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26th of October, 1972 – Germany, Bonn
Cullaica POV
An oppressive aura shone around him, his face permanently set in a wolfing snarl as he marched down the abandoned castle halls of the now-dead Knutz family.
His firmly held wand sparked and arced, burning and marking the walls as his magic raged from both within and without.
He turned the corner and neared the doors of the former ballroom and his fury rose akin to the pressure building beneath the volcano and just as a volcano would culminate into a furious explosion, so did his temper and magic and the doors cracked, the raging magic he exuded splintering and cracking the heavy oak doors like a finger pressed down to a thin sheet of ice before he pressed and pushed further.
The doors burst apart like an infant's head between his hands and his wolfish snarl turned bitter and hateful as he stepped through the gaping hole, his feet treading on the broken wooden pieces, his wild eyes stretching out from one wall to another.
The hall had the Knutz' family banners and tapestries still hanging from the walls and pillars, bloodied and torn and ripped as they were. It was a mockery he himself had taken great joy in fashioning, tapestries that proudly went back a dozen and a half generations now steeped in the same blood they cherished and boasted about.
However, in that moment, he cared not for the reminder of his bloodletting.
No, his fury did not lessen when he saw his friend sitting carelessly, maps and documents laid strewn before him while he tended to the raven perched on his shoulder, his long black hair covering his pale white face and was unaffected by his arrival, his petting of his damnable raven not lessening even the slightest amount.
No, instead, his fury rose to unbearable levels, the kind of fury that was hot and scalding, the kind that rivalled that which set in the west and rose in the east and the of his wand crackled and fizzed and burned, thoughts and intent dancing at the edge of his mind that roared him forward, that pressed him, that whispered to him that he would do better, that he would do what his old friend did not care to accompl-
"Pierre."
The utterance was akin to a death knell, an icicle that prodded and pushed into the deepest vestiges of lost identity and forgotten remembrance within his mind.
Cullaica halted in his steps, staggering, as if a hook from an umbrella was wrapped on his neck pulling him back. That single word…that single name.
"You dare…" Cullaica hissed out furious, unable to hide the betrayal in his voice, his mauve eyes wild with rage and fear. That name…it didn't belong. It was dead. Rotting. Decayed. He had no right…no right to utter those words to him. To him!
At that, his oldest…friend…stopped petting his raven and turned his coal black eyes that peeked out behind a curtain of shadow-like black hair towards Cullaica,
Grey-white irises danced in black absence though there was nothing in them, no real hint of conscience or humanity, no, his eyes were blank, a polarised white canvas that even the greatest and most avid painters would scuttle away from because of the deep primal warning all peoples had and that everyone pretended did not exist.
"You needed the reminder why we do what we do." The Raven responded without emotion, without care, his pale white face exhibiting the same warmth found in the bitter cold of Siberia.
"You think I have forgotten?!" Cullaica raged, his wand arm sweeping across, a destructive wave of accidental magic splashed across the ballroom and more than a few pillars groaned and cracked under his half controlled magic.
There was a tinge of betrayal, no, there was more than a tinge as he heaved poisonously and flared murderously at his near lifelong companion. He could never forget, never, what they had promised one another.
The path that they'd set themselves on when they won their freedom.
His old friend lazily waved his hand, shimmering with black wisps as he did so, and the pillars repaired themselves. The act only served to enrage Cullaica all the more.
Always his old friend was there, like an anchor mooring him to the shore, fixing his mistakes unconcerned, unbothered, uncaring.
'Rabid Cullaica, rabid wolf', the cold phantom hand from his friend patting down on his head keenly felt, 'Hush, hush…'
"You think I have forgotten…" Cullaica's voice was a sibilant whisper, the rage, the betrayal he felt at his friend's stabbing comments seeping through his voice.
Their eyes met and time seemed to stop as pieces that once pieced one another together stared at one another. "No…old friend…" Cullaica's mauve eyes hardened like super-cooled droplets of molten gems.
"I could never forget."
Cullaica's face twisted, his plastic-like face melting like it was splashed with the strongest acid and revealed layers upon layers of old scars that streaked across his face, thick scars that were akin to mountains overlooking valleys of miniscule stretches of skins.
Beyond the treatment they were subjected to, they'd chosen to leave permanent marking that went beyond the mental, beyond the magical. It was their individual markings, legacies that they could own and take pride in whilst they followed their master's orders to the letter and spell. Farmworkers stamping the wool of sheep.
His old friend has his hands and feet broken too many times to count, magically and mundanely, and for him, they chose his face…
'You have too pretty a face, my boy…'
Had it been only his face that was destroyed, perhaps things would have been different. His soul would have been scarred but it would have remained and likely healed but that is not what happened. No, instead it withered and died and fled the reality of pain that was the Camps, leaving behind, after years of agony, a husk, a mere vessel, to enact its vengeance on an indifferent world.
His nostrils flared, unhinged eyes stared at the white irises of his old friend.
An indifferent world, he thought as his rage burbled like a pool of gaseous poisonous lakes, depthless hate fuming out from every pore of his skin, that would reap all of the blackness and hate it so loved to sow and turn a blind eye to.
His gaze flickered for a moment towards the bloodstained banners of the Knutz family. An indifferent world fashioned by golden gloved hands.
They were all the same, Light Houses, Dark Houses. Good. Evil. The same noble families that loved to play their games on their terms, on their rules.
Pierre and his family had fallen victim to their game, snared like little rabbits to be fashioned into fattening meal or a dagger carved out of bone.
Only Cullaica had remained.
And only his friend, the Raven had survived out of the pit alongside him.
And out of the ashes of the camps, consequence had been born. He and his old friend were the consequence that negate, that which brings all that is extant to cruel and wretched perish.
There was a hint, the barest hint, in his old friend's black eyes, that Cullaica recognised as regret as his coal black eyes set on Cullaica's inheritance.
The raven cawed and flew away as his oldest friend stood up and made his way towards Cullaica, his gaze never breaking from Cullaica's scar ridden face.
His old friend stopped several paces in front him, his arm slowly rising, scarred hands that looked like all feeling and dexterity should have been lost, and it reached out to Cullaica, stopping right in front of his face.
"I know." His old friend's voice lacked warmth but it was gentle, kinder as his arm lowered, his gaze snapping up to meet Cullaica's mauve eyes and Cullaica knew that the moment had faded into dust.
"Our losses are unimportant. They have always been unimportant."
Cullaica gritted his teeth at the words of his old friend, his fingers twitching. His face began to melt, undulating in waves of pale skin oceans before his plastic-like face returned that twisted into a scathing scornful look.
"Yes, yes." Cullaica snarled out as he looked away from his old friend's coal black gaze and suppressed the urge to lash out. Barely.
Their tools were only just that, tools, but Cullaica never liked losing anything.
After all, he kept little trophies of all his favourites so he'd never lose the moments.
But for the past thirteen, fourteen months, they kept on losing tools.
First, their precious delightful remnant scions of dead Houses were stolen from them with them too late to the realisation, second the so called mysterious disappearances of artefacts that they knew were located in Italy and now this war the Sayres declared on them, sweeping across their fruits of labour like damnable locusts.
War was always going to happen, yes, but so soon? It was unexpected. The scrying techniques they'd adopted after their interactions – cowards that they were – with the Symbols had never suggested that these attacks by the Sayres was a possibility.
This all but confirmed that this was likely how the Symbols were killed off, a way to fool even the most insightful divination abilities.
Cullaica's rage settle down as his mind spun on its unsteady axis.
They'd always known the Sayres were the only threat that could undo their work.
Atticus Sayre alone was a problem that would take the combine efforts of himself and his old friend to kill. If they could even corner him with that damnable Sight of his, Sight that neither of them had found a workable solution to despite years trying.
Combined with an archmage wife, armies of wizards and with unimaginable wealth?
Problematic, problematic, problematic
"Yet our efforts are being undone as we speak." Cullaica said as he turned back to face his old friend, anger still showing but it was kept subdued underneath the thin veil of scalding rock. He raised his hand, his index finger extending before he spun it around, thin wool threads materialising out of thin air as he spoke
"Like threads pulled from ball of yarn, it's all being undone, undone, undone." He sing-songed acidly, his mauve eyes gleaming murderously.
The magical world had not yet seen its full reckoning.
The societal order that persisted was not yet shattered beyond salvation, there were too many Knutz families, too many Otterdahl families still out there to be destroyed, and there were too many pretty little wizards and witches that needed to be dragged with them into the pits of nothingness and emptiness.
The offence burned deeply.
"And disallowing me to go to China will only make the East lost to our work." The threads burst into fine flames until only remnants of smoke remained.
He'd abandoned his push further into North Africa after he'd heard the reports of the few Ravenites that managed to escape into the Chinese hinterlands.
Unknown wards that trapped entire enclaves within its bowels that were as impenetrable as the armour that was nigh on impervious to spell-fire, elixirs that trapped anyone and everything within its radius and impossible to extract people from, and that was only the beginning of it all.
He was needed and had been on his way to China after amassing a host of Ravenites, several thousand strong, only to be stopped from going by his old friend.
And now…
Now they lost it and it set everything back. Their plans in Central Asia. The Ottomans. All that should have lead towards gobbling up Illosian aligned nations in Asia and the rest of Europe when their army had swelled to the tens of thousands.
All before sweeping across the rest of the magical world…including the fortresses of the Grand Alliance.
And that wasn't the worst of it.
No, the silence they were hearing from Russia, their own damn backyard, was indicative enough that things were about to change from bad to much fucking worse.
All of their work was being undone and he hated it all. He hated it, hated, hated, HATED it. Their symphony of consequence was under threat of having its strings cut before it could rise to beautiful discordant harmony.
His old friend knew it too, Cullaica thought to himself with a flicker of grim satisfaction as he felt the slight wake of agitation in his old friend's magic.
Documents from the table behind his old friend began to float towards them. They circled around them though there was one that was closer by him.
"If you had gone, you would have died pointlessly." His old friend said emotionlessly and unblinkingly. "Ignobly" his old friend added and Cullaica gritted his teeth. They weren't under the illusion that they wouldn't be facing an uphill struggle against the Sayres once they joined into the fray.
It wouldn't have mattered then, had it been just a few more years later. It didn't even matter that it was possible they would have eventually lost anyway. All that mattered was that they'd succeed in bringing an end to the order their dead masters so loved.
Their legacy of misery and death and chaos would have long prevailed past their deaths and that was all that mattered. The culmination of their promise.
Unfortunately, the disappearance of the hundreds of scions they'd been so carefully warping was a bitter blow to the cause, tools that once could have accelerated their aims immeasurably snapped up before they could have proven usefulness.
The psychological horror of seeing their oh-so-precious noble children firing killing curses like they were first year hexes would never be realised, he thought mournfully
China was equally a bitter blow.
Cullaica returned his gaze back to his old friend, hard mauve eyes coldly assessing him. "So you've failed then." Cullaica simply stated, knowing that this conversation was only happening because his old friend couldn't find a solution to the Sayre Sight despite the promise his old friend thought this other avenue might have held.
The agitation in his old friend's magic grew and Cullaica felt morbid satisfaction at the strength of the agitation. His old friend may seem as if he'd cast off all human vices, virtues and morality but he was proud as any being.
Unfortunately though, Cullaica thought a little more soberly, just a tinge, it also meant that with the aggressiveness the Sayres were showing towards ending them, it would become only a matter of time before the inevitable end.
Ugh.
He wished he'd acted on his impulse to dissect that fool Sariel when he had that sole chance when he'd sought them out after the ICW inexplicably warmed towards them. Maybe things would have been different, he mused to himself, if they'd been able to fuck with Atticus Sayre the way he was fucking with them.
A faint saccharine smile cut across his face as he met his old friend's coal black eyes.
"How long do we have?" Cullaica asked as he snatched the nearest document from the air began tracing his eyes across the document.
Dated 1965, it was an ICW report, more specifically an assessment document, of Illos' forces and capabilities and it was the first time he'd seen it. More importantly, there were also snippets of the suspected capabilities of the Sayres.
Much of it was simple speculation though there was a keen note on there about Grindelwald's death on some Scandinavian volcanic island that was destroyed totally by some city-killer spell.
His old friend added notes on the margins, some of it arithmantic calculations and some of it observations born from the archives they pilfered from the Camps and other locations so lovingly given by their dead masters.
His old friend was planning something…
"Two months perhaps if we care for it." His old friend answered and Cullaica looked up from the document. His old friend never lied about such things nor was he often wrong about such matters of death. Not with how close he was to Death itself.
Two months to undo decades of work…if they wanted to drag out that long.
The unfairness was delicious.
"You're planning on ending it all on a high" Cullaica said with a gleam in his eyes.
Cullaica saw an unnatural glimmer of light in his old friend's coal black eyes and he laughed loudly at it when he understood. Not only laughing at the plans but also the final destruction of the attachment he held to this mortal coil.
His blood pumped and raged within his veins, the excitement, the chaos that it would sung was marvellously delectable. He remembered his old friend's family.
Their words.
Their promises to one another to go back home to their apartment in the City of Light. In the most beautiful way, his old friend would bring their home to them.
"And in the meantime?" he asked, this time quieter, more subdued.
For a moment his old friend said nothing as they simply stared at one another.
A document flew towards Cullaica and he snatched it out of the air.
His eyes widened slightly before he frowned a little deeply as he read it.
It was a number of arithmantic calculations that showed the constituents of a new spell…a piercing spell he realised. There were familiar elements in there too…the most eye-catching the main components that allowed Fiendfyre to consume magic in the way that it did. His saccharine smile grew when he realised that it might well be enough for their tools to do some serious damage to the Illosians.
"Make it all as bitter as you like." His old friend only stated as he backed away, documents circling around him as he turned back towards the table, the raven that perched itself on the banister above cawing before flying off of it only to settle onto his old friend's shoulder, and Cullaica never heard sweeter words.
The words were also words spoken that signalled an end of a kind.
He knew now that his old friend was giving him the reins to do anything he liked, no matter how detrimental or beneficial it was to their dying cause.
Pulling him back from going to China only to let him go with all of this knowledge…
He fervently hated the tinge of true sadness so he twisted around and marched out of the gaping hole. This was not the final end for either of them. Their path of reckonings may be veering off to different destinations but in the end…
Death would bring them all back together.
-Break-
26th of October, 1972 – Koldovstoretz, Russia
Reality accentuated itself as he pulled himself out of Living Time, his gaze once more filled with the sight of the interiors of his command-tent.
Silence permeated throughout the silent tent, the sound of his intermittent breathing the only break in the monotony. There should be a feeling of coming victory, a nearing triumph, one that mirrored the feeling athletes get when they're a few paces away from the line, but all he felt was…pity and remorse.
For a moment he remained in his lotus position, a reflective mood washing over him.
Cullaica and the Raven were two broken people intent to destroy everything, regardless if it was good or not. Two people who chose to be nameless and instead chose to inhabit a nihilistic identity warped by their tremendous pain and unimaginable suffering.
Evil done onto them, evil they sought to chase onto others.
A legacy of torture and misery passed down the generations.
Atticus sighed silently as he stood up and began to walk towards the exit flaps of the tent, his mind stuck on what he'd Seen and on the notions of justifications and consequence. This wasn't the first time he'd Seen that conversation, the last conversation between two shards of two different pots that merged into one another.
And it wasn't the first time he was seeing a different angle to it all.
Both of them thought themselves to be inhuman and their actions were undoubtedly inhuman yet despite all of that, there was a morbid sense of humanity about them.
They were broken by their suffering, a kind of suffering he imagined was likely orders of magnitude worse than what Amelie Cantona had endured and had come back from, and yet ultimately they are driven by their suffering, consumed by it.
They were stripped down, and they have allowed themselves to be stripped away of everything they were once were even when they were out, to their very core and succumbed to the inhuman evils they'd been subjected to.
Had there ever been any hope for them to come back from their suffering?
It was a question he often asked himself. One of many questions he asked himself when it came to the evil he unleashed for a later good. The greater good.
A forlorn smile formed thinly on his face, one that, had others seen it, would have recognised it as the look of remorse. He was guilty and he was culpable for the deaths and horrors the two most broken people he'd ever seen unleashed onto the world.
In the name of bull-headed ambition. In the name of rendering lessons that'd stick many generations later, using history and memory and experience to act as the premier teacher so that such evils couldn't happen again. 'Never Again…'
In the name of the Greater Good.
What an analogous, vague idea that provoked far too many insane justifications to count, he mused to himself, and maybe wasn't he just another, really, that used the same level of justifications to force society to fit in his and Emily's own preference?
'Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.'
T.S. Eliot's famous quote described him to the tee and worst, he also knew he was a necessity that was needed. The good that had come and would continue to come from the path he would lead his people towards immeasurably outweighed the secret cruelty with which he shepherded them with.
Despite all of that…
His mind flashed back to the serial reels of Cullaica and the Raven, the butchery committed and the butchery they encouraged and permitted their followers to do.
The feeling of accountability weighed heavily on him, this close to all that has transpired to these people. His own hands might as well be steeped with the blood of tens of thousands.
Knowing that such manipulation of events would culminate in the staving of extinction, not only once for the life on Earth, but twice for all life in the galaxy however distant in the future it may end up being, did little to soothe his conscience.
Conscience, in the end, he contemplated, that didn't really matter an iota.
As he'd always known.
The hopeless smile turned heavy as he reached the flaps of the tent, his hand pausing and his body stopped moving. Perhaps the weight was enhanced because he also knew that there would no one to ever hold him accountable for his misdeeds, however good intentions and beneficial and necessary they were.
He was accountable to no one. He answered to no one.
Perhaps that was the greatest tragedy of them all, he mused quietly to himself.
He began to move again and exited the flaps, the frigid Russian winter air sobering him out of his thoughts and he set his gaze towards the surrounded Koldovstoretz, the former school now turned into a makeshift stronghold.
The gothic austere school made for an impressive building even from afar despite the distortive orangey hue that clouded it somewhat.
"Sir." One of the guards saluted with a fist on their chest.
"At ease." Atticus said with a faint smile before walking towards the larger encampment that surrounded the school. There was a hub of activity, hundreds of Illosian forces that were waiting on his command, his words.
"Have they acted?" Atticus asked when he glanced at the guard.
"No sir." The guard stated before raising his arm. A holo popped up, a holo of the school with heat dots of varying hues of amber. The guard continued "The hostages are safe and should that change, we'll all know immediately."
Commander Zivkovic, the man who would lead the rest of the mission here in Russia once Atticus left, had suggested they tie the monitoring systems to their armour.
A useful idea.
Atticus nodded slightly before he turned his gaze towards the school.
The school was situated in a rather bothersome location.
With the Ural Mountains at its back and forested hilly lands with a large lake at its front and sides, it was a difficult building to siege, magically or muggle.
A surprise attack done head on wasn't an option, not with the safeguards they put in place after the rescue of indoctrinated heirs. Day and night patrols were on high alert, and ramparts were built in some places that the Ravenites identified as weaknesses.
And neither was attacking brutally an option as they had done in other regions of Russia either.
The Ravenites within Koldovstoretz made no secret of it that they will start executing every living soul within the school should they attack and none of his people wanted to be responsible for the deaths of school children.
Surprisingly as well, most of the students were being taught the old fashioned way of indoctrination rather than the blunt mind whammying they normally subjected the vulnerable to. Atticus supposed that the Raven might have felt at least some kind of kinship with these kinds of children to spare them that violation.
Atticus shook his thoughts away internally. Time to get on with it.
After a few minutes of walking through the encampment, he arrived at the Commander's tent and walked through it. His eyes flickered towards the men and women who were communicating through Holos to the signallers of other platoons.
As of right now, there were eight different operations simultaneously within Russian and Belorussia, most of it towards dismantling the entire power structure of the Ravenites whilst also eliminating all of the support network.
By the time the sun rose tomorrow, the bulk of the work would be done before the majority would go on to the Ukraine and then further south into the Balkans whilst a few platoons would hunt down known – and previously unknown – sympathisers and collaborators along with the wayward Ravenites.
The collaborators were of little consequence but they would be vital in the Milanese Trials to come. "Sir!" Commander Zivkovic saluted him alongside his subordinates.
Atticus waved them on before he raised his hand.
A holo showed before he flicked his finger and sent on the information to Zivkovic.
Zivkovic had a curious expression on his face before he looked down to his arm. Atticus could feel the surprise emanating from the commander.
The commander looked up from his arm finally after a few long minutes.
"I didn't think you could maintain that many portals, sir." The question was there and Atticus smiled faintly. It was why he liked Zivkovic. He wasn't overawed like many others were with Atticus. There was respect and loyalty, of course but no more.
In truth, it wasn't surprising if looked in a wider scope. His inaction to deal with the Ravenites, however much he was taking in refugees, had been a contentious point amongst many within the Illosian community, particularly of course the refugees.
"It is a new development."
Atticus answered calmly before he allowed a flicker of displeasure show on his face.
"Direct confrontation will only lead to unnecessary casualties."
Zivkovic looked at him for a long moment before he nodded slightly.
"I see." Zivkovic said before continuing "Do you need anything from us, sir?"
"I need a harmless distraction." Atticus answered before explaining in depth what he wanted as he'd Seen himself do a dozen times over.
The way words form and combine, the way it is communicated, even the tone in which it was spoken, all of it led to specific slightly different outcomes.
Literal words of power, of consequence that rippled the universe in the ways that he wanted it to, sifting particles of sands until it all built towards the castle he desired.
He never failed to appreciate its marvelousness and its disturbing qualities.
Two different coloured threads all tangled up in a neat little ball of yarn.
It was a few hours later that he was standing alone in the encampment in a tent made out of the same enchantments invisible cloaks are layered with.
The night was starless and the world around them would have been pitched into total darkness had it not been for the exercise to his far left some three hundred metres and the alight Koldovstoretz before him just shy of a kilometre away.
The encampment had been moved from where they were, an oddity that would grab their attentions but not so much as to see it a threat, and that was all he needed.
Atticus' arms slowly rose up from behind him, his violet emerald eyes aglow as magic began to hum and thrum around him, the chains around his magic slackening.
The thickness of magic around him was immense, akin to wading through a pool full of crude oil, and his being was fully open now, the locked door that kept the rush of flood water demolished. The universe was open to him once more.
The chains slackened even further and his eyes closed as he allowed himself to sense the world around him in all of its inexplicable ways.
The sight of the currents of magic down to the very depths of their frequencies, the cosmic energy that he venerated and worshipped, pleasurably filled his eyes.
One piece in an infinite puzzle, that was what he felt like when he let himself be part of the greater whole. One piece that stood at the centre of the universe and magic responded to him, eagerly and easily, with the merest expression of will.
Beyond the sight of the currents of magic before him, he sensed the very energy that flowed through life and universe far and wide, almost to the very corners of the Earth
His senses were beyond human perception, the shifts in the winds a hundred miles away keenly felt as if it was happening on his skin in this very place, the sounds of rustling trees in St. Petersburg as keenly heard as if he was there resting against the roots and barks of the trees themselves.
Each twist of air, each rustling leaf, left a miniscule imprint as they interacted in the web of magic that permeated throughout and within the Earth, and more importantly, he felt that same interaction some kilometre away from him within Koldovstoretz.
He felt their breathing, he felt the vibrations of the air as they talked, all hundred and sixty nine Ravenites and three hundred and sixty three students.
His eyes reopened, blazing white glowing orbs that absorbed the kaleidoscopic miasmic arrays of magic that strummed around him like a miniature cyclone.
The magic around him whipped and lashed around him in tightly controlled arcs, violet and emerald wisps flowing and ebbing into white thick tendrils of magic.
His hands began to glow, white and orange, the crates behind snapping open before two centimetre amber spheres in their hundreds began to encircle around him, and Illosian Runes began to eke out of the centre of his palm before the white-orange runes began to connect to one another in mid-air.
There was a faint whine, like the sound of building power within a magnetically accelerated gun, and Atticus spread his arms wider until he was fully stretched.
His mind, opened to a perception that ran for thousands miles in every direction, reduced to a radius of a thousand metres, the sharpness that he held on his surroundings akin to the sharpness with which laser scanning heads measured surfaces. He saw all, felt all, heard all in the minutiae.
His thought stream split into two, one focused on Koldovstoretz and its inhabitants, and the other on the Illosian Runes. With an exertion of will, a miniature portal formed before him, only three centimetres in diameter, and with another, greater, exertion of will, that miniature portal began to duplicate, again and again until…
Until he was surrounded by a hundred and sixty-nine three centimetre diameter wide portals, their destinations yet unassigned as the strain of keeping the portals open to their destination was immeasurable.
Each of the portal would activate in every single blind spot, some behind the heads of the Ravenites, others above it, others behind their backs.
The circling amber spheres began to stand by each portal, ready to race ahead and with a final breath in, his mind fortifying itself, Atticus with a final push of Will, activated each of the hundred and sixty-nine portals before a twitch of the finger sent the amber spheres careening forward through the portals before switching off the portals within a fraction of a second after they'd passed through the portal horizon.
Atticus breathed out, the sensation of all Ravenites encased within the amber blocks was satisfying. It was done. Anticlimactic yet beautiful all the same.
A desire emerged from within the pool of his mind, the thick sphere of magic surrounding him began to change frequencies, nature, the desire change to a thought, burn, and so the sphere of magic burst into a white hot sphere of flames that burnt through the invisible tent until it was no more, leaving behind not a speck of ash.
The sphere of flames subdued, suborned to his will leaving behind circling and lashing tendrils of magic that would appear as if they were the appendages of a Lovecraftian horror-creature. His gaze set upon Koldovstoretz, the sight of inter-webbed frequencies of magic that composed of the wards a thing of beauty yet it was also a beauty he must strip away.
The maelstrom of magic circling around him halted its movements as he raised his left hand, open-palmed and wide, perpendicular to the ground, and turned his gaze towards the grey-clouded skies.
The maelstrom of magic grew longer, higher, and with a gentle twist of the wrists, his magic began to reach out to the skies like a hungry flame, his mind and body and magic connecting to the surrounding nature magic with powerful will and desire.
Its submission to his Will came easy, rumbling sounds of the skies began to echo hauntingly in the empty Ural Mountains, and the volume of his magic interspersing with the surrounding magic began to grow in size and in strength.
By now, he was a miniature supernova caught in its definitive moment, streams upon streams of magic webbed out of him like expelled mass, the sounds of thunder growing louder and the streaks of the first lightning illuminating the area around him with devastating power.
He stood there serenely as the weather began to howl and whistle, blankets of grey broken to pieces by webs of lightning that lasted longer and more powerful than they ought to.
His expression was melancholic in a strange way as he latched onto a moment almost thirty years in the past. He still remembered how it felt to take down the wards of Genelum castle. The revel, the power, the strain, the struggle, the exhaustion.
The ends of his fingers bowed into a half claw and deafening silence suddenly washed over the area as sudden light was extinguished and thunder stifled to death.
So effortless…so easy, he mused to himself as magical energy so thick, so powerful, so dense, circled around him. A rate of magical expulsion that would cause the vast majority of magicals to die from magical exhaustion within a few seconds.
Yet for him…it was little more a bucket of energy drawn from a pool of liquid power.
Time's march began to slow as his perception sharpened and dulled the passage of time, and it was only half a moment later that his left hand stretched out once more, and the pressure around him began to decrease palpably before suddenly a column of lightning the thickness of a bullet train lashed downwards with tremendous power.
The wards iridescently and ethereally buckled and but held against the tremendous power, the interlinked wards straining and loosening with each fraction of a second that passed by. A flicker of appreciation sunk into him at the sight of the strong wards. Whomever constructed the Koldovstoretz wards was a master of their craft.
Nonetheless, it mattered not for a whole second passed and the interwoven wards began to snap almost all at the same time and like a bubble the wards burst apart, destroyed beyond salvation as he felt the crack happen within the wardstone.
With the wave of the hand, the lightning column stopped before it could sear through the foundations of the empty courtyards and into the dungeons where there were people and with a soft exhale, he reduced his control over the weather all whilst he chased the grey clouds away to reveal the presence of the stars.
A bright orb formed in front of him which began to climb into the sky before bursting apart, colourful hues of violet sparks showered above him, the signal for his people to go and secure the school. He didn't need to glance to know that they were moving towards the school. He could feel it readily enough.
For a moment, he let himself stand in silence, surrounding by a storm of his magic, and let the frigid cold of the Russian winter touch his skin. The feeling was blissful.
Its coldness provoked his mind, sharpening and dulling it all the same time as he dove into the recollections of the Time that belonged to him.
He'd grown so much over the last thirty years.
And not only magically.
Lord. Leader. Symbol. Hero. Husband. Villain. Shepherd. King. Mentor.
An evolution of experiences to accompany an evolution of magic.
A faint amount of air escaped his lips as his mind darkened.
And he'd have to evolve many times more in the centuries to come.
He turned his eyes towards the stars.
He'd always believed them to be wondrous and invoked a sense of awe within him.
Now, he saw them with wary eyes.
The glow of his eyes began to dim as he reeled his magic back in.
The work started against the Ravenites had only begun but that would soon enough come to a precipitous end. An end of an era to herald in a new age. A new evolution.
One where direct politicking would take hold of his life for as far as he could See.
The glow in his violet emerald eyes remained even as he dialled down the connection to the universe slightly higher than he usually left it as, and his mind began to return back to its mortal confines as his greater perception faded away.
A faint smile settled on his face as he turned away from the stars, his hand rising and falling as a blue-orange portal formed before him. He stepped through it and arrived at the school's great hall and began to walk around the marble blocks that contained some of the Ravenites.
He was due a change, he thought to himself, welcome one that aligned with what was needed to be accomplished to the change he desired for himself. Not a change of inaction like the one that gripped his Older-Self and led to his people's downfall but one of a more involved and conscientious responsibility.
He walked through the marble blocks, his gaze tracing each and every one of them. It would start partially here. Whilst he did have an ulterior motive, one of predominant curiosity, to grant second chances to the indoctrinated and unsalvageable, it was buoyed by the want of change.
The weight of constantly plotting to keep a long war going felt freeing, no more would he have to watch death and destruction of both body and mind continue on.
The prospect of the killing and the fighting coming to an end was deliverance.
He knew that there would still be some killings needed in order to deal with genuine threats that couldn't be eliminated with deft diplomacy and enticing economic incentives but he would strive for such instances to be the only killings to be done.
He would not be able to clean the blood stain from his hands clean but he would be able to start dirtying his hands with black soil and stroking plants to life.
Doing so for the next few centuries sounded productive if tiring, he thought as he came to a stop at one of the marble blocks, but nonetheless a welcome change, he mused as he studied the angered expression of the Ravenite.
It was ugly, he considered as he keenly inspected the face in detail.
The look of hate.
The fear behind the look of despair.
A look he'd seen and Seen all too often on far too many, many faces.
"Sir?" Zivkovic stepped towards him and Atticus moved his arms behind his back, his gaze never breaking from the ugly expression.
"Alexei" Atticus addressed Commander Zivkovic by his first name.
"When you see his face…what do you see?" Atticus posed to the man, his tone soft yet authoritative. Atticus could feel the man was startled by the question.
He heard Zivkovic turning and looking at the expression properly for the time.
"I…" Zivkovic began and Atticus could hear the uncertainty in the man's voice.
Atticus knew that Zivkovic saw the enemy.
All of his people saw the Ravenites the same. How could they not? In their eyes they committed evil and needed to be dealt with. Harshly. Without mercy. Many had been unhappy with his and Emily's decision to capture them if it was a possibility.
If only they knew that their evil was permitted to happen by their loved leaders.
He took pity on the man. "I see division." Atticus said to Zivkovic and he felt the man's eyes on him. "I see a man without a compass, adrift at sea on a piece of wreckage. I see starvation of purpose. I see meaninglessness."
Atticus turned towards Zivkovic whose expression was one of bewilderment.
Atticus smiled at the commander before he lost it and turned grave and solemn.
"I see tragedy when I look at this man." Atticus turned back towards the marble block, his eyes intensely trailing across the Ravenite's face. "Not an enemy."
There was a lull of silence.
Societal change would also start here, slowly, as ideas and considerations were planted in the minds of his people. Change that mirrored the rise of American Exceptionalism on the world stage.
The Illosian culture and people was young, so very young, and the pole position of power they found themselves in hadn't yet sunken in fully. By the time the war ended, it would sink in and the culture of exceptionalism would become further infectious as years and decades passed.
Zivkovic spoke up.
"My family is from Živkovci. A small village of no importance but a place my ancestors long called home." Zivkovic paused for a moment, as if drawing on memories once thought long forgotten.
"I remember the river stream that passed by the backside of our house. The smells of the plants and the earth." Zivkovic said with a frown before adding
"Even sometimes honey from the colony of bees high in the trees outside of our family wards if the wind was right. A good place to grow up. A good home."
Zivkovic's gaze hardened.
"A home we were forced to leave after the Ravenites cut through the Ministry like wheat under the blade of a scythe." Zivkovic said firmly as he turned towards the Ravenite.
"When I see him…I can only see an enemy."
The Ravenites had taken over in Serbia in 1960.
All of the Illosian Guards, volunteer forces and the Avalonian forces held a relatively strong presence of former refugee peoples within them.
Most understood that many of the Ravenites had little choice in the matter of their actions but that was peripherally and largely inconsequential to their own suffering.
The hum from Atticus rumbled in his throat, giving a gravelly quality.
Zivkovic seemed to realise once more who he was in the presence of and bowed his head apologetically. "My apologies, Your Grace…I" Atticus held up his hand stopping Zivkovic in his tracks.
He gave Zivkovic a faint smile as he dropped his hand.
"I understand your hatred." Atticus said with consideration before looking away from the man and towards the Ravenite. He let the moment drag on as the sounds and presence of his people in the castle grew stronger for a few moments.
He felt them interacting with the students and shepherding away from their rooms towards the courtyard where a transport ship would pick them up.
He refocused onto the Ravenite, the words falling out of his lips like they had in the future he was moving everything towards. "It is an understandable hatred. A reasonable hatred. But ultimately…" Atticus gestured towards the hateful look of the Ravenite. "It is the same hatred that is expressed on this man's face."
"Hatred has poisoned this man into the path of evil that knows no bounds to the depravity he willing to sink into. The horror he is willing to commit. The suffering he is willing to bring to the innocent." Atticus turned to Zivkovic.
"He is preoccupied by hatred. Consumed by it. So much so that he has acted with hatred to inspire hatred into the world, Alexei. Perhaps he carries the torch of hatred forced upon him. Perhaps it is his own torch. Nevertheless, he is a lesser man for it." Atticus intoned quietly, speaking of more than this particular Ravenite before them.
Atticus could see that Zivkovic was struggling with the words and he sighed as he removed his arms from behind his back, turning slightly towards Zivkovic.
"It took me a long time to move past my own hatred for Grindelwald and the man who killed my father." Atticus said truthfully. Hating a dead man was futile.
Zivkovic looked surprised at the admission and the fact that Atticus was sharing it.
He continued "And I only truly moved past it when I realised that I was harming myself by doing so." Just as the hate he'd felt for himself for being too late was harmful. Something that took years longer to get past than hating Grindelwald did.
"There will be a time when the war is over." Atticus continued before he glanced at Zivkovic "A time that will come sooner than you think and I realise that I cannot ask you to forgive. I may be King but that can only come from within yourself and with time." Atticus said with a faint smile before he lost it slightly.
"I can only ask however, that you reflect upon whether nor not you wish to fall in the same pit of hatred as this man has. His actions may or may not have been truly his own but that hate of his is real." Atticus finished.
When Zivkovic turned his gaze towards the Ravenite, Atticus began to walk away from Zivkovic, leaving the man to his thoughts.
One day soon enough, Zivkovic would thank him for those words. Words he would use to create new ones that would touch the hearts of his and the rest of the magical world greatly after the harrowing Milanese Trials came to an end.
Words of forgiveness and healing.
Words that sprang actions that connected magical kind through sentiment and caring.
A wistful smile grew on his face as he walked through the eerie halls of the school, memories of futures Seen blissfully playing out in his mind.
Aye, the fruits indeed grow beautifully under the caring touch of bloodstained hands.