would. The most likely outcome was that I'd end up facing the collected might, such as it was, of a host of supernatural beings and wise, that would just be... tedious
So when I picked up Tom, and opened the Gates, I chose my moment of entry carefully. No doubt the Gatekeeper of this period must be going wild trying to figure out who entered, where and when they are.
The list of luminaries that have a key is rather short and almost without exception quite nasty, on account of being mostly of the many tentacled, many eyed, many fanged variety. The Old Ones have mostly lost theirs or been abjured entry by the collective Powers.
The few entities that still have a key and can enter at will more often than not, DON'T LIKE THE GATEKEEPER!
The little shit must be going insane....
Still, personal feelings aside, I deliberately chose my point and time of entry at the time and place where Death was strongest, Time most chaotic, and the Gatekeeper, likely to be rather distracted.
The End of the World...
Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden
Collins didn't die without a fight, not that that was any consolation.
Her death curse however, had been useful in dealing with imps summoned by the warlocks.
"Rooaaaaawwwwrrr!"
That just left big and ugly...
"Forzare!" I roared and flipped a car on top of it. A Saab, that's what you get for not buying American.
Unfortunately, Tiny didn't want to stay down, and with another roar, raised the car over his head like an Olympic weightlifter, preparing to heave it at me.
I wasn't interested in playing catch with a SUV, and the skin crawling feeling I was getting from the factory behind me wasn't making matters any better.
This time, I added a touch of soul fire.
"Forzare!"
The few seconds that the demon had been down gave me the time I needed to focus, all of my grief, my rage, and every shred of the anxiety that I was feeling over the fates of the two young Wardens I'd sent into the meat processing plant behind me. They were probably dead.
The others should have been finished by now...
Ever see one of those old road-runner cartoons, when the coyote's about to get whacked over the head?
-WHUMP-
The pressure wave blew dust in my face and ruffled my black leather duster. A silvery spike of materialized kinetic force pinned the demon where I had pile-driven it, and the car, into the ground.
Hope someone's got insurance...
The screeching cries and keening were slightly gratifying, but if it was wailing, that meant it was still more or less intact and more importantly here in the real world. That probably meant that it wasn't as injured as it wanted me to think and possibly hoping I wouldn't notice-
My shield takes the brunt of the fire coming out of the thing's tail end. The modifications I put in after nearly losing a hand work perfectly for keeping away the searing heat. Though, from the smell of it, this was hellfire and I was in trouble if I kept using my soul fire to counteract it. so...
-WHUMP-
The fire cut out...
-WHUMP-
-WHUMP-
-WHUMP-
Just for good measu- did it just a twitch?
-WHUMP-
I don't have time to see if I killed it or not. A quick look over my shoulder showed me that Tiny's body was dissolving into a noxious puddle of goo which would probably give some janitor nightmares.
I'm not cleaning that up...
I'm tired, more than a little drained, but I've got to see what hell I put those two kids that I sent in there through.
I didn't mean it literally...
I was just sneaking a look 'round a corner, unfortunately this was just as Warlock A happened to be facing me and the psycho looked me right in the in the eye. I didn't feel a Soul Gaze come on which was probably a good thing cause crazy doesn't wash off that easily. The tension however, was getting thick as he stared me down, covered from head to toe in blood.
I broke first, and execising great wit tried to lie my way out of this potentially volatile situation. In a passable falsetto I said, "Um, Avon Lady!"
Okay, so I didn't exactly have high hopes for a peaceful end to the day...
The bastard started laughing.
Henceforth called Chuckles, he tried to take my head off with something that reeked of evil, pain and blood. It took out most of the wall above my head and continued on behind me for some ways from the sound of things.
But that wasn't what got to me.
On what should have been the factory floor, were two concentric Circles drawn in blood, and judging from the piles of skinned carcasses laying around at the cardinal points of the circle, it wasn't pig's blood.
Because the carcasses were human...
Chuckles was gloating about...something, while firing off several more of those hair-raising bolts of inky, blood-tinged darkness.
I noticed that he never crossed out of the line of blood, just shuffled along the inside of the outermost of two circles, he was probably buying time for the other six dark magic users, congregated about the outer edge of an inner circle, which held within its center what looked like a large rubrics cube.
I can't describe it better than that, I couldn't get a good look at it, on account of the sicko trying to kill me and all...
I can say that it was the source of my bad feeling.
Where's my backup? Ramirez!
That was when I found them.
I'd sent Wardens Travers and Grace into the factory with instructions to intervene only if necessary. At the time, I'd thought Carlos was on his way soon with a force of twenty Wardens and that the swarm of Imps and Tiny were the bigger threat.
Oh, sweet hindsight.
When I say I found them, I mean, I tripped over what was left of Travers' skull which was the biggest piece of her still intact, and landed face first in an unpleasantly smelling mess that was probably Grace, poor guy.
I'd still be gagging if I wasn't busy trying to stay alive...
They were younger than Ramirez!
I'd like to say that I rose to my feet in a towering rage and a vortex of magical power with staff in hand and cut Chuckles down to size. In reality I sort of half rose and crab-walked/rolled out of the way of the next blast. I couldn't continue fighting like this, the next mystical attack that got sent my way I parried into the ceiling.
I could feel the blood and death magic tug at me as I turned it away. Whoever these people were, they had to enjoy causing pain to work at this level. So much pain and blood...
Blood...
Pain can go both ways, there's the pain one causes others and the pain that one endures. Pain is an unavoidable facet of life, as is blood...
I finished drawing the circle in time, it had the added benefit of drawing away power from whatever ritual the warlocks were performing. Their guttural chanting took on a frantic and distinctly dismayed tone.
Tapping into the ambient power was simple.
And painful...
Never again!
The piles of skinned humans helped to make it bearable.
Chuckles wasn't quite so happy any more, my circle alone was damping down the amount of power going into his. I could tell the moment he realized this.
It's when he peeled off his face...
I don't even bother blocking his next death spell. The curse washed over the boundary of my ward and my circle leached away at its power, growing stronger.
I slammed the butt of my staff into the ground, drawing more of the power and agony into my body...
And I screamed myself hoarse.
A while back, I learnt a painful but valuable lesson about limiting myself to direct effect spells. I tried using my shield bracelet to ward off burning napalm. The fuel was deflected away from me, the heat, wasn't.
Now, I did something similar.
The scream was not a direct effect spell and I could see that it worked by the way Chuckles was staggering about like a punch-drunk brawler bleeding from his ears, the members of the inner circle seem not to have taken the surprise well either. One of the Warlocks stumbled into the innermost ring and wailed as first her clothes, then her skin and then her flesh was stripped from her bones.
Then her bones turned to ash.
Hell's Bells!
Seriously alarmed, not that that I wasn't already but this was more of a ohshitohshitohshit kinda thing, I drew in another jolt of power and added soul fire to it. I'm going to be paying for this in the morning, provided of course, that I live that long.
The life giving magic that I send toward their circle completely obliterates the death spell Chuckles hurled at me and crashes against the barrier with a resounding boom.
As my ears cleared, I could hear the sounds of barked commands and running feet.
Finally...
Seeing my relief, Chuckles pitched in with his two cents.
"Tis matters not!" He screamed. "Neither thine spell nor thine enchanted iron shalt breach mine barrier!"
Idly wondering where this guy learned his English, more like which century, I raised my free hand and screamed back at him.
"WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY THAT THEN!"
Then I pull out my .44 and shoot him....
Suppressing a vicious surge of satisfaction, I aimed at the inner circle of warlocks. They hadn't stopped chanting in spite of my efforts and seemed to be reaching a crescendo.
A satisfying as it would be, I aimed at the box, instead of Grace's murderers.
"HARRY, NO!"
I squeezed the trigger...
The Other Harry
I whistled at the wave of devastation that spread across the world leaving naught but the dead, demons and a precious few tortured souls. As I had thought, the Gatekeeper used the Time Gate when the situation proved untenable. His memories of that possible future would only stay within his past self's mind for a short while before it faded, a brief interval with which to avert disaster.
While his past and future selves were distracted, I settled into my time...
I'd have to lay low as I created a place for myself in the mortal world, not draw attention as I built my Sanctum, not-
A seventeen year old girl, wearing Levi's walked up to me in the middle of an empty street in Marseille, June of 1721.
"Hello Harry Potter."
...
....
.....
"Luna, why am I not surprised..."
AN: Yep, another one that started out as a blog post, I'll put the disclaimer here
I own neither the Dresden Files nor Harry Potter those works are the genius of authors I don't hold a candle to. This story is not for profit and is a work of fanfiction, no animals were hurt in the creation of this story and any real world similarities to the demonic entities depicted herein, both real and imagined is simply a coincidence. TTFN
