A/N Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, anything you recognize is the property of JK Rowling.
Harry had always hated these kinds of fights - these knockdown, dragged-out, street-by-street city sieges. They always came with an increased loss of life, especially on the civilian side. The cities were never the same, despite the mech-attack-hardened buildings. It was impossible to truly harden the more sensitive infrastructure against all mech attacks, especially an army.
But just because he hated it didn't mean he didn't excel at this style. He watched with a certain amount of grim satisfaction as the small arms fire pinged off his armour. It did no other damage other than cosmetic. He turned his chain gun onto a man he saw setting up an anti-material rifle in the shell of a building, gutted by an early exchange. He felt nothing as the threat was blown away into nothing other than a fine red mist.
His danger sense flared as he swung himself in a one-hundred-eighty-degree arc, catching the swing of the surprise attack on the flat of his sword. He could imagine the other pilot's look of surprise as the chain gun ripped through his mech, causing the haptic feedback loop to fry the enemy pilot's brain.
Harry knew how much that must hurt. He had had less severe haptic blowback before, and he had been out for approximately a week with the worst buzzing headache ever. Even a minor overload had laid him out for a week straight, and he could only imagine how bad it would hurt to be killed by haptic feedback.
He did a quick sweep to ascertain whether the town was secure. Seeing a fellow Cygara pilot dispatch a final mech, he let out a sigh of contentment. The pilot had finished his job.
"City secure," came a voice over the radio. It was interspersed with static as the jamming nets were slowly taken down. Harry let out a grim smile. after months of fighting the Church of the Awakened One, this was their last major push before the Zyran capital. Ockern and his inner circle had essentially taken over Zyra a few years back, and it was only now that the truth of this rot had come to light. Cygar had reached out to him as he was the best pilot in all of Kissindra as a one-man strike team. He had done the job masterfully, destroying the military governor of this region by himself.
With the death of their governor and incidentally their best pilot, the Cult-controlled Zyran army had fallen much quicker than it otherwise would have. That's not to say it was easy by any stretch of imagination, quite the opposite. The Church of the Awakened One had put many of Ockern's most zealous adherents as the sergeants garrisoning this place. Cygar had to bleed for every inch of ground they covered. He looked sadly at the number of mechs standing stock still, their pilots dead, large gashes or bullet holes obvious even from hundreds of yards away.
The streets ran red with blood, mixed with cooling oil and plasma, from destroyed mechs, neither side coming through unscathed. The landscape surrounding the town was gutted and pockmarked, train gathering in craters created by near-constant shelling as the defenders tried to withhold the inexorable advance of the Cygaran army. The Cygaran standard flapped in the cold wet rain, proving it was all for naught.
Harry could see the ground infantry begin to come in and do the mop-up and the policing. Their brown jackbooted uniforms were seemingly perfect for the weather and the now muddy sludge they had to manoeuvre through. He was happy, the Church of the Awakened One was just about to surrender, and he could feel it. This had been their final holdout. The Church, as they referred to themselves, was led by a crazy man who thought that all infidels deserved nothing other than death if he were feeling lucky.
What he did when he captured a town was give all the people a chance to "convert" to his psychotic religion, usually as a simple acolyte, where most people were only able to eke out the smallest of lives for themselves. Only the most fanatical members of such a cult were allowed to advance. The real problem came if they refused. The old and infirm got off easy, they were executed on the spot. The able-bodied men were sent to mine for the requisite materials to continue building mechs. The young women were taken as pleasure slaves for Ockern and his inner circle.
The children arguably had it the worst of all. Children under the age of six were taken away from their parents and brainwashed to see the "beauty" of the religion, he had fought against them on more than one occasion, and their single-minded determination to do whatever their "God" commanded was unnerving at best, horrifying at worst. Once the religion got its tendrils deep enough into a child's psyche, no one had ever seen them recover. It was commonly believed that the only release was death. Luckily the war against the rebels was all but over, this was to be the final push.
Fires burned across the battlefield, eagerly consuming all available fuel, somehow still lit in the drizzle as dark grey clouds gathered overhead. The dusk was lit by the innumerable burning fires as the evening sky glowed with an eerie muted orange light. The light was refracted by the heavy smog of dust and debris that was just now settling, leaving a heavy smog-like atmosphere, cast in a muted orange colour. The survivors watched on, their eyes hollow, their hearts and minds heavy from the brutal fighting they had been engaged in for the last three days. The horrors of battle were fresh on their minds.
"We did it, we finally did it." an old man said, letting his weary body drop heavily to the dirt. His face was lined with sweat, streaking through the blood and grime that accumulated throughout the battle.
"What are you going to do now?" he asked, looking down at his worn and calloused hand; watching the light of the fires bounce off his rings, not looking at all like the victorious general that he was.
His proud visage finally slipped. It was just enough to glimpse the old man underneath - a man who had fought in far too many battles, too many life-and-death situations, a man who just wished for a quiet life to seep through.
"I'm not sure."
The young man's hair was shorn short in the common military style, stuck to his scalp, scars crisscrossing his skull. His emerald green eyes were dull, almost lifeless, sitting against the tree trunk they had cut down and set next to the fire. Someone had begun brewing a pot of coffee over the fire to reenergize the fighters.
He was only sixteen but his eyes told a different story, a young man who had seen far more than those of his age should be forced to. Eyes told of countless battles, of near death, of ruthless murder, of friends dying, killed on a battlefield. But they still somehow said I will not bend, I will not break, I am here!
He sighed heavily, looking the old man square in the eye. It was something men thirty years his senior struggled with.
"I will be here while you finish securing the push into Zyra, and I will be there to watch the surrender of the Zyran army, and I will be the first to congratulate you on your promotion to High Command, but then I must continue my journey."
"You could always wear the colors of Cygar permanently," the old man said, pressing gently.
Letting out a humourless sigh, the young man replied, "Perhaps, one day, but today is not that day." He looked up at the old man with something akin to sadness. This was not the first time that he was offered the ability to wear Cygar's colours permanently, nor was Cygar the only kingdom to offer such an offer. Cygar was merely the most recent.
"I could give you a forward command right now, I could get you a new core for your mech, any weapon, any attachment, name it and it's yours." the old man said, sounding almost pleading. "Just take the colors. I have met many young men, they are all restless, but none as much as you."
He gestured to a standard, almost broken in half, still fluttering in the slight breeze. The colour looked almost blood-like in the weird dusk, its golden-winged sword like an avenging angel seeking retribution for some unknown sin.
"Join, settle down, quit putting yourself at death's door, and join Cygara's high command with me, I know they want you."
He shook his head softly.
"I can't, I won't be tied down. Once I accept the colours, you'll be honour-bound to land me. It may not happen today, and probably not tomorrow, but one day, one day there will be enough pressure to land me, and not to get too prideful, I'd assume it to be a dukedom, and you and I both know that I can't accept that, at least not yet."
The old man let out a slow small breath. He wanted to argue, but he knew that what the young man said was true. The boy was searching for something he doubted even the boy himself knew. The old man held out hope that he could sway the young man, convince him that his quest was for naught, that happiness could be found off the battlefield. In his heart, he knew it was a fool's errand but he felt honor-bound to try.
The young man turned his head and let his eyes rest upon the comforting sight of his sword, a masterwork of engineering, a weapon befitting a warrior. It had been created out of the best steel in all of Kissindra with an elegant runic script running up and down the centre of the blade. This signified the blessing of Solyndra, while the edge boasted a width measured in nanometers. The blade itself was enchanted to stay ever sharp.
The boy was the best mech pilot that anyone had seen in quite some time. His ability to interface with his mech was among the best of what anyone on the continent could offer in terms of responsiveness. His magic turned his Ravager Class into a seemingly natural extension of his body, making it dance across the battlefield. In one hand his sword, an eight-foot behemoth that cut both man and machine apart with ease; in his other, a chain gun that shot rounds out at a blistering five thousand rounds per second. Dealing death at a range, and speed that boggled all perceptions. His abilities and that of his mech were augmented by his unique form of magic.
To be a mech pilot required magic. That was the only way to connect with the core of a mech. The more powerful the sorcerer the better the mech would respond. A well-trained and skilled mech pilot was invaluable to a country's fighting force. One had to use their magic to control the mech, using the magic to guide their mech's movements.
A newly promoted mech pilot or a weak sorcerer could do little more than walk forward in a more or less straight line and occasionally turn. Their value to the army was as a movable heavy weapons platform. But a true master could easily turn a hopeless situation into a runaway victory. Their ability to manoeuvre their mech with merely a thought could change the outcome in all but the most hopeless situations.
Once young Harry began to exhibit the telltale signs of having magic, he was immediately taken to the Grand Mechanist to be tested for compatibility with mechs. The young child took to mech piloting like a duck to water. Normally it took prospective children, often as young as seven,eight months of meditation to even begin to sense a mech core.
Harry had done it within the first day of meditation, and by the second day, the child had already begun walking around the training yard in the mech. By the end of the first month of training, he was already sparring with and holding his own against children three or four years older than him. By the time graduation rolled around - his cohort graduated at thirteen - he was already a well-decorated veteran of both the Telllimanus campaign and also the Pullan campaign.
He already earned himself the distinguished title of "High Mech Pilot'' for single-handedly killing five enemy mechs, many of them heavier and better armed than his light mosquito class mech. After serving out his time in the Makavian military, he left and became a mercenary, fighting for whoever had the coin to pay his exorbitant rates.
But seeing how he was the best pilot in the known world he had armies lining up to pay his rates and lock him down for the duration of campaigns. Soon after becoming a mercenary, he used not an inconsiderable bonus to transplant his Mosquito mech core into his now familiar Ravager Class mech.
It was a medium-sized twenty-one-ton mech, a simple gunmetal grey except for a golden lightning bolt laid across an azure background. It was the symbol of Harry Getthen, the name he had chosen for himself once entering the academy.
His caregivers as he thought of them - when he thought of them at all - were named Dallumar. But Harry had never felt like he truly belonged to them. They were abusive, unloving people, forcing him to wake early every morning from his cramped sleep spot under the heater to take care of the multitude of animals. The fat slob of a man would go back to sleep in the bed that he shared with his equally horrendous wife.
After feeding the animals, Harry was then forced to come back inside and cook breakfast for them. Only then would they drag themselves out of bed and lumber downstairs and snap at him for every inane thing they could think of. The only time they were even remotely grateful for him was when they received payment from the empire for the successful procurement of a mech pilot. This amounted to a one thousand credit fee, which led immediately to stuffing their fat gobs with as much luxury food as they could procure.
When he left for the academy, all he took with him aside from the bare necessities were his long-handled knife, given to him by the butcher where Harry had worked before admittance to the academy and an old ratty baby blanket that was embroidered with the name Harry on it. This was the only thing his caregivers had found when they spotted the boy.
They had rightly assumed that was the child's name. He was simply found in the woods and swaddled, sleeping peacefully with a fresh lightning bolt scar on his forehead when he was found. Nothing else was known about the boy, save his apparent first name, Harry.
Harry stood in his mech watching as the remaining prisoners were drug up to the front where the rostrum had been set up, The remaining leaders of the Zyran Army stationed here had been sentenced to death yesterday. The sentence was read in the deep booming bass that Harry was familiar with, coming from his friend and leader of this campaign.
"You! You! You!" came a raspy voice.
Harry looked around, confused, before spotting a stooped old crone leaning heavily on a staff that was covered in runes.
"You don't belong here!" she yelled, her eyes burning with barely repressed rage, spittle flying from her lips. "Begone! Foul cur, begone from this land foul! Demon, begone forevermore!"
With that final pronouncement, he felt magic wrap him and rip him from the only life he had ever known.
A/N Its back, I promised you that I wouldn't forget about this story, and Well here it is. The first chapter of the rewritten The Power he knows not, Enjoy!
Thanks to ChiaroscuroGirl for her beta work, as well as her insight into the weirder ideas I insist on including into the story.
Update 2/22/23 I now have a discord discord. gg/gm9mhAYYYa Come Join me!