The Master of Death
Down to the Bottom
Harry immediately moved over to one of the cages, which contained a young, scared looking woman who was looking around frantically, as if trying to find something. It took him a moment to realize that she couldn't see him due to his cloak and an uncomfortable feeling settled into his stomach as he realized that their terrified response was caused by the mere opening of the door.
He gestured towards the door, locking it magically and, after a moment of thought, cast a silencing charm on it as well, just in case anyone should come near. Then he slid out of his cloak and knelt beside the young woman's bubble. She immediately flinched away from him as he suddenly appeared before her, whimpering. From several other bubbles, several others started screaming at him, including an older looking man and woman that may have been her parents.
Harry waited for a minute, hoping they would settle down once they realized he wasn't a giant, but they didn't. Without knowing their language, he couldn't calm them except with magic, and controlling this many people that way while also trying to get them to safety could easily get complicated.
But now that he had a group of normal humans, perhaps he could get rid of that weakness.
Slowly extending a hand, he clicked his fingernails against the hard surface of the bubble, before dragging them up. The girl's fearful eyes followed his fingers, until she'd unknowingly lifted them high enough to make eye contact—
And then he was in her mind.
A long time ago, Snape had derided him for simplifying Legilimency into something as simplistic as mind reading and had told him the mind was a complex and many-layered thing. It had taken him a long time to really understand what he'd meant—but he had learned, from experiences and mistakes.
And now, knowing what he had learned, he was forced to agree with Snape.
With his decades of experience, it was a simple matter for him to invade the layer of the mind responsible for conscious thought, allowing him to effectively 'read minds,' but the mind was so much more than that. Voldemort had sent him amazingly detailed dreams by feeding to the parts of his mind that were responsible for his dreams, and at the Ministry he'd almost completely taken over his body by assuming control over his voluntary muscles.
And yet, even that was not the limit of what you could do with the mind.
Harry sank into her mind, past the layers of her conscious, into the depths of her long-term memories. He slid past her procedural memories and dove into her declarative ones, finding where her episodic memories stopped and her semantic memories began, before entering the latter.
And there it was—exactly what he'd been looking for. Factual knowledge, independent of personal experience; how to make food, address elders with respect, the role of a woman in a household and on a ship, and many other things were stored there, but he flicked through them with barely a glance to get what he truly wanted. Her lexical knowledge—how to speak her language, how to form meaningless sounds to create defined words, and more than that, how to say the words, what tone to use, and all the many things that turned words in the dictionary into written and spoken sentences.
Having taken what he'd needed, he retreated from her mind. He wasn't sure how long he'd taken, but the people in the room had only grown louder. The girl hadn't even noticed what he'd done—or perhaps she had, but simply hadn't understood the feeling.
It didn't matter.
"Have they hurt you, child?" He asked, giving her another look over. She didn't have any obvious injuries, but things could be done that didn't leave a mark. The fact that they'd taken her clothing could have meant such a thing, but at the same time, everyone else had been stripped as well.
The girl looked at him strangely for a minute before her eyes widened as she apparently realized that he was in fact talking to her. The noise in the room quickly began to change, as the men and women close enough to hear his words began to spread them.
It didn't quiet, though; in fact, it got louder.
"He can…Is he…?" A man began hopefully.
"Quiet Caomh!" An older man snarled. "It's probably just another of their filthy tricks!"
"And what reason do they have to trick us?" A woman asked. "Eogan, they already have us. We're trapped in their cages with no way out. Why trick us now?"
"She's right," Another man said. "Why bother now? I for one wish to hear what the old man has to say."
Eogan snapped his head towards the new speaker, face outraged.
"Are you saying we should trust him, Ninian? We don't know who he is or where he's from! Who knows what could happen!"
"Yes," A strong looking man spoke and Harry recognized him as the older man who had shouted at him when he'd appeared before the girl; her father, perhaps, or maybe even a husband. "Who knows? We could end up captured and put into bubbles, forced to wait while monsters take us away one by one. Eogan, be quiet. I, too, would like to hear the newcomer speak—regardless of how he got here. Speak to him, Boudicca."
The girl, Boudicca, started at the sound of her name, but still took a few seconds to respond.
"I…" Her eyes darted around uncertainly. "Am in a cage?"
Harry sighed and then offered her a kind smile.
"Yes," He said. "I suppose there's a limit to how well you can be while you're held captive under the sea."
He stood then, raising his wand.
"Do not worry, though; I'm here now, which means you're safe," He said matter-of-factly, swishing his wand, causing the bubble around her to vanish into thin air. "All of you. And while I'm at it, I'm going to kill the ones who put you here so they'll never do this to you again. It's pleasure to meet you all, by the way."
The resulting outburst—cheers, really—was instantaneous and deafening, and Harry was thankful he'd put up that silencing charm. He let them cheer, though; after being held captive for so long, it was good that they had been able to hold onto hope.
Harry gestured towards Boudecca, clothing her with a spell before moving onto the next bubble. One by one, he freed and clothed the captured men and woman, causing amazing gasps and murmurs, but they seemed to accept magic fairly easily—being kidnapped by underwater giants probably helped with that.
He stood before Eogan's bubble and dissolved it, smiling at him.
"Do you think I can be trusted, Eogan?" He asked, smiling, conjuring the clothing a brief foray into the man's mind had revealed to be his normal wear.
Eogan scowled, before glancing towards a young boy and girl he'd already freed, and nodded sharply.
"If you can get us out of here, I suppose it doesn't matter who you are." He said. Of course, that wasn't really what he said—but it was what he meant. Harry just silently translated the words and the emotions and intentions Eogan's mind revealed to be behind them into phrases that were easier to understand then a direct translation.
Harry just smiled again, continuing to free them, watching silently as families reunited. He let them all have a moment, watching them quietly. After what they'd gone through, they deserved at least a few moments of happiness before he had to ruin it.
He slid over to the man he'd confirmed was Boudecca's father, clasping him on the shoulder.
"The tower we're in—it goes further down," He said. "There are several floors full of animals above us, but there are floors beneath this one, too. Are any of your people missing?"
The man glanced towards him, but then followed his gaze towards the joyful families and seemed to understand.
"Many of us have been taken," He said grimly. "My brothers. Nuallan, too, and Suibhne, plus their families. But all of us were in here together before they started taking them away."
Harry pursed his lips severely, nodding. He wondered when the sadness of what they had already lost would start setting into the people.
"There might be more people beneath us, then," He told the man. "I have to go check for myself. I can't leave anyone behind."
Boudecca's father nodded.
"Everyone!" Harry said, raising his voice. In an instant, everyone went silent; apparently, freeing them all had earned him some authority. "I'm sorry to be the bearer of badness, but we aren't safe yet. We still have to escape the rest of the tower, and to do that we'll likely have to fight."
A wave of almost palpable nervousness spread through the room. Harry couldn't blame them for that; their last encounter with the giants had ended up with all of them captured. He held his hand up for silence, however, stopping any fearful responses before they could begin.
"I know you're all afraid, but don't worry," He told them. "This won't be like last time. This time, you have me on your side and that means this time you're going to win."
Harry had no real way of guaranteeing that against an entire city of enemies with unknown power, but he'd learned long ago that an important part of inspirational speeches was not mentioning all the horrible ways things could go wrong. So instead, he gestured with his wand, conjuring a miniature model of the interior of the silver tower as he'd seen it so far, as well as a series of large, blocky layers to indicate the basements. The first six basements were clearly defined, but everything beneath that was solid black. He also made a model of the boat that had brought him here, positioned just outside.
He tapped the sixth basement layer.
"This is where we are now," He said. "The levels above are full of wild animals. To get out, we're going to head towards that boat and crush anything and anyone that gets in our way. However, there are floors below this one, possibly ones filled with other people who have been captured. I'm going to go down to the very bottom and free everyone I can find. I'll bring up everyone I can find and we'll all work together to escape. We'll march out as an army, if we have too."
"And what do we do?" Eogan said.
"For now, I need you all to stay in here. Someone will probably notice if we make a break for it, so I need you to wait until I'm done. I'm going to free each room and have them stay where they are until I've freed everyone. Then, once I've freed them all, I'll open all the doors and we'll get out of here quickly. That should give the giants less time to respond and call for help. Does everyone understand? Can you all agree to wait a little while before leaving this room?"
There were murmurs of agreement. As much as Harry was sure they all wanted to leave, they all seemed to agree that fighting the giants with a lot of people helping them would be a lot better than trying to fight them all alone.
"But what of us?" Eogan asked, but not fearfully. His brow was furrowed but he seemed to honestly be awaiting the answers. "What do we do if the giants come before you're done? And how are we supposed to fight them when we escape?"
Harry glanced over the men and woman gathered before him. A part of him hoped he'd be able to do all the dangerous stuff himself, but the practical part of him had already accepted the fact that that might not be possible and was prepared for things to go wrong.
"I will not force anyone into battle that does not wish to fight, but anyone who does, for their freedom or their families, step forward." He said, face serious. "And I will give you a way to fight the giants."
For a moment, they all glanced and spoke amongst themselves, but then most of the men stepped forward with various degrees of confidence, ranging from 'not much' to 'very little.'
Harry twisted his wand and raised it sharply into the air before slowly dragging it in an arc above the heads of the men.
And then solid, heavy plates of steel twisted themselves into existence, cladding them one by one. In ten thousand years, it would have been an archaic defense, but here, in the Stone Age, steel was something that wouldn't be discovered for thousands of years. It was harder than anything the men had ever encountered and, with a quick series of Lightening Charms, it weighed no more than the clothes on their backs. Swords, hammers, maces, and axes all formed by their sides, also lightened. Harry thought about making guns, but he was wary of putting them in the hands of a bunch of people who'd never used them and who may start to panic—in the cramped confines of the hallways, they would probably do more damage to each other then the giants.
They'd just have to make do with weapons that were thousands of years ahead of their time and the power of a wizard. And he could always make them later, if he got really desperate.
"With these, it should be a bit more of a fair fight," Harry said. "Now wait for me in here and guard the door. I've used magic to make sure that no sound will leave this room—if any of the giants enter, kill them quickly, before they can get outside and warn the others."
The freed men and women were marveling at the weapons he created, speaking of them in awed tones, but he saw several of the men nod at his orders. Eogan and Boudicca's father moved to stand near the door, where they could easily attack anyone who entered.
Harry nodded back at them and moved towards the door.
"I'll be back soon." Harry said, leaving the room.
He glanced towards the water pillar, taking a deep breath.
One floor down, who knows how many to go.
XxXXxX
'How many people have these giants captured?' Harry thought angrily. He'd freed four entire floors full of people, all of them of different nationalities. He'd told each group of the others he'd encountered and convinced them all to work together, but none of them seemed to have any prior knowledge of each other.
And he just couldn't figure out why. After seeing the warped creatures outside the city, he thought he had a good idea as to what they were doing to the people they captured, but why were they doing this? He couldn't pass it off as something random; not after seeing all this. Nine floors and counting of specially prepared rooms for containment, all of them full and with species coming from wildly different areas?
This had definitely been planned, which meant it had some kind of purpose behind it. He'd thought it might be slavery, and maybe it was, but if so, what were they making them do?
He shook his head, lifting a hand to rub at his temples as he slide further down into the depths of the tower.
All those people that had been captured…if this was as organized as it looked, he couldn't ignore the possibility that this had been going on for a long time. He hadn't seen any warped people, but those animals outside the city must have come from somewhere and there had been at least several thousand, and that was just what he'd see. If they'd been capturing animals for that long, they might have taken people before, too. How many times had these floors been filled and emptied?
He had no way of knowing, but just thinking about it pissed him off.
Harry was startled from his thoughts by what he saw in the tenth basement.
Unlike the other nine floors, the tenth was a large sphere, maybe twenty meters in diameter. The sides of the sphere were perfectly smooth and the only way out was through the water pillar. There were no doors or walls; nothing to hide behind or climb up. Anything that wanted to get out of this room would need to be able to breathe water and swim straight up.
Looking around, Harry figured that was probably the idea.
In all the floors above, the people and animals held captive had been held in bubble-like cages, but had been otherwise unharmed. There hadn't even been guards posted, though most likely because anyone who wanted to escape would have still needed to break out of their cage, pound down the door, and then make it up the pillar. Nonetheless, Harry would acknowledge that, regardless of how horrible their intentions and actions may have been, the giants had at least been practical enough to not harm any of the people they'd captured, if only because they were probably more useful healthy then they were alive.
But on the tenth basement of the silver tower, that wasn't the case at all.
Halting his vertical motion by 'flying' in the water, Harry shut away his emotions and his immediate desire to act. Reacting quickly wasn't the same as reacting well and with all these giants present it could get someone hurt very badly. Instead, he took a long moment to look at the situation and think about what he should do.
There were two guards present for every captive and the room was obviously much bigger than any of the others, so it stood to reason that these captives were more important than any on the upper floors, for whatever reason.
At the same time, however, they weren't being treated nearly as well.
Harry looked around in muted disgust. There were a number of strange looking devices positioned throughout the room, looking like the horrible offspring of medieval torture machines and some kind of coral. The vast majority of them had someone hooked up to them and in a great deal of pain. Even with his feelings locked away, Harry was still able to feel distaste for the act, from a practical standpoint; if they were trying to gather information, there were much more effective ways than torture, which is why he didn't enjoy using it.
He paused for a moment, considering that.
Were they trying to gather information? Or were they just causing pain? If they were trying to do the former, they weren't doing a very good job of it. In fact, the people in charge of the devices didn't seem to be asking any questions, which made the latter more likely, but didn't address the question of why. As far as he could tell, it was causing pain just for the sake of causing pain, which was something he just didn't understand.
Not understand it, however, didn't mean he was unfamiliar with it. He'd seen dozens—hundreds—of dark wizards exploiting and harming others for their own enjoyment, and he couldn't understand it any better now then he'd understood it with the Death Eaters. He wasn't a saint and in order to protect innocent people, he'd done things he wasn't proud of, but it had always had a point and he'd never let himself go too far. He'd never hurt someone solely for the sake of hurting them. What these captors were doing was something that disgusted him, no matter how many times he saw it.
Righteous anger attempted to rise up, but he fiercely squashed it back down with practiced skill. Learning Occlumency had been hard for him, since he'd always worn his heart on his sleeve, but he'd learned it, because he'd had too. Acting on impulse and letting your emotions show was something he hadn't been able to afford to do.
So instead of lashing out like he wanted too, he waited for several moments, taking calming breaths and clearing his mind. Then, when he was sure he was in control, he went back to observing the scene.
His anger and disgust had unconsciously caused him to focus on the machines and the act of torture, rather than the people involved. Doing so, it took him only a moment to realize what made this level so different.
The captives on this level weren't human. Instead, there were inhumanly beautiful beings huddled in pain and fear, creatures out of fairytales and nightmares crying out in pain, strange beasts whimpering like kicked dogs, and fantastic monsters that looked to be afraid of the dark; in the lowest depths of the tower was a menagerie of abused magical beings.
The torturers themselves were a bunch of humanlike giants. Harry swept his gaze over them before frowning, feeling like he'd missed something important. But even after a few moments of staring, he couldn't figure out was; they were definitely giants. They each stood taller than any normal human, hovering around eight feet. Beneath their clothes, their bodies looked nearly…twisted. Their muscle distribution was random and extremely disproportionate and gills stood out on their necks. He thought he might have seen something shell-like, but most of their bodies were covered. Other than that, there was nothing that particularly stood out about them. If someone looked only at their faces, they might have thought—
Harry froze, realizing what he'd missed.
The giants had all been strange looking. Some had looked freakish and monstrous and some had looked unearthly and beautiful, but none of them could have passed for normal.
And yet, the faces of the giants below looked…plain. Human. That was why he hadn't noticed anything odd about them; their faces weren't particularly remarkable in anyway—which was what he should have found odd. They weren't particularly hideous or beautiful; whereas the giants had stood out, these ones could have just blended into a crowd, if not for the monstrous aspects. They wouldn't have been at all out of place with the groups upstairs, if they'd had human bodies.
In fact, they would have blended in perfectly, down to their very skin color.
As he felt his hands curl into fists, Harry had a feeling that he might have stumbled upon the people that had been taken.
He stood still for a long moment, processing that and considering the implications.
He'd been right to wait and observe. If those were really captured humans, then he couldn't simply go in guns blazing. They were just innocent people that had been warped and twisted by monsters; even if what they were being forced to do was horrible, he couldn't just kill them.
But he did have to stop them. Even if they were being forced to do this against their will, he couldn't let them continue hurting innocent people and he'd like to think that the people beneath the giants alterations wouldn't want some puppeteers making them do this either.
That was okay; those two goals weren't mutually exclusive. They just made things a bit more complicated. He needed to do something about the creatures being tortured before their captors had time to gain their bearings and act intelligently and start using hostages. Which meant that keeping them from using the captives against him was his first priority.
He glanced around, locating everything that could give him an advantage. The walls were smooth and featureless, but in the middle of the sphere hung several dozen floating crystals that served as lights. Many different colors of what he assumed to be blood had coated the walls, along with torn clothing and all the disgusting products of keeping a group captive in an area for an extended period of time.
It was disgusting—but for someone skilled in Transfiguration, it was useful all the same.
Thinking for a moment, he nodded to himself and raised his wand.
All at once the lights went out.
With his Night Vision Charm still active, he could still see perfectly in the sudden darkness, so he could see the human-giants react. Even caught by surprise, they reacted with inhuman swiftness; but as he'd said before, reacting quickly was not the same as reacting well.
They spun, immediately assuming a defensive position in expectation of an attack, rather than trying to use the hostages they had at their disposal. It wasn't until a few moments later, after not being attack, that they realized they weren't the targets at all.
And by then it was already too late.
One of them said something he couldn't understand in a voice that could have been a human's, if there had been any infliction or emotion in it whatsoever, causing the others to shift into a strange formation. One brought out another of those glowing crystals and tossed it up into the air, where it hung suspended on its own. The single crystal wasn't enough to properly illuminate the entire room, but reduced the darkness to a dim veil.
The humans-turned-giants looked around cautiously, trying to find the one who had shut off the lights, but Harry just floated silently and invisibly above them, casting spells. In trying to find their enemy, it took the former men a moment to realize what was wrong.
The torture machines that had bound the inhuman creatures had changed, becoming copies of the bubbles that bound the people and animals on the levels above—if those bubbles had crystalline spider legs. The 'spiders' had climbed the smooth walls of the sphere, taking them out of reach of the human giants.
One of the giants shouted, lifting a spear that looked like it might have been grown from some kind of giant sea urchin and not wanting to take any chances, Harry turned into a snake in his hands, expecting him to be surprised and try to throw it away.
He didn't.
Instead, the man-giant grabbed the snake by its head and snapped its neck, his blank expression unchanging, and reached for another spear.
Harry hit him with a stunner from less than a meter away and Apparated to the opposite side of the giants to avoid a response, trying not to worry about that emotionless reaction.
The giants lashed out around themselves without a second thought, naturally failing to hit anything. The giant that had shouted orders before, whom he assumed to be the leader, tried to start giving orders, but Harry drowned out his voice by twirling his wand and summoning a painfully loud shrieking noise, before snapping it sharply to the side and shattering the dim light high above his head.
As he'd hoped, the giants had quickly become focused on hunting him down. Assured that he wouldn't need to worry about them trying to hurt the captives for at least few moments longer, he Apparated again, appearing in the midst of the giants, silent and invisible. He raised his wand and then he lowered it like he was sweeping down an ax.
There was a silver streak of light that flashed around him, accompanied by a sound like a gunshot and minute tremors that vibrated through the floor. As quickly as it had come, the light faded. Several giants shouted, one of the creatures high above him let loose a deafening screech that was even louder than the one he'd created, and hard crystal shells shook as several creatures tried to escape their bubbles—even as another silver flash went off. For a few seconds, there were the frantic movements of scuffling footsteps, followed by something large and heavy hitting the ground.
And then it was over.
With a gesture, he hushed the reverberating scream he'd conjured, before creating a bright white light that lit up the entire room all on its own. The giant's spears twisted suddenly, writhing and becoming heavy steel chains that wrapped themselves around the unconscious giants.
Satisfied, Harry glanced upwards, where his crystal spiders had gathers on the ceiling, and winced in pain. Leaving the ground with a thought, he slowly floated upwards, towards the still shrieking woman in one of the spheres.
Her voice was quite literally painfully loud, even through the thick, muting shell he'd created around the captives, and he had to quickly put a Silencing Charm on his ears to keep them from bleeding. Three meters from the ceiling, he turned himself upside-down, before moving the rest of the way up and pressing his feet against the ceiling.
The screaming girl had long black hair and some of the palest skin he had ever seen; she probably would have been quite beautiful, if not for her shredded, bloodstained cloths and the wounds on her skin. There were several cuts around her mouth, presumably from the torture machine that must have been tailored too her. As she continued to scream, cracks began to form in the shell around her, making Harry wince slightly. That cage was a good six inches thick and it was cracking like glass.
He drew away his cloak so she could see him, which caused her to flinch away in her sphere and scream even louder. Due to his Silencing Charm, he couldn't hear her, but he could literally feel the sound she was creating.
He gestured sharply, silencing the bubble around her and repairing it before it could fully shatter and sent her falling to the floor. Then, he lifted a hand to his lips.
It took a nearly a minute, but with his Silencing Charm keeping her voice from breaking the glass, she eventually went silent and tears started to form in her eyes. That made Harry wince, too, and he quickly dispelled the Charm, before knocking on the bubble.
"Don't cry," He said, raising his voice so she'd hear him through the thick sphere. After all, he didn't have a voice that could literally break glass. "I'm here to save you."
Her eyes widened at that, apparently stunned.
"…Really?" She asked hopefully, moving in her sphere to stand on the top of the bubble so that from Harry's point of view, she was standing upside-down.
"Really," He confirmed with a smile. Raising his wand, he pointed it at her and cast a silent Vulnera Sanetur. Her wounds immediately began to heal, making him smile wider, once again glad that he'd learned healing magic. After they had finished closing, he cleaned and repaired her clothes. "What is your name, my dear?"
"I am called Beansidhe," She replied.
Harry coughed delicately, somewhat amused. That would explain her voice, he supposed.
"Well," He said. "Do not worry, Beansidhe. You are all safe, now that I'm here. I promise I'll get you all out of here—and I'll make the ones who did this to you pay. But can you hold on for minute, my dear? I'll release in just a moment, I assure you, but I need to have a quick chat with the men down below. After I heal your friends, of course."
"Ah…" She glanced down at the former humans on the floor, anger burning in her eyes. "Please; take as long as you need."
"Thank you for your patience," He said, still smiling. "Hopeful, this won't take long. It would be unbecoming of me to make a woman wait."
After healing the last of the creatures on the ceiling, Harry let gravity find its hold upon him once more and allowed himself to fall back towards the floor. Slowing his descent ten meters before he hit it and then gently lowering himself the rest of the way, he landed quietly in front of the unconscious leader. As a precaution, he conjured another set of chains around him, put him in a Leg-Locker, and then woke him.
The former human's eyes snapped open immediately and he tried to rise. When he found that he couldn't move, his eyes quickly sought out the source. After dully staring at his chains for a moment, he lifted his head to look at Harry, deep lines of anger setting into his face.
"Hello," Harry said, lifting his hands to show that he didn't mean any harm. "I was hoping you might be willing to answer a few of my questions. Perhaps I'll be able to help you—"
Harry cut himself off, eyes widening in shock. As soon as he'd said the word 'questions,' blood had begun to leak from the corners of the giant's mouth.
It took him a moment to realize what had happened. With even a moment of hesitation, the giant had bitten off his own tongue. Realizing he'd been bound and was being questioned, he'd removed his own tongue so nothing could be tortured out of him.
Harry snapped his wand up, forcing the man's mouth open with a spell, in too much of a hurry to even bother trying to be gentle. The giant tried to force his jaw closed, tearing the skin of his lips in the futile struggle, while Harry focused completely healing him. He quickly reattached the bitten off portion of the tongue before transfiguring the blood into a gag to keep the man from trying that again.
After he finished, the bound man just glared at him, enraged that he'd denied his attempted silence. Harry took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, more worried about what that meant then happy that he'd saved the man's life.
He'd really bitten off his own tongue. Without any fear or hesitance, he'd tried to tear it off rather than even speak to his captive. That…was not a good sign. Generally, only the truly devoted or fanatical would go that far rather than risk giving away any information; most would at least consider surviving long enough to escape or be rescued.
But the giant hadn't.
And that said horrible things about the state of his mind.
Harry had been aware that there had probably been some degree of mind control involved when he'd seen the man-giants torturing people without any supervision. He'd suspected it, even before then; the animals and humans that had been captured and mutated so horribly probably wouldn't serve the giants willing. He'd figured there would have had to be some control mechanism involved that kept them under control, whether it was magical in nature or simply holding their loved ones hostage.
But a small part of him had clung to the hope that it had been the latter—that he could just save the day by freeing everyone. He couldn't say it had been a particularly strong hope; most of the mutated creatures he'd seen had been animals that probably wouldn't have been able to understand the concept of hostages.
But he had hoped nonetheless.
Harry shook his head.
"What have they done to you?" He murmured, kneeling down before the man. He lifted his hands to the man's temples and stared into his eyes, holding fast as the man tried to struggle out of his grasp. "…I don't know your name or if you can hear me, but…I'm going to try to help."
Slipping into his mind was so easy it was strange, but Harry needed only a glance at the contents to figure out why.
His mind had been mauled. Entire parts had been torn away, as if by a shark—something had sunk its teeth into his mind and torn away bloody, ragged chunks. It had not been a subtle, careful process, but a brutal assault that had pounded the man's mind into submission.
Passing into his mind was effortless because someone had already taken a battering ram to the gates.
What was inside was, if anything, in worse shape. Entire sections had been removed—but then they'd been replaced. Harry had a hard time navigating the man's mind, it had been so horribly warped; it was nothing at all like a normal human mind. There were sections that might have been human if they hadn't been wounded by the assault and tainted as they tried to fight against the spreading alterations and failed, falling prey to sickness and frailty. But other parts were something that wasn't and never had been human, which seemed almost surgically attached. It was a living, growing, spreading thing, stealing areas of the mind and dissolving them. It would continue to grow until there was nothing left that was human—and at this rate, that wouldn't be long. It was something that wasn't human and didn't want to be; it wouldn't understand what a human thought or felt or wanted and had no intention to even try. He could not say it was pure evil, so much that it had no grasp of morality whatsoever nor any ability to change; it would show him no more compassion then a disease or a storm, not because it hated him, but because it could only be what it was—and it was something that would enslave and spread until everything around it was like itself.
He thought about trying to dive into it, to see what lurked inside that patchwork frame, but he knew he couldn't. Legilimency was not only the art of entering the mind but of interpreting it correctly—but this mind wasn't like that of a human. It was like the sea, like the alteration of sound waves in water, and most of all, like green music backed by the sound of a storm.
Harry didn't even know where to begin with it. He had no choice but to stay within the parts of the mind that retained some form of humanity, between the sickening cancerous growths of a foreign mind. There was nothing he could do to help this man. If he had enough time, he might be able to carve away the implants, but it would do nothing to help him. After he removed everything that was wrong, there wouldn't be anything left that could constitute as a person.
And perhaps that was the point. The giants had sought to make a man into something inhuman and they had succeeded.
The person this man had been was never coming back—he had drowned down here at the bottom of the sea.