And were finally back to the main PoV!
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He blearily opened his eyes, images filtering in unbidden of a... party that he'd been in of sorts? While his mind suddenly started replaying a conversation he could barely recall happening.
Hmmm, so the killing curse can't be stopped? At all?
Taking in his surroundings he found himself confused when he finally noticed the ash-covered field. When he noticed the hundreds of people flinging curses of some sort in the same direction ahead of him.
If people are allowed to use it during war... then wouldn't every war just end quickly?
He felt his skin hair rise as he dimly noted that a majority of the curses been flung ahead towards the foggy center of the field were green in color and cold in nature.
In theory.
He let the gulp come out as he watched the fog slowly start to disappear.
The problem with that curse, Rodrick, is that it requires-
The curses fizzled out the closer they got to the clearing center. The closer they got to the being fighting against the hundreds around him.
-is the concentration and focus needed for its success.
He watched the ground beneath him break. He watched the sky above set itself into harrowing flames.
And fear... has a nasty habit of breaking both.
He heard the sudden cries that started reaching his ears- his mind unsure if they were human or not.
But more than that, the killing curse is only as powerful as the caster's mind. As the caster's delusions.
He dimly noticed the fact the wizards and witches on the edge of the encirclement started to turn away.
He watched as they started to run.
For it to work... Its absolute rule is the surety that it can kill. That the user is capable of ending what stands before him.
He heard their cries to open the wards. To let them escape.
And it's hard to convince yourself that your spell will work with so many corpses around you.
He dimly noted the fact the cries turned from their request to the truth that the wards had long since been removed.
It's hard to convince yourself that you're special enough to succeed when so many others have died trying to do the same.
When he focused on their screams and cries, he felt the urge to let out a snort at the audacity of the monster who'd long since reapplied the wards meant to contain him, himself.
Only a Dark Lord can claim that arrogance. And very few people in history have ever come close to that standing.
When he looked up to the sky above, he finally realized where the inhumane screams from earlier had come from.
And of those that do, even fewer would ever convince themselves of the necessity of it's use. To do so, would claim a weakness of relying on it.
It was only then he noticed why everyone had started running. Had started crying for an escape. Had given up on fighting.
In truth, fear itself is what brings down a nation and the killing curse fails in its painless promise of death. There are far better spells to fulfill that need.
He finally took notice of the cascade of demonic fire.
The closer it got to the ground, the faster the wizards ran. The further the wizards got, the bigger it grew.
And there's nothing quite as scary as the existence of a monster.
The fire looked alive. Sounded alive.
He watched as it stretched across the sky, watched as it sped past the fleeing wizards, and circled them, forced them to turn, forced them to run back towards the center. Towards the epicenter of pure, utter, chaos.
A place where time failed to function, where gravity lost its hold, where life and death entwined themselves across its victims.
The center where the very air looked alive, where the ground seemed non-existent, where magic itself failed its own rules.
Giant claws emerged from shadows, grabbing hold of and tearing through its victims.
Bodies burst into ash the closer they got.
The earth below slowly rumbled as it shook, as it disappeared into a never-ending darkness.
The corpses that survived seemed to come to life with their cries of pain, of horror, their deaths temporary or simply no longer a truth they could obey.
The truth that Death walks among one's race.
He took in the shadows that manifested out of thin air, resembling creatures he barely recognized.
Incomplete giants with bloodied clubs swept through the mounds of people, their skin and form growing with every life they took.
Black dragon-like creatures spewed a cold flame that didn't burn as much as it simply evaporated what it touched before it breathed it all in to let loose more.
Red swarms flew around, almost faster than his eye could see, groups of people, tearing away their portions with every pass they took through.
Strange amalgamations rapidly rose around the center, taking the few spells that made it through onto themselves before either bursting entirely or spewing them back out at their source.
He latched his eyes away from the monsters before him and dimly noted the fact at the edges of the field, thorns rapidly rose out of the ground and through the few souls that had managed to get past the demonic encirclement. Thorns of ice and wood grew into a lock around the field of death, preventing escape.
As Rodrick followed them up to the sky they reached for, his eyes widened in horror and awe as he realized exactly why everyone had started running at the same time.
He finally understood the true trigger for the panic, for the fear, for everything.
As he understood why the earth beneath his feet had looked so wrong and felt so strange to stand on.
Evidently, they'd followed the monster before him.
He hadn't found them, they'd found him.
He wasn't sure whether to laugh or not at the absurdity of it all as he took in the ground that was far above him, and that he currently stood on top of one created entirely out of dark magic. And with that realization came the distinct, utterly strange, feeling that it was unbearably hot.
The demonic cry that rang out of it was the last thing he could recall before the realization of who the monster before him was.
Who the monster currently twisting the reality around him was. Who controlled the demonic caricatures of darkness.
It was a face he couldn't ignore. A face he would always recognize.
It was his grandfather.
The blood that ran through his veins was the darkness that had broken the rules of the world before him.
And perhaps the scariest part of it all, he faintly noted as his consciousness seemed to scramble. As his mind slowly woke from its slumber and the nightmare that Gellert Grindelwald had been.
...His grandfather as he twisted the very world around him with ease, looked bored.
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