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The Vernichtungslager of Konzentrationslager Auschwitz (also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau), three kilometres west of downtown Oświęcim (200 kilometres southwest from Warsaw), a half-hour after lunch (London time: A half-hour before lunch)…
Delighted laughter echoed amidst the endless moans of millions who had died in this charnel house and over the mostly-empty fields where the most well known of the Nazi extermination camps that had unleashed the HaShoah on all of humanity…and would forever remain the eternal symbol of man's cruelty to man.
When the crowds of gawking normals who came to tour the southeast part of the Birkenau site — where still-intact prisoner barracks stood close to the main guard house and the railroad siding beside which trains of cattle cars transporting the condemned to this hellish place pulled up to — took a chance to gaze towards the planned camp extension set north of the main grounds near where the barracks for the camp staff were located, they saw a level field clear of trees fenced off by once-electrified fences composed of barbed wire that would have enclosed off the extension that had been planned for the place and partially built before the avenging hordes of the Red Army stormed into this part of Europe in early 1945.
What the normals could not see were a small cluster of still-intact buildings at the very northwest corner of the grounds — which today lay due south of Leśna Road where a suburb of modern Oświęcim had grown out in recent years — that were protected by layers upon layers of mundane repellent charms, thus allowing this small visual remnant of the magical aspect of the Holocaust to remain invisible to normal eyes.
These days, magicals living in continental Europe were taught in their history classes that Grindelwald's War had been fought with no taint from the Nazi monsters who had come within a hair's breadth of becoming the masters of the Continent.
The truth — as those who actually pursued intensive post-graduate mastery studies in Magical History soon learned — was a lot more complex than that.
For not all magicals who were born in Germany and Austria during the years Adolf Hitler was Führer joined the Magische Reichsarmee when war was launched in 1939.
Despite Gellert Grindelwald's efforts to ensure all those who could wield a wand and showed even a modicum of competence in duelling were drafted into service to fight the magical enemies of the Reich and help create the Greater Good, some slipped through the cracks…and wound up being recruited to serve in the Schutzstaffel.
Wilhelm Mandel was one such man.
A native of what today was the Polish port city of Szczecin — Wilhelm still thought of that place by the German name "Stettin" — he had been drafted into the SS right after graduating with fair marks from the Greifinswald Academy of Sorcery near Wolgast in 1937. Like many who had donned the Totenkopf on their head gear, Wilhelm had been immersed in the pseudo-Germanic mystical traditions created by Heinrich Himmler's people; due to his magical training, he had been encouraged to help his comrades understand the meaning of things like runes and legends. Thus, like so many others, he was made to believe that all of the citizens of the Fatherland had a right and duty to be the Master Race, rulers above all of humanity. Hand-in-hand with such indoctrination was the encouragement to loathe all "subhumans" that were infesting Germany at the time…especially the greedy and dirty monsters who dared claimed themselves to be God's chosen children.
Shortly after the Final Solution was formally initiated at the Wannsee Conference at the start of 1942, Wilhelm was assigned to the Totenkopfverbände at Auschwitz.
There was a necessary reason for that, he soon learned.
Despite the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy that kept magical and normal separated for over two centuries, there were those gifted with magic willing to do anything to protect their normal brethren even if doing such violated the tenets of the Statute itself. Many of those people were Jews, Gypsies and Slavs who didn't care about the Nazis exterminating their families and friends…and who decided — in following the classical theory that an unjust law is no law — that another classic dictate would be obeyed whenever chance presented itself: An eye for an eye.
On arriving at Auschwitz, Wilhelm — then ranked Obersturmführer in the SS — soon learned how badly his normal brothers and sisters in the Protection Squads and other elements of the Party had suffered at the hands of the rogue magical subhumans.
For example, in the wake of the assassination of Gestapo director Reinhard Heydrich by Czech partisans in the summer of 1942, the natives of the Bohemian villages of Lidice and Ležáky near Prague were nearly exterminated to the last in retaliation due to evidence — later proven false — that the assassins hailed from those places. Within a week of the liquidations, ALL the members of the Bund Deutscher Mädel living in the Sudetenland towns of Karlsbad and Troppau — today the Czech towns of Karlovy Vary and Opava respectively — were found raped and murdered, throats slit and bodies hideously mutilated, the corpses left impaled on wooden stakes in a field outside town.
Along with the corpses was a note: This can happen to you as well. Heydrich was only the beginning. We will not stop until all the "master race" are exterminated.
Horrified to discover there were people willing to do THAT to the loyal supporters of the Führer, Heinrich Himmler — with the urgent prompting of Martin Bormann and other senior Nazi leaders — moved to prevent these monsters from actually succeeding.
Unfortunately, since the Magische Reichsarmee and the Übermenschen Gruppe were too busy engaging in desperate combat against the external enemies of the Fatherland, Himmler decided that such "internal" dissent would be dealt with by people under his own charge.
Hence, the magical side of places like Auschwitz.
Despite the considerable advantages magicals possessed when it came to combat against non-magicals, there were many times that magicals were caught off-guard, then — once their powers were contained thanks to devices provided by the Undying Lord himself — they were transported in special trains to the extermination camps to be tortured and liquidated after every little ounce of useful information was torn from them.
However, doing that at locations where industrial-scale murder was being done 24/7 exacerbated something that would haunt places like Oświęcim for decades to come…
Release us…
"Silence!" Wilhelm Mandel snarled as his blood-red eyes focused on the wispy ghosts that had been haunting the walls of the barracks-like edifice where the Spezielle Vernichtungeinheit for Auschwitz had been located since the Russians overran this place in 1945. He had been ecstatic when he returned here some months ago at the behest of the man who, in the wake of the Fatherland's conquest by the lesser races, helped him embrace an even greater power than magic so Wilhelm and his brothers and sisters who had proudly served in the SS would evade capture by roving squads of Allied hit wizards…to say anything of the traitorous bitches of the Schwarze Mädchen who — once freed of their sacred magical oaths to the Führer — turned like rabid dogs on their comrades and hunted them down without mercy until the Battle of the Gates of Nurmengard saw them redeem themselves by trying to stop the beast hordes of Nerio from invading Earth. After using his vampire-enhanced magic to examine what was still here, Wilhelm had laughed with delight, finding himself grateful that the morons of the Naródnyj Komissariát Mágičeskie Del who accompanied the subhuman Slav hordes into Poland only put up strong repellent charms around this building to keep the normals away. As he learned from friends working for Adam Sewell, the NKMD — thanks to the hatred of all things religious true communists adhered to — also persuaded their Polish comrades in the Ministerstwo Magii to NOT summon exorcists from Rome and Jerusalem to cleanse Auschwitz of the spirits of its millions of victims…which allowed a massive node of entropic energy in a type of "sinkhole" to be created which just BEGGED to be tapped into for better uses.
And right now, Adam — whom Wilhelm owed a profound magical debt to — and his brother and sister daywalkers had a VERY urgent use for this energy.
The Avalonians.
Wilhelm tried not to scowl as he recalled the few times he had encountered those damned bioroids since the Liberation, both in Germany and here in Poland. The stench of the mesonium in their blood always burned his hypersensitive nose every time he smelt it, which told him right away that trying to take the blood of one of those women would be tantamount to suicide. Even more, thanks to the bioroids' former masters and their mad passion for all things Terran, the Avalonians came in all forms…INCLUDING Jews and Gypsies, not to mention the other subhumans that the Nazis tried to wipe off the map six decades before! Atop that, they gladly supported movements that weakened the Aryan blood which still flowed through the veins of the Master Race by allowing such unholy things as alternate lifestyles and giving the mentally ill a chance to live true lives. They didn't care about the differences of skin colour or any of the other dividing lines that separated the stronger and weaker races; in their psionically enhanced eyes, ALL sentient beings — and they went so far as to include creatures like goblins, centaurs, the natives of Nerio and the like as being SIMPLY NO DIFFERENT than human! — were the same and deserved equal respect. Worst of all, they willingly sought vampires of all types to help them once more "embrace true life"…which stripped them of their powers and made them as weak as the cattle they once hunted for blood!
When Adam had told Wilhelm and his friends about the dire threat the "crystal-bloods" now presented to vampires, it had been an easy conclusion for all of them to make.
No self-respecting hunter of blood would EVER tolerate such a thing!
It had to be stopped by all means possible.
Hence, Wilhelm's current mission to Auschwitz.
"Do you think we can purge all the energy in this place in time?"
Wilhelm winked at his current companion, a grin crossing his face. Janina Neumann was a native of Breslau — today the Polish city of Wrocław — who had been a Haupthelfer at Auschwitz who had been turned thanks to Adam Sewell's wonderful sister Vadoma in the wake of World War Two. She was also a magical, having graduated in the top third of her class at the Nurmengard Academy of Magic in 1937. Her half-blood status, however, denied her a chance to become one of Grindelwald's elite Black Maidens. That made Janina resent those such as Margareta Hecht, the bitch who eventually killed the Führer's personal secretary Martin Bormann in 1945. It also helped ensure she joined the women's auxiliary of the SS, the Helferinnenkorps. Like Wilhelm, Janina had taken personal delight in torturing captured magical partisans, even going so far as to rape male prisoners to give them a taste of what their friends did to the helpless maidens of Karlsbad and Troppau.
Wilhelm and Janina had been passionate lovers since the war, living off the normal cattle as they shifted from town to town across Germany, inwardly disgusted at how the lesser races had thoroughly raped and pillaged the Fatherland in the wake of 1945, effectively erasing all the good things the Nazis had done for their people…yet both knew that if they and their friends tried ANYTHING to raise the Hakenkreuzflagge once more, magical and normal Germans alike would be all over them like a plague!
"It shouldn't take too long," he said as he watched the potion over the portable stove he set up in a circle of runes in the middle of the room to ensure the ingredients could safely draw in the energy that permeated this place and allow it to be infused in the black meson crystals at the bottom of the cauldron. "We were busy here, remember?"
"Ja, I do," Janina wistfully noted as she looked around.
Release us…
"Oh, shut up!" Wilhelm snarled out with splayed fangs, projecting his magic out to silence the restless spirits around them. "Stupid filth! Learn your place!"
"Stop wasting your energy, Willi!" Janina said as she gazed sympathetically at him. "I'll bet they've been moaning like this for the last sixty years. The Polacks didn't do a thing to exorcise them even after 1989, so why should they hope…"
You're too late, unmenschlich schweinhund!
Both Nazi vampires howled with outrage. "WHAT DID YOU SAY?!" Wilhelm screamed.
Amused laughter answered. You're too late…the Archangel's Avatar comes…!
Wilhelm and Janina blinked…
…before the sealed door leading into the building exploded inward, nearly ripping the former's head off as it crashed against the opposite wall…which was FORTY metres away at the north end of the building! As both vampires stared in stunned shock at the wrecked door, they then tensed on hearing a strange piston-like sound as their magical senses overloaded from the waves of DEATH now emanating into the room.
"Excuse me," a metal-tinged man's voice asked in accented English, his annoyance quite apparent. "May I ask why is it you people are butting into my dreams?"
Both former members of the SS turned…
…and found themselves staring at a walking nightmare.
Diagon Alley in London, that moment…
Now seated on the roof of Gringotts, Inada Mizuho smirked with delight as she watched the Hollows storm forth through the magical gateway opened by Elizabeth Gibbon to flood both Diagon and Knockturn with their numbers, all of them then diving into the shadows where two hundred vampires had hidden themselves in preparation to launch an attack on the unsuspecting magicals who frequented this quaint old shopping district.
Much to the would-be Zoroastrian warrior-priestess' personal dismay, many of the people in Diagon and Knockturn today did nothing save stand there like stunned idiots as the wraiths of Gonebren went forth to do the bidding of the leader of the Schwarze Mädchen. It was disappointing…and a clear demonstration on how far the wizarding culture of the United Kingdom had fallen behind in comparison to their peers elsewhere on Earth, even on the Continent itself. Dulled by a lack of proper situational awareness training and wand discipline thanks to lacklustre instruction they received in Hogwarts, none of them had sensed the danger looming in time to prepare themselves for what was to come when Elizabeth charged out of the shoppe owned by the ever-jovial Fred and George Weasley…though the Yorkshire-born veteran of World War Two in Europe herself had to be alerted to the oncoming danger by the wise Abraham Lincoln, who had honed his senses when it came to the undead to a knife's edge for over a century.
Fortunately, there were veterans of Britain's most recent magical civil war present at the time who were willing to help Elizabeth, her twin sister Jessica and their brave friends in putting the vampires down. From Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes came the shoppe's owners, their fiery younger sister Ginny and the Man-Who-Won himself, Harry Potter. From Rosa Lee Teabag came Harry's passionate sister Rose and several of her friends from Meridiana, the loyal and strong Neville Longbottom, his bright sister Grace, the all-seeing Luna Lovegood, the Weasley siblings' brother Ronald, the sarcastic yet wise Severus Snape and the sly yet helpful Mundungus Fletcher…whom Mizuho had arranged to meet this day to conduct some business to generate some funds for her classmates on the bioroid factory to use for the next couple of months' weekend trips down to Earth. And from Gringotts came the cunning and intelligent Blaise Zabini…who was flanked by a platoon of armed goblin guards in full battle armour and with bared steel swords and daggers ready to ensure no vampire invaded their noble establishment uninvited.
"RAIL-SPLITTER!"
Mizuho's head snapped over on hearing that outraged scream from one of the vampires who used his transformation abilities to render himself mist and avoid the Hollows' grasp. Noting that Lincoln was now facing a half-dozen of the undead hunters of blood, she scowled as she lifted the Staff of Gihan to level the crystal on one…
…before her eyes went wide as the nigh-immortal former president of the United States surged at them, twirling his woodsman's axe over his head with the speed of a propeller blade before he beheaded three in one go. As spell fire lanced out from the Black Maidens and their new allies at those other vampires who had avoided the grasp of the Hollows, Lincoln ducked a wild punch from a man who had come up behind him, then twirled and literally cut the fool vertically in half from crotch to forehead. As the creature collapsed in two pieces on the cobblestones at his feet, the Kentucky-born vampire hunter then sent a knife-hand strike into the abdomen of another vampire that got close to him, then twisted his limb and yanked out…pulling her heart out along the way! That caused the last blood-hunter to gape…which was enough for Harry to turn his head into a fine mist of bone, gore and ichor with a Reductor Curse.
As that was happening, the six Schwarze Mädchen were conjuring all sorts of weather-based attacks on the vampires now being herded towards them by the Hollows. Noting that, Mizuho nodded; no doubt, Elizabeth had mentally asked the spirit of her late mother Alana to make her friends let this happen so the just-revived veterans of the Battle of the Gates of Nurmengard got some exercise before they went forth to perform their duty for the Daughter of the Pendragon. Despite their being in virgin bodies that had just been freed from over six decades in suspension, the Black Maidens hadn't lost their killer edge. Storms of lightning bolts from Cara Walthari, knives of ice from Lila Fontaine, concentrated tornadoes from Aimée Sutone, blasts of laser-like sunlight from Margareta Hecht and conjured magical soulswords from the Gibbons twins were cutting down the opposition like wheat on the Great Plains of America falling before a grain harvester. And while their friends and veterans of the Order of the Phoenix and the Defence Association of Hogwarts were holding their own, they just didn't move with the inhuman speed and the grace of the finest ballet dancers shown by the Black Maidens.
Within about a minute of the Hollows being summoned to Diagon, the few undead vermin who had — most likely, by sheer luck! — STILL managed to keep free realized that they needed to escape and inform their leader that the hunters were now the hunted. As they moved to flee through the Leaky Cauldron and the other hidden gateways that led out of Diagon and Knockturn onto Leicester Square to the west and Irving Street to the south, Mizuho smirked on hearing all of them howl with outrage as they found themselves slamming into unyielding energy barriers that the would-be warrior-priestess herself had set up with the Staff. "They are displeased," she mused aloud as the Longbottom siblings, Luna, Ron, Raven and Jessica charged towards the west end of Diagon to deal with the vampires there, a company of Hollows flanking the magicals to ensure none of their friends who helped them feed on the supporters of Voldemort years ago, much less Alana Gibbon's younger daughter, did not come to harm.
Naturally, the Staff commented with a smile in its voice. Their arrogance is quite obvious, Controller. Indeed, they should have remembered that — given that Abraham Lincoln effectively chased they and their friends out of the United States of America by the time he encountered Deannette Antonia Raeburn 121 years ago — he would react immediately to any future sighting of such a large congregation of vampires.
"Indeed." She then smiled. "If you wish me to move, My Lord, I can."
Her head shifted around to allow her to gaze in amusement at a flustered Ragnok, now wearing his battle armour and flanked by a platoon of guards; the chief director of Gringotts in Britain and his troupe had tried to quietly approach the Friend of Dragons once they saw her sitting on the roof of their establishment observing the rapid-paced battle on the cobblestone street below. "My apologies, good lady," Ragnok said with a polite bow of his head as his current companions slightly relaxed themselves; even if the Friend of Dragons had not done anything against any of the Noble Tribe, they were all oath-sworn to protect their leader no matter what. "I should have hailed as soon as I came up the stairs. I didn't mean to make you believe I meant you harm."
"To me, good sir, your emotions are really no different than people such as Lord Harry and his doughty friends, to say anything of the Wise Mistress Elizabeth and her brave warriors," Mizuho stated as she stood, twirling the Staff with practised ease to allow the glowing crystal head to hover close to her left ankle. As the goblins — who could all sense that the Staff's physical form had to mass several hundred kilograms — nodded in appreciation at such a casual show of strength by this humble follower of the words of the great sage Zaraϑuštra Spitāma, she turned to gaze down Knockturn to see Aimée Sutone and Lila Fontaine literally burn away the half-dozen vampires who had been trying to escape onto Irving Street. "I mean that as no insult, of course."
Ragnok cackled. "None ta-…"
A shocked gasp then dropped Mizuho to her knees, her eyes wide with surprise as a faint yet ever-present psionic link with someone she had fallen totally in love with months before — and that had been forged a little over a week ago — echoed deep inside her mind with a mixed cauldron of anger and surprise…tinged with the metallic chill that indicated that he had allowed the dark side of the Wise Lord Himself to overcome his soul and seize control of his body. Before the goblins could react and assist her to her feet, the traveller from another dimension screamed out, "BELOVED!"
And with an explosion of energy, she teleported off to the east-southeast…
Auschwitz-Birkenau, a moment before…
Moroboshi Ataru was quite upset.
He just HATED it when that part of his soul suddenly reacted to some odd stimuli and made him do something without giving his conscious mind a chance to ask "Why?"
Especially when he — having gone to bed early today — had found himself slipping into the Dreamscape…and once more began to dream of THEM.
The girls of Battle Royale.
He didn't understand why he dreamt of those girls these days, though. As many who knew him personally could attest, Ataru had an interesting love-hate relationship with the manga based on the infamous novel written near the end of the previous decade by Takami Kōshun. The characterizations were quite enticing and easily grabbed the reader's attention to earn necessary sympathy to increase the impact of the story — helped so by the extra attention to detail paid to them in comparison to what was shown in the original novel or the movie based on it, that topped with the human-like artwork done by the manga series' creator, Taguchi Masayuki — yet the story itself was something Ataru just loathed since none save TWO of the characters survived in the end. Yes, one could be sympathetic to the systematic abuse and rape suffered by Sōma Mitsuko when she was a child and the cold indifference bestowed to Kiriyama Kazuo by his caregivers in the wake of the accident that killed his mother and switched off his emotions…but how could one enjoy a story where a bunch of third-year middle school students were made to kill each other for reasons that were far to the left of totally STUPID?!
While he didn't plunged back into re-reading the whole manga these days, he did exercise his talents to sketch pictures of the Battle Royale girls — even if he was genetically an Avalonian now, Ataru did NOT bat for the home team; he liked the guys but didn't care to fantasize about them, thank the gods! — in scenes that reflected his private wish that many more than just Nanahara Shūya and Nakagawa Noriko had escaped Oki-shima at the end of the story. Running along with that, he also imagined ways for the other characters to have lived through The Program, even the early victims like Fujiyoshi Fumiyo (cut down by Kamon Yonemi during "homeroom class") and Tendō Mayumi (shot down by Akamatsu Yoshio after she walked out of the school). Unfortunately, Ataru knew he was no writer by any stretch of the imagination, so he couldn't compose such fan fiction stories for publication on the Net. And while there were the odd times when he fantasized about those girls — even during the time he was "married" to Redet Hensō…though, in one of many ways that demonstrated how much the Oni-form Avalonian loved him, Lum's twin DID comprehend what had attracted Ataru to Battle Royale in the first place — they never constantly haunted either his conscious or subconscious thoughts.
A week ago, that had changed.
For the utter life of him, he simply couldn't understand why.
In his dreams these days, he always found himself on Oki-shima, encountering those very girls in situations that did — and in many ways, did NOT! — reflect what happened in the manga. From meeting Fumiyo in the classroom to encountering Mayumi just outside the school building to finding a wounded Noriko in the village medical centre after she had been left there to recover by Shūya to meeting Mitsuko on the cliff at the north end of the island to meeting almost all the other girls at various other places. In many of those encounters — save for those with girls who had confirmed boyfriends such as Ogawa Sakura and Kotohiki Kayoko…not to mention girls like Fumiyo and Mayumi — he found himself experiencing QUITE intimate encounters that had left him with soaked bed sheets and futons every night since! From getting double-teamed by Shimizu Hirono and Minami Kaori — which had blown Ataru's mind totally away; didn't those two girls hate each other?! — near the centre of the island to learning out how "snugly" Nakagawa Yūka really was, it just didn't stop!
The only characters he HADN'T encountered in those dreams over the last week were his two favourites.
And while he knew they were just simple dreams and not reflections of true reality by any stretch of the imagination — even if it was fundamentally possible for Avalonians to use the Dreamscape to subconsciously contact each other, Ataru himself had never done anything to explore that aspect of his new powers — the fact that he hadn't got a chance to enjoy something with either Inada Mizuho or Noda Satomi was starting to get frustrating…even for a man who had consciously wanted to do everything to stay loyal to his current pair of lovers, Sebone Shikuko and Noberu Miyako!
And right now — after dreaming of a nice little orgy with Yūka, two of her fellow "lighthouse girls" Sakaki Yūko and Matsui Chisato and childhood friends Kitano Yukiko and Kusaka Yumiko, in the living quarters of said lighthouse on Oki-shima's eastern tip — he was in some dark place that was filled to the rafters with ghosts…and he was in his Cyborg body to boot!
Someone was going to pay dearly for this…
"WHO ARE YOU?!"
Ataru blinked as he focused his good right eye on some blond Western guy — hair cut military short, of course — with almost ghostly white skin, blood red eyes and fanged canine teeth standing near the centre of the room. A quick ki check later, the transformed Terran tag race champion tried not to groan as he remembered the one time he had encountered a vampire back in Tomobiki the previous fall. First ghosts, now daywalkers, he mused to himself, confirming thanks to the shaded windows that it was well before dusk wherever he was. Joy!
"I was just about to ask you that question, friend," he declared as his cybernetic left eye locked on another corporeal person in this long hall — Western, nice body, very cute, early twenties, wavy dark hair in a ponytail…and with blood-red eyes and white skin confirming she was also a vampire, though that was easily fixed — before he gazed on the blond man. "Where am I?"
Release us, oh Avatar of the Archangel…
Ataru perked before he focused on the ghosts currently in this room. Sure enough, said spirits were also Western…and dressed in what appeared to be ragged prisoners' clothing. Noting that, Ataru then realized that ALL of these ghosts were as thin as proverbial rails, with skeletal like arms and legs, drawn faces — and all with shaved hair, even those women and children he could see — and other clear signs that he was now surrounded by the spirits of the victims of one of the most horrid crimes in all human history.
An annoyed sigh then escaped him. "Don't tell me…let me guess," he stated as the tendons over his right eye twitched. "This is Oświęcim, right?"
Both vampires snarled. "HOW DARE YOU…?!" the blond screamed as he charged…
…only to get his face nearly caved in by an outstretched metal armoured fist! As he collapsed to his knees, Ataru inwardly smirked on sensing the stunned shock flooding the vampires' souls on noting that the man — Wilhelm Christian Mandel, originally from Szczecin on the Baltic coast, Senior Assault Leader of the…! Oh, fuck! He's a damned Nazi! the transformed Japanese teenager quickly realized after his mind had a chance to analyze what his telepathy had locked in on when he had briefly touched the stupid goose-stepping undead moron — had been knocked down so easily.
"Get it through your rotting skull, idiot!" the machine-man snarled as he glared down at the dazed Wilhelm. "This is Poland! Always has been Poland, always will be Poland! You idiots from Germany had no claim on anything in this country, so don't call this place 'Auschwitz' even if you DID work here when you were still alive!" He glared at the female vampire — Janina Lise Neumann, originally from Wrocław not far from here, member of the SS women's auxiliary and Willi's lover for many years, Ataru reminded himself — before he dipped his head in an approximation of a smile. "Just like your home town is called Wrocław and your boyfriend's home town is Szczecin, Janina-chan," he added, which made her hiss. "You lost the fuckin' war, so get over it finally!" His left eye-sensor glowed, making Janina gargle on sensing the aura of power emanating from that ruby-red orb. "Now, I ask again, very politely: Why am I here?"
Release us, Avatar of the Archangel…
Suddenly, a burst of energy exploded from the wrecked doorway behind him.
"ATARU!"
He jolted…before he turned to stare wide-eyed at the young woman standing there, dressed now in — of all things — a medium blue Japanese sailor suit school uniform!
"Mizuho…?"
Warsaw, the Polish Ministry of Magic, that moment…
"DIRECTOR!"
The leader of the Magiczne Policja Republiki yelped on hearing that panicked cry, then sighed. "Quit doing that, Kazik!" Halinka Gorazdowska snapped as a panting junior officer — just fresh from training at the law enforcement branch of the Gniezdno Academy of Sorcery outside its near-namesake cathedral town of Gniezno in west-central Poland — stopped to catch his breath. "Now, relax yourself and make your report!"
He deeply breathed in to calm himself. "I'm sorry, Director!" Kazik Mazurski stated as he bowed his head to the older woman, a fisherman's daughter from Gdańsk whose brother Stanisław Gorazdowski was recently appointed the commanding officer of the Republic's first starship, the Błyskawica. "The Class A alarms just went crazy! They just picked up the Przyjaciel Smoków! She's in Sector Mał, sub-sector Oś!"
Halinka blinked as she took in the words from the native of Olsztyn. Like most other magicals worldwide, she knew of the Friend of Dragons. While Poland wasn't blessed with the wide profusion of magical creatures as vast countries such as Russia, Canada, China or America — to say anything of a planet full of magical beings such as Nerio! — it still had the common things like dragon preserves, mermen colonies in the Baltic Sea, house elf servants, local branches of Gringotts…not to mention the famous fire flower fields in the Carpathian Mountains along the border with the Czech Republic and Slovakia. While there hadn't been incidents of dragon poaching at the reserve in the High Tatras on the Slovak border south of Kraków which would have attracted the attention of that mysterious Avalonian-Japanese teenager with the strange alien battle staff, there HAD been four attempts at illegally cultivating fire flowers stopped by the Przyjaciel Smoków over the last few months that the director of the MPR personally knew of.
So why…?
Halinka then turned ash-grey as Kazik's words about that young woman's current location repeated themselves in her mind.
The Class A alarms just went off!
Those were keyed into the six magically darkest places in the country, made that way thanks to the damned Nazis: Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibór, Bełżec, Chełmno…
And Oświęcim…better known worldwide by its German name, Auschwitz.
Dear God! What on Earth made her go to THAT damned place?! the fisherman's daughter railed as she recalled the many times she pleaded with Minister of Magic Katarzyna Młynarczyk since she was made the Director of the MPR five years ago to hire the best magical exorcists regardless of country of origin to finally clear out those sinkholes of misery formed by the slaughter of MILLIONS of innocent people during the Holocaust.
Halinka then shook her head; she'd worry about that question later. "Get the duty team down there now!" she then barked. "Call Gringotts! We need curse-breakers to go down there as well! Pay it out of the emergency funds if they ask! MOVE!"
Much to her personal delight, the young cadet was already sprinting off to do as she had bade. I'm sure glad I don't have to deal with the lazy bums that were working in this place back when the Communists were still in power! Halinka mused…
Auschwitz-Birkenau, that moment…
"Mizuho…?"
Okay, I'm awake…so I cannot be dreaming this!
There standing before Ataru right now — holding the living symbol of an insane catastrophe that wiped out the fourth race to rise on Sagussa thirteen millennia ago; How the HELL did she get her hands on the Staff of Gihan of all things?! a part of him mentally railed on seeing that ancient battle staff with its human head-sized crystal of meson encased within a crescent moon-shaped holder at the business end — was a total impossibility.
Inada Mizuho.
Officially registered as Girl #1 of Shiroiwa Junior High School's Class 3-B…according to the class list in Battle Royale.
Who — in this universe — was a FICTIONAL CHARACTER!
And much that Ataru would have LOVED to have a replica of such a passionate, unique character as a friend, he never once contemplating having such a replica made.
That was, after all, something the Niphentaxians had done many times over…
…and after learning what some of those poor replicas had endured over the years, he had vowed to NEVER succumb to that sort of urge.
But this…
Oh, no…!
The still-organic upper right side of his face paled as the information his empathic senses was fast-feeding him churned through his mind. As that was happening, Ataru tried not to scream in outrage, vowing to himself to find the idiot that instigated this and torture said idiot with the martial arts knowledge he had received thanks to his sister Negako.
This girl was not a Terran-form Avalonian…
…but a Terran-turned-Avalonian.
Which meant that this girl was born a normal Terran before becoming an Avalonian.
And given that she was a perfect physical match for the images of Inada Mizuho that Ataru had seen in his dreams over the last week…
Last week…?
Oh, I am SUCH an idiot!
The letter from his would-be bond-mate, the mysterious "Vinur Drekar" — to borrow the Icelandic name for her — that had been popping up from time to time since March…
Who had been forced to bring Azu Kakazu and her sister sex-droids to Earth over a week ago in ultimate hopes of keeping two victims of Hifuto Syndrome whole and hearty in spirit, which compelled Ataru to become their owner and master even if he had immediately moved to then see those girls become Avalonians themselves…
…and in her letter apologizing for forcing him through that, confessed that she was none other than the mysterious woman from Gestation Tower #98 on the Avalonian bioroid factory Ataru had encountered in the midst of the Liberation, who had yelled at him to stay away from coming inside that part of the bioroid factory…because she had to look in on her friends…!
That had been the first damned clue!
After all, pure-born Avalonians always called others of their kind "sisters."
Terran-turned…
The Staff of Gihan…
Speaks — and writes — like Hiromi does…
And speaks with a Sanuki accent, the local dialect of Kagawa Prefecture on Shikoku…!
Mizuho-vayae…
Wait!
Mizuho-vayae?!
Since when did he start thinking of her as THAT?!
"CRYSTAL-BLOOD!"
An armoured hand shot out at that instant, snaring Wilhelm Mandel — whose shattered face was leaking ichor — by the neck to yank him face-to-face with a very high-tech representation of Sagussa's god of death. "You insulting my girl, pal?" Ataru hissed out as his sensor-eye ominously glowed.
As Mizuho blushed, Wilhelm gargled as he tried to pull those rock-hard fingers away from his throat. Seeing this, Janina Neumann howled her outrage as she lept…
…only to be doubled over by a punch to her stomach, which sent her crashing face-first into the floor! As a pained groan escaped her, Mizuho — who teleported over to intercept the stupid woman even if she knew that the former camp guard couldn't possibly hurt her beloved Ataru while he donned the dark armour bestowed to him by the Wise Lord Himself — smirked as she allowed the blunt end of the Staff to touch the floor. "Lady Janina, I do realize that you Nazis completely outshine all others throughout history by the mind-boggling depths of your stupidity…but surely even you should have come to realize the hopelessness of your situation here," the would-be warrior-priestess stated as the dazed vampire gazed up at her. "If you attempt to take my blood, much less my beloved's blood, the meson in our regenerative enzymes would turn you into a 'crystal-blood' within minutes…and in a process that — as the noble Master Angelus and the passionate Master Spike could loudly attest — is quite PAINFUL! I have been dealing with dragon poachers and other such miscreants on Earth and on Nerio — including an honest-to-goodness GRIFFIN-DRAGON, whose power far outmatches their normal cousins here — for the past four months! My beloved has participated in MASSACRES on Okusei, Phentax Twelve and Tomobiki for much longer than that! Did you really believe you could HOPE to deal with both of us even if you ARE vampires?!"
"Mizuho…"
"Yes, Dearest?"
"Destroy her first, THEN rant at her!" Ataru advised as he winked at her.
"Oh, be assured, my love, I shan't do that to her!"
He blink-blinked. "Why not?"
"Are you aware of the events yesterday morning at Nurmengard in Germany?"
A shake of the head answered her. "Sorry. I don't keep up with magical events."
"Well, I managed to retrieve forty-four hundred of our sisters from cryogenic suspension in a cave near the prison itself before our friends' fellow vampires wound up giving themselves terminal cases of meson poisoning. All were Terran-turned girls who turned out to be veterans of the Magical Army of the Reich from the European magical side of the Greater East Asia War; they were ultimately saved by the Lady Negako's delightful 'grandfather,' I suspect," Mizuho stated as she mirthlessly smiled at the dazed vampire now at her feet while Ataru's captive tried to struggle out of his metal-hard grip. "One of those wonderful ladies is a former schoolmate of the Lady Janina here, the Wise Mistress Margareta Hecht. I was actually thinking of turning Master Wilhelm's lover into one of us, then present her to the Lady Margareta as a personal sex toy…"
"NEVER!"
Summoning what strength he had, Wilhelm broke free of Ataru to lunge at Mizuho…
…only to collapse dead on the floor thanks to his leaving his throat behind!
Shaking his head, Ataru moved to wipe the ichor and shredded flesh on the back of Wilhelm's shirt, ignoring Janina as she gaped wide-eyed at the sight of the man who had shared her heart and her bed for over sixty years, lying now DEAD on the floor…!
Dead…!
Dead…
A moan escaped her as she seemed to collapse on herself, her skin regaining something of a healthy tone as her eyes reverted to a natural brown shade and the sharp canines in her mouth faded back to normal teeth. Instantly, Mizuho leaned down to probe her mind before she blinked, then allowed a sigh to escape her. "Even if you were involved in the evil that was unleashed in this place, you were still human all along," she whispered.
Spare her, Fire Maiden…
She blinked before turning to gaze upon the spirits now floating around her. "Why?"
The ghosts of Auschwitz's dead all grinned as their emaciated forms transformed into reflections of what they had been before they had run afoul of the Nazis. As he allowed the cold fire to restore him to normal, Ataru was quick to note that several men were in the dress uniforms of soldiers of the long-defunct armies of Austria-Hungary and Imperial Germany from World War One, medals of bravery and loyalty proudly displayed on their chests. As he tried not to scream out at being reminded of the insanity of the Holocaust and the millions it had claimed, those voices chanted, Because what your proposed to do unto her — as you just saw — is more of a threat to those like her than anything others may conceive, Fire Maiden. Even if she and her lover were the only ones given the gift of magic by God that were here when we faced the crematoriums still 'alive' today — and those not blessed with magic have almost all slipped from their mortal shells to face the Shadowlands before God grants them the right of final passage through the Veil of Eternity you and your beloved always see before your minds' eyes — the time of blood-revenge is long since done. Too much of it has been spilled in this accursed place.
"Then may I humbly ask upon you all a favour?"
Ask.
"That you will allow the Black Maidens of Master Gellert Grindelwald — who, once freed of the ghastly oath forced on them to remain loyal to that monster Hitler, atoned for their affiliation with the Nazis by hunting down creatures like Martin Bormann…to say anything of the overlord of the Schutzstaffel himself! — a chance to tap unto the power of this place so they may destroy the beasts who seek to harm my adopted kinswomen?"
A pause before they shook their heads. No. We know of the Black Maidens…but we are afraid that if the darkness of Auschwitz touches them, they will be lost once more to evil. They have suffered enough for their mistakes, Fire Maiden. Unlike others who ultimately fought under the swastika to help their master claim the Deathly Hallows, the Black Maidens were motivated to bring equality to all, magical and non-magical, human and non-human alike. After touching the minds of the undead ones, we know the Black Maidens are now effectively lost in this time, alone save for each other…and all of their newly-adopted kinswomen, the daughters of long-lost Sagussa from Avalon. They have earned their peace.
Then will you all grant my controller that power? In exchange for your final passage through the Te'a to your long-earned rewards Beyond?
Hundreds of eyes focused on the crystal at the end of the Staff of Gihan. Why?
Because my controller — motivated by her beliefs — will not stand back as the battle between the so-called 'undead' and those still 'living' is soon to be fought on the Isle of Azkaban in approximately forty hours' time, the Staff stated as that focusing crystal pulsed in perfect cadence to its words. And while the odds are against them, the vampires will not give up. The skirmish presently being fought in Diagon Alley in London will not deter them. Their defeat must be total and complete to make them accept reason or destruction. The power within this place that was born in the wake of your murders will guarantee that, plus aid me to seek another like I, the Genesis Wand of Parah, so it can be used to restore my controller's male classmates to life.
And thus allow all those who fell in The Program to live in peace on our Earth?
Yes.
Silence fell for a moment…before the ghosts all nodded. It is agreed.
"Dearest, take Janina and get clear," Mizuho bade. "I sense our friends from noble Warsaw arriving to investigate what has happened here. I shan't be long."
Ataru smirked. "Hai!"
Diagon Alley…
It was supposed to have been a simple shopping trip.
Apparate herself over to Slug and Jiggers to get some supplies, maybe have a tea or coffee at the Leaky Cauldron or Rosa Lee Teabag, then apparate back to Romney Marsh.
Getting herself caught in the middle of a battle between her would-be "allies" among the daywalker vampires and the Black Maidens had NOT been part of the plan!
Not to mention…
As she ducked from the storm of spell fire unleashed by a strange blonde woman with grey eyes in a modern black business suit as she moved to mow down a gaggle of vampires before charging down Knockturn, Achelois Runcorn bit back the torrent of abuse trying to crawl up her throat at the sheer stupidity Adam Sewell just demonstrated today.
To pull something like THIS on his would-be "allies"…!
She shook her head as she drew her wand and formed a defensive shield around herself. Tactically, pulling a raid like this had both its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, it would unleash panic among the masses and — if the vampires had been crafty enough — might have made the people at the Ministry of Magic believe that a new Dark Lord had just fired the first shot in a rebellion against the current order. On the minus side — as was being proven right now — it confirmed the presence of a large mass of daywalkers in Britain…which, as now demonstrated by the presence of a man in funeral black swinging an AXE of all things to deal with some of these creatures, was an open invitation for the Ministry to call in the Rail-Splitter to deal with the lot.
And…
She shook her head as the screams from the crowd echoed in her ears, then turned to gaze on the impressive sight of Elizabeth Gibbon using conjured soulswords to rip apart several of the daywalkers while still calmly directing her subordinates and the Hollows that had been summoned to Diagon today to put down this raid.
Achelois still had trouble believing what the leader of the Schwarze Mädchen had just publicly declared before summoning the inhabitants of Gonebren to Diagon today.
The Vengeance of Blood.
ALL magical women in Europe — regardless of age, birth status or type of magical power — were diligently taught that most sacred of all benedictions, usually by older magical women in private lessons away from the formal classrooms.
The reasons why were just too ghastly to contemplate.
The dual heiress of the Runcorns of Halton and the Collinses of Widnes tried not to wince while the spells flew fast and furious around her as she remembered the day she had taken her first flying lesson on a broom, when a subtle charm had been used against her crotch to shatter her hymen and ensure she could not be a "virgin" in the magical sense even if she couldn't later give her maidenhead to her first sexual lover.
Magical legend and folklore were full of tales of virgin witches who had been kidnapped by wicked sorcerers and subjected to all sorts of hideous tortures to exploit their "purity" for evil. The results of such tortures usually spelled disaster for someone else and left the sullied witches either dead or forever stripped of their magic.
The Vindictam Sanguinis had been devised as a way to put a stop to all that.
As was generally accepted worldwide, the power of Magic Itself — while not truly sentient in a human sense even if many believed there were divine powers that controlled and influenced Magic — that filled all things was known to answer certain pleas made unto It.
This normally happened either at times of great pain…
…or at the end of a victorious quest such as a war against a powerful foe.
With all of the legends concerning the reason WHY the Vengeance of Blood had become one of the most powerful — if not THE most powerful! — benedictions unto Magic Itself had been burned into Achelois' head by her mother Napaeae long before she went to Hogwarts, there was the story of the FIRST time that benediction was reported to have been used.
Over a century before the Norman conquest of England, a young woman from the territory of old Mercia named Godgyfu — who was too poor to be given the chance to become one of the first class invited to Hogwarts — won the favour of a druid of the old Celtic faith and became his apprentice. The druid was a kind man who wished no harm unto anyone…but had earned the scorn of a lord for his "heresy" against Christianity. What was worse, said lord had under his command a powerful wizard who also believed in the religion that had been spread across Britain at the time of the fall of Rome. To bring the druid to heel, the wizard kidnapped poor Godgyfu — who had vowed unto the old gods that she would remain pure until she met a good man — and threatened to see her turned into a squib by raping her, thus making her break her magical oath. Unfortunately, said wizard didn't realize that the druid had taught his young apprentice very well; on realizing what was about to happen to her, Godgyfu called on Magic Itself to give her the power needed to protect herself and keep her own magic pure and whole.
Her plea was answered.
The wizard was struck dead by a lightning bolt from the heavens. The lord who had commanded said wizard to destroy Godgyfu's master would be cursed to die of a horrid illness before he could see to his affairs and select his heir…which saw his lands forfeited to the Crown of England under King Edward the Confessor. The king would later command the elderly Helga Hufflepuff to come down from Scotland to investigate what had happened and why. The matronly co-founder and co-headmistress of Hogwarts met up with Godgyfu and her master, then learned of the Vengeance of Blood. Horrified to learn that the wizard who had wanted to destroy the druid had threatened to strip Godgyfu of her magic by raping her, Helga pleaded with the king to pass the first ever Magical Royal Proclamation to ensure that those who still followed the "old ways" were no longer subjected to persecution. On realizing what nearly had happened, the king readily agreed and issued his proclamation — despite howls of protest from Archbishop Æthelnoth of Canterbury and threats of excommunication from Pope Benedict IX down in Rome — which served as the foundation of the concept of freedom of religion in the magical world, eight centuries before it became codified in the normal world in the Constitution of the United States.
And the legends of the Vindictam Sanguinis were born.
Now…
Achelois could only shake her head in stunned admiration at the smart move Elizabeth Gibbon had just pulled moments before.
Ever since the Liberation, there had been a noisy debate in certain circles within wizarding Britain over what the Avalonians actually were. People grounded in the normal world found it easy to accept the aliens thanks to a healthy understanding of both science fiction and science fact; those like Hermione Granger and Harry Potter knew of the times the normals had experimented in CLONING animals in recent years — an act which all magical traditionalists avoided like the plague as they saw such as horridly unnatural — thus the idea of replicating or building strands of DNA to create new life did not sound so odd to them. However, those who had been raised in a pure magical environment like Draco Malfoy — with next to NO contact with the normal world — couldn't bring themselves to fully comprehend the concept of "biological android" even if both words were grounded in classical Greek terms. Even more, attempts by normal-raised people like Hermione to make the magically-raised understand usually failed thanks to the deeply-bred arrogance people like Draco felt concerning their "superiority" over normals…which came hand-in-hand with a total contempt towards technology of any stripe. Atop that, when issues of potential influence in the Wizengamot — especially given calls in recent years to remove the barriers that blocked Meridiana-trained magi from dealing with anything influenced by the Ministry of Magic, which would have seen seats in the magical house of lords filled by Rose Potter's friends such as Cassiopeia Lestrange…not to mention put Draco Malfoy's own seat under threat from his sister Raven, especially after Narcissa learned her daughter was alive! — were factored in, finding ways to make the Avalonians seem less human to the masses became paramount.
Such moves were helped tremendously by the appearance of H.M.S. Hood over the skies of downtown London a couple weeks ago when she was commissioned into the Royal Navy, which had horrified many magicals on realizing that the Avalonians' technology could possibly trump magic in all aspects.
And despite the fact that the Avalonians had recently helped people such as Pansy Black and Mandy Potter recover their magic out of a simple desire to assist those in need — to say anything of helping victims of the Second Purification War such as Ginny Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin and Bellatrix Lestrange fully recover from their wounds…never mind what Alice Holmes had done in the mid-1980s to give people like Rose Potter and her friends life after the Death Eaters had killed them while they were still in their mothers' wombs! — people like Draco Malfoy who wanted to do anything to stop the bioroids from "meddling" in the affairs of wizarding Britain wouldn't give up; that was what had driven Theodore Nott's alliance with Adam Sewell in the first place.
Elizabeth Gibbon had just blown Theo's and Draco's cause right out of the water.
There was no way in Hell that any self-respecting WOMAN in wizarding Britain — even Draco's closest female allies in the Wizengamot such as Hester Selwyn (the Baroness of Hampstead and distant cousin of Dolores Umbridge), Elaine Mithwold (the Baroness of Whitley and the aunt to Achelois' old year-mate Zacharias Smith) or Timaea Crouch (the Countess of Wells, the oldest serving member of the Wizengamot since the death of Elphias Doge in 1997 and the grandmother of the younger Barty Crouch) — would support ANY move to attack the Avalonians in the wake of a Terran-turned-Avalonian witch invoking the Vengeance of Blood of all things to defend her and her friends against the threat…
"ACHELOIS! LOOK OUT!"
Achelois gasped as she found herself facing a snarling vampire…
…before he was bowled over by Rose Potter, who had tackled him with a move straight out of rugby football before he could try to take the apprentice curse-breaker hostage. The two tumbled onto the street close to the entrance to Madame Malkin's shoppe before the vampire rendered himself vapour to escape the healer's grasp…then lashed out with fingers now tipped in claws to rip this crystal-blood bitch's heart out. Rose ducked clear of those claws even if they tore into her shirt to expose her left breast and leave scar marks over the plump flesh…
…which made Achelois see red!
"IKHORH VRASMOS!"
A bolt of gold light lashed out from the curse-breaker's palm to slam into the vampire's chest, which made him howl with agony as the dank fluid within his veins and arteries literally evaporated, killing him just as efficiently as beheading or using silver or mesonium on him. As his smoking corpse dropped to the street, Achelois screamed out as she lept over to gaze upon the wounds on Rose's chest. "Are you alright, Rose?!" she gasped as she moved to pull the torn clothing away and inspect the wounds…
…not realizing that her touching Rose's red hair allowed the healer a chance to probe right into the other woman's mind and discover…
KRACK!
As Achelois gargled on feeling her jaw dislocate from that well-aimed uppercut — that accompanied by a sudden, sharp pain at the back of her neck — she tried not to smile before unconsciousness finally seized her.
This is not…the way…I wanted to…get close…to her…!
Nearby, Harry had jolted on seeing the vampire tackled by his sister rip open Rose's shirt to expose her chest to anyone who wanted a cheap thrill. Before he could lash out against the perverted bastard for abusing his sister like that, Achelois Runcorn of all people burned the creature's blood away with a very ugly spell that vampires had fought for years to have banned since it worked just as well against any of their kind as traditional weapons like silver or wood stakes. He then relaxed as the would-be curse-breaker moved to comfort Rose — despite his knowing that Achelois was potentially involved in the daywalker vampires' move to attack the Avalonians, Harry also knew the dual heiress of the Runcorns and the Collinses had a massive crush on his sister, dating back to when they first met at Hogwarts in 1996 — and help her…
…before he laughed his guts out when Rose nearly knocked her jaw off!
"What the hell…?" Fred began.
"…was that about?" George finished.
The Man-Who-Won sighed as he did a quick scope of the scene. The aurors had finally come storming in from the Ministry to clear out the few vampires still on their feet in Diagon and Knockturn; much that he had tried for YEARS to get a ready reaction team of law enforcement officers put on constant standby, he hadn't got any sort of funding for it from the Wizengamot out of the excuse that such a "warlike" move in peacetime was a waste of money. The Hollows were fading to return back to Gonebren, their part of the mission set before them today by the leader of the Schwarze Mädchen now done. The shopkeepers and the other bystanders — who had, as usual, not lifted a wand to help out; it would be YEARS before the lazy arses died and allowed the younger generation being trained now at Hogwarts (who were being taught to be a lot more proactive and alert to potential threats) to take over those establishments — were peeking out of their stores to gawk at what had happened. The goblins who had stormed out of Gringotts alongside Blaise Zabini had now formed a cordon around the main doors of the bank, ready to take down anyone who might invade their territory. The Black Maidens and the veterans of the Defence Association and the Order of the Phoenix — including, much to Harry's surprise, Mundungus Fletcher of all people! — were also surveying the scene to ensure no further surprises popped up to hurt anyone…save for Elizabeth Gibbon herself, who was talking on a cell phone to someone, no doubt one of her friends up on the Freedom to give them an update as to what was happening. And…
"What just made that poor woman earn your sister's ire, Mister Potter?"
Harry smirked as Abraham Lincoln came up, his axed covered in greenish-red ichor and bits of shredded flesh and gore. Gazing back at Rose, who was kneeling beside the stunned Achelois and doing a diagnostic on her with her powers, he turned back to the former American president. "She's one of your old sparring partner's would-be allies here in Britain, Mister President," he whispered as Elaine Savage shouted out orders to get her subordinates fanned out to survey the damage and locate casualties. "You'd think that she would know better than to let my sister touch her."
Lincoln and the Weasley twins all laughed…
…just as the chimes of materialisers echoed through the air.
To everyone's shock, four groups of sixteen women each and a single group of ten women appeared in clear spots all along Diagon Alley from the Leaky Cauldron entrance to the rear gate close to Leicester Square. Leading them was a stunningly beautiful Latino with silky black hair tied in a loose ponytail at the back of her neck and dark olive-brown eyes full of knowledge and passion. She was dressed in the camouflage uniform of a soldier of Spain, the single gold eight-point star of a commandante embossed on her green shoulder epaulette slip-ons. "Get your wands from Gretta and start caring for any wounded you find!" she barked in accented English to the others — all of whom, Harry noted, were wearing white lanyards bearing the crimson crucifix of the Red Cross on their left arms — as she waved towards Margareta Hecht, who had pulled out the trunk she had obtained from Julia Hoffman earlier in the day at Buckingham Palace and had expanded it to full size. With that, she marched over to Elizabeth to get a full briefing about what had happened.
"Who's that?!" George asked as he watched two of the new arrivals move to care for the stunned Achelois.
"That's Doña Rosa Fernández."
Eyes locked on Rose as she came up, absently waving her hand over her torn shirt to make her decent again. "You know that woman, Healer Potter?" Lincoln asked.
"Yes! She's the oldest of the Black Maidens; she was one of Francisco Franco's earliest allies since she brought over a tonne of normal-born graduates from the Tarraco Academy — Doña Rosa graduated from there in 1929 — to help fight for him! She's also the ONLY woman in history to have been awarded the Pour le Mérite Magique, the Order of Asturias AND the Sacred Order of Befana in her lifetime; it was ultimately all for her research in magical diseases even when she was busy caring for the Schwarze Mädchen in the field!" As the others gaped at her, the apprentice healer sighed. "By the way, guys, DON'T ask the poor woman her FULL name!" she hissed to the twins. "Doña Rosa's no different than Dora! She was known to curse first…and she could be creative with her curses, too!"
"You're certainly right about that, Rose."
"Hey, Aunt Poppy!" Harry said with a smile as he leaned over to gently kiss Poppy Pomfrey's cheek, which made the matronly mediwitch smile. "What are you doing here?"
"Well, I was visiting Hamilton at St. Mungo's when Elaine put out the alert about this," Hogwarts' resident healer stated as she did a quick scan around with her own mage senses to detect any signs of serious casualties. "I see there are no dead."
"Except for the undead…and they are now all QUITE dead," Lincoln quipped, which made Poppy gaze on him before her jaw dropped in shocked recognition. "And I meant that as no joke. It's good to see you again, Madame…"
"¡Madre de Dios! Poppy Pomfrey, is that you?!"
Poppy jolted…before she gasped with delight. "Rosalía Fernández!" she cried out with delight before she warmly embraced the senior healer of the Black Maidens. "I saw the news in the Prophet that you all survived the Gates, but I couldn't believe it!"
"You two know each other?!" the Weasley twins exclaimed together.
Both healers laughed. "We met at a conference in Geneva after Rosalía was made a Knight of the Order of Asturias in 1935, just before she got dragged into that wretched civil war in Spain!" Poppy declared before she gazed on her friend from Villanueva de la Serena a hundred kilometres east of the Portuguese border in the province of Badajoz. "Do you have all your mediwitches with you?"
"Sí…but the more hands on deck, the better!"
Poppy nodded. "Good point! Come along, Rose!"
"Coming!" Rose called out as she followed the older healers to where the triage point was being set up now close to the front doors of Gringotts.
Watching the healers of the Black Maidens go to work, Harry nodded in satisfaction…before he tensed on feeling a hand gently squeeze his shoulder. "Well played, Harry," Severus Snape whispered to the younger man before he headed off.
The Man-Who-Won smirked before he nodded as Elaine came up to join him. "No fatalities on scene, Boss," the chief auror reported, the relief on her face quite apparent. She then thumbed the new arrivals. "Who are these girls?" she asked.
"The Black Maidens' healers and mediwitches," he answered as the Weasley twins headed back to their shop to inspect what damage might have been done. Out of the corner of his eye, he was quick to note the two mediwitches tending to Achelois were now conjuring a stretcher to get her somewhere else. What the devil happened to her?! he wondered to himself. Rose has a mean right cross, but she couldn't have hurt Loi THAT badly! "Brigadier Gibbon's been given a Royal Warrant by the Queen," he then added in a whisper after he took a casual glance around with his mage sight to see if a certain reporter from the Daily Prophet was in the area. Noting that a brightly coloured beetle was fluttering around close to the entrance to Flourish and Blotts heading in their direction, he wandlessly erected a privacy screen to ensure the transformed reporter couldn't overhear what he said next, "We've got a major vampire problem, Elaine. As of now, we're on…"
"ANIMAGUS FINITE!"
People cried out on hearing that scream from a beautiful brown-eyed woman with flowing rusty red hair, now dressed in a surplus British Army combat uniform with the wreathed crown of a warrant officer class 2 on her epaulette slip-ons…before they gaped as Rita Skeeter of all people appeared out of nowhere, hovering in mid-air for a second before she crashed face-first into the cobblestone street! Without hesitation, the mediwitch that reversed her transformation — Suzanne Stuart, Harry recognized; she was a Hufflepuff from the NEWT class of 1935 who was a good friend of the first British member of the Black Maidens, Enid Geraint — called out, "JORDENSKAGLE!" That summoned chains made of solid marble to entwine the stunned reporter and keep her locked down; Harry could also sense that Suzanne's version of that charm came with a magical suppression hex, no doubt to keep prisoners secure before they could face interrogation.
"Suzanne! What's wrong?!" Elizabeth called out from her position close to Gringotts.
"We got a bloody spy here, Liz!" Suzanne called back, her brogue indicative of her origins as a native of Inverness. "An animagus; she was disguised as some sort of beetle! We need Linn here to find out what the devil she was doing!"
The leader of the Schwarze Mädchen moaned as many of the onlookers gasped on learning the darkest secret of the Prophet's most notorious reporter. Sensing the crowd's mood — and realizing this was another opportunity to engender good will between her girls and the magicals of Britain — the native of Yorkshire then smiled as she pulled out the cell phone she had borrowed before coming down from the Freedom. "Master Staff Sergeant Hecht, please tell me that Major Heinrich's toys are with her personal belongings!"
Grinning, Margareta reached into the chest to pull out a particular box. Opening it, she gazed inside before a churlish smile crossed her face. "It's all here, meine Generalmajorin!" she called out. "I'm sure Frau Majorin Heinrich will be more than pleased to discuss the consequences of spying on innocent people with our prisoner!"
The onlookers all blinked on hearing that statement from the native of Saxony-Anhalt before they all turned to glare wrathfully at the still-stunned Rita, who was now wondering why her Quick-Quotes Quill had suddenly replicated itself a dozen times, all of them now floating in circles in front of her eyes. "Right-oh!" Elizabeth said before she brought up the dialing function on her phone, then made a call up to orbit.
Watching this from nearby, Harry could only shake his head before he felt Elaine's hand squeeze his shoulder. "Was bound to happen sooner or later, Harry," the chief auror whispered before she headed off to look in on her people.
"Yeah," he breathed out.
"What's this about?" Lincoln asked.
"You remember all the problems you had with the press during the Civil War, sir?"
A cackle escaped the former president. "Son, I might have had it bad…but believe it or not, Jeff Davis had it a lot worse!" he advised. "Let me tell you…"
Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the forest to the west of the camp, minutes before…
"This place is horrible…!"
"Quiet!" Porucznik Władysław Kowalski hissed as he gazed out towards the barracks-like building where magical prisoners of the SS were interrogated and killed during the time this ghastly place was in operation. Like the others of the Polish magical police who came with him to Oświęcim, he had on a special wrist bracelet that shielded his mind from the side effects of the huge node of death energy that still saturated these grounds decades after the Nazis were defeated and the few survivors of Auschwitz were liberated by the Red Army. And like his own boss back in Warsaw, the native of Lublin — which had another of these accursed places, Majdanek, located just two kilometres southeast of downtown! — often cursed the selfish fools in the Magicznego Sejm for being such tightwads with money; even if the post-1989 reforms of the Polish magical government that went hand in hand with Solidarność's victory over the Marxists that ultimately took their orders from Moscow saw to it that all magicals in the Republic could vote for representatives in the magical parliament, the people they often elected cared more for personal gain than helping those who voted them in live safe and happy lives.
While he had been lucky to have been raised on the other side of Lublin from Majdanek, normal-born magicals born and raised here in Oświęcim…!
"Włady, there are two people inside the interrogation hut!"
Władysław perked as his senior scout, Starszy Odkrywca Danuta Ziębianka, walked over to join them; using an invisibility screen, she slipped out of the forest to approach the back door of the old interrogation hut. "Anything else there, Danu?" he hissed.
"Saw that the front door…!"
KRACK!
Everyone gasped as the roof of the interrogation hut was blasted clear up into the sky. As a half-dozen pairs of eyes followed that particular structure as it soared up several dozen metres into the air, Władysław moaned as he HOPED the Przyjaciel Smoków remembered that there WAS an International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy in effect — major pain in the butt that it was at times! — and that the normal tourists visiting the main part of the Birkenau camp would probably notice the roof of a building flying up from practically NOWHERE. As he reached for his cell phone to put a call into Warsaw to get the memory charm experts out here, Danuta then gasped, "Who's that?!"
Eyes snapped over…
…before they gaped on seeing a man in a black martial arts gi with black belt calmly walk out the front door of the interrogation hut, carrying an unconscious woman dressed in normal civilians in his arms. As the visitors from Warsaw all blinked several times as they wondered what the heck was going on here, said fellow turned to gaze in their direction, revealing himself to be the most famous teenager on Earth today…as well as the adopted brother of the Earth Angel and the reborn Xiàolíng Emperor of Hàn atop that! "Moroboshi-san!" Danuta called out as she waved to get his attention; she and her co-workers — none of whom could speak Japanese — had charmed themselves with a universal translator spell so that they could be understood by the Friend of Dragons before they came to look in on her.
Moroboshi Ataru looked over before he smiled, calmly carrying his unconscious companion towards the group of magicals — no doubt, members of the local law enforcement — as the roof of the interrogation hut came down on the small crematorium building to its east with a rather loud BANG! Wincing slightly as he stopped to look back, he shook his head before moving to join the visitors from Warsaw. "You have to excuse my friend there for a moment, minna-san," he said as he gently laid the woman down against a tree. "She was surprised to note you haven't done any sort of cleansing here, so she's having her staff absorb some of the dark ki and magic in this place."
Immediately, the medic working with Władysław's team, Uzdrowiciel Uczeń Patrycja Madejówna, drew her wand to commence an examination. She then blinked as a ghostly parchment appeared, reading it right away before she gaped. "This is a vampire!"
"Yeah," Ataru calmly stated as he thumbed behind him. "I just ripped the throat out of her lover inside the hut. Her brain decided to take a vacation when that happened, so I suspect there was some sort of soul-bond involved. Mizuho doesn't want her destroyed; we'll get her up to the Błyskawica to get her body-swap done, then give Janina-chan — that's her name, Janina Neumann — over to some lady named Margareta Hecht."
The magical policemen all perked on hearing that name. "Wasn't Neumann one of the magicals that was assigned to this place when the Nazis were here?!" Danuta demanded.
"Indeed she was, my friend," a woman's voice then hailed, which made everyone turn as Inada Mizuho came up to join them, the Staff of Gihan held to her side. "She and her beloved were — at the behest of a most vile creature who is seeking to destroy all our kinswomen — trying to concoct a disgusting potion to see all the death energy in this place absorbed into ebony meson crystals so that it could be used by their leader in such a campaign. Fortunately, they didn't count on the lost spirits of this place calling upon my beloved Ataru to deal with them while cloaked in the armour bestowed to him by the Wise Lord." She then gazed back at the wrecked interrogation hut. "And I do apologize for making such a mess, but trying to NOT allow a massive earthquake to strike this place while I was allowing my staff to claim some of that energy caused a bit of a backlash from that hideous potion. You'll find Herr Mandel's corpse inside, along with all their belongings in case you need to have them examined back in Warsaw."
"And the roof?" Władysław warily asked.
Mizuho blinked before she gazed to the south and the main part of the Birkenau camp. "I do believe the protections placed on this place from normal eavesdroppers years ago by our Russian friends have served their purpose, Master Władysław," she calmly stated, finding herself stuttering as she tried to properly pronounce his name; save for a few tongues like English and Korean, foreign languages had never been her forte. She had met Władysław and several of his co-workers when she went to the fire flower fields a third time to stop thieves from absconding with the beautiful plants. "I don't sense a single person out there having noticed what just happened here."
The visitors from Warsaw all breathed out in relief; much that they did understand the need for the Statute of Secrecy, most magicals in Poland — even the people trained for the task — found performing memory modifications to be quite distasteful. "Though someone on the outside's GOING to notice something here sooner or later," Ataru then added before waving around. "You feel all this ki here?! Given enough time, you'll end up facing one mother of an earthquake or some other natural disaster hitting this place WITHOUT any outside help! Why the hell haven't you got the exorcists to come here to clean this place out?!"
"Money!" all the Poles chanted at once.
The visitors from Tomobiki and Shiroiwa (in another dimension) blinked on hearing that before they exchanged a look. "Can you do it?" Ataru wondered.
"I'm not too sure if I have the control to do it without causing the catastrophe you just described," Mizuho admitted. "What about the Lady Negako? Can she do it?"
"She won't have the patience for it…and she never gave a shit about that damned secrecy statute in the first place," he said with a shake of the head. "Onē-san might do like she and Kyech did back in February with that mana node under the Tarōzakura."
"One gigantic geyser of energy causing a wide-spread, low-key earthquake. Minor but still noticeable," she noted, which made the Poles all cringe as they imagined what would need to happen to keep the truth about such an event secret from the normals. "What of the Lady Dean or the Lady Heather? Perhaps the Lady Jessica could assist. Her powers force her to consume evil energy to remain alive and sane. They're going to be involved sooner or later with the business concerning the Black Maidens."
He shrugged. "Well, it wouldn't hurt to ask."
"I doubt you'll get far with any of the War Hawks, Moroboshi-san," Patrycja muttered. "They HATE being forced to clean up after other people's messes!"
"Then I would highly suggest you prevail on your leaders to do something about this place — not to mention the other death camp sites — as soon as possible, my friend!" Mizuho stated as she waved behind her to the wrecked interrogation hut. "Even if I was TRYING to be careful here, look at the damage I ended up doing! I know you made this place a memorial to the ghastly crimes that occurred here, but even I can see what still needs to be done!"
"Well, we could try to persuade Onē-san to visit them in Warsaw."
She gazed on Ataru. "Why do you propose that?"
He icily grinned. "She's very good at laying down the facts of Life."
A hum escaped the would-be warrior-priestess, then she nodded. "A good point, Dearest," she breathed out. "In the meantime, let us go up to the bright Błyskawica and help the Lady Janina reclaim her humanity back. Please excuse us, my friends."
And with a flash of energy, Ataru, Mizuho and Janina vanished. The visitors from Warsaw all blinked before Danuta gaped. "Did she just call him 'Dearest?!'"
The others stared wide-eyed at her…
To be continued…
WRITER'S NOTES
1) Translations: Vernichtungslager — Extermination camp; Konzentrationslager — Concentration camp; HaShoah — Literally "Catastrophe," one of the two Jewish names for the Holocaust (the other name is Churben ["Destruction"]); Totenkopf — Literally "skull," this was the name given to the skull-and-crossbones insignia of the SS…and serves as the root word of Totenkopfverbände, the "Death's Head Units" who were the people directly in charge of all concentration camp operations; Obersturmführer — Literally "Senior Assault Leader," the SS equivalent of a Navy sub-lieutenant/Army lieutenant/Air Force flying officer (NATO rank code OF-1); Spezielle Vernichtungeinheit — Special Extermination Unit; Ministerstwo Magii — Ministry of Magic; Haupthelfer — Chief Assistant; Helferinnenkorps — Women's Assistant Corps; Unmenschlich — Inhuman or fiendish; Magiczne Policja Republiki — Magical Police of the Republic; Przyjaciel Smoków — Friend of Dragons; Ikhorh Vrasmos — Boil the Ichor; Commandante — Literally "commander" and normally translated as "commandant," this is the Spanish title for an Army major (NATO rank code OF-3); Madre de Dios — Mother of God; Animagus Finite — A cancelling spell (Finite) designed to reverse an animagus transformation; Jordenskagle — Earth Chains; Porucznik — Literally "messenger," this is the Polish rank title for an Army lieutenant (NATO rank code OF-1); Magicznego Sejm — Magical Diet; Starszy Odkrywca — Literally "senior explorer," this is a title derived from the ranks of Polish members of the Boy Scouts (in the MPR, this rank would be the rough equivalent of a police chief inspector); Uzdrowiciel Uczeń — Apprentice Healer.
2) Notes about the magical schools mentioned here:
As hinted at in Part One concerning the Nurmengard Magic Academy (in German, Akademie der Magie Nurmengard), thanks to the very diversified nature of German society pre-1871 where there was no one single government controlling the whole territory — during the height of the Holy Roman Empire, its territory was divided into HUNDREDS of effectively independent nation-states — the presence of multiple small schools of magic serving various parts of Germany even to the days of the Third Reich is understandable. Wilhelm Mandel's alma mater, the Greifinswald Academy of Sorcery (Akademie der Zauberei Greifinswald), was the magical school for the Duchy of Pomerania which lay on the Baltic Sea coast in modern-day northeast Germany and northwest Poland; this duchy existed from 1121-1637 as an element of the Holy Roman Empire before its territory was split between Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia (later Prussia) in the wake of the Thirty Years' War (1618-48). Eventually, Prussia took full control of the territory of old Pomerania in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars. Greifinswald (literally "forest of griffins," named after the heraldic symbol of the royal house of Pomerania [a red griffin]) remained an active school of magic until the end of World War Two, when it was shut down by the Soviets in the wake of the Battle of Greifinswald on Sunday 22 April 1945.
The Gniezdno Academy of Sorcery (Gniezdno Akademia Magii) is named in tribute to Gniezno, a city in Wielkopolska ("Greater Poland") Province in west-central Poland about fifty kilometres east of Posnań. A city that has been around since at least the Tenth Century, Gniezno — the name "Gniezdno" is the medieval version of that name — is the seat of the Roman Catholic archbishop who also serves as the Primate of Poland.
Spain's national magical academy, the Tarraco Academy of Magic (la Escuela de Magia en Tarraco), is located near the city of Tarragona on the Mediterranean coast of Catalonia about sixty kilometres west-southwest of Barcelona. The name "Tarraco" is taken from Roman times. The site of the Colonia Iulia Urbs Triumphalis Tarraco ("Julian Colonial Town of Triumph at Tarraco") in modern-day Tarragona was first seized by the old Roman Republic in 217 B.C.E.; it would eventually become the capital of the republican province of Hispania Citerior ("Nearer Hispania") and would later serve as the capital of the imperial province of Hispania Tarraconensis ("Taragonian Hispania"). The Roman city would be conquered by the Visigoths in 476 C.E., though the conquerors would leave the city pretty much as it was. Tarraco would later be conquered by the Muslims in or around 713-714.
3) The Soviet Naródnyj Komissariát Mágičeskie Del (literally "People's Commissariat for Magical Affairs," short-formed NKMD) was the USSR's magical ministry during the time of Iósef Stálin's rule. The name of this organization is a play-off on the term Naródnyj Komissariát Vnútrennix Del (NKVD), which literally translates "People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs"; this was the Soviet secret police from 1934-54 and the precursor agency of the KGB.
4) The Hakenkreuzflagge (literally "hooked cross flag") was the name for the Nazi Party's crimson red banner defaced with an off-centre white sphere defaced in turn with a tilted, right-facing black swastika. In 1935, the Hakenkreuzflagge was made the national flag of Germany and served as such until 1945.
5) Inada Mizuho is one of the minor characters of Battle Royale. As I've noted elsewhere, the characterization of her and her fellow BR characters in the stories of this universe is based on the American English translation of the manga series released by TokyoPop between 2000-05 as written by Keith Giffen (born 1952), the famous comic book writer/artist that worked on DC Comics' Legion of Super-Heroes in the 1980s and 1990s. I use the term "would-be warrior-priestess" whenever I refer to Mizuho since she — a Dungeons and Dragons role-playing gamer who suffered from dementia and schizophrenia and came to see herself as the mortal avatar of "elder gods" such as Ahura Mazdā, the supreme deity of Zoroastrianism — called herself the Warrior-Priestess Prexia Dikianne Mizuho. In the manga, Mizuho survived almost right to the end; she would be struck down at the end of the manga story "Faith" (manga story #79).
Her weapon is the Staff of Gihan, a 17,000-year old haijo-ju (literally "will of the people" but more poetically translated "voice of the people's desire") from Sagussa that was essentially constructed as the ultimate personal weapons system. It has the ability to tap into the Power of the Te'a Itself — in effect, the very power of the Big Bang that created the Universe — to do anything the controller might desire…only limited by imagination and the potential influence of other objects of meson like the Power Jewel used by Dean Raeburn. The Staff first made its appearance in The Senior Year story "Great Father Ataru Stage Two: Remembrance." It also appeared in my story Lonely Souls.
6) Zaraϑuštra Spitāma (also known as "Zoroaster") is the mythical founder of Zoroastrianism, one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions. All the details of Zaraϑuštra's life have not been proven as historical fact, including things like the time of his life and his place of residence; scholars believe he may have lived between the Eighteenth and Sixth Centuries B.C.E. and his homeland of Airyanəm Vaējah ("Land of the Aryans") has never been pinpointed with any accuracy beyond somewhere in central Asia. It is he who is credited as being the author of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti ("Worship in Seven Chapters") and the Gāϑās (a collection of seventeen hymns composing 238 versus which focus on questions of the divine influence on truth and the spirit of righteous); all of which were collected into the Zoroastrian bible, the Avesta. Zaraϑuštra is known to modern non-Zoroastrians as being the inspiration of Friedrich Nietzsche's novel Also Sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spoke Zaraϑuštra") released in 1883-85, not to mention the tone poem opera named after it written in 1896 by Richard Wagner. The initial fanfare, "Sunrise," became the theme song for the famous 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
As an aside, Avestan (the language by which all Zoroastrian holy texts were written; the name of the language is based on the word "Avesta") is a language that employs thirty-seven distinct consonant and sixteen distinct vowel sounds. Because of that, the standard Romanization of Avestan has to employ more than the twenty-six letter Latin alphabet can provide even with macrons to represent long vowels. Thus, we get the following:
The "ϑ" symbol — one of the lower-case versions of the Greek Θ (theta) — represents the voiceless dental fricative like the first sound in thin;
The "š" represents the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative such as the first sound in sheep;
The "ā" represents the long open central unrounded vowel like the vowel in the American English pronunciation of cot;
The "ə" personifies the short mid-central (or schwa) vowel similar to the second vowel sound in sofa; and
The "ŋ" represents the velar nasal consonant similar to the end consonants in each syllable of singing.
7) Moroboshi Ataru's earlier encounter with a vampire occurred in the Yatsura manga stories "Down For the Count" and "Blood From a Stone" (manga stories #101-102).
8) As noted above, the Polish Ministry of Magic divides the nation into sectors and sub-sectors to help them pinpoint areas of interest. The sectors are based on the several provinces (in Polish, województwo [plural województwa]; normally rendered in English as voivodeship) that form the first-level sub-national government divisions. The sub-sectors are based on the counties or county-level cities within those provinces. Thus, the six Nazi extermination camps based in the territory of Poland during World War Two are located as follows:
Treblinka — Located in Ostrów Mazowiecka County of Mazovia (Sector "Maz", sub-sector "Ost");
Majdanek — Located in the city of Lublin of the province of the same name (City sector "Lub");
Sobibór — Located in Włodawa County of the province of Lublin (Sector "Lub," sub-sector "Włod");
Bełżec — Located in Tomaszów Lubelski County of the province of Lublin (Sector "Lub," sub-sector "Tom");
Chełmno — Located in Koło County of the province of Wielkopolska (Sector "Wie," sub-sector "Ko"); and
Oświęcim (AKA Auschwitz) — Located in Oświęcim County in the province of Małopolska ("Lesser Poland") (Sector "Mał," sub-sector "Oś").
9) Like many Slavic cultures, the Poles use different spellings for family names dependant on gender. Hence, we have the situation of the sister of Captain Stanisław Gorazdowski (introduced in Part 55 of Phoenix From the Ashes) introduced here, Halinka Gorazdowska. Even more, a woman's marital status can influence the spelling of the family name. The traditional rule was this: Unmarried women whose base family names end in consonants (save "-g") get "-ówna" added to the name, while vowel-ending names and names ending in "-g" get "-anka"…while married women get "-owa" and "-ina"/"-yna" respectively. Although these suffixes are still used by some people, mostly the elderly and in rural areas, they are now becoming outdated and there is a tendency to use the same form of a nominal surname for both a man and a woman.
10) The Fire Flowers spoken of here are based on Polish folk legends. It was said that to find this powerful plant the seeker had to enter a forest before midnight on the Eve of Kupala (the night of 6-7 July in the Gregorian calendar; the night of 23-24 June in the old Julian calendar). The flower would climb up the stalk of a fern tree. Precisely at midnight, it would bloom so brightly that no one could look directly at it. In order to harvest it, a circle had to be drawn around it and the seeker had to deal with demons trying to distract him/her from doing so. It was said that if you answered the voices or faltered during the task, the fire flower would sacrifice its own life. Anyone possessing this flower was reported to have gained the ability to read minds, find treasure and repel all evils…which would made the magical flower in the universe of this story quite valuable worldwide in both potions and materials used in warding.
11) The issue with Azu Kakazu and the other gynoids mentioned above was depicted in A Nice Quiet Place.
12) Sanuki was the old provincial name for what is now known as Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. As noted above, in Battle Royale, the town of Shiroiwa is located in Kagawa-ken.
13) The Shadowlands spoken of by the ghosts of Auschwitz here is based on the dark hinterland between the mortal and divine introduced in the role-playing game Wraith: The Oblivion, created in 1994 and is part of the World of Darkness multiverse created by White Wolf Publishing. I was referred to this by my good friend Robert Geiger — who wrote a couple side-stories for TSY and has suggested story ideas for me for over a decade — via the 1997 source book Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah (ISBN 1-56504-651-X), written by Jonathan Blacke and Robert Hatch. In the universe of this story, the Shadowlands form part of the divine energy field that can be perceived by Sagussans in their mind which is known by the catch-all term Te'a ("That Which Is Above mortal understanding").
14) The noble houses of the Wizengamot noted on here:
The Barony of Hampstead (Hester Selwyn) is named after a neighbourhood in the London borough of Camden, located over six kilometres northwest of Charing Cross.
The Barony of Whitley (Elaine Mithwold) is named after Whitley Bay, a seaside town in Tyne and Wear in northeast England ten kilometres east of northeast from Newcastle upon Tyne).
The Earldom of Wells (Timaea Crouch) is named after a cathedral city in Somerset at the south end of the Mendip Hills fifteen kilometres south of Bristol.
15) This part introduces the Spanish and Italian versions of the Order of Merlin:
The Order of Asturias (in Spanish, Orden de Asturias) is named after the Kingdom of Asturias in what today is northern Spain; this was the nation that, in 722 C.E., launched the Reconquista ("reconquest") against the Muslims that conquered the Iberian Peninsula eleven years earlier. It is divided thus (with the equivalent Order of Merlin post-nominal letters as comparison):
MO3 — Knight of the Order of Asturias (Caballero de la Orden de Asturias) (short-form Cab. d.l. O d. A);
MO2 — Knight Commander of the Order of Asturias (Comendador de la Orden de Asturias) (Com. d.l. O d. A); and
MO1 — Grand Cross Knight Commander of the Order of Asturias (Gran Cruz de Comendador de la Orden de Asturias) (GC d. Com. d.l. O d. A).
The Sacred Order of Befana (in Italian, Sacro Ordine della Befana) is named in tribute to Befana, a witch from Tuscany during the late Twelfth Century who both fought against evil and helped heal people from plagues regardless if the victims were magical or normal…and in real life, is the Italian folk equivalent to Santa Claus. The order was established by Prince Philip of Swabia (then the Margrave of Tuscany) and blessed by Pope Innocent III (hence the title "Sacred"). Like the other magical orders introduced in this story, it is divided into three levels:
MO3 — Knight of the Sacred Order of Befana (Cavaliere del Sacro Ordine della Befana) (Cav. d. SO d. B);
MO2 — Officer of the Sacred Order of Befana (Ufficiale del Sacro Ordine di Befana) (Uff. d. SO d. B); and
MO1 — Commander of the Sacred Order of Befana (Comandante del Sacro Ordine della Befana) (Comm. d. SO d. B).
As an aside, those awarded the Order of Asturias in Spain have the right to be addressed by the honorific Don (for men) or Doña (for women); the term is a diminutive of the Latin dominus ("master") and is best known as the honorific given to the real name of the famous pulp fiction novel character Zorro (Don Diego de la Vega). Note that Don or Doña can be used with a person's given name or full name…but NEVER with just the family name. Also note that the standard Spanish honorifics Señor ("Mister" [short-form Sr.]), Señora ("Mrs." [short-form Sra.]) or Señorita ("Miss" [short-form Srta.]) always comes BEFORE Don or Doña; in those cases, the basic honorifics are initialized, i.e. Srta. Doña Rosalía María Fernández de Calderón y Jiménez de Córdoba (which is Rosa Fernández's full name, by the way). In conjunction with that, winners of the equivalent awards of the Order of Asturias elsewhere like the Order of Merlin are addressed with the same honorifics, i.e. Don Harry James Potter.
16) Solidarność is the short-name for the Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy "Solidarność" ("Independent Self-governing Trade Union 'Solidarity'"), the famous Polish trade union federation that was formed in 1980 at the Gdańsk Shipyard under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa (born 1943) that became the first non-communist labour union in the Warsaw Pact. Despite attempts by the Polish leadership to put Solidarność down during the early 1980s, constant pressure by Wałęsa's people would eventually force the communists to submit to negotiations that saw semi-free elections in the summer of 1989…and, once all support from Moscow was eliminated that fall, a coalition led by Solidarność helped Wałęsa become President. These days, Solidarność is still an active force in Polish society even if the actual numbers are a fraction of what they had been in the mid-1980s (a half-million today versus approximately ten million then).
