The Master of Death
Different Tracks
Stepping into the Nevernever was like leaving the desert. It was like the world had been dry of magic all along and he hadn't noticed—until he plunged head first into the ocean. Energies and forces flowed past him, above him, and beneath his feet, vibrant and full and radiating with power.
They were in a forest, with crystal leaves in all the vibrant shades of autumn. The trees, he noticed, had no visible roots, and seemed to merge seamlessly with the ground at their base. It wasn't dark in the forest, though it was nighttime on the other side of the portal; or, at least, it seemed like everything was illuminated by the sun, even though the trees canopy hide the sky completely and should have blocked the light.
Harry hummed quietly as he took that in, accepting it. His tracking team followed him quickly into the portal and immediately began scanning the area.
"That way, I suppose," He said as they decided on a direction.
"Wait," Margaret said, stopping him. She narrowed her eyes as she ghosted silently around the area. She rose off the ground, stopping to look at the tree leaves before lowering again. She shook her head. "As I thought, Justin will have run into some trouble. This must have been his last resort, or he'd have taken a different route."
"How so?" Harry asked.
"The leaves," She said. "I recognize this area; it's near the border of Winter. All the leaves in this point towards the border…I never found out it that was supposed to serve as a guide or a warning, though. Either way, there are a series of seven bridges over seven rivers. Mab, the Queen of Winter, placed one of her trolls under each of the bridges and they make a point of trying to eat anyone that crosses."
"Trolls?" Harry asked, raising an eyebrow. "An interesting choice of guards, though I can see how it would be effective. Are they strong?"
Margaret shrugged.
"There trolls," She said. "More than that, they're trolls chosen by Mab. She wouldn't waste her strongest ones by putting them here, but I'm sure they're all mighty enough for members of their kind. But how strong they are isn't the point. If they kill invaders, that's fine, but if the invaders kill them, here in the land she owns and which they rightfully protect, she can claim that it's within her rights to deal with them as she sees fit and nobody on the Accords would be able to argue."
"So if we kill them, it will be off with our heads?"
She shrugged again.
"Probably not, but she could threaten us with it before offering a deal in return for forgiveness, which may or may not be worse. It'd be more profitable, that way, because she'd gain the services of a warrior, or a group of warriors, that can defeat at least one troll."
"But she'd lose a troll in the process," He pointed out.
"So? Mab can get more trolls any time she wants. Even if someone killed all seven trolls, she could just have a new batch of changelings made whenever she felt like it."
Harry filed that away.
"It would be easier to just avoid them entirely, then. Will they bother us if we cross the rivers in some other way?"
"No," She said, shaking her head. "You can even just cross under a veil and they won't chase you if you drop it on the other side, as long as they don't catch you on the other side. That's probably what Justin intends to do. The river's are…unpleasant, however, so I don't recommend swimming."
"I didn't intend to." He said, gesturing. He glanced around quickly, memorizing the place in case he needed to apparate back here, and then gestured with his wand, unraveling the transmigrated animals. "Lead the way."
She glanced him in confusion and he returned her gaze with a mild gaze, taking silent amusement as her eyes widened as he began to rise into the air.
"I trust you can lead us there by air? An old man like myself is hardly in good enough shape to take long walks through a forest, so I prefer to fly."
Margaret silently followed him into the air. Harry carefully navigated the tree branches while Margaret just let herself slide straight through them. As he rose above the trees, he found the sky stained in lovely shades of purple, red, and blue, as if it were sunset.
That would require there be a sun, however, and he couldn't see one anywhere.
"Let's go," He said, shaking away the thought. He drew his cloak around him before making Margaret invisible to everyone but him with a flex of his will. He let his head exposed so Margaret could see him in turn, and together they flew above the treetops, crystalline leaves passing quickly below.
Slowly, the trees beneath them began to change, shifting from the colorful splendor of autumn to the empty skeletons of winter before fading completely, leaving behind dead, barren ground. The temperature began to drop extraordinarily quickly, going down what felt like fifty degrees in several minutes. As soon as he started seeing his own breath, Harry cast a Warming Charm on himself.
He came to a halt a split second later and tilted his head at the sight before him.
It was snowing hard, but it was like there was an invisible wall separating it from him. As if worried of crossing some line, it stopped uniformly a foot in front of him, settling on the ground without letting a single flake cross over.
Carefully reaching out with one hand, he made sure there wasn't actually an invisible wall there, before glancing at his companion.
"Is this the place," He asked, squinting into the storm. He thought he might have seen something there, but visibility was so poor he couldn't be sure what it was. He kind of hoped it was a bridge, though.
Margaret frowned, looking at the snow warily.
"This is the place," She said, sounding hesitant. "But, it's not supposed to snow this hard here…This is the very edge of Winter and the weather reflects it; I've never seen it get more than a bit on the cold side. Something's wrong and I don't know why."
Harry pondered that for a moment before shrugging.
"I don't intend on staying long," He said, drawing his hood up to hide his face as well as shield it. "And I must admit I'm not all that curious about the weather. Let's finish this before it becomes an issue and leave."
Diving into the storm, he faltered slightly at the force of the wind, before forcing himself to stabilize. He was glad for the make that he could see through his invisibility cloak even with it covering his face completely; with winds like this, the snow may well have hurt. A hidden movement with his wand caused the snow to slide off the cloak instead of sticking to it, keeping his vision as clear as possible as he flew towards the blurred shape.
He had a hard time making it out until he was almost directly above it. He tried to look for Justin, but he couldn't see anyone. It could have been the storm…or maybe there just wasn't anything to see.
Narrowing his eyes, he lowered slowly until he covered horizontally less than a meter above ground. Searching quickly as he hovered parallel to the ground, he swept the area nearby until he found what he was looking for.
It was faint and half filled with snow, but…there were definitely footprints in the snow. Shifting himself into a vertical position without moving a muscle, he frowned into the distance down the length of the bridge.
Putting a hand in his pocket, brushing the stone within—and with a firm effort of will, dragged Margaret right to his side. She looked around with wide eyes, not seeing him.
"I've found their tracks," He said, invisible by her side. She started suddenly, which he took some amusement in. "But before I pursue them, I figured I'd ask for your opinion."
She scowled at where she thought he was, but missed him by several feet. After a moment, she looked around, her face falling into a tense mask as her gaze fell to the tracks. She followed them with her eyes down the bridge until they were out of sight.
"He's veiled himself and the girl," She said, sounding certain. "Otherwise they'd have been attacked. You'll be attacked too, if they see you or if you make too much noise."
"That will not be a problem." He said, pondering the bridge. "But if I can't make noise or let myself be seen…I suppose it goes without saying that they'll attack if I make too much noise taking Justin down? Hm…well, it's not as though I'd particularly mind if he were attacked by trolls, but I can't risk Elaine. I'll save her, then deal with Justin."
Margaret glanced at him once, apparently wondering about something.
"And how do you intend to deal with his death curse?" She asked, as if she already knew the answer.
Harry slowly lifted an eyebrow.
"Explain," He ordered.
She seemed caught between sighing and shooting him a smirk.
"His death curse," She repeated. "The curse he will cast as his life slips away—all the energy he has, everything that gives him life, released in a single spell as he dies."
Harry didn't bother asking if it was dangerous. The fact that it was called a 'death curse' kind of implied that.
"Will it endanger the girl?" He asked instead.
Margaret shrugged.
"That depends entirely on what he does with it," She told him. "As long as you have the power, you can do anything you want with your death curse. It could by an explosion, if he was uncreative. Or a curse on you or the girl of some kind. Or even a message to someone. Whatever he wanted that he thought was worth spending his last spell on."
"I'll take that as a maybe." Harry decided, pursing his lips. After a long moment, he nodded. "Very well; I know how to deal with things like that. Before he has a chance to curse me…he will already be dead."
Gesturing towards his eyes, he cast a spell Ron had taught him… it must have been more than a hundred years ago. Harry silently marveled at that as his senses sharpened. The Supersensory Charm was a pretty simple one, but being simple had never kept spells from being useful. Ron had used it to get his driver's license and to drive cars in general, to make up for when he occasionally forgot to look at his rear view and side mirrors.
With the senses this charm granted, not looking behind you while driving wasn't an issue. It went without saying that it was just as useful, if not more so, in battle and in other situations. As his eyesight improved, he was able to see the individual snowflakes as they fell and witness them in all their shapes and beauty. He heard the wind as it passed through the world, rustling the branches of trees that were now so very far away. If not for his cloak and the spells he'd laid upon it, he'd have felt the chill of the storm with startling clarity and the touch of snowflakes and of the wind.
It was truly a marvelous spell and one of his favorites, even if having enhanced senses could be used against him.
He looked at the tracks and followed them with his eyes, his gaze piercing the veil of the snow. Rising into the air again, he followed the tracks across the bridges, watching as they became fresher. It was at the beginning of the fourth bridge that they stopped. Before his eyes, more prints slowly came into existence, not as if being made by invisible feet, but as if slowly fading into existence. The heel of the prints appeared first, cut off from the rest of the foot for a moment before that too became visible.
Watching it, Harry guess it was another illusion, probably centered on the caster. It wouldn't make the prints disappear, but it hid the ones immediately around Justin and Elaine. Justin must have figured that if someone noticed the prints, they at least wouldn't know exactly where they were.
It was nothing but a paper defense, though, and Justin probably knew it. Or, at least, it was the moment someone was looking for him; he'd probably hoped that no one would try looking for him in the first place.
Harry seriously pondered the fact that it had started snowing in an area that supposedly rarely saw snow, just as Justin was trying to move discreetly. That was the type of luck that tended to make him suspicious, but for the moment, he could only be grateful for it.
Well, that, and hope that it wouldn't suddenly turn on him.
Still, in the snow, it was easy enough to find Justin. Now that he knew where to look, he could see the flaws in the illusion. It went without saying that when creating an illusion, the more things you had to keep track of, the harder it was. Making yourself invisible was relatively easy. Hiding an entire area, however, was much, much more complex—especially when it was raining or snowing. In weather like this, Harry probably would have used spells to keep people from consciously recognizing him, rather than make such an illusion, for one simple reason.
He didn't think there was anyone in the world that could accurately keep track of every snowflake in an area and model how it fell.
At the border of Justin's illusion, snowflakes suddenly shifted position, all of the snow falling in the same way. It was like someone had recorded a section of the snow storm for five second and then replayed it again and again. By watching where the illusion didn't match with everything around it, he silently mapped out the borders of the illusion, figuring it was a semi-sphere around two and a half to three meters in radius, with Justin and Elaine almost certainly at the center.
A careful glance at the footprints and he figured that Elaine was on the left and Justin on the right, but they were standing within easy reach of each other.
Perfect.
He drew in a slow breath, readying himself to end this. He ran through his options again quickly, making sure there wasn't a better one, before shaking his head. Average human reaction time was one hundred fifty to three hundred milliseconds, but he was sure that he could kill Justin in less than a hundred this way.
He apparated on the exhale, into the midst of the illusion, less than a meter behind where he knew Elaine and Justin to be. His already outstretched hands had to move mere centimeters to touch them. He ended up grabbing Elaine by the back of the neck and Justin by the shoulder and—
He skipped the remaining bridges, suddenly appearing on the other side. Elaine and Justin were both visible now, and he let go of Justin's shoulder, causing him to tumble to the snow.
More than three bridges behind him, a brain hung in the air for a fraction of a second before being caught in gravity's hold and falling to the ground, splinched quite neatly out of Justin's head.
Elaine immediately whirled on him, freezing for several seconds when she saw nothing. It took the poor girl's violated mind awhile to just make thoughts connects, before she raised her hands—
Which promptly dropped to her side as her eyes began to droop. Harry shifted his arm around her back to keep her from falling as she sagged down in a bewitched sleep.
"None of that, my dear," He whispered. He quickly looked her up and down, making sure she was physically unharmed, before nodding in satisfaction. Of course, he already knew that her mind wasn't in anywhere near as good condition, but he could fix that when he was in a safer place.
A sudden roar behind him drew his attention, as the guardian trolls finally reacted. The huge, ugly creatures clambered onto the bridges as he turned to make sure they weren't a threat. They quickly gathered around Justin's displaced brain, sniffing the air like dogs, before turning, looking at him.
Or rather, since he was still invisible, at Justin's corpse and Elaine.
Harry contemplated them for a moment, before deciding it wasn't particularly important. He was about to apparate back to the portal when another, even stranger sound, made him hesitate.
Clapping. Slow, deliberate applause that echoed strangely. At the sound of them, the trolls quieted with a sudden whimper, like fearful, obedient dogs.
Glancing quickly to make sure the source wasn't dangerous, he saw one of the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his entire life. Tall, slender, and beautiful in a way that made it obvious that she couldn't possibly be human, she was seated side-saddle on a pitch-black horse. Her red hair curled delicately down to her hips, causing her flawless white skin to stand out all the more in contrast. Her cheekbones were high as her face was such that he could not tell precisely what age she was, except that she was neither young nor old nor anything but stunning. Her golden eyes were catlike and her lips were full and red. Her flowing gown was a beautiful green and she wore it like a supermodel.
He stared for a long moment, surprised and slightly confused, but was about to dismiss her and leave when she spoke.
"Impressive as ever, Harry Potter," She said before he could apparate.
He stopped again, curiosity warring with logic, before slowly drawing down the hood of his cloak and shrugging just enough out of it that it revealed him but kept it on his shoulders. He said nothing, looking at her quietly and uncertainly. Margaret and Bob the skull had both recognized him, but they'd been angry or fearful. This woman didn't sound like she was either.
He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.
The trolls conversed among themselves in their grunting language, surprising Harry slightly, both with the noise and with the fact that he could understand it. They contemplated whether or not they should try to eat him and the girl, whether the body on the ground was too cold to be tasty yet, and whether they would get in trouble for eating them.
Without even looking behind him, he replied to their words.
"Leave," He said in troll, a low pitched grunt, followed by a click of his teeth and a higher pitched grunt. They fell silent at once, staring at him openly like he was the strangest thing any of them had ever seen, before the largest one, the apparent leader, grunted back something impudent with an emphasizing snarl.
Harry exhaled slowly in impatient annoyance, turning towards them as he drew up his hood again, so that he could not be seen from behind. He allowed his transfiguration to unravel and looked at them for a moment, his many eyes firm. He opened two of his mouths so that they could see his teeth and marvel out how they were not-teeth and how he was cold where the world was warm and wrong where it was right.
"Leave," His third mouth repeated as his teeth whirled around it.
They stared.
Then they left, whimpering yet again. He stared after them like a disapproving teacher at his foolish students and shook his head.
He snorted derisively as he transfigured himself back to being human.
"Trolls," He said, shaking his head. "Even if you can make them understand you, the only language they really understand is strength. At least they understood quickly, this time; I do so hate having to get violent over silly things like this."
The woman sighed behind them.
"Children will be children," She said, sounding dismissive. "Foolish and young."
Harry hummed quietly in agreement, turning towards her again.
"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, my lady," He said politely. "Who might you be?"
She slowly smiled, revealing dainty canines and he knew even before she spoke that she wouldn't answer his question.
"Oh, I am just a messenger for my Queen," She said.
Harry felt something move behind him, but recognized the feeling as well.
"Her name is Lea," Margaret whispered into his ear, finally catching up with him. "Leanandsidhe. And she is no mere messenger. Let her see me."
Harry looked at her out of the corner of his eye, nodded slightly, and it was so.
Lea's eyes widened in surprise as her head snapped towards Margaret, but then a slow smile began to spread across her face as she looked down at Justin's corpse.
"My, my…I think I understand now. As expected from the Master of Death, even the fallen know no surcease. It has been quite some time since last we met, poppet, and I must admit I had not expected us to ever meet again. But it is good to see you again, child."
"Lea," Margaret replied, nodding to her. "May I ask what you're delivering?"
"Just an invitation, my dear," Lea said, her eyes turning slowly towards Harry. A letter was held delicately between the fingers of her right hand, though it hadn't been there before. "From Queen Mab."
Harry furrowed his brow, beginning to get annoyed. It was really getting troublesome how everyone knew him when he didn't know them. He was going to have to make a check list of everything he needed to do to preserve the time stream.
Still, he nodded in acceptance, beckoning her forward with one hand. When she handed him the letter, he immediately flipped it open.
The contents surprised him.
It wasn't long, but he found himself reading it again and again. He brought one hand to his pursed lips covering his mouth as he worked his jaw. He didn't stop reading the note until he noticed Margaret try to move behind him to sneak a peak, at which point he snapped it closed and slid it smoothly into his cloak.
When Margaret shot him a suspicious look, he ignored her completely. The letter wasn't for her and she had no real right to read it in the first place.
Instead, he just stood there for a second, hand concealing his mouth and hiding any expressions that he might not be able to control. He kept his eyes closed for the same reason, as he took a calming breath and relied on his Occlumency to get himself completely under control.
That…no one should know all those things about him. There was no one alive or dead who knew all of that except him, and all the different people that had the scattered pieces were a dimension away and unlikely to talk.
The only realistic way she could know about that was if he'd told her or if she'd broken his mind and torn out the secrets within. Without knowing what type of being Queen Mab was, he really had no way of know which.
Honestly, he was seriously worried about the latter, because he was having a harder time imagining the former. He supposed it was possible that he trusted this Mab that much, but he sincerely doubted that'd he could trust anyone that much.
Even Ginny didn't know about the secrets of the Department of Mysteries.
But even if he wasn't sure how she'd learnt about that, he was absolutely sure that she must have learnt it from him, in some way or another. The possibilities of how she might have acquired that information simultaneously confused and frightened him, but there was no doubt about where she'd gotten it.
Maybe that was the point; to prove that he was involved with her in some way beyond the shadow of a doubt, or maybe to get his attention.
Either way, it had worked. Even if it could well be a trap, he was suddenly very, very interested in Mab.
Lowering his hand once he was sure he was in control of himself, he gave Lea a polite smile and bow.
"Thank you very much, my dear lady, for being kind enough to bring this message to me so quickly. Please inform your Queen that I would be delighted to accept her invitation." He said. "However, I have obligations to fulfill at the moment…"
He shifted Elaine's sleeping body for emphasis.
"…And I cannot help but notice that the date of the party has not been given, nor the location."
"'Seek out Queen Mab at the next stop along your track and the party will be underway when you arrive.'" Lea said. "That was the second message Queen Mab gave unto me—and the second which you gave unto her."
Harry twitched.
"Of course I did," He murmured. "You'd think that since I knew how this was going go in advance, I'd also know when to stop."
He sighed, then, realizing he couldn't blame himself; he'd have to send the same message to avoid a paradox.
"Thank you again for your kindness, my lady," He said, forcing another smile. "I shall make sure to attend the party, but for now I must go."
Lea turned her head slightly, looking off into the distance far behind him.
"Indeed you must," She murmured. "Make haste, Harry Potter. My Lady hid you as best she could with this storm, but your arrival will not go unnoticed for long and Titania has not forgiven you. Go."
XxXXxX
Harry wasn't sure who Titania was. He didn't know why she had a grudge against him or how dangerous she was.
He did, however, have a long-held policy to not wait around for people that wanted to kill him. At least, not ones he knew nothing about, had no knowledge of whatsoever, and who may well outnumber him.
There was a time and a place to stand up and fight. But it wasn't when there was no need to and you weren't sure about your odds.
Instead, he chose to apparate back to the portal with Elaine, step through, and not look back.
"Elaine!" The boy said, rising to his feet with a strangled voice, his voice as relieved as if he had awoken from a nightmare and would it was just a dream. He rushed quickly to his side. "Is she okay?"
"She's just sleeping," Harry assured him, kneeling to set her down. "Can you close that portal? Supposedly, I have someone following me; if at all possible, I'd rather it not be there when they catch up to me."
"Where's Mom," Dresden said instead, looking around like he expected her to pop up at any moment…which, Harry supposed, she had last time.
He sighed, reaching into his pocket to touch his stone yet again and summon her back into his presence, startling the boy.
"The portal, please?" He repeated.
The boy hesitantly nodded, pulling himself away from Elaine's side and lifting his hands into the air. For a few moments, nothing happened, but then the opening began to slowly close. Harry nodded in approval as he stood.
"Good," He said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to make sure the Universe isn't going to collapse on us or something. I'll be back in…five minutes, I guess."
"Um," The younger Harry said, swallowing. "O…kay?"
Quickly making sure his flame-freezing charm was still working, Harry apparated to the other side of the train.
—And immediately had to catch himself in midair as there was no floor beneath him. Unlike the other side of the house, which seemed completely untouched by the fire, this side had been engulfed by an inferno. The House seemed ready to fall apart, except in the places where it had already done so, and was bathed in flames.
Now that he thought about it…He hadn't worried about it much since there'd been no signs of it on the other side, but the fire really should have spread there by now. Or, at the very least, the smoke should have.
Frowning, he willed himself forward through the air, towards the train. About a meter from its side, the fire and the smoke came to a halt, and the floor stood untouched. Even if it should have been collapsing, it supported his weight without a problem when he hesitantly stepped upon it.
He pondered it for a moment before shrugging and stepping fully onto it. This wasn't anywhere near the weirdest thing he'd seen today. Or in the past ten minutes, really.
Moving towards the entrance of the train, he knocked twice, firmly, and it opened immediately.
"Ah," His still monstrous looking companion said immediately. "There you are, sir. I'd wondered where you'd gotten to."
"There was a bit of business I had to take care of," Harry replied, shrugging. "And I'm afraid it seems there's quite a bit more. It appears I've caused a lot of trouble and now I'm going to have to clean up after myself, but I'm going to need your help with that."
His companion licked his mandibles considering.
"I'm not sure what you mean, sir." It said. "But it's the purpose of this train to take you where you need to go."
Harry bowed his head in thanks.
"It seems I've been to this universe in the past, chronologically," He said. "And done quite a bit, though I'm not certain of the specifics. I'm fairly sure that means I'm going to have to travel back in time to make sure things happen as they were supposed to. Can you take me there?"
It made a humming sound as several of its eyes removed themselves from their sockets and crawled across his face on twisted, misshapen legs. They looked at him and then at each other, before putting themselves into different sockets as their owner open his mouth, done thinking.
"This train can get just about anywhere, sir," It said. "If it needs to. However…that's only if we know where we're going. Existence is a very big place, sir; if you don't know exactly where you're trying to get to, it's effectively impossible to get there. We'd be lucky if we just ended up somewhere far from where we wanted to be and not in, well…you don't want to know."
Harry nodded in acceptance to that.
"It shouldn't be an issue," He said. "I know how this type of thing works. You said you received a call for the Master of Death before, did you not?"
"Yes, sir. But there was only one, if that's what you mean, sir."
Harry waved dismissively.
"Check for something besides the Master of Death; a call for some other person or thing."
"Um…what should I look for, sir?" It asked.
"It won't matter. Whatever you look for first will be the right thing."
"…Will that really work, sir? I can check to see if there are calls on other lines, but…will it really be the one we're looking for?"
"It should work, as long as we use that one. After all, at some point, we'll be going in time and setting things up so that people will contact us in that specific way. We'll just profit from our future labor right now."
"…I'm confused, sir."
Harry smiled at him.
"Time travel's like that, sometimes." He said. "Don't worry, though; while it makes no sense now, it'll be clear as day in the future. Or the past, I suppose, depending on where and when we get done."
"If you say so, sir. But…even if all that's true, and we do set things up in the past to help ourselves here in the future…how does that explain why we came here, now?"
Harry thought about that for a moment and shrugged.
"I don't know yet. Maybe we had ourselves come here to set things in motion? I figure I'll understand later." He dismissed. "All that matters is that I am here, now, and a lot of what I sincerely doubt are coincidences are coming together. I've already learnt a lot about my future actions because I just happened to be in exactly the right places at the right time…I think things were set up for this day."
"By us, sir?"
"Maybe. Or maybe we're being manipulated. We won't know until a bit further down the road, I suppose." Harry said, standing. "Anyway…I have at least one more thing to do at this point in time."
The sound of a wall being blown down echoed through the house.
"Make that at least two more things to do." He said, shaking his head. "I really hope I'm behind this convoluted mess; at least that way I'll be able to get revenge by doing this to myself. I won't even have to feel bad because it'll be all my fault."
XxXXxX