A few minutes earlier, the mass of tumultuous clouds had seemed colossal to her, their bases skimming the ocean, their tops reaching to the summits of the sky. But now, just a few hundred metres from the storm, she could fully appreciate the immensity of the pillar of wind, lightning and cloud facing her. The only adjective she could think of to describe it was "monstrous".
"Lady Snow, we're running out of time! The deck isn't safe! We have to get back!" shouted Alfard, the last matagot left with her to face the unfathomable immensity of the storm, all the others having already taken refuge behind the thick metal walls of the ship.
But she couldn't persuade herself to look away: every now and then, she could glimpse terrible, fantastic shadows forming on the cloud wall by the light of a flash of lightning, things she only hoped were mirages born of her imagination, monsters more terrible than the average wizard could ever imagine. The uninterrupted rumble of thunder made her whole being shiver, the increasingly violent wind hitting her armour and sliding over her like a thousand razor blades.
"Lady Snow!" he cried again. "We're going into the storm, you're going to get struck by lightning!
Eager not to endanger the matagot warrior before the battle had even begun, Hermione turned and strode across the deck, Alfard at her side. She entered the corridor quickly, Alfard closing the door behind her, locking it by turning the large circular crank handle in the middle of it.
Hermione wasted no time waiting for him, and immediately headed for the command cabin, making her way through the copper and wood corridors, pipes and cables of all kinds running along the walls, her footsteps echoing on the metal floor. She climbed the steps of a metal staircase before opening the last door separating her from her objective.
To describe the command cabin as impressive would have been an understatement. It was as large as a small theatre and divided into two levels. An upper platform housed the ship's commander, the communications team responsible for relaying information, orders and all other forms of communication, and the observation team. The two groups of people sitting facing all kinds of dials and machinery were now familiar to her. This singular application of magic as a basis for technology was fascinating to her. The members of the communications team all wore on their heads a sort of metal ring covered in runes, giving off a faint light. Some seemed to be in a strange hypnotic trance, while others were taking notes, talking to the commander or looking after the machinery in front of them.
The observation team was even stranger, she who had always had a negative preconception of divination had to admit her mistake, given that these people seemed to be using it as a radar, constantly relaying the information given by a young blonde woman, her hands placed on either side of a basin containing a strange silvery water in which volutes of a strange material were evolving, forming whimsical shapes.
The lower deck, as the platform below the command deck was referred to, was home to all the technical subdivisions needed to keep the ship running smoothly, with dozens of Hansians bustling around their control stations, monitoring and coordinating everything from the power stone room to the weapons and the various large-scale magics needed to operate such a metallic behemoth.
But at this moment, what was capturing Hermione's attention was not the interior of the cabin, teeming with activity, but the large bay windows, arcing one hundred and eighty degrees, offering a view of the outside, of the cloud wall they were inexorably approaching.
She came to stand next to the commander, nodding to him. It was crucial that she remained at the communications station so that she could intervene quickly if there were any problems with the void shield arrays, given that she was supposedly the expert in the field. Being the recipient of such trust when her understanding of this magic was only superficial made her stomach twist... Aster had told her that the mysteries behind the operation of void shields were not yet at her level, and she agreed, but that didn't stop her bitterly regretting not having insisted more.
The commander's powerful voice rang out in the cabin: "Everyone to their stations! Get ready! We're entering the storm!
In a roar of wind, the ship pierced the wall of cloud, the foredeck visible from the observation deck being engulfed in a grey tumult, and a fraction of a second later, it was the turn of the deck itself. Outside, the storm was so thick that Hermione could have thought it was night, with only the heavy raindrops hitting the glass and the brief flashes of lightning to be seen. Caught up in the turmoil, the whole ship was shaking, so much so that Hermione had to hold on to the railing to stay on her feet.
"We've lost contact with the other ships!" shouted one of the people at the communication posts. "The magical interference is too strong, and the mists are too thick to get a visual on them!"
"The compass has gone mad! We're going through an area of intense electromagnetic interference!" shouted another.
"Keep trying to re-establish contact with the others! Stay on course and activate the storm shields!" Said the commander in a thunderous voice, his gaze fixed on the chaos of greyish darkness that the ship was cutting through.
"Activation of the storm shields!" a voice from the lower deck replied.
Hermione's eyes widened as thousands of tiny runes running across the metal structure of the canopy lit up one after the other, so that in a fraction of a second, the entire command cabin was bathed in a bluish glow. Outside, a curtain of translucent blue light formed around the ship, covering it completely. Hermione could feel the mystical aura of magic at work in her bones. A vindictive excitement was growing in her heart, the same one that had terrified her when she had suddenly found herself alone at the head of the Order of the Asphodel, this feeling of intoxicating, irresistible power. To be in one of the most powerful war machines she had ever seen, apart perhaps from the Khrè golem, at the head of a veritable army. She did her best to squash this idea, but the continuous thundering, almost like divine war drums, only made this abject feeling grow.
So much so, that when greenish fires began to dance around the tip of the ship, soon followed by a bolt of lightning, a titanic pillar of light whose thunder shook the metal skeleton of the ship as it crashed into the shield, a toothy grin spread across her face, briefly illuminated by the white light of this supernatural thunderbolt. With her ears still ringing and patches of green and blue dancing in her field of vision, she thought she saw a strange shape made up of lightning in the distance between the dark clouds, but paid it little heed, the light from the flash still too strongly imprinted on her retina to see clearly.
"Increase engine power to level three! Add two power stones to the circuit" shouted the commander. The already intense magic of the ship grew even stronger, an electric shiver running down Hermione's spine, a coppery taste on her tongue as a wave of power from the bowels of the ship shot through her. She clenched her fist around her battle staff, her pent-up desire to see the smoking carcasses of those who had dared to imprison Aster crumble at her feet... she shook her head, since when was she so bloodthirsty?
She was drawn out of her brief introspection by a movement in the dark clouds, a thin line of light was running in their direction, she was sure of it, but at what distance, she couldn't say. She frowned and leaned forward, glancing briefly at the commander and the observation team, who didn't seem to have noticed anything... had she been dreaming?
No, the streak of light had grown, its shape clearer, its speed terrifying, was it... Caught up in a sudden panic, Hermione screamed at the top of her lungs. "ACTIVATE THE VOID SHIELDS!" In the split second between her command and the crew's reaction, the thing was close enough to be visible in all its magnificent horror. Two eyes, if she could call the two abysses of white lightning such, seemed to be staring at her, penetrating her soul. As if in a flash of lightning, she saw it, the titanic serpent of lightning, brighter than the sun, two huge storm wings spread across its back, its neck bent, ready to strike, its fangs like mountain peaks of vicious, curved lightning, compared to its immensity, the enormous Hansian war machine was no more than a fly.
It all happened in an instant, the activation of the void shield covering the ship, and the strike of the storm monster. With an indescribable screech, the thing's fangs struck the crack in reality protecting what now seemed like a very frail skiff. The pressure of the divine jaws was so terrible that the light released by the impact seemed to exceed that of a thousand flashes of lightning, so much so that she had to close her eyes and press her forearm against them. Immediately followed the most violent thunderclap she had ever heard in her life, like the hammer of a god falling on a divine anvil.
She vaguely heard the voice of the commander bellowing, "Arm the disruptors... ...FIRE" followed by an inhuman scream of rage and pain, more intense and terrible than she could have imagined. A moment later, Hermione opened her eyes again, only the normal thunder could still be heard. She could see no trace of the lightning serpent through the void shield... had the Hansian weapons killed it? Driven it away? A bad feeling tightened in her throat.
A voice on the lower deck rang out. "You have to deactivate the void shield, it's consuming too much magical energy!
She was about to nod when she finally put her finger
on the source of her discomfort. The storm seemed... almost too calm... " Wait..." she said.
"Miss Snow!" cried the Hansian. "The creature has been destroyed!"
"Wait!" she shouted. Her eyes searched the darkness of the lightning-streaked storm.
The commander spoke up. "Miss Snow, I..." But he was interrupted by a powerful flash of light and the same abominable crunch of lightning fangs on the void shield. The immense eye of the beast was just on the other side of the void shield, staring into the cabin with unspeakable rage. A sphere of lightning surrounded by darkness. It spun, its titanic body moving at an inconceivable speed. Then it struck again. It's terrifying form visible at times between blinding fangs and deafening thunder. The commander shouted frantically to shoot the thing with the disruption weapons. But it never wavered, striking again and again with the power of the divine beast it was, unrelenting and merciless.
After several of the longest minutes of Hermione's life, in a momentary pillar of light, the most powerful flash she had ever seen, a thunder so powerful that her heart stopped beating for a moment, the creature finally disappeared. Perhaps injured, perhaps frustrated at not having been able to break through their defences... Hermione didn't care. All that mattered was that it was gone. For good measure, the void shield remained active for a few seconds longer, but when it was certain that the thing was gone, and that keeping the void shield active would eventually melt the death-stone and alchemical silver supports holding it up, it was finally cut off.
Her ears were ringing, her eyes aching after being exposed to repeated flashes of light. She could hear frightened murmurs, some wondering if the thing had really gone, others if they were even alive. "Stay on guard!" shouted the commander.
For the next half hour, the ship continued to move forward, dodging gigantic obsidian spikes, and somehow resisting the lightning that repeatedly struck the storm shield. All the while, Hermione kept scanning the windy darkness. Fortunately, the creature that had attacked them earlier did not reappear. The dark clouds around them seemed to gradually lighten from black to dark grey, with lightning falling less and less frequently around them. Soon, all Hermione could see through the thick glass was a misty, almost pearly white. "Get ready! We're emerging!" cried the commander, a chorus of affirmation answering him.
A few seconds later, the ship finally emerged from the storm, shreds of cloud trailing in its wake. Hermione blinked to adjust to the light. The ship had just entered what she could only describe as the eye of a cyclone. The clouds formed a titanic rim rising immeasurably high into the sky.
Hermione gritted her teeth and clenched her fists as her gaze fell upon it. At the centre of the eye of the storm, in the middle of a raging sea of razor-sharp obsidian peaks, was an island, completely surrounded by high black cliffs. On it stood a structure carved out of the rock, a distorted fortress of senseless angles, its tall blind towers jutting out towards the cloud gap opening onto an eternally grey sky, studded with putrescent hues. She couldn't see any doors, just tiny openings in the walls, too small to even be called skylights. The place exuded an aura of death and decay and despair so powerful she could feel it in the very marrow of her bones.
Azkaban... The place where they had dared to throw Aster in. Seen from the outside, it was even more terrible than her nightmares had shown her. Knowing that Aster was there, somewhere behind those wards and walls, made her sick. It was obvious at first glance that the place was impregnable and that the abomination had never known defeat.
She looked away, her gaze caught by movements in the wall of cloud from which they had just emerged. One after another, the huge Hansian steel hulks, esoteric war machines, emerged from the cloud mass. One... two... six... they were all there, none lost in the turmoil or succumbing to the abominations within.
No, Azkaban would remain impregnable forever. For Hermione had no intention of taking the fortress, but of turning it to dust.
"Get into formation, we must have a craft at each point of the heptagram, the wards must fall!"
oOOOo
To say that Sirius was worried would have been an understatement. He was leaning forward, his hands on the bars, scanning the cell opposite his own, sickened by his helplessness. Over the last few days, Aster's physical condition had deteriorated rapidly. She, who had accustomed him to fascinating discussions, to stories as terrifying as they were incredible, to her sarcastic tone full of humour even in this damned place, had begun to speak less and less. Instead, she stared at the wall, completely motionless. At first, Sirius managed to attract her attention, to get at least some kind of response from her, but it didn't last.
Under his helpless gaze, Aster began to talk to herself, fragmented sentences devoid of meaning, something about the stars, the creeping mists, the thirst. Once, she raised her head and stared into his eyes for a long time, her gaze lit up with an unearthly green glow. She asked him if he could hear the singing, if he could hear the flute, before prostrating herself again, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Lately, he had seen her playing with a blue acorn several times, before holding her head and sobbing silently.
Her last words haunted him. "He promises me... Sirius. He tells me... I must... the choice... the stars... I will..." She had said in a hoarse, broken voice. "Late, too late, the choice... no more..." before falling back unconscious, the blue acorn rolling off her limp hand onto the cold flagstones. He didn't know what to think, what had she been trying to say? Had it at least made sense? Despite the clarity of mind brought on by the fact that dementors fled this floor of the prison like the plague after the "incident", he couldn't understand.
It was more than clear that she was suffering from a serious lack of blood, but there was nothing he could do, even in his canine form he couldn't slip between the bars to offer her his arm... His only hope was the arrival of the Order of the Asphodel. Oh how proud he was of his goddaughter. Of course, he himself had been a fervent advocate of the rights of non-humans, especially for Remus, but he had never gone so far as to create a real parallel society bringing together all the rejects who could not find their place in the feudal society of the wizengamot. It was an accomplishment beyond the norm, beyond anything he could have imagined, and yet the young vampire a few metres away from him had achieved it.
He bit his lips and twisted his fingers in worry, it had been hours since Aster had moved an inch, and since vampires don't breathe, it was impossible for him to even know if she was alive or not. If the Order of the Asphodel didn't arrive soon, it would be too late... if it wasn't already. He let out a long, painful groan and forced the thought out of his head. No, Aster wasn't dead, she couldn't be. He stared again at her small, motionless body. A most absurd sight, innocence scorned, shattered, a child at death's door, lying on the cold, hard, cruel slabs of the closest thing to the definition of hell that mankind had ever created.
He leaned against the bars once more, calling her name. But nothing happened, she remained motionless, her eyes closed, her skin as white as dry bone. He cowered in the corner of his cell, unable to look away from Aster for fear that this would be the last time he would ever see her. He didn't know how long he stayed like that, hours, days... impossible to say in this stony hell.
Suddenly, movement caught his eye. He blinked, had he been dreaming? No, Aster's fingers twitched again. "Aster!" he cried hoarsely, but she did not react. He stared at her with renewed attention. Small, almost imperceptible tremors shook her limbs. What on earth was going on? He watched helplessly as Aster's body was shaken by increasingly severe convulsions. He felt horrible, powerless, did she have a caesura? He frowned, his Grimm nose allowing him to smell a strange odour... like ozone. The air was slowly becoming charged with electricity and magic, he realised. It only became clearer when the walls began to emit a diffuse greenish glow and small green firefly-like lights appeared, more and more of them, floating in the magic-charged air.
The last time he had witnessed something like this was when he was a child, when his father had taken him and Regulus to attend a high ritual, the screams of pain and terror of the woman in the seconds before her sacrifice still sometimes haunting his nightmares. "Aster... what... what have you done." He murmured as the magic in the air became so dense as to be tangible. He felt as if he was standing right where the most powerful bolt of lightning the earth had ever known was about to strike. He felt watched, as if a fraction of the infinite ineffability of the universe had turned its attention to this tiny spot, this insignificant grain of sand floating in space.
Something was there, something vast beyond measure. An antediluvian terror was growing in his flesh and bones. An animalistic terror, rooted in the unconscious depths of his being, where his mind had no hold. Something instinctive, a terror in its purest form, all-consuming and indescribable. He couldn't take his eyes off Aster as the young vampire was lifted from the ground by an invisible force, her whole body shrouded in this supernatural aura.
She stood up suddenly, her feet touching the ground, her body stiffened as if by a violent electric current. Sirius was speechless, as horrified as he was fascinated, the kind of morbid fascination and immoral curiosity that lurks in the hearts of mankind, preventing him from looking away.
He yelped in horror, a vertical line in her forehead had just opened up, as if cut with a scalpel, between her eyes, running from the top of her eyebrows to the line separating her forehead from her hair. But where he had expected to see blood, what happened was far worse. The skin on either side of the wound was pushed aside, but instead of revealing the skull bone just below, only darkness lay there. A deep void, an abyss. In the midst of this darkness, a blazing star was born. It was only when he blinked that Sirius realised with horror. A vertical eye had just opened wide in the middle of his goddaughter's forehead, its brilliant green pupil trained on the opening and closing fingers of Aster's able-bodied hand.
The flesh damaged during the ritual her goddaughter had tried to escape from years ago deformed, like a flowing fluid, until it took shape again, leaving no trace of injury.
"Aster!" shouted Sirius again, but she still didn't react, her new eye was open, but her normal eyes remained closed. Fury surpassing even the primordial terror gripping his heart, he screamed. "Whatever you are, give me back my goddaughter!"
But once again, he was ignored. The pupil shining like a green star in the darkness of that cursed eye was fixed on the metal arm to which Aster was so attached. The one Aster's beloved adoptive mother had made for her. The thing possessing Aster placed her able-bodied hand on her shoulder, at the junction between the strange metal and the skin, then with a sudden movement, ripped it off, the arm flying across the room, crashing to the floor with a metallic thud. But instead of the spray of blood Sirius had expected, a liquid black shadow sprang from the wound. The shadow struggled erratically like a snake in agony. The unspeakable eye narrowed, as if frowning, fixed on the shadow. It stilled, as if frozen, before suddenly taking on a finite form, a new arm, human in appearance, but monstrous in every other way. The... skin, if he could call it that, was so deep black that it seemed to absorb light, contrasting with the alabaster skin of the rest of Aster's body. Scattered across this black skin were hundreds of tiny green scales, glistening in the half-light. But what was most disturbing was the hand that the thing possessing Aster was having fun opening and closing, its fingers abnormally long and ending in vicious, sharp claws.
Clearly satisfied, the thing used its new hand to tear off the prison uniform covering its body, exposing itself to the freezing prison air. Sirius tried to look away to respect Aster's modesty, but when the thing possessing her body brought the claws of that inhuman hand to the skin of her abdomen, any concept of modesty evaporated. He began to scream, begging the thing to stop, but it would have none of it. Slowly, the thing carved incomprehensible rune after incomprehensible rune into the skin of his goddaughter, unlike anything he had ever seen, even in the most obscure books in the Blacks' library. With horror, he saw the thing possessing Aster engraved with more and more runes, just under her ribs, on her sides, her stomach, her normal arm. When, instead of blood, a black liquid filled the wounds, giving them the appearance of tattoos, he couldn't decide whether it was better or worse than the alternative... his pleas died when, at last, the thing stopped abusing his goddaughter's skin.
With a flick of her wrist, the thing possessing Aster pulled a long, dark green cloak out of thin air and quickly wrapped herself in it after discarding the last scraps of old fabric from what had been the prisoner's uniform. Then she turned her gaze towards Sirius, her piercing, unspeakable gaze. A shiver ran down his spine, and he froze completely, like a small animal before the most terrible of predators, aware of his total powerlessness.
She picked up the mechanical arm, and with a supple step, Aster made her way towards the gates of her cell, the bars parting as she approached, the metal twisting as if it were as pliable as marshmallow, and not iron made indestructible by ancient spells. She crossed the corridor and stopped in front of his cell, the pupil of that unspeakable eye fixed on him, a green star shining in an infinite nothingness, its gaze piercing right through him, his soul as if laid bare. After a long moment of silence, the bars of his cell slowly began to crumble into ashes, soon leaving nothing but air between him and his goddaughter.
What on earth could this... this demon possibly want from him? Wasn't taking Aster from him enough? These thoughts were interrupted when Aster turned away from him and began to walk down the corridor. He made a superhuman effort to calm his breathing and relax his muscles enough to follow her. The intensity of the magic around Aster was knife-sharp, the feeling of being watched as strong as ever even as his goddaughter turned her back on him. "Aster... what have you done?" he whispered, as with a wave of its hand, the thing possessing Aster exploded the heavy metal door closing the end of the corridor in a flash of light, throwing it against the wall on the other side hard enough for him to see cracks in the stone at the point of impact.
What kind of monster was this? At least the thing didn't seem hostile towards him for some reason... otherwise he would have been dead long ago. She continued forward, Sirius hobbling behind her... what on earth was she doing? Strangely, he could see no trace of dementors in the vicinity, how terror inspiring had Aster's attack been that made them desert the whole floor? So tempted that dementors are capable of feeling fear.
A few dozen metres and another broken door later, Sirius followed her up a thin, dark stone staircase just outside the wall leading down to the lower floor. Never since his arrival in prison had he been able to leave his cell, and now, for the first time, he could see the terrible vastness of Azkaban. They were on a tower, he realised, one of many towers above an architectural chaos of obsidian spikes and blades. Far below them, he could see the hooded forms of dozens of dementors floating gently between buttresses and bastions. The tower from which he was descending overlooked the sea by at least several hundred metres, he realised with a shudder. Between the dementors, the titanic labyrinthine citadel, the raging ocean and the storm of absurd proportions he could see in the distance... the mere idea of running away seemed impossible. What on earth was the thing possessing Aster going to do with all this?
His defeatist thoughts were interrupted when Aster suddenly stopped, her head turning towards the storm in the distance. The eye in the middle of her forehead opened wide, her pupil moving erratically. What... He didn't have time to wonder for long, because a split second later, a flash of light forced him to close his eyes for a brief moment. This was followed by a deafening noise, as if someone had struck an infernal gong, an unbearable noise, both metallic and crystalline, shattering his ears.
When he regained his sight, he couldn't believe his eyes: what he assumed to be the wards of Azkaban were visible, a translucent grey dome surrounding the entire fortress. He had never seen such a powerful and ancient wards, such a tangible presence. And yet his eyes weren't deceiving him, fine cracks were visible. A second later, another flash of light, even more powerful. He cowered to the ground immediately, clasping his hands over his ears, but even so, the noise was unbearable, the shockwaves stirring his organs. Was Azkaban under attack? Suddenly, with a noise that made him feel as if he were in the middle of a collapsing glass cathedral, the wards broke. Blinking, he sat up. Over there! Huge black flying machines the like of which he had never seen were flying towards the prison! A wave of hope invaded his heart: was this at last the Order of the Asphodel that Aster had told him so much about?
oOOOo
Although the Hansian ships had made it through the storm and stood up to the things living in the lightning and clouds, Ethan remained sceptical as to whether the Hanseatic League could really enable them to attack Azkaban. What could the forces of a trading nation really do against one of the best defended prisons in the world? What's more, he was well aware that the shield that had saved their lives on several occasions during the crossing was a modified version of the one created by young Miss Snow's artefact, so it had nothing to do with the alleged power of the Hanseatic League. Maybe their ships were impressive, but it was all bluff and pretence, he told himself.
But now, his mouth half-open in amazement, his eyes wide as he watched what must have been some of the most powerful wards in Europe slowly fall apart in a deafening roar, he had to admit that he had been wrong.
A few weeks earlier, when Miss Snow and Severus Snape had come to headquarters to put in place the plan to rescue Lady Karrasinqi, he had been filled with doubt. He hadn't let any show, of course, but that didn't change the fact that the very idea that such a young girl could rise to the challenge of leading the order in Karrasinqi's place and gathering the forces necessary to free her had struck him as absurd. As a member of the inner circle, he had of course not failed in his duty to do his utmost, but this had done nothing to prevent doubt from gnawing at him.
In the end, he'd been wrong about everything, and while he'd been organising the Asphodel troops with Asmodée, Miss Snow and Snape had put together a real army, a force powerful enough to see the wards surrounding Azkaban shattered.
He turned to face the troops under his command. A motley crew of vampires, wizards, lycans, werewolves, fauns, sylphs and a few red caps. The matagon contingents had their own chain of command, so none of them were part of his troops. A small veela contingent was somewhere in one of the ships, he didn't know which, but he wouldn't count on them to assist the assault any more than that, as far as he knew, their clear and sole objective was to exfiltrate their fellow beings. The Asphodel had divided its forces into three squads, one led by Asmodée, the other by Arnold, and the last by himself... He just hoped that Mimosa wouldn't hold it against him too much for having overdosed her camomile tea the day before. The young witch, despite her enthusiasm and willingness to take part in the operation, just wasn't cut out for battles of the intensity they were about to face. He readjusted his scarf and hood, the clouds masked most of the sun's rays, but to fight it was better not to lose strength by exposing himself to more light than was justified.
He gauged his troops: determined people, far from being a professional military troop, but all with the willpower and strength to get through. All of them had been lifted out of misery by the Order of the Asphodel, all of them, in one way or another, owing their lives to Karrasinqi.
He spoke in a strong, calm voice: "Thank you all for coming to fight today. You are brave, and your names will go down in the history of the Order as those who took part in its first battle. Today, we face injustice, we take down the symbol of tyranny, we free our saviour! The primary objective is to locate Lady Karrasinqi and bring her aboard one of the ships." He clenched his hand on the hilt of his enchanted blade, weapons provided by Hymgaabal imbued with solar energy, specially made to fight dementors, that wouldn't kill them, but would wound them enough to send them back into the foul pit from which they came, only some of the sorcerers present would be able to completely annihilate their essence. "Destroy the dementors if you can, and stay on your guard, we don't know what other horrors lurk within these walls. If possible, take the prisoners away, magical Britain clearly isn't capable of having a functioning justice system. Remember, stick together in teams of five, with at least one person capable of throwing the patronus per group!"
The sound of a horn rang out, its clear sound echoing over the waves, reverberating off the obsidian walls of the prison. It was time for an assault. "It's time! Get aboard!" He bellowed as he drew his blade, pointing it at the dozen or so large cycloplanes ready to receive them. He jumped aboard one of them himself. It had been a long time since he had taken part in what could be described as a major battle, but at last it was time for the vampires' martial pride to be restored after so many decades of being muzzled.
...
The whirr of the cycloplanes filled the air, like a swarm of metal insects, they swooped down on Azkaban, unleashing wave after wave of fighters on its ramparts, inside its walls... Violent explosions could be heard on all sides, some just preferring to punch holes in the walls to get straight into the heart of the fortress. Here and there, flashes of silvery light could be seen, each releasing a creature of moonlight, pushing back the swarms of dementors, who let out deafening shrieks, as if the very light from the dozens of patronus were causing them excruciating burns.
Far above the battle, a small formation of winged creatures shrouded in flame swirled around a tower, piercing it with their blazing fire. The chaos was total, the sound of solar blades slicing through the putrefied flesh of the soul-eaters, the exchange of spells, the terrified screams of the few human guards and the prisoners still conscious enough to realise what was happening.
As for Ethan, he was standing in the main courtyard of the prison, his blade plunged into the chest of a dementor, who let out a heart-rending scream. While some groups had set themselves the mission of banishing the dementors and putting the guards out of commission, others were freeing the prisoners and searching for Karrasinqi, Ethan's group had a very specific mission. Beside him was Patrick, a Lycan who was now transformed, ripping the throat out of a strange creature with greyish skin and a hundred long pseudopods ending in obsidian blades, with his teeth... disgusting, classless, but, he had to admit, effective. What on earth was that thing? Just to his left stood Lucy, a small witch with long braided brown hair, her wand clutched between her fingers, concentrating on maintaining her mice patronus. And then, just behind them, the people they were escorting. Two tall Hansians dressed in long blue tunics, their faces masked, an emblem representing an eye in a gear on their chest. He didn't know their names... absolutely nothing about them at the moment. All he knew was that he had to protect them at all costs, and that whatever was in their little metal box was going to be used to blow up Azkaban. One of them was holding a small object vaguely resembling a compass in his hand and was using it to guide them.
"We have to go through the small iron-barred entrance on our right. Said one of them in broken English with a strong northern accent. Ethan nodded, holstered his sword and gripped the thick bars of what looked more like a large sighing hole than anything else. With a grunt, he pulled with all his might, the metal twisting, the cement giving way under his vampiric force. Patrick came in for support, his big clawed paw gripping the bars. A second later, with a dreadful creak, the metal gave way, leaving the way clear for them.
Ethan slipped inside, then Lucy, followed by the two Hansians, and finally Patrick, who had some difficulty because of his stout build. The corridor was long, its walls hewn from the rock, as it sloped gently downwards. By the light of Lucy's mouse patronus, their little group made rapid progress. The slope became steeper and steeper, and they passed countless junctions. It was as if the rocky promontory on which Azkaban rested was a veritable labyrinth of galleries. "Did the dementors dig this up?" he asked aloud. Indeed, the walls looked as if they had been dug irregularly, almost as if they were natural, but lacked the regularity of tunnels dug by human magic.
"No." replied one of the Hansians. "They predate the arrival of the dementors by a long time." Ethan gritted his teeth, it didn't bode well.
Soon they came to a strange, irregularly carved staircase leading down into the bowels of the earth. "The tunnel. It's carved from the bottom up..." Lucy murmured in horror. Ethan felt the urge to turn back, but the Hansians had already started to descend.
After several dozen long minutes of descent, which at times felt more like climbing than anything else, they finally reached a corridor that was more or less straight. The Hansian with the compass nodded contentedly. How could he be so calm? Gradually, as they descended, the air became hot and humid, and the rock looked less and less like rock and more and more like something else. Something he couldn't, or rather, wouldn't dare name.
The corridor... if it could still be called that, widened until it opened onto a vast cave. The air was warm and humid, and he could feel intense magic vibrating against his skin. The walls were strangely shaped, as if carved to represent creatures he couldn't describe, and an oppressive majesty pervaded the place, as if they had entered a forbidden temple to some ancient, forgotten pagan deity.
Without waiting, the two Hansians moved forward without hesitation, going up to the strange, flexible and deformed bulb enthroned in the centre of the ancient grotto. They opened the metal box and took out a strange black stake engraved with silver runes glowing with an unearthly light. With a powerful gesture, they drove the stake into the bulb.
Ethan stood alert, all his senses awake, but nothing happened, only silence surrounded them. Suddenly, a wave of light was emitted by the stake, travelling across the floor until it disappeared into the walls. A long, deep, muffled shuddering sound came from all around them, perhaps even from inside their minds. The two Hansians looked at each other for a second, then ran towards the exit. Without question, Ethan followed them, taking Lucy in his arms, knowing full well that the young witch could never run as fast as a vampire.
He didn't have to wonder for long what he was running from, because the walls began to shake and distort, the strange material becoming more and more like a membrane, with terrible, shapeless things moving just beneath it. With a dreadful noise, the walls tore apart, and unspeakable shapes emerged, madness given flesh. Vile amalgams of animal and human limbs, hundreds of deformed faces cackling, snarling, sneering... begging... There were hundreds, thousands, of all shapes and sizes, emerging from the walls, the floor, the ceiling. One of the Hansians was grabbed by the ankle and pulled towards one of the walls, his last scream of pain and terror so full of agony that Ethan would have nightmares about it for at least a century.
With one hand, he held Lucy, and with the other, he hacked, sliced, eviscerated, cutting a path through the flesh. The surviving Hansian had drawn a strange blunderbuss, shooting waves of burning sulphur, melting flesh and bone, adding to the deafening din of the foul beasts. Patrick was behind them, ripping and tearing at whatever came within his reach. At last they reached the staircase and began to climb. Something grabbed his ankle but he managed to shake it off. Patrick was behind him, the Hansian in front. The situation was getting worse. They weren't going to get out of there alive.
"Run! I'll hold them off!" shouted Patrick.
"No!" exclaimed Lucy!
But Ethan just climbed faster, tightening his grip on the witch. After a hellish climb that felt like trying to climb out of the deepest pits of hell, they finally reached the labyrinth of corridors and stopped for a moment. In the depths, behind him, he could see a terrible reddish light, the screeching and groaning getting closer and closer.
"Lucy! Bombarda Maxima on the ceiling." He shouted.
"But Patrick!
"He's dead! Now!"
With a groan of rage, anger and horror, Lucy vanished her patronus and pointed her wand at the ceiling of the staircase. A moment later, a violent explosion sounded, followed immediately by a series of cracking noises.
"Run!" shouted the Hansian. "The corridor will collapse.
It had been a century since Ethan had run so fast. His feet pounding the ground, the crunch of heavy stones falling behind him.
Finally, he, the Hansian, and Lucy emerged from the basement window. Lucy, despite the tears streaming down her cheeks, managed to raise her patronus in time to fend off the dementors advancing towards them.
"You!" Ethan exclaimed, pointing at the Hansian. "What the hell was that?"
A moment before the man's reply, Ethan perceived a red glint in the darkness of the disturbing mask's eye openings. "Azkaban." He said simply, clearly unaffected by the death of his companion. What on earth was wrong with these people? It was then that Ethan realised something: unlike Lucy, whose blood he could smell, the Hansian was as tasty as a piece of metal. "Not human..." he murmured, a shiver running down his spine. He raised his eyes and looked around. The state of the Azkaban courtyard was terrible, similar to the forts he had visited during the First World War after a long bombardment. The battle was far from over. He just hoped that the things would stay stuck underground, that Patrick's sacrifice would not be in vain. He closed his fist on his chest, allowing himself a few seconds of respect for the brave lycan's death.
He turned to Lucy. Traces of tears were visible on her cheeks, her eyes reddened. "Let's go," he said. "Lady Karrasinqi is still locked up in one of the gaols of this cursed place."
oOOOo
The echoes of the battle reverberated between the cold stone walls, the inhuman howls of the dementors, the cries of rage and suffering, the moans and groans of the prisoners, the explosions, the cracking of stones as the whole fortress shook under the power of the assault.
The vampires designated as scouts were the first to attack, some even jumping from the still-flying cycloplanes, running at supernatural speeds, smashing down doors, tearing open gates, some of the most agile even running up walls to reach their objectives. It didn't take more than a second after their arrival for her to witness the cold-blooded murder of one of the Ministry's wizard guards.
The clouds of cycloplanes whirled around the fortress, depositing squads wherever possible, removing any possibility for the defence to organise itself... not that there were many defenders other than the dementors, since Azkaban only housed a small garrison of guards, and this had been cut off from any reinforcements by Hymgaabal's intervention.
But Azkaban was vast, the dementors innumerable, and her group had crossed paths several times with abominations that had nothing to do with this plane of existence. At Samarillis's insistence, she was accompanied by five matagot warriors and two of the most talented witches in the Asphodel. She raised her staff, dispelling the blaze of violet flames that had just reduced to ashes the dementors they had caught in a corridor leading to the gaols... perhaps hiding from the dozens of patronus that had invaded the premises, or more likely, taking advantage of the chaos to devour the souls of a few unfortunate prisoners.
She quickly surveyed the jails, finding a body without a soul, and a number of corpses... no trace of Aster. Where could they have locked up her friend? If only their search had allowed them to locate her exact cell... She shook her head, every moment lost put Aster in greater danger.
"Nothing here." she declared, before resuming their journey down the long, dark corridor. Azkaban was gigantic, its architecture meaningless, its cursed arches giving her the impression of being in the bowels of a great unspeakable beast.
With a blow from the bottom of her staff, activating the shock array, she shattered the heavy metal door blocking their progress... she blinked, how? They were at least on the sixth floor, and yet a huge room with a ceiling as high as a cathedral was opening up before her. Hundreds of doors spanned the base of the walls, each leading to a new corridor or staircase. A large section of wall had collapsed, letting in the pale light of Azkaban's eternal day, a cold, salty wind rushing through the breach with a ghostly whistle.
At the top of the wall facing her was a large stained glass rose window, its shades of grey, green and blue adding to the already gloomy atmosphere of the place. She stopped dead in her tracks; there was something deeply unhealthy about this place... worse than the rest of the fortress, she meant. Several dark masses lay in the centre of the room. She approached cautiously, her companions must have sensed the danger, for the two witches had their wands ready and were watching their backs, and the group of matagots had drawn their swords.
She saw one of the masses of dark cloth on the ground turn with the tip of her wand, and yelped in fright. The corpse of one of the vampires who had led the assault stared back at her, his eyes hollow, his jaw dislocated, his chest caved in as if by a ram. It was then that she realised.
"It's a trap!" she screamed. But it was already too late.
...
A few hours ago, before penetrating the storm barrier surrounding Azkaban, Alexandra had thought herself ready, confident in her ability to face it, in her knowledge of light battle magic. But now she felt doubt and terror running through her bones. No sooner had Dame Snow shouted her warning, than dozens of dementors emerged from the doors opening onto the vast hall. There were so many of them that it took a superhuman effort for the memory of waking up this morning in her lover's arms to conjure the silver hedgehog from her wand to fend off the abominations, their ragged breath, their smell of decomposition and the terrible cold surrounding them making her want to vomit.
The matagots had already set to work, slicing and crushing the dementors with their weapons, her sister-in-arms hurling a lance of brilliant light and a half-moon of shimmering silver energy at the creatures, her light magic burning them and ripping their ethereal putrefied flesh to shreds. If, a year earlier, she had been told that she would find herself fighting alongside cat-men in armour against dementors in an impossible fortress to save the heiress of the most terrible vampire lord on the continent, she would have thought herself mad... and yet...
She risked a glance at Dame Snow, a child, so young, and yet the steel in her eyes was unmistakable. Nor was the inferno of violet flame turning the demons facing them to dust. The magic coursing through the young girl was so intense that her eyes glowed with supernatural energy, her hair and cloak lifted by the residual energy of the unheard-of destruction she was wreaking on the monsters. Her flames took on whimsical forms, sweeping their enemies in waves in a maelstrom of devouring fury.
But despite their best efforts, the dementors wouldn't back down, as if all instinct for survival had been stripped from them. After several long minutes of fierce fighting, the dementors crowding around and above them suddenly stopped.
"What's that?" Her colleague growled.
The dementors stepped back, pressing themselves against the walls, as if they wanted to disappear through them. Had they finally managed to push them back? She thought hopefully, her heart beating with renewed vigour.
"Don't let your guard down," Lady Snow intimated. "It's not us they're afraid of."
Dementors? Afraid? Absurd, she thought for a moment... before the temperature suddenly dropped several degrees, steam forming in front of her mouth with each exhalation. She felt a weight on her shoulders, like electricity in the stifling air, despite its icy cold. Silence had fallen over the vast hall, the noise of the other fighters coming from outside as if muffled by a thick layer of cotton. The dementors were silent, their trembling forms barely discernible from the growing shadows.
Alexandra gasped as the sound of a falling water droplet broke the silence, its terrible echo almost sounding like a thunderclap. About thirty metres from their group, a grey puddle of a viscous, steaming liquid had spread out on the ground. A few seconds later, another drop fell, large and heavy, splattering the ground around it.
Slowly, she looked up, on the ceiling, dozens of metres above them, hung a dark mass of indefinable outline in the half-light. The thing was moving, like waves created by the wind on the surface of the water, but more chaotic. For a moment, she thought she saw sickly yellow points of light in the quivering mass.
With a foul creak, the thing detached itself from the ceiling, dropping heavily to the ground in a shapeless mass. Dame Snow took a few steps back, a look of immense terror etched on her face. The matagot warriors stood ready, their swords pointed at the mass, which was motionless for the moment, barely rising and falling, its breathing hoarse, a slow, deep, painful rattle, regular and frighteningly peaceful. Marie, her colleague, had held out her wand, placing herself right in front of Lady Snow to protect her. As for the dementors, they had stopped moving altogether, as if terrified at the very possibility of the thing noticing their existence, so tempted that the dementors were able to feel the fear.
The thing was enormous, the size of a country house, its bloated body covered in sparse grey fur, a viscous, steaming liquid escaping from the vile wounds covering it, in places she could see pale, translucent parchment like skin beneath which ran dark veins. A kind of smoke was rising from her, blurring the boundaries of her body. It was then that it began to move, slowly turning on itself. Dozens of legs with far too many joints were revealed, some ending in thick claws, others in human hands. Three long tails stretched out behind her, all placid and steaming, their fur dripping with the foul grey mucus.
When Alexandra saw its head, she yelped in terror. At the end of a muscular, bloated neck was a human face, its skin pale, its eyes closed, the perfect image of a corpse's face... she couldn't take her eyes off it, never in her life had she imagined seeing the face she would once have when she would die.
The thing's bluish lips began to tremble, words forming, but no sound other than slow, rasping breathing came out. The thing crawled towards them, its dozens of filthy legs unable to support its weight. Suddenly, with improbable speed, the thing lunged, coming at them in a fraction of a second, its jaw dislocating to reveal row after row of rotting yellowish human teeth.
But its momentum was stopped dead in its tracks by the appearance of a trembling translucent grey surface, against which the thing crashed with a sickening crunch of flesh and bone. No sooner had the shield dissipated than Alexandra launched her favourite chain of light annihilation spells, the Tripacian spear of light, followed by her most powerful demon banisher, her lunar arcs, and her luminiferous diffraction spell, Marie imitating her. Dame Snow was not to be outdone, brandishing her staff and unleashing salvo after salvo of dozens of violet energy dashes and destructive flames.
Nothing seemed to help, the thing was absorbing their spells, and Dame Snow's flames, despite their incredible ability to burn dementors to their very essence, were just curling the monster's fur. The matagots' blades could slice flesh and shatter bones, but the wounds closed just as quickly, each fracture becoming a new and unlikely joint.
The thing had regained its senses, and Alexandra could only feel deep terror and disgust as she saw the sweet, peaceful smile of her own face on the beast as, with two of her hands, she seized one of their matagot companions and tore it limb from limb like a daisy being stripped bare in a shower of blood and entrails. The abomination was about to seize another of their matagot companions when Alexandra managed to throw a spear of purifying flame directly at the vile parody that was the creature's stolen face. The sun-white flames engulfed the creature's head in a halo of purifying light. The face contorted, uttering a terrible, silent scream. But when the flames dissipated, the thing was unharmed, her own dead face turned towards her with a flaccid expression.
It leapt up, over her allies, Alexandra toppling under its weight. She cried out in pain as she felt her legs being crushed to a pulp under the mass of the thing. The pain was so terrible that she barely realised when the thing brought one of its parody of a human hand up to her face.
Alexandra will never know what the thing was about to do, because the next thing she knew, a blinding beam of green light shot through the creature, sending it reeling as it disintegrated most of its bloated body. Another flash of green light followed by a thunderclap and a howl from beyond the grave blinded and deafened her. She blinked slowly to regain her vision... The creature was gone, only a thick puddle of vile, steaming fluid remained on the ground.
Had Lady Snow saved her? Was it one of the secret magics that she and Lady Karrasinqi seemed to have mastered? She turned her head and groaned, the pain in her legs unbearable. All the survivors in the group were turned towards two people coming towards them. A huge black dog, and... " Karrasinqi" she whispered. The vampire was barely recognisable, draped in a long cloak so black it seemed to absorb the light, moving forward with her eyes closed... well, apart from the large vertical eye open in the middle of her forehead, its green pupil glowing and fixed on their group... as she lost consciousness, she could hear Dame Snow whimpering. "Aster, what have you done?"
...
"Aster, what have you done?" Hermione whispered, her heart racing, her eyes fixed on her friend... One minute they were dealing with an immortal monster, and the next minute Aster was arriving to destroy the thing... or rather... no, it wasn't Aster, something was possessing her.
Hermione remained on her guard, not knowing if she was going to become aggressive. She had missed Aster so much, and when she finally saw her again, instead of hugging her as all her instincts were screaming out to her, she had to force herself to keep her distance. She had imagined herself arriving as a saviour, pulling Aster out of her cell, giving her back her freedom, her fingers trembling with anticipation, she had only one wish, to take Aster away from here, to their house, to look after her and never let her leave it again, but she couldn't, not without knowing what the hell had happened to her.
Aster continued forward, ignoring the matagots' swords pointed at her, ignoring Marie's wand. She finally stopped right in front of Hermione, her one eye wide open in her forehead fixed on hers. Hermione swallowed, taking a moment to observe Aster. She looked frail and thin, more than a head shorter than her. Her normal eyes were closed, her face relaxed, as if she were asleep. The arm that Hermione had grown accustomed to admiring as a marvel of magical engineering on Anna's part, instead of being where it belonged, was in Aster's hand. Where it should have been, in its place was a strange arm with skin that was far too black, studded with tiny scales.
It was then that a series of memories came back to her, a discussion in their maid's room in Ulthar years ago, the ritual that Aster had carried out to establish her authority over the order...
Hermione grimaced... a name hissed between her teeth: "Lagaelis." Hadn't Aster said that Kav-deb had made sure that the entity couldn't harm her? She gently took Aster... Lagaelis... she wasn't sure, by the hand, guiding her towards the cycloplane a few dozen metres away before shouting. "Fall back! We've got Aster!" One of the matagots grabbed the young witch with the broken leg, another, their dead companion, and they all started running towards the cycloplane, no one giving the dog a second thought, following in their footsteps and jumping into the plane with them.
oOOOo
Hermione kept one hand on Aster's shoulder, holding the young vampire close, to hell with Lagaelis, if they didn't want Hermione to do as she pleased, they would have to push her away by force. She needed that, the physical contact reminding her every second that Aster was there with her and not dead in her cell. In just a moment, the cycloplane landed on the ship's main deck. She was about to drag Aster towards the ship's infirmary when she released herself from her grasp, calmly making her way towards the bow of the ship, resting her hands on the metal rail, her gaze fixed on the dark silhouette of Azkaban. Caught off guard, Hermione took a few seconds to react. She said to the matagot who had not followed the others into the ship to escort her. "We need to sound the retreat." The matagot tilted his helmeted head slightly and ran off.
She approached Aster... Lagaelis, if her suspicions were correct, and placed her hand on his forearm. "Whoever you are, I order you to release Aster..." she said. She hesitated for a moment, unsure of how to put pressure on an entity that could potentially be considered a deity if what Aster had said about Lagaelis was correct. In desperation, she tried the first thing that came to mind. "If you don't release your hold on Aster immediately, Kav-deb the Green and Sonya Legravallina are going to hear about this, and you don't want to find yourself up against them!"
For the first time, the thing possessing Aster reacted to her words, turning its demented eye in her direction. Hermione froze, unable to breathe, an unspeakable pressure had suddenly fallen on her, as if a major part of the universe had just directed its attention at her. As if a titan had just laid eyes on a tiny insect that was a little too noisy. The darkness around the green star-like pupil of this abominable eye seemed to her to be an infinite, unfathomable abyss deeper than space and time. Her whole body tensed and her hair bristled, the moment reminding her of her condition as a small mammal in the face of primordial terror.
Finally, the eye turned away from her, returning to its observation of Azkaban. As Hermione finally began to breathe again, she realised that she had collapsed to the floor, on the verge of fainting. Panting and shaking all over, she struggled to her feet. Just then, the battle horn sounded again, announcing the retreat. Immediately, clouds of cycloplanes rose from what was now a huge ruin, hundreds of whirring black dots heading for their home ships.
Hermione shook her head, and out of courage or madness, hard to say, she pulled Aster's shoulder to try and turn her towards her, but she couldn't, she was as rigid as a statue. Ignoring the terror still shaking her, almost certain of the name of the entity possessing Aster, she said. "Lagaelis, you will release Aster now!
To her surprise, a monotone voice resembling Aster's but with a clear inhuman accent replied, "Our agreement has not yet been completed."
Hermione heaved a deep sigh, trying as best she could to calm the terrified, erratic beating of her heart. Helpless before the entity, she did the next best thing. She stepped forward until she was right next to Aster, and stared back at Azkaban, resting her trembling hand on the railing, wondering for what absurd reason the entity was staring at the ruin that would soon be razed to the ground, destroying all the dementors in the process...
The horn sounded again, as did those of all the other ships, indicating that all the cycloplanes had returned with their cargo of warriors and prisoners. A few seconds later, the ships began to climb higher and higher into the air, out of range of the explosions that the Hansians had prepared. Up and up they went, until Azkaban was no more than a speck several kilometres below them.
The horn sounded again and Hermione covered her ears. Far below them, several small lights appeared in the black silhouette of Azkaban, like crackling fireworks. Then, in a split second, the entire prison island was engulfed in a huge sphere of what Hermione assumed was plasma. The flash lasted only an instant, Hermione having had the good idea to look away at the right moment, was able to see the immense hole in the ocean resulting from it, the waters forming a wave of prodigious dimensions collapsing on the spot where a few seconds earlier Azkaban had stood. "The shockwave is coming!" she yelped as she pressed herself to the ground, imploring Lagaelis to spare Aster's body as she backed away from the rail. No sooner had she uttered her words, than a noise similar to a thousand thunderclaps resounded, rattling her and making her lose her breath. Fortunately, the ship's void shields had briefly been activated, reducing the effects of the shockwave to a minimum. She couldn't imagine what would have happened to her without this protection... she probably wouldn't be alive to think of it.
She got to her feet with difficulty and approached the rail, Aster hadn't moved an inch, the eye still turned towards the maelstrom in the ocean far below them. Could Lagaelis not see that it was over?
"There she is," whispered the Aster like voice.
What? Hermione's eyes widened; in the maelstrom of raging waters, patterns were taking shape. Something immense was moving just below the surface of the water, nonsensical shapes making the water swirl, the surface rippling in an absurd manner. Gigantic black curved spikes emerged all around the maelstrom by the hundreds, bulbous bodies covered in flesh, skins and huge purplish scales emerged here and there, while a howl, a complaint that no living thing should be able to produce, echoed in the eye of the cyclone.
Slowly, Lagaelis raised the black arm of Aster towards the sky, and without a sound, a gigantic rift opened up, as if cut with a knife, mists pouring out of what Hermione could only call a crack in reality. From it emerged three gigantic emaciated arms with countless joints, finished off by hands with far too many fingers.
"She's been fed far too much," Lagaelis murmured.
Hermione couldn't look away from the demented sight. Had she gone mad? No magic she had ever seen rivalled this absurdity. She could feel a chill run through something much deeper inside her than her bones as the arms swung with unimaginable speed at the titan bobbing in the water.
As the three deformed hands closed over the thing's maelstrom jaw, Hermione shrieked in horror, pressing her hand to her mouth. The monstrous thing was fighting the unspeakable, its arms pulling the titan into the air, towards the rift, lifting it almost to the height of the Hansian ships trying as best they could to manoeuvre away from this madness. From the thing dripped inconceivable quantities of seawater, its misshapen limbs several kilometres long trying to clutch at sea rocks, struggling not to be pulled out of the waves.
The titan was blind, a shapeless mass of limbs wriggling in all directions, terrible mouths and bulbs of flesh covered in seaweed, its purplish skin mingling with the rock of the seabed from which the thing had been pulled.
"It has grown so much... it's time for the harvest." Lagaelis said, without Aster's mouth moving. The thing was dragged higher and higher towards the crack in reality, struggling more and more vigorously.
A spear slowly emerged from the rift, a titanic harpoon the size of a mountain slamming into the titan with immeasurable speed, piercing it through and through. The thing's cry of agony was terrible, its voice so powerful that Hermione watched in horror as the thick clouds of the cyclone surrounding them were swept away, dispersed in a gust so powerful that it made the warships move despite the momentary activation of their void shields. In a sudden, violent movement, the titan was pulled into the rift, disappearing into the misty darkness. With a deafening crack, the rift in the fabric of the universe closed, revealing the immensity of the blue sky.
Hermione shook all over, unable to fully comprehend what had just taken place before her eyes. Fortunately, or unfortunately for her mind, Lagaélis turned towards her, his eye staring at her with great intensity. "Take care of my disciple." It said. Then the vertical eye in the middle of Aster's forehead closed, leaving behind only a thin, almost imperceptible pinkish line. Hermione barely had time to open her arms before Aster collapsed against her, her small form inert and faint. Unable to stand, she let herself fall to the ground. Like a dam breaking, her emotions, so far suppressed to enable her to win this battle, overwhelmed her, and she began to weep uncontrollably as she held Aster close with all her strength. Her chest continually shook with sobs of relief, happiness, terror, incomprehension... But all that mattered to her at that moment was that Aster was there, in her arms.
oOOOo
She had just woken up buried under a thick duvet, someone right next to her... Hermione, her half awake mind whispered to her. She ached in every part of her body, a terrible hunger itching her fangs. Hermione was against her right there, she could feel the blood coursing gently through her veins. She crawled against Hermione, ignoring the pain in her muscles, driven by her need for warmth, to feel her friend against her, her hunger... she rested her head against Hermione's neck, letting herself rest against her. One of Hermione's hands came to rest between her shoulder blades, caressing her back, the other in her hair. Hermione was saying something to her, but she couldn't understand it, too absorbed by the softness and warmth surrounding her, the scent of Hermione, the softness of Hermione, the feeling of security, of calm... unconsciously, she began to nibble at the junction between Hermione's neck and shoulder, until her instinct took over and she bit down.
The delicious taste of warm blood invaded all her senses, and she began to drink greedily. Hermione's breathing quickened, and she felt the embrace around her tighten. But she didn't mind, because it was Hermione. She vaguely heard a bottle being uncorked and drank, but didn't pay much attention to it, too focused on Hermione, the taste of her blood, her warmth, her presence, her magic surrounding her, feeling like a thick layer of cotton wool on her mind.
She drank and drank, she couldn't tell for how long, wrapping her arms and legs around Hermione like a koala bear. Slowly, her mind became sharper, her memories flooded back, Azkaban, Sirius, Lagaelis... She withdrew her fangs carefully, taking the time to let her saliva close the wound without leaving any trace. Then she let herself collapse against Hermione, her muscles completely relaxed, she felt distant but present at the same time. "Am I dead?" she asked in a small voice.
Hermione's voice answered her, hoarse, as if she had been crying a lot. "Yes, silly, you're a vampire. But you're not dead, dead."
"Oh." She said dumbly. "So... you saved me."
A watery laugh answered her. "Aster, I think you're one of the only people in the world that four nations would join together to raise an army to liberate."
"Oh"... repeated Aster.
"Yes, oh, silly." Hermione laughed.
Aster pushed herself up on her forearms a little, opening her eyes to Hermione's face. Her friend was dishevelled, a drop of sweat on her forehead, her large brown eyes reddened by tears plunged into hers. On the bedside table, Aster could see a dozen empty vials labelled "sanguin reconstium".
She leaned forward and placed a kiss on Hermione's forehead. Before snuggling up to her again. "Thank you," she murmured.
After a long moment of silence in each other's arms, Hermione murmured. "I love you."
Aster nodded against Hermione. "Me too, you're the best friend I could ever have dreamed of having."
Surprisingly, Hermione let out a long, painful sigh. "Aster, I love you, more than as a friend, romantically I mean."
"Oh," was all Aster could say, her train of thought stopped dead in her tracks.
After several long minutes Hermione loosened her grip a little, much to Aster's displeasure.
"You don't have to answer now, I can leave you alone for a bit if you're uncomfortable with me now..." She said quickly, Aster thought she heard a sob.
Before she had time to think, she cried out, "No!" before tightening her embrace. "Please stay... It's just... I don't really know what this means... I mean... what would change?"
Hermione's hand left her hair and came to rest under her chin, causing her to lift her head, levelling their faces. Hermione's eyes were wide, her pupils dilated, her cheeks adorably flushed. Before Aster could ask what was happening, Hermione pressed her lips to hers, three long seconds that seemed like both an instant and an eternity, Hermione's lips impossibly soft against hers, an indescribable sensation in her chest. Then Hermione withdrew, her cheeks now the colour of peonies. Aster's mind was at a standstill, unable to categorise this new all-consuming sensation.
Hermione looked away and said with unusual shyness. "Being in a romantic relationship is... doing the same as before, but... more. Like being able to do this sort of thing for example."
Following her instincts, Aster placed a hand on Hermione's cheek, making her turn towards her again. Then she imitated Hermione, placing her lips on hers again, longer this time, in search of that deliciously euphoric feeling of intimacy. After a little longer than the first time, she withdrew, and looking Hermione in the eye, said. "In that case, I wouldn't mind trying it."
Hermione gave a little shriek, and hugged Aster so tightly that she couldn't hold her position and the two of them found themselves against each other again.
Several long and too short minutes of cuddling later, Hermione said. "Aster, you'll have to explain to me how you managed to adopt a Grimm in Azkaban."
oOOOo
In the heart of London, Severus emerged from a panelled telephone box. Looking poised, a long bundle of kraft paper slung over his shoulder and a bag in his hand, he strode out into the street. Given the unprecedented chaos in which the Ministry of Magic had been plunged, it had been disconcertingly easy for him to retrieve Aster's personal effects, which had been confiscated and studied by the unspeakables. For the first time in years, he had to fight hard not to let a smile form on his face. With the fall of Azkaban, the subsequent tsunami that ravaged the North Sea coasts and the huge political scandal surrounding the uncovering of the truth about the Veela genocide, heads were going to roll.
oOOOo
Somewhere in Denmark, not far from the ravaged shores of the North Sea, in an old shepherd's stone house, an emaciated witch with a black mane and skin as white as chalk was wrapped up in a thick woollen blanket. She would never have expected such hospitality from a muggle... She lowered her pride when he placed a large plate of steaming fish soup in front of her and said something in Danish, a big smile on his face behind his thick grey beard. She nodded in thanks, the most her pride would allow her to do for a muggle, before taking a spoonful of what turned out to be the best soup she had ever eaten. It was important not to incur the wrath of her host, she would need all the energy and support she could get to find her master... She also had to contact her sister, after what she had seen with her own eyes, they had to know that there was surely more to the stories of the mythical ages than they admitted.