Feel my Fangs
Chapter 13 – Dark Creature Extermination Expedition
A party of fifty men and their captain were at the edge of the forest south of London.
"DCEE? You all ready?" the man commanding the expedition yelled. "DEECEEE?"
"Yes, sir!" the Dark Creature Extermination Expedition troops yelled back.
"We'll be heading into the forest and then you know what you have to do," the captain said. "Don't be fooled into thinking that the creatures are nice ones. They hide under illusions and don't be taken in by the image of a young one."
"Yes, sir!"
"Alright, let's go!"
They entered the forest cautiously. They had planned this for several weeks. This was the last fortress of the dark creatures—a valley hidden amidst endless acres of forest.
They were here to kill every single being. They were the elite of the elite, men who had trained together for years. They knew each other well and they knew their formations well. Pity they did not know their enemy.
Unbeknownst to them, a wizard-vampire was currently exploring and examining what remained of Lord Sythe's hidden valley.
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Harry stood at he cliff where he and Paula, the vampire analyst, had stood so long ago. Since then, the trees and the bushes had grown thicker and wilder, betraying the fact that none had stepped into the area for a very long time.
Harry threw a stick onto the invisible bridge and was delighted to find it still standing. Harry walked to the stick and threw it away so that others would not be able to find the invisible pathway. He then began the long and torturous walk to Sythe's castle. There were twists and turns in the invisible pathway so that even if one found it, they wouldn't necessarily know which way to go.
One might think the castle was in the middle of the valley, but Harry knew better. The castle was actually a bit on the left such that if you didn't know where it was, you might walk right past it and then spend the rest of your life looking for nothing in the valley and the surrounding forest.
Harry had been lucky the first time, as he had encountered Stanley the Dragon on the way and proceeded to make friends with him. A pet here, a piece of meat there and Stanley was only too happy to show Harry the way to Sythe's fortress.
Harry laughed as he remembered how Paula and Sythe had thought he had fought with Stanley and managed to tame him.
"As if the stupid steamer dragon could ever be tamed," Harry muttered loudly.
He was thanked for his comment with a swift swipe of a blue spiked tail targeted at his legs.
Harry instinctively avoided it by jumping over it.
"Ah, the joys of having vampire reflexes," Harry thought, as he landed and immediately proceeded to climb into a tree in order to be able to be face to face with the blue creature.
"Hey Stanley," Harry said to the steam dragon. "Still alive you old dog."
The dragon nudged Harry affectionately with its nose.
"Hey don't mistreat the dead!"
The dragon snorted and puffed out smoke indignantly. As he was about to swing his heavy tail at Harry, Stanley's left ear perked up. The dragon turned to face the left side of the forest. Someone—many someones actually—were approaching at a high speed.
Harry stopped petting Stanley and turned to the area where the disturbance was coming from. Harry admitted that whatever was coming was good because they hardly made any of the usual noises that accompanied human troops—the jokes, the laughter, the grunting, the cursing and the loud stomping around. These were elite troops, trained to work in rough areas with no distinguishable roads, and in relative silence. These were assassination troops.
"Elite or not, I'm better than them," Harry whispered to Stanley. "I also have the advantage of the area. I know this place and the forest will provide cover."
"You can't fly away or they'll spot you and shoot you down, Stanley," Harry said to the dragon. "You'll have to trudge your way through the forest. Get into the caves and they won't be able to follow you once you're in the underground mazes."
Stanley nodded and quickly made his way out of the clearing he and Harry had been standing in.
Harry stood crouched on his branch, his wand in his hand. He could hear the small sounds that the troops were making as they approached. He waited for them; it would be another hour before they would get to his spot. Harry disliked waiting but if he had learned anything from his decade-long confinement in a coffin, it was patience.
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Harry had stopped fighting fair a long time ago. He now hit without warning and slashed from behind. The elite troop thought they were under the attack of some invisible force. Harry moved too fast for them. They saw his shadow and sent a volley of spells. They ended up hitting their own comrades. It was an unfortunate thing that they had used cutting and bludgeoning spells instead of the usual 'stupefy.' The teamwork fell apart and each tried to prove his superiority.
"They're supposed to be able to work together," Harry frowned. "I didn't realize they were so mentally vulnerable."
As he was running amongst them causing havoc, Harry had lightly touched their thoughts and had tweaked the animal instinct of each man to want to be the head of the group. The fight became a wizard melee and Harry returned to his seating position in the tree.
"Well, this is sort of anti-climactic," Harry said cheerfully to the tree. "But it's still an amusing spectacle."
He watched gleefully as one wizard killed his friend with a well-placed 'diffindo.' He winced when one got a precious limb crushed. Soon the elite had been decimated. The last standing man succumbed to his wounds and bled to death, as Harry twirled his wand.
"Well more food for Stanley," Harry said. "Dragons' aren't vegan right?"
Harry hopped down from his hiding place and strode over the desolate area where fifty men had been mentally induced to fight each other to death.
"If Voldemort knew the power of mental persuasion, he would have had the wizarding world under his thumb a long time ago," Harry said to nobody in particular. "In some cases, it's good thing that Voldemort thinks that wizards are above all other species and underestimates all the other creatures."
"I do wonder what happened to the old snake-face."
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As Stanley cleaned up the remains of the Dark Creature Extermination Expedition, Harry walked up to Lord Sythe's hidden fortress.
He slipped in through a broken window (and there were a lot of those) and entered the castle.
The first thing that hit him was the repugnant smell of decaying flesh. Pinching his extra-sensitive nose, Harry slowly advanced into the hallway, his wand pointed in front of him. He walked into an unlocked room and was only half-surprised to see the walls stained with blood.
In the centre of the room, lay Sythe, bathed in a pool of dried blood. He had scratched his eyes out and his ripped his own throat out, it appeared. His body was in various stages of decomposition.
"Is this what the blood potion does to you?" Harry said, sticking his wand into Sythe's eyehole. "Hey, you alive?"
"…was never alive," Sythe's tongue wiggled. "Take your wand out of my eye."
"Mmm. So the Lord of Vampires has been reduced to flesh and pulp, his thirst the cause of his own demise," Harry said as he wiped the congealing blood on Sythe's tunic. "You did this to yourself, the eyes and all. You couldn't kill yourself."
"I fear death," Sythe finally said as what was left of his throat vibrated. "That's why I became vampire in the first place."
"I know the pain of going without blood," Harry added. "But I never wanted to die."
"It burns, it burns," Sythe said as if he were talking to himself. "I can't die but I can hurt."
"You've come to the end of your immortality," Harry whispered to his old mentor as he raised his wand.
"Please…"
"Diffindo!" Harry said, taking pity on Sythe. Harry watched as the severed head of Lord Sythe rolled to the other side of the room.
Harry poked his wand in Sythe eyehole once more, but this time, Sythe was silent.
Harry conjured a coffin and deposited Sythe's remains in it. He sealed the coffin as well as the room it was in.
"You'll be able to rest eternally," Harry said, in a somewhat cheesy way. Harry didn't want to explore the rest of the castle so he left the way he came in.
Harry stood in front of the fortress and looked up at the towers and the broken windows.
"I'll return the castle to its original glory after I get rid of all those bothersome adversaries," Harry promised before turning away.
With that, Harry whistled for Stanley who came trudging down the valley. Harry hopped onto his back and told him to leave for Diagon Alley. Harry had unfinished business to take care of, including that promise to Luna to stir up trouble.
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A/N: Next chapter, meet the Boy – spawn of Narcissa's indiscretion.