First Contact

by inwardtransience

Beth already had a bad feeling that her fifth year at Hogwarts was going to turn out to be pretty miserable — as pessimistic as she was, she hadn't seen a literal alien invasion coming. Because apparently the infamous Potter luck was screwing over the whole planet now. (eventual F/F) [Dimitran Fleet, part 1/4]

6. Zero Day — VI

Most famously, Dimitra had the advantage of literal magic (again, to use the local terminology). Much has been made of the unusual proportion of Force-sensitives on the rediscovered human homeworld, the extent of their abilities seemingly outstripping those seen by Jedi throughout history. At the time of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, the "magical" population of Dimitra was estimated to be between point-five and one percent of the total. For comparison, before the war the Jedi numbered around one hundred twenty, out of an estimated galactic population in excess of one hundred twenty-five quadrillion — roughly one in one hundred fifty Dimitrans were mages, whereas the Jedi were only one in one quadrillion.

Dimitran experts insist the occurrence of mages on their world is unremarkable — perhaps slightly elevated relative to average, but not to such a margin suggested by the statistics. Local scholars believe the "magical" population of the galaxy is vastly underrepresented by the Jedi and various less well-known orders, due in large part to a selection bias. The Dimitrans have designed various devices by which a less powerful "mage" may have a much greater effect — by Dimitran standards, the Jedi are walking everywhere on their own two feet, while it would be much more efficient to simply get in a speeder and fly there. Grandmaster Skywalker has long admitted there may be thousands of Force-sensitives left undiscovered — due to organizational bottlenecks and insufficient infrastructure, their ability to detect potential Jedi is extremely limited — and recent experiments by Jedi recruiters with Dimitran techniques have validated some of the magical scholars' claims.

So what is the cause of the seemingly disproportionate magicalness of Dimitra, then? After some analysis, scholars have proposed two possible contributing factors: longevity, and diversity. The use of those words may seem absurd, speaking of such a young society limited to a single world, but the mages of Dimitra have advantages in these areas which the Jedi, for all their long, complex history, do not.

Dimitra's entire written history may only be five to six thousand years long, but mages have existed for the whole duration. This may not seem a great accomplishment, given that the Jedi Order is believed to have been founded eleven thousand, twenty-five thousand, or thirty-five-thousand years ago — which date is used varies depending on how one defines "Jedi Order" — but their Order has not existed uninterrupted through all that time. Limited to only the six-thousand-year period of Dimitran history, the Jedi Order has been reduced to a single member on at least two occasions — once shortly after the Mandalorian Wars approximately four thousand years ago, the Order preserved from extinction by one Meetra Surik, and a second time with the Great Purge of the recent past. Modern scholars know precious little of the Jedi as they existed before their revival under Master Surik — only scattered legends of wartime heroics remain — and Grandmaster Skywalker himself will admit that the Jedi of today have very little in common with the Jedi before the Purge. His training under the previous Grandmaster Yoda was very short, and focused solely on the mission at hand, most of his development since then entirely self-taught — and it is those largely self-taught abilities that he passed on to his students. For all practical purposes, the Jedi Order as it exists today represents a continuous tradition going back only so far as the opening of the (now defunct) Jedi Academy on Yavin IV, barely thirty years ago.

The history of magic on Dimitra, on the other hand, features no comparable discontinuity. At different times, knowledge of their arts has been passed down student to apprentice, in a manner similar to Jedi of various periods, but at other times was taught to entire classrooms of students at once, to an organized curriculum culminating in official certifications. In recent centuries, "magic" has become formalized as thoroughly as any science, with dozens upon dozens of educational institutions all across the world — most localities even provided a basic magical education to all residents within their borders — and formal academia including researchers and journals and vast libraries, everything that might be expected of modern research universities. And there, perhaps, is another poorly-ackowledged but perfectly mundane advantage held by Dimitra: Jedi training has almost universally been considered a journey of personal spiritual development, emerging as the Order had out of an ancient priesthood, but the practice of magic on Dimitra had a much more practical, secular character going back millennia.

The mages of Dimitra have been refining their arts for generations upon generations, successive developments made over six thousand years without interruption, as clearly demonstrated by the complexity and variety of of the "magic" they can bring to bear. If the Jedi had a similarly strong history, who knows what they might have been capable of by the time the Yuuzhan Vong arrived?

And here we already see a hint of the relevance of Dimitran diversity — the "magic" available to them came in many broad and varied classes, and could be freely adapted to any number of practical applications. There is the advanced academic approach to the subject to consider, of course, but in other avenues, Dimitra may have been advantaged by their own underdevelopment. The locals have only perfected planetary communications and transportation technologies in the last one hundred fifty years — until very recently, the various scattered communities throughout the planet developed independently in various degrees of isolation. Not only have the Dimitrans regularized, formalized, and academicized their arts to a degree the Jedi have never managed (in known history), but this development has come out of multiple different cultures and traditions, resulting in several superficially similar but substantially distinct schools of magic, all with their own specialities and deficiencies. If a Western mage encounters a problem he cannot solve, he may consult with an Eastern or American mage — there is no such parallel tradition today's Jedi may collaborate with.

These factors made mages a far more versatile resource to the Dimitrans than were the Jedi in their fight against the Yuuzhan Vong, and far more effective. A Jedi with a decade of intensive training, lightsaber in hand, may have serious difficulty bringing down a Yuuzhan Vong warrior one-on-one; on the other hand, a teenage student of Dimitran magic may do the same in seconds, with a single "curse". (Famously, Elizabeth Potter defeated no less than eight warriors single-handedly during Zero Day alone, less than a month after her fifteenth birthday.) Mages were effective in combat, yes, but their medicine was also far more advanced than Jedi healing, they could manufacture devices to effect uncrackable communications or uninterruptible transportation, build defenses strong enough to withstand repeated volleys from the cruiser orbiting their world, even personal shields to protect individuals from fire-breathers. As the invasion progressed, there were rapid developments in adapting their magics to work hand-in-glove with available technology, resulting in advances unique to Dimitra that compare favorably with modern equivalents available to the rest of the galaxy — as their infant fleet's performance in the recent insurrection demonstrates.

Jedi and Dimitran mages both insist their abilities arise out of the same fundamental potential — a Jedi may learn Dimitran magic, just as a mage may learn Jedi arts. But it is clear that, whatever their similarity, their difference in approach has led to results so distinct as to be unrecognizable.

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5th September 1995 (63:5:19)
— Contact plus 00.00.03:6.30

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Spreading beneath her out toward the horizon, Paris burned.

The aliens had initially sent out landing parties to all the big cities, or at least bombed them from orbit, over the course of the first day people scrambling to deal with them. There'd been a little bit of a lull in the middle there, all the aliens who'd landed killed — even the bombing had stopped, for a time. Beth had heard a rumour that the big ship bombing them had flown off to the moon, for some reason. She had no idea if that was actually true, she wasn't sure how they'd found out — maybe there were people with telescopes somewhere keeping an eye on them? — but if it had happened, the ship had come back with a vengeance, if anything the bombing even heavier.

And there'd been another round of landings, more aliens concentrated in fewer places than last time. Mostly, aiming for the biggest cities, where the resistance was stiffest — London had gotten out of a second attack, having mostly been evacuated by this point (which was apparently obvious from space?), but some other huge cities weren't so lucky. Beth and Sirius had been in Istanbul at the time — the local mages still insisted on calling it Constantinople, of course — helping clear rubble and repair bridges and stuff to keep the evacuation going. (Things were somewhat complicated there, due to the Turkish government not quite having the resources of rich European countries to respond as well, and also being surrounded by water and having the Greek border so close. The Greek military had actually opened the border, even running over barriers across roads with tanks to get people and vehicles through faster, which helped.) They'd been surprised to look up and see more of the green fishy-looking things dropping out of the sky, Beth and Sirius had flown up to meet them, along with a bunch of other mages — over the last couple days, they'd learned magic was better at killing their ships than guns. With the local mages, plus numerous helpers come in from neighbouring countries, they'd managed to knock out most of them before they made it to the ground, the couple that slipped through immediately shelled by the Turkish military, soldiers sweeping in to gun down the survivors.

Sirius got a message from a friend, so he'd quick apparated her to Moscow. The city was a bit of a mess, but honestly not as bad as she'd come to expect by now — though she guessed she shouldn't really be surprised, the Americans' capital was probably in relatively good shape too. (There had to be advantages to being a global superpower, after all.) There was an even bigger landing going on here, she and Sirius arrived just at the tail end of it, sweeping in to help blow up the last couple transports before zig-zagging through the city to spot the ones that'd landed. For the most part, the Reds were already on it — like how mages were better at taking down their ships, a few soldiers with automatic rifles could mow down a couple dozen lizard-people without too much trouble. (Mages could kill them just fine too, but only ones who knew any decent battlemagic, which wasn't even close to everyone, and even then muggles were more efficient at it.) The tall, scarred ones were more of a problem, since their armour could survive getting shot a few times, but bring in heavier weapons, or grenades and shite, yeah, the muggles could mostly handle them just fine. Beth and Sirius went right past the ones close enough to army people, they'd take care of those, after a little looking found one without any soldiers around.

They announced their arrival by Beth once again blowing up their transport with an over-long Thousand-Lances — because apparently she had a signature move now — and had probably killed over half of the aliens before several cracks of apparation rung through the square, and then a flood of automatic weapons fire. Looked like some of the local mages had popped over some muggle soldiers, which was clever — as long as they were working together anyway, why the hell not, right.

About then, Sirius got another patrōnus from Dumbledore — Paris was in trouble. Sirius paused to ask the bloke who seemed to be in charge of the soldiers who'd just popped in if they were good here — he wanted to radio their names up to a superior, so they'd know Beth and Sirius had helped out (though the Soviets already knew about them, they did Leningrad just yesterday) — before grabbing Beth and apparating out.

This wasn't the first time Beth had seen Paris since the aliens attacked, so the blasted-out, fire-scorched mess wasn't a surprise. The steady booming of big guns and rattle of machineguns told Beth the army was still here in force — unlike every other government in Europe Beth had heard anything about, the President and various important ministers had refused to evacuate, the French stubbornly digging in to defend their capital city.

Beth hadn't heard it herself, but she had it second-hand that the President had given a big, dramatic, inspirational speech over the radio and everything. All about how France had already surrendered Paris to an enemy once this century, and God save him, he would not let it happen again. If the aliens wanted him out of Paris, they'd have to come down here and drag him out themselves — and he didn't plan on being taken alive, he would rather die than surrender. (Supposedly, there'd been the sound of a handgun being loaded in the background while he said that, just to make it clear he was being completely serious.) He continued to give radio addresses, every hour on the hour, with updates on the progress of the invasion and the evacuation of the civilians — but not the high-ranking political leadership, who'd also all refused to leave Paris — so everyone would know he was still alive and that France was still fighting.

She didn't know shite about this bloke, didn't really follow politics (she didn't even know if he was a liberal or a socialist or what), but he sounded like kind of a badass.

When they arrived back in Paris, they immediately took off into the air, to get a look around — another bombing run had come by not long ago, the air thick with smoke and dust, so it took a little bit to make out anything useful. By the noise, Beth would guess there were landing parties somewhere, but Paris was fucking huge, they should find someone to ask if there was anyone they—

And then several of their rocky fighter planes zipped by, dumping a torrent of fireballs down on the city below as they went — passing close enough Beth was sent reeling by the wind, wand clicking against her broom handle as she grabbed it with both hands — closely pursued by a cloud of mages on brooms. Right, that was where the people in charge wanted them, got it. Beth and Sirius immediately zipped after them, leaning low over her broom and consciously shoving magic into the enchantments to get as much speed as she could. She started opening up distance ahead of Sirius pretty quickly — his first broom had been a Firebolt, but this one was only a Nimbus 2000, side-by-side the difference was obvious.

The ships were curving around, and then they flipped at improbable right angles — seeming to stop in mid air and then zoom off equally fast, completely ignoring momentum — sending a few fireballs at the mages following them before continuing over the city, a constant rain dropped below them. Beth turned to intercept them, and then adjusted to a sharper angle, fuck, these things were fast, come on...

She was barely in spell-range before the things blew right past her — the eerily silent ships moving quick enough the roar of wind following them was almost deafening, again sending Beth wavering before she got her broom under control again. By then, the main pack of mages were catching up, racing by a bit to her left, she started off again parallel to them, again chasing after the bloody things.

It seemed the aliens were paying attention and developing better strategies, just as the defenders were. Before, the ships Beth had seen had normally hovered over ground forces and just pounded everything into oblivion, trusting their shields to absorb the return fire — skipping around a bit to prevent too much from concentrating on them at once, but relatively stationary. This group — eight of them, Beth counted — seemed to have learned their lesson. The things were, just, absurdly fast (which she guessed made sense, since they were spaceships, and space was really fucking big), could accelerate from nothing to much faster than even her broom could keep up with in a blink. And they could do the opposite, too, from so fast they were a streaking blur to perfectly still in an instant, just, ignoring momentum somehow — the big things could turn on a sixpence, no matter how fast they were going, and at odd angles, just, twitching and jittering around, it was very weird. They had to have some way to zero out the effects of momentum inside the ship somehow, because otherwise Beth was pretty sure the pilots would have been battered into paste by now, some of the turns they were pulling...

The point was, Beth couldn't keep up with them — and the rest of the mages, mostly on even slower brooms, couldn't touch them either. They were stuck in a frustrating little dance, the mages chasing the ships back and forth and back and forth, sometimes getting close enough to risk tossing a few spells at them, but the speed the ships were moving at made it terribly difficult to aim, few hit anything. And sometimes taking shots in return, the ships swivelling in place — while still moving forward at the same ridiculous speed, how did these things fly, exactly? — the ships' speed added on top of the fire balls', too-fast streaks of light, one mage reduced to a burning torch plummeting toward the ground, another, another. Beth was almost hit once, intense heat slapping over her in a wave, practically before she'd seen it coming, too fast — she wouldn't be surprised if she ended up with a sunburn from that, but she was lucky, one of the mages behind her was killed by the same shot.

It was very frustrating, after a couple attempts that didn't get them anything some of the mages started apparating around, moving in front of the ships. Ooh, that was clever, how did they... It took a little bit of poking around for Beth to figure out that, by standing up on the foot-pegs, she could get enough leverage to dig into an apparation — thankfully, she didn't splinch anything, and took her broom with her, that could have gotten messy. (Sirius would later lecture her about experimenting with something as dangerous as mid-air apparation in the middle of a battle, but it'd worked, so whatever.) By the time she got with the programme, a couple of the ships had been nicked, but none seriously damaged. Watching the battle swirling around through the air, Beth waited until just after the ships had turned around again, tried to guess which direction they were going, apparated ahead of them and an extra couple dozen metres up. A quick glance, she'd gotten the angle wrong, a second apparation got her in the right place. Dragging the incantation out a little, "Hostīs damnātōs millanceīs," they were coming faster than she'd thought, she raced through the rest of the incantation even as she started to dive, "flagrantibus ulcīscere!"

The eight rocky, colourful alien ships racing right at her, she released the spell at the last second, tried to dip under them — tried, because they were moving so bloody fast, she was spun off course by the turbulence around them, sucked in along their wake. Thankfully, she didn't hit anything, and none of the ships vanished her like that one poor bloke back in London the first day...though she was spun badly enough she nearly lost her grip on her broom, both feet slipping off the pegs, both arms and one knee hugged around the handle. Scrambling to climb back on, the curse hit with a quick series of explosions, she turned around quickly enough to see she'd only managed to clip one of the ships with one of the ends, most of the curse streaking by down toward the city below.

She winced — she hoped that didn't hit anyone...

A dozen little flashes of fire, chips were blown off the ship she'd hit, carving a knobbly asymmetrical gash across the surface. She hadn't properly killed it, but it did quickly drop behind its buddies, wavering unsteadily in the air — damaged, at least. Still getting her broom back under her, the other mages leapt at the opportunity, and soon the ship was struck by a withering assault of spells from all sides, leaving only charred fragments behind, spinning and flipping down below.

Over the next couple minutes, they managed to bring down a second, apparating ahead and crippling it with wildly-cast area-effect and arc spells — Beth had nothing to do with that one, her second attempt at hitting one with a Thousand-Lances missed completely. The ships were already adjusting their strategy, starting to shoot fireballs ahead of them in anticipation, one mage was hit with a fireball, a second splattered on the front of a ship, instantly shredded into pieces by the force—

All around, there were dozens of flashes of fire — some bright gold and white, others deep violet and black — with a chorus of furious avian screeching. It wasn't just the sound, magic carried thick on the air, with an intense feeling of righteous rage, bubbling up Beth's chest, her hands reflexively clenching, skin squeaking against the polished wood. For a wild second, she thought a bunch of phoenixes had joined the fight, but no, the colour of the fire was wrong — and as figures resolved out of the flames, Beth saw the birds were far too big. They looked sort of like hawks, with the rounded heads with big eyes and sharp curved beaks, large clawed feet, and huge angled wings, but were somewhat out of proportion, their bodies too narrow and too long, the legs looking off in a way Beth couldn't quite put words to. Some were mostly bright yellow, with white patches on their bellies and more orangeish on their backs and the edges of their wings, some with wider, flatter faces (looking almost more owl-like) mostly a solid black edged here and there with purple and a deep silvery colour. Also, they were far too big to be normal birds — the closest was near enough for Beth to tell their bodies were roughly human-size, wings broad enough to shade the sun.

It seemed the veela and lilin had decided to help defend Paris.

Beth didn't really know what to think of veela and lilin, generally. She knew the legal situation for them could be sort of complicated — like, in Britain, veela were considered beings, who got fewer rights than humans but were still considered people, but lilin were dark creatures, getting even fewer rights, despite the fact that veela and lilin considered themselves to be the same race. (Beth's understanding was that it was kind of like how human mages could have magic that naturally leaned light or dark, just more extreme.) There was some weird stuff about how they reproduced that Beth didn't really get, not helped along by veela/lilin being super private about it. Like, humans married into their clans all the time, but they couldn't actually have kids with humans — Fleur called her dad her dad, because he was married to her mum and had raised her and everything, but he wasn't her biological father...and she didn't even know who was, and no, she'd refused to explain how that happened. (Beth got the impression it was a secret, to make it harder for racist humans to fuck with it and exterminate them.) They could turn into big damn birds, yeah, and had some kind of wandless fire magic, but they also had a kind of mind magic, pushing feelings out at people.

People were really scared of them for that reason which, yeah, Beth kind of got — people messing with your head was always creepy as fuck. She was pretty sure it wasn't malicious, though. Like, from what she'd seen, they were mostly just pushing out whatever they happened to be feeling at the time, and she thought it was just part of how they talked to each other? She'd watched veela with the Beauxbatons students at Hogwarts talking to each other, and yeah, that's what it'd seemed like...and, Beth's omniglot-ness picking up on it and unconsciously starting to copy it after talking to Fleur a few times was a pretty damn big hint. Beth couldn't actually do the mind magic part, but Fleur had still noticed, seemed to noticeably soften toward Beth a bit, for whatever reason. (According to Sirius, if she changed the shape of her own mind to push her emotions out the feeling would colour her aura, which was something empaths like veela would be able to pick up on — she wasn't doing that consciously, of course, she was shite at occlumency, but being an omniglot can be like that sometimes.) The aura of sexiness veela (and lilin) seemed to have, Beth was pretty sure, was just because they were kind of horny all the time, for weird magic reasons. And also they just tended to be super pretty, so some of that was on other people, but whatever.

The way Sirius explained it, they kind of needed to borrow energy from other people, for complicated magic reasons, which they preferred to do through sex — they could do it other ways, but sex was the most fun. So, they were magic sex vampires, basically. They could hurt people doing that but, since they basically had to feel everything the other person was feeling in the process, they really really didn't like to. Sirius was pretty sure it was against their own law, in fact. (Apparently, feeling someone die while they're a part of you was super unpleasant, who'd have thought.) Of course, people could be super squeamish and paranoid about magic sex vampires, which shouldn't really be a surprise to anybody, but Beth didn't...think that was deserved? They were a little creepy, sure, but they were mostly benevolent, or at least not actively malevolent, she didn't think they were worth being scared of.

Unless we were talking about their fighters — those, Beth was learning just now, were pretty fucking intimidating.

The huge bloody birds showing up easily doubled their fighting force, which probably would have made it easier anyway. They could pop around the battlefield like the mages, disappearing and reappearing in bursts of fire, and, unlike animagi, could still cast magic in their bird forms — and a surprising amount of magic too, filling the air around them with flames just by a hard flap of their wings. The light-coloured birds (veela) cast fire all gold and orange, intensely hot, giving off light magic warm and pleasant, like sunlight on a summer day; the dark-coloured birds (lilin), though, their fire was black and purple, and seemed to draw in heat, chilling the air around them, the magic they put out dark, but not vile and sickly in the way of some curses, instead reminding Beth of a cool spring breeze, thick with thunder on the horizon. (If Beth's magic leaned one way or the other, she imagined she'd find one of the two uncomfortable, but her magic was weird.) The clouds or fucking tornados of fire didn't seem to do anything — which did make sense when Beth thought about it, these were spaceships — but having way more people in the air was a good distraction, able to head them off easier and get attacks coming from more directions. Pretty quickly after the veela and lilin turned up, they'd already picked off a third ship.

Then the newcomers changed strategies — and they got really scary.

Some kept at what they'd been doing before...more or less. They'd still hop around, flooding the air ahead of the ships with clouds of fire — but the fire didn't stay clouds. A seconds after being cast, it would clench, seeming to pause in place, and then swiftly condense into a swarm of glistening needles, almost looking like gold and violet gemstones. The ships would fly right through the needles, some bouncing off and some sticking into the surface, seemingly to no effect...but then the veela/lilin would put up another cloud of flame — flying through the fire, the needles stuck in their skin would explode, scoring dozens of little holes, jagged chips flung away, like hitting a tree with a blasting curse. They didn't do a lot of damage, the needles small enough it was just superficial, but it wasn't nothing.

Watching the second go around, Beth thought she'd figured it out: gold needles would explode in the dark fire, and the purple needles would explode in the light fire. She didn't know why veela fire and lilin fire interacted like that, but it was obvious it did. As small as the bits they were chipping off the ships seemed to be, the second run through they must have hit something important, one of the ships slowing and wobbling. Beth actually got to this one first, appearing right in front of the cockpit — she could faintly see the scarred alien inside through the crystalline surface, some weird bag over his head. (Air supply for when they're in space, maybe?) She tossed off a Lance of Modestus, the two-stage piercing curse splashing against the windshield, soaking into it, the material thin enough that the second stage went right through, Beth saw a flash of blood. And then it was by her, too quickly for Beth to make out whether that had been a lethal hit — but the ship was obviously listing now, the hail of additional spells tearing it apart probably hadn't been necessary.

The rest of the newcomers took a different tack: they switched into human form, in mid-air. They couldn't fly like this, falling unaided, but after passing the elevation of the ships they'd teleport up again, streaking past the ships only to appear overhead in another flash of fire, again and again. They'd also make the weird frozen fire-blades, sometimes bands whipping out at the ships, almost like an arc spell, others making long spears, rearing back and chucking them overhand at the ships, the spears flying unnaturally quickly, as though propelled by an overpowered banishing charm. Some spears missed, or bounced off, or only stuck in a little bit, the ship's manoeuvring snapping off the rest to spin away — the bit stuck in the surface would then explode the next time it was touched by the opposite fire-colour, the explosions bigger than from the needles, so not completely useless. One lucky spear buried itself deep in a ship, just rear of the cockpit, missing the pilot but obviously hitting something important, the ship shivering and wiggling in the air, mages quickly leaping on it to finish it off.

One lilin, the mad badass made a kind of sword, and fell right at one of the ships, a heavy two-handed overhand slash shattering his conjured weapon into pieces and sending the man into an uncontrolled tumble — but the force, and whatever magic was imparted by the blade, managed to sheer off the last metre of the tip, at least. Apparently there was something important in there, because the ship immediately started flipping head over tail, streams of lava-ammo spilling out from the hole. After nearly falling all the way to the ground it finally managed to right itself, coasting along slow and unsteady, still leaking liquid fire from its shortened nose. It didn't last long, though, once a couple mages had noticed it'd survived they'd popped over (including Beth), the crippled ship pulverised under a hail of spells.

With the help of the veela and lilin, the ships were quickly killed off, one by one. The last survivor tried to escape, pointing its nose up at the sky and streaking up, but then a veela landed on the cockpit. Drawing a sword — an actual sword, Beth belatedly noticed the newcomers were all in matching uniforms, must be from a veela military of some kind — dropped to his knees against the window and buried his sword in it up to the hilt. The ship's acceleration had him sliding off, but he held onto his sword, his weight cutting a curving streak through the cockpit — probably not hurting the pilot, but definitely breaking the seal, he couldn't go back up into space anymore. The ship spun around, and started to dive, chasing after the falling veela, but then Sirius was there, the cockpit shattering in a million pieces from an overpowered blasting curse. Beth didn't see the shot that killed the pilot, but the ship stopped manoeuvring, kept diving nose first, down and down and down, until it finally smashed itself against the city below.

Beth looked around, spinning in place — yep, that was all of them. Well, that hadn't been so bad.

The air again ringing with avian screeches from the veela and lilin — this time a bubbly, gleeful thrill, an edge to it almost smug — joined with cheers from the mages, too loud, some of them must be amplifying their voices. The whole group started diving back down toward the ground, a few who'd ended up further away apparating over to join them, the big bloody birds lazily spiralling down after them. They were singing, now, their voices clean and clear — almost human-sounding, despite being bird-shaped at the moment — magic carried along on the sound, reminding Beth very much of Fawkes. (It wasn't a proper language, since Beth didn't immediately copy it, but she assumed the magic it worked by was similar.) Not explicit meaning, but feeling, an echo of it drawn out of Beth — mournful for all the people who'd been killed, yes, but despite the enemy's best efforts they were still here, resolute in the will to keep fighting so long as there was a single person left to protect, and they'd just kicked arse too, if the aliens thought they'd just roll over and take it they had another fucking thing coming.

(Her chest tight with the tangled storm of emotion, it almost brought tears to her eyes, she took a few slow, deep breaths to get control of herself.)

Early in the descent, she recognised Le Palais de l'Élysée ahead — the residence of the French President, they'd built a fallout shelter or something underneath, all the high-ranking government people were down there somewhere. They'd also put magical defences in place, pre-existing, they'd just switched the wards on when the bombing started, which Beth was pretty sure was a violation of Secrecy, but nobody cared anymore. There was a big pearlescent dome over the gardens, shimmering in rainbow streaks like a soap bubble, the area under the dome packed with a bunch of military equipment and soldiers, clumps of locals who'd decided to stay with the army rather than risk fleeing through the city. (Paris was huge, it'd take well longer than an hour to get to the edge of the built-up area, meaning another bombing would come around before they got out.) Beth knew from her previous visit that they had a pretty busy camp going on here, people gathered out on the grounds, a big outdoor kitchen put together from supplies commandeered from the surrounding blocks, to keep the refugees and the soldiers fed, both the ones guarding the Palace and the ones coming in from assignments elsewhere in the city. They'd even looted alcohol from somewhere, bottles of wine being passed around, because of course — this was France, after all.

Beth and Sirius could get through the wards, they'd been keyed in during their last visit, but she expected they'd need to send up someone to let the veela and lilin through...but then with a flood of gold and black flames, they just teleported straight to the other side of the wardline. Oh, well, never mind, then...

The mages touched down in a paved courtyard between the gardens and the Palace itself — the stone a creamy off-white, rows of big windows, twisty detailed decorations carved around the frames and along the edges. The military had put up a little command station here, a big tarp pitched over tables strewn with papers and marked-up maps, a couple bits of alien equipment salvaged from one corpse or ship or another (sealed with protective spells to prevent possible contamination), big metal boxes she assumed were some kind of communications stuff, she didn't know, a couple army people constantly listening at or talking into radios. Beth knew Britain had a rather more permanent-looking and professional set-up in Oxford, though she'd never gotten this close to it — after Beth and Sirius had moved on, the convoy they'd escorted out of Westminster had continued on to Oxford, setting up a base of operations in the University. (The town had basically become a big refugee camp, and also a place for volunteers to gather, Beth could see people all around from the sky, but thankfully the aliens hadn't tried to bomb the place yet.) This here was a similar idea, she thought, but temporary and more haphazard-looking.

(She assumed the French military must have a bunker in the city somewhere they could use instead, but they'd decided to do this outside. For morale reasons, maybe?)

Beth and Sirius didn't approach, though, hung back with a bunch of other mages while a couple people Beth assumed were leaders of some kind went to update whoever was in charge around here. They were joined by... Beth hadn't caught whether that one was a veela or lilin — there wasn't an obvious difference in human form. Whatever, a woman in the odd veela uniform was going with them. The base was leather, but very old-fashioned looking, a chest piece and those skirts made out of strips like pictures Beth had seen of Roman soldiers — not covering a whole lot, their legs below the knee and arms bare (they weren't even wearing shoes), Beth assumed the armour projected protective spells to cover the rest — with long sashes draped over their shoulders, crossing their chests, wrapped around their waists, twisting red and purple stitched with glittering gold. All of them were armed, not just with wands — Beth assumed the bracers on their lower arms were also wand holsters — but also with blades, a sword hanging from one hip and a knife at the small of their backs — which weren't just for show, the enchantments you could put in a sword were fucking ridiculous. (Obviously, when she thought about it, since goblins could fight mages on even ground despite not being able to use wands at all.) She was aware it even used to be common for battlemages (or sometimes just nobles in general) to wear a sword or a dagger, in addition to their wand, but it'd gone out of style at some point after Secrecy. She assumed these veela and lilin were from some rather old-fashioned military group she didn't know anything about, would explain the uniform and the weapons.

It looked like the veela/lilin person was being introduced to whoever was in charge over there — she had no idea whether muggle leadership would even know of the existence of veela, so that would probably take some explaining. Whatever, not really Beth's business. Some of the mages conjured benches, Beth and Sirius went ahead and sat with them. Not like she really needed to sit down or anything, the active flying she'd been doing did use her legs but not as much as actually running around, but why not. Some of the locals showed up with bottled water and, like, buns and stuff — Beth wasn't really hungry, but she took some water — the helpers giving the mages some funny looks when they didn't think they were being watched. Apparently the random people who'd ended up here weren't quite used to magic being real yet, but there were kind of more important things to worry about, so. Some healing potions were passed around (Beth took one for nerve damage, the hot-cold numb tingles in her wand arm dying down), the conversation quickly turning to the state of the invasion.

Most of these mages were locals, so they didn't know much about the situation beyond France, just rumours they'd picked up here and there. Beth and Sirius had been popping all around Europe, though, Sirius kind of monopolised the conversation filling them in. She did follow the whole thing — French was one of the first languages she'd picked up after learning about the omniglot thing — but Beth didn't talk much, just sitting quietly and sipping at her water.

Apparently, someone was keeping any eye on the ships in orbit — they were keeping a catalogue, some of the French mages had heard about it from somewhere. The biggest one was huge, at least fifty kilometres across, which was fucking insane. It seemed to be made out of the same stuff as the fighter ships they'd seen (they thought, maybe), shaped sort of like a big starfish, a blob in the middle and big arms curving out. It wasn't part of the attack, though, hanging back in orbit around the moon. Their assumption was that it was a civilian transport of some kind, holding back in wait for the defenders to be dealt with before moving closer. They didn't need to bother, since it wasn't like anyone would be able to hit them up in space anyway, but whatever.

The biggest military ship almost looked like an oblong spiralling seashell of some kind, with twirling bands around its length and coming up to a point...but, naturally, was fucking huge — their estimates put it just over a kilometre and a half, which was, just, ridiculous. It'd mostly stayed out of the fighting, occasionally sending down fireballs from orbit — in particular, it'd picked off several countries' naval bases — but this second wave of landing craft and fighter ships had come from that one. The first wave had come from smaller ships — of course, "smaller" was still improbably big, maybe around a fifth the size of the big one, so around three hundred metres long, the size of an especially large skyscraper. There were at least three of them, though they weren't sure if that was all of them, since long-range communications were out and the curve of the earth got in the way. They were pretty sure there was a fourth, and maybe a fifth, but they knew of three for certain, the spotters even noting distinctive markings to keep track of them. It was one of these that was flying over Europe and bombing the shite out of them...though apparently, when they'd run off to the moon for a little bit, they'd ended up with a different one, the ship on its bombing loop overhead now with different markings from the one that'd done it the first day. Not that it really mattered, she guessed, since the lava-balls would kill people the same no matter which ship it was coming from.

Apparently, people were trying to make guesses about how much space there was in these ships and how many aliens they could be expected to carry, but there were too many open questions to get a solid answer — they had no idea how the aliens' technology worked, so they didn't know how much space all the equipment would take, or what they considered acceptable as a minimum for living space, or how many crew the ships needed to operate, anything like that. Also, the attacks on all the big cities seemed to be mostly a distraction, the spotters had seen really big landing parties heading somewhere further south. They knew at least one was in Africa, probably in the really jungly part south of the Sahara, and they thought there were two in Asia — one in India, and one in Indochina, or maybe Indonesia? (They hadn't gotten a good angle on it, not sure where it'd ended up.) Word had been passed along through the mages that there was another big landing in America, in the Amazon somewhere, but they didn't really know much about it.

They didn't know much about any of them, really, what was going on down there. They assumed that, once they'd dealt with the attacks on European cities, they'd have to pack up and go help dig out these big landings — India might do okay, she guessed, depending on what exactly the aliens had brought with them and how many of them there were (nobody knew shite), but it sounded like most of the countries they'd (probably) landed in didn't have the resources to take care of it themselves. So, even when the fighting here was over, it wouldn't really be over.

(Convincing Sirius to let her help with the attack on Europe had been bad enough, but she assumed he wouldn't be happy with her volunteering to go fight aliens halfway around the world. She'd figure it out when the time came.)

And they did think the fighting in Europe was mostly done already. With the fighter ships they'd blown up just a minute ago, they'd already killed most of the ones the spotters had counted — reports from other countries could be spotty, so it was possible they were all dead, and they just hadn't heard about it yet. There was the big landing that'd just happened, presumably they'd get word if anyone needed help dealing with that. (From what Beth and Sirius had seen, hopping from Istanbul to Moscow to Paris, they probably had it handled.) Unless something big happened, most of the French mages were hesitantly confident that the aliens had run out of little ships and soldiers to throw at them. They'd hang out waiting for word to come in they were needed somewhere, of course, but they thought it was done.

Which meant the complicated politics bit was about to start — there was the end of Secrecy to deal with, and all the muggles and mages cooperating to put together a response to the big landings was going to be a huge fucking headache — but that wasn't Beth's problem. In fact, she pretty much stopped listening when they got to the politics part, rolling off the bench to lay on her back on the stone of the courtyard (muscles in her back, strained from leaning over her broom, twinging a little at being forced straight), and stared blankly up at the sky.

Supposedly, the climate in Paris was pretty similar to London — a little warmer and sunnier, but not really by very much. Which was kind of funny, because you never heard people talk about Paris being a rainy dreary shithole, but whatever. Like in London the same time of year, it was pretty cloudy, but not overcast, alternating patches of clouds and blue sky. Enough that it'd probably be at least partially sunny today, if it weren't for all the smoke rising from the city, blurring out the blue with bleak brownish-grey. The sun would peek through sometimes, bits of the smoke noticeably backlit, throwing crazy shadows overhead. Like you could get sometimes when it was partly cloudy, but much more busy, the roiling of the smoke being sheared in different directions by the wind making even more varied shapes in different colours, a complicated mess.

...And there were a lot of cities that'd been hit as bad as Paris, right? It occurred to her that all that smoke in the air, washing out the sun, probably wasn't good. She wasn't sure how much of an effect it would have on temperatures and, like, crops and stuff, but...probably an effect, right? Having to deal with a famine on top of aliens trying to kill them could get very bad very quickly. That was an unnerving thought, she was kind of freaking herself out a little...

(Saving people from the aliens wouldn't do any fucking good if they all just starved to death anyway.)

Since she happened to be looking up at the sky, she was one of the first people to see it. There was a disturbance in the clouds and smoke overhead, swirling and bowing out, as though being pushed aside by something — Beth felt herself stiffen, tension thrumming through her, before the something even showed itself. It was an oblong shape, several times longer than it was wide, vaguely cylindrical, a yellowish-whitish colour that only grew paler as it got out from behind layers and layers of smoke, streaked here and there with darker oranges and browns. Beth heard shouting from the command station, and then a wailing siren pierced the air, muggles scrambling for weapons and mages for their brooms. She'd seen it early, so she ended up near the front of the pack, zipping up through the wards so fast the wind roared deafeningly in her ears, almost covering up the fires of the veela and lilin teleporting. The shape was still dropping, and dropping, the size of Beth's finger, and then her hand, and then her arm, and then bigger...

It swooped down over the river, its dive halting over the big islands in the water over there, maybe a mile to the east of the Palace. And then its guns opened up, one whole side of the ship flaring with bright orange light, and the whole island was consumed in fire, the shockwave so powerful Beth felt it tear at her hair from here, dust stinging at her eyes.

Like the fighter ships she was more used to, the surface of this one was mottled and uneven, seemingly made out of partially eroded stone, craggy and blobby. A sort of rounded tube, reminding her almost of a discoloured cucumber, even seeming to kink and curve a little as a long cucumber might, dotted with little nodules sticking out all over the place. As irregular as the shape was, it didn't really seem like it'd be aerodynamic to her...but then, it was a bloody spaceship, so they probably didn't need to worry about that. She flew straight at it, in a crowd of mages on broomsticks and big bloody bird-people, and the ship just got bigger, and bigger, and bigger, fucking up her sense of scale, it was further off the ground than she'd thought, maybe as much as a kilometre, the thing was just so fucking big, a few hundred metres from one end to the other, it was hard to say exactly...

The guns were more powerful than the fighter ships, that one broadside had pretty much melted half of that entire island, previously dense with buildings but now a mass of glowing sludge, belching a thick column of black smoke, more buildings collapsing as their foundations were eaten away. The lava-bombs that'd been dropping from orbit, the largest as wide as she was tall, but brighter and hotter, the wind on the way not having cooled them down, hitting with less impact but the heat sheering through buildings in a blink, liquid rock or metal or whatever the fuck it was sloshing down alleys. Anyone left on that island was either dead already or about to be baked to death, and there was probably nothing they could do about it.

The ship tilted on its axis, and then a volley of lava-bombs were spit out from the opposite side — another city block just vanished, disappearing in an explosion of fire and smoke.

Some of the mages launched spells at the thing, but they fizzled out before even reaching the surface, the size of the ship throwing off their sense of distance. But the ship reacted anyway, a dense rain of fire-balls sent in their direction — smaller ones, similar to the fighter ships' guns. There were enough fire-balls that she couldn't really go around, and dodging them would be risky, so she apparated instead, forward and up. She'd meant to come out straight above the big ship, but it was still a short distance ahead of her, fuck. Close enough. The incantation for the Thousand-Lances spilling over her lips — automatic by this point, cast it so many times the last few days — Beth started in a shallow dive toward the big ship, the long arc of her curse extending out ahead and above her. Partway down, her flightpath brought her among a group of mages, they sidled to the side out of her overlong spell, a dozen shouted incantations melded together—

She was still a couple seconds away from the ship when a distortion appeared in front of her, the lines of the ship bending, refracted — Beth abandoned the spell, wand hand snapping to her broom to wrench it to the side. One of the mages around her didn't react quickly enough, vanishing into the distortion, his body twisting unnaturally for an instant before he was just gone, Beth blasted with a flash of hot prickles. Her broom shuddered in her grip, Beth being yanked back, as though someone grabbing onto the back of her shirt and pulling, but she leaned harder into the flight spells and managed to wrench away from the pull, turning down, zipping by the width of the ship in a blink, diving toward the city below, her heart pounding loud and painful in her ears.

That was the weird shielding the fighters had, but bigger — and it'd appeared far further away from the ship than they normally did, Beth almost hadn't reacted in time. That had been too close.

Once she'd caught her breath, she levelled off and began pulling up again. The ship was still moving, drifting ponderously over the city, and at a pretty good clip too, Beth had to adjust the angle of her climb to meet it. Another city block vanished in a burst of liquid fire, dozens of fireballs flung from the other side at the flying mages, she saw one get hit, clothing and broomstick caught alight, yet another burning projectile plummeting to the city below. From here, she could tell the defenders were noticeably fewer than they'd been before, several must have been caught by surprise by the dense fireballs or the too-deep shields. They were still fighting, though, spellglows lancing at the ship from this way or that, clouds or darts of veela/lilin fire.

Beth suddenly flew through a cloud of dust, chunks of surprisingly light, porous stone pummelling her, she ducked her head, jerked to the side. Debris from the ship, they must be making hits. As huge as the fucking thing was, she expected the skin was proportionately thick — at this rate, this was going to take a while...

Coming up from below, distona distona cumigne lacera, even as the first spellglow neared the ship she dug in and apparated away — didn't want to attract attention and get sucked into one of those shields. She wavered a little coming out, her foot slipping, took her a second to get control of her broom again. She'd apparated over a garden to the south (first thing she'd thought of), a few hundred metres away from and mostly level with the ship. She picked a spot low on the right side — there was a darker patch here, almost purple-ish, distinctive enough she'd remember it, aim right at the seam with the lighter stuff just there. Casting the Thousand-Lances again, she flew straight for the ship, gritting her teeth against the magic burning its way down her arm. As she approached, there was another huge burst of veela fire, tiny little explosions popping off scattered across the top of the ship, it lurched to the side a little, Beth reflexively adjusted her approach angle a little, and almost ran right into her own arc spell, dipping a little down before she accidentally killed herself (that would have been embarrassing). She released the spell earlier than she normally would, took a hard corner, paralleling the side of the ship a couple dozen metres away — hanging off her broom sideways, hugging the handle tight with one arm and one leg, so she could toss curse after curse 'down' at the thing as she sped by. Shields caught some of them, but she saw a few burst against the craggy surface, dissolving from a distona or flinging out chips from a sectumsempra. She saw an orangish glow growing out of notches here and there, rolled back right side up so she could apparate off again the instant before the guns fired.

The ship was wheeling around, turning to cross the river to the northern side of the city, no, Beth wanted to keep hitting that same spot. Once it'd evened off, she apparated again, putting her on the right side again. That'd seemed to work okay, so she'd just do it over again, started a Thousand-Lances aimed for the same spot on the lower-right. She was still some seconds off when she wanted to turn — dozens of metres away, the ship still big enough it all but completely filled her vision — when mages on broomsticks plummeted past her to either side, what—

Orange glows appeared along the face of the ship, shite! She dropped the spell, turning away, the fireballs already flying — her breath catching in her throat, the world seeming to slow around her, like that moment before she caught the snitch, she harshly yanked her broom up and to the left, and then the fireballs were streaking past her. Beth was blasted with heat from all sides, leaving a lingering ache like a bad sunburn and stealing the breath from her lungs, but she'd gotten through. Her arc spell was past her now, a deep red ribbon twisting across the last few metres to the ship — some of the arc was bent away by a shield, but some was slipping past — Beth tossed off a few more curses before dipping into a dive, dropping below the guns' line of sight.

Except then there were more fireballs coming at her from above, fuck, this thing had guns on the bottom face too. Only a few shots at first, and relatively slow, since they were travelling the same direction — glancing back over her shoulder, she sidled around the only one that was coming anywhere near her, before squaring herself and apparating away again.

Another city block was annihilated, and then another, the ship constantly spitting out fireballs, but the mages and veela and lilin stayed on it, many spells disappearing into shields but many slipping past to burst against the ship, the material darkened with scorched streaks or blasted off in chips and chunks. Beth made a few more runs with her Thousand-Lances, aimed at more or less the same spot; Sirius caught up with her after the second one, and realised what she was trying to do, flying alongside her and hitting the same spot with his scary vanishing curses. They were definitely doing some damage, a gash slowly being carved into the side of the ship, and not just the two of them, each time Beth apparated out more scorch- and pock-marks appeared in the ship, making it look even more mottled and uneven than it'd started. And they made another pass, and another, and another, Beth wincing as the ship lit up one patch of the city after another, broomsticks and bird-people shot out of the sky...

Until after what felt like an hour of making one run after another after another, dodging fireballs along the way, her hair knotted from the wind and skin wet with sweat and gritty with ash, Beth saw it. As fast as she was moving, it was in view for like a second, she was already diving downward again before her brain quite registered what she'd seen: there was a gash torn into the ship, showing a narrow glimpse of a hallway on the other side.

"Vocem vecta. We opened a hole, lower-right. Make a distraction up top, please." Beth was only mostly certain she'd remembered to speak in French, hopefully somebody was listening. Beth apparated again, putting herself more in line with the hole, and darted off, the acceleration hard enough to push her feet hard against the posts, her hands squeaking against the handle. She ducked low over her broom, eyes fixed on the little hole in the side of the ship, growing larger and larger by the second, certain now it was wide enough to fly through. The ship filling her vision, there was a sudden explosion of fire, deep enough of a boom Beth felt it in her chest, on the opposite side, from this angle the ship edged with golden-white flames, almost looking like an eclipse — thanks for the help, lads. The ship started manoeuvring in response to whatever was going on up there, nose tipping up a little and turning, Beth wrenched her broom back into line, the craggy hull of the ship stretching in all directions and the gap yawning open—

Beth passed into shadows, the wind and much of the noise of the battle abruptly cutting off, her stomach twisting and head spinning as the world seemed to tilt around her, her sense of down swinging some degrees sideways. She slammed down hard on the braking spells, her momentum carrying her forward, but she let it, lurching over the front of her broom and tucking into a roll, bleeding off her speed — getting her feet back under her, as she stood up she lept to the side, clearing the hole for the next people through. Not looking where she was going, she slammed shoulder-first into a wall, nearly knocked down on her arse again.

Glancing around, it looked like there was a long hallway running along the lower-right corner of the ship — which was convenient, hopefully the pilots and commanders and shite would be somewhere up at the front. Beth was in a cross-hallway which, luckily enough, happened to be placed more or less directly across from the hole in the ship. As Beth looked around, more broom-flyers appeared through the gap, the cross-hallway giving them room to slow down. (Most of them rather more gracefully than Beth, though she was forced to duck under someone's foot nearly hitting her head.) The hallways looked...really weird. It wasn't like she'd expected futuristic-looking polished metals or whatever, like in some science fiction film, she had seen what the rest of their technology looked like, but it was still...

The walls were smooth, but textured, mottled pinks and reds and yellows. The joins between walls and ceiling and floor weren't angular, but more gradual curved lines, the hallways like long tubes. They looked organic, like how she imagined the inside of someone's throat or blood vessels or something would be, it looked like they should even be slimy, but Beth was leaning with one hand on a wall, so she could feel they weren't — a soft, almost leathery texture, warm to the touch, but dry. There was a faint smell of raw meat on the air, cutting over it something more like cooking bacon, thick on the steam wafting from the charred streaks slashed into the hallways from curses that had managed to slip through the gap.

That was...odd. Beth had noticed that their weapons and armour almost seemed to be living things — were their whole bloody ships alive too?

Beth shook the thought off, shoved away from the wall — they weren't alone in here, there were several aliens at the intersection, diving out of the way of the mages flying in and shouting. (There were panels and rolls of some kind of material sitting here and there, a repair team?) They did look different, though. They were the same species as the tall ones, definitely, but most of them were without all the weird mutilations and scars and shite on all the ones Beth had seen so far, their faces mostly intact. (Which actually made it more obvious that they definitely weren't human, their features noticeably wrong.) Most were rather plain, dressed in undecorated loincloths or toga-looking things, but one was in a more complicated robe, Beth immediately marking her as the person in charge. There was some weird thing attached to her head, in place of hair, a tangled mat of writhing tentacles — very gross — and, Beth initially took it for a glove of some kind, but on second glance her hand had actually been replaced with some kind of...armoured crustacean, like, a crab or something, her eight fingers with blades and pincers and tiny little tools she couldn't make out from here...

Okay. That was fucking weird.

Beth didn't pause to think about it too long, flung a blasting curse right at the one in charge — she jumped into motion, trying to dodge the curse, but reacted too late, the spellglow striking her in the upper-right, her chest torn apart with a splash of thick black blood. Some of the plain ones were pulling out the same short sword things the lizard-people used, others running off, probably to go warn someone. She belatedly noticed the larger hallway was an odd sort of L shape, some of the aliens were walking along the wall, standing upright at a 90-degree angle to the floor, which, that was quickly giving her a headache just looking at it. Trying not to think about how the hell that worked, Beth punched through the chest of one of the ones with a sword; another one was charging at her, she slipped to the side, severing his sword-arm with a sectumsempra, as the alien staggered a follow-up blasting curse splattered his head all over the wall. (Ugh, gross.) Other mages had started attacking the aliens at more or less the same time, wiping them out in seconds, curses chasing after the ones trying to flee.

...Were those civilians? They didn't seem to be carrying weapons. They were on a ship that was blowing the shite out of Paris right now, so they were at least assisting with the attack, and they'd probably been running to warn soldiers, so. Beth assumed nobody would really give a damn about just killing the aliens and not bothering to take even any of the unarmed ones prisoner instead, but it did make her feel kind of uncomfortable for a second.

They were just finishing off the last of the aliens when the hallway suddenly erupted into gold-white and purple-black flames — one nearly right on top of Beth, a blast of frigid air slamming into her — a dozen veela and lilin appearing. Jesus, could have given them some warning, about gave her a heart attack. Beth quick tracked down her broom, shrunk it away, and they didn't hang around talking about where to go next, they all started moving all at once. Most of them had clearly had the same idea as Beth, charging down the main hallway toward the front of the ship (some hopping up to run on the wall, which continued to look fucking weird), but some split off in the other directions, probably as a distraction, or to hunt down important equipment to smash. Not that Beth expected they'd be able to recognise that stuff even looking directly at it, but why not. Glancing around, she saw Sirius was going this way too, near the front of the mages running along the wall.

They ran without any opposition for a time, it was impossible to say how far without any things around to use for scale, the gentle up and down curling of the floor under her feet and the subtle curve to the walls throwing off her sense of distance. A few aliens came out of cross-hallways or doors — looking like valves, flaps irising open — immediately set upon by curses from multiple sources, mages peeling off in those directions in case more were coming. And destroying everything they found while they were at it, Beth guessed, explosions and snapping of curses resolving, sizzling and popping of cooking meat, steam wafting out of doorways in their wake.

A deep buzzing, some of the grenade-bugs came zipping out of a cross-hallway, one veela/lilin slashed across her chest before she could react, Beth dove, rolling under the cloud of fire from one of the red ones, skidding to the opposite side of the hall. Still laying on the ground where she'd fallen, she peeked around the corner, there were three soldiers over there, just starting to charge out toward them. "Cumigne lacera!" a couple other curses and one of the lilin-fire-spears flying out at more or less the same time — the trio vanished behind a burst of fire and a rain of colourful sparks (didn't know what that curse was), by the time the air cleared they were all dead on the floor. The veela who'd gotten cut with a bug was bleeding pretty badly, but was well enough to evacuate herself in a burst of golden fire; the mage who'd gotten hit with the fire bug was burned badly enough that he probably wasn't going to make it, but one of his friends quick apparated him out, reappearing behind them some seconds later, their group already having picked themselves up and moved on again.

"This way, here!" Beth glanced to the right, saw someone waving them to an opening in the wall up there — assuming he must have seen something important, Beth turned that way. Bracing herself, she just kept running, around the corner with the wall, leaning back and stepping up, her stomach lurching and her head spinning as gravity shifted 90 degrees. (No idea how they were doing that, but it was pretty neat.) The opening led to a short tunnel, the lights on the ceiling — patches of this yellowish glowing moss-looking stuff, which continued to be fucking weird — curving down along the wall until finally reaching the floor on the opposite end of the tunnel. The people ahead of her mirrored the lights, running up the wall as they went before ending up upside-down on the ceiling — Beth belatedly realised the lights told you which way was up, because they couldn't just have gravity pointing the same way all the time, for some fucking reason. Gritting her teeth, trying to ignore the way her stomach protested, she followed after them, stumbling a little as her brain struggled to make sense of the tunnel twisting around her, the floor and walls of the room ahead tilting.

They came into a low-ceilinged but wide and long hall of some kind, depressions in the floor every few metres lined with some kind of equipment — Beth thought they were workstations of some kind, what almost looked like control panels and lumps of living something-or-other that clearly did something, shells gleaming and creepy fucking tentacles wavering, very busy, Beth's eyes glazed over most of it without taking in the fine details. Over each of the workstations was a window, the colours and shapes somewhat distorted, but showing the view outside, the horizon straight up, the city on Beth's right and the smoke-choked sky to the left...which meant the floor inside was perpendicular to the ground outside, but Beth wasn't thinking about that right now. There were people at all the workstations, odd fleshy bags over their heads, more walking between the rows, but they were already scrambling into movement by the time Beth caught up, some moving to rush against the mages, others turning to flee, soldiers in their weird shell-armour reaching for grenade-bugs.

Golden and purple fires appearing scattered through the hall, veela and lilin jumping ahead, curses lanced out toward the armoured soldiers first — Beth's distona took one full in the chest, dissolving to dust, falling to the floor in multiple pieces — taking out all of them on this side of the hall before they could barely react, a buzzing in the air as ones toward the opposite end managed to get bug-grenades out. But the veela/lilin cast their weird crystallised fire, needles seeking out the bugs, the things exploding to send bits of frozen flames and shattered bug parts everywhere. The rest of the aliens fell under a rain of piercing and slicing and blasting curses, stray spells striking the windows — actually displays of some kind, the curses tearing out chunks to reveal the ceiling beneath — as they ran out of aliens the curses instead turned on the equipment packed into the room. They spread out a little as they went, so they could get to everything, blasting curses tearing apart the controls and shite to send bits of shell and splashes of black and greenish-yellowish blood everywhere, severed tentacles flopping limp on the floor, the curses a constant booming and crunching and clattering of noise, Beth could barely hear anything else.

From the displays and shite, Beth suspected these were the controls for the guns — hopefully they'd slowed down the bombing of the city, at least.

As they got toward the opposite end of the hall, the horizon through the displays tilted, the city shifting around more behind her. The ship was taking off, pointing its nose to the sky. But even as it moved, there was some kind of explosion somewhere far behind them, the floor shuddering under her feet, hard enough some of their group stumbled, the city through the displays lurching to the side. Beth suspected some of the mages who'd split off before had just blown up something important.

They streamed through another twisting tunnel, like the one before, coming out back into the same L-shaped hall... Actually, Beth suspected they were on the top-right side of the ship now, but whatever, there was another identical L up here, so. Before long they ran into some more crew members — not soldiers, must have some other job — quickly cut down before they could do practically anything. There was another shudder in the floor, and then gravity abruptly shifted, pulling them at an angle back the way they'd come, what'd been a hallway a second ago now mostly vertical. For a couple seconds they slid down the shaft, Beth scrambling for something to grab onto, and then ran into a hard ramp, some kind of ceramic, rolled to a hard stop against another body, drawing a hard oof — someone had conjured a floor for them, looked like, good thinking. People started reaching for their brooms, but before they could get very far the gravity righted itself again, pulling them toward what was supposed to be the floor. Beth skidded back down the ramp, sliding until she reached the leathery organic surface—

A clonk on the back of her head as someone ran into her, another heavy impact on her back slammed her against the floor chest-first, she coughed, stars dancing in her head, let out a strangled groan as the weight suddenly increased, someone falling on top of whoever had fallen on top of her. Her face pressed into the floor (the little air she could get smelling strongly of flesh, ugh), the weight on top of her shifted, a knee or elbow or something painfully digging into her lower back, fuck fuck fuck...

Finally everyone had gotten the fuck off her, a lilin reaching a hand down to help her up. All a little dizzy and bruised, they immediately started running again, a little more slowly than before, a few of them noticeably limping.

She wondered if the aliens had fucked with the gravity on purpose, but if they had they probably would have kept it on the wrong way to squish them against the 'floor' who knew how far down, or at least stop them from getting further up the ship. Someone elsewhere must have hit something else important, throwing off whatever made their gravity work for a second there.

There was movement in the hall ahead, Beth leaned around to try to get a glimpse between the people in front of her — there was a sizeable pack of lizard-people up there, maybe as many as a dozen soldiers with them. The lizard-people started charging toward them, an amplified voice yelled, "Break!" There was a cross-hallway here, both left and right, some of their group split off to either side, probably hoping to go around the aliens, but some of them kept going straight ahead. The defenders couldn't be everywhere, after all, hopefully someone would get through. Fewer people in the way, she spotted Sirius near the front of the people staying in this hallway, so she stayed with them too.

Curses started flying, but Beth couldn't fucking see anything with everyone in the way, she turned toward the wall, jumped as she neared it, gravity switching 90 degrees on her in mid-air, staggered a couple steps. The first couple ranks of lizard-people had been chewed up by the first volley of spells, but the rest kept coming, climbing heedlessly over their dead or dying buddies. "Sectumsempra," dragging a squiggle through the air, the invisible arc passing over the other mages' heads to slash into the pack of lizard-people, cutting several down to the bone. She'd had to aim high, to make sure she didn't hit any of their people, so a few got past — Sirius just punched the first one to reach him in the face, hard enough the dinosaur-looking motherfucker spun down to the floor, so Sirius could cast his vanishing arc spell into the ranks behind it, the line of charging aliens folding into themselves, killing a good third of the lizard-people single-handedly. Because he was just a complete fucking badass like that.

(Sometimes, Beth was reminded that Sirius was actually an extremely dangerous man, he was just so silly most of the time that he rarely seemed like it.)

There were more bursts of fire as veela and lilin teleported head, toward the scarred aliens, but Beth saw three running up onto the wall toward her, reaching for grenade-bugs. "Cumigne lacera!" The alien in front was killed by the fiery explosion, the one behind him staggered, but the last reared back, throwing the bug — Beth dove down to the floor, skidding awkwardly, but there was a heavy thrum as the bug zipped overhead, missed for now. Climbing back to her feet, one of the veela/lilin got the bug-thrower from behind, but the last was still coming for her. He'd dropped his bug, instead reaching for their weird snake-spear-whip things. Beth shot off a distona, but he gracefully dove over a shoulder, immediately popping to his feet again to her left, the spell going wide, dipped around the arc of a cutting curse, and then he was far too close, snake-thing hardening into a long spear, his arm rearing back to stab.

Beth jumped, a quick banishing charm giving her an extra boost, throwing her at the other 'floor'. She landed awkwardly, tripping, and then falling right into a lizard-person corpse, splashing into hot, wet blood, all along her side and back — ugh, gross. Sick clawing at her throat, she pushed herself up, the alien had switched his snake-thing to whip form, turning around his head, "Aigída!" the head bounced off the silvery shield charm before it could reach her, the alien turning on his heel to—

Sirius jumped up next to the alien, a vanishing curse severing the head of the snake-thing, a follow-up curse incinerating the alien's head, the body falling limp. He turned over to Beth — looking up at a funny angle, standing on the wall relative to her — probably about to ask if she was okay, "Fixam iaculor!" the two-stage piercing curse penetrating the armour of the alien coming up behind Sirius before punching through the body beneath from shoulder to hip, the force making him flip nearly head over heels.

Sirius glanced over his shoulder, startled, before turning back to throw her a grin. "Thanks, missed that one!"

Beth turned back to the battle, but it was pretty much done by this point. One of the veela/lilin was trading blows with a scarred alien — taller and thicker than most of the rest, spikes growing out of arms and hips, a fleshy-looking cape draped from hooks fixed to his shoulders — even as the others finished off the last few survivors. It looked like someone had challenged someone to a duel, the veela/lilin fighting with her sword, turning aside spear thrusts and ducking or spinning out of the way of the swinging snake head, the enchanted blade cutting gouges into the alien armour. The alien was snarling and spitting, visibly surprised that the woman was actually keeping up — until the spear changed to whip form in mid swing, twirling around the sword, but the woman just ducked under the head whipping around toward her face, falling to one knee, a blast of purple fire leaping from her free hand to burn at the alien's hip. He screeched and stumbled back, the injury making him fall to his knees, his head vanishing in a second blast of fire, body immediately going limp. The fire cleared to show the head discoloured in mottled patches and streaked with frost, definitely dead. And that looked like all of them, good.

Beth belatedly noticed that the hallway ended maybe another twenty metres ahead — there were already explosions coming from that direction, some of the people who'd turned off must have gotten there first. There were a couple minor injuries in their group, but nothing serious, they were all soon running toward the corner ahead.

They were about halfway there when the floor under Beth's feet shuddered. She didn't mean, like, the whole ship being rattled by something — though it felt like maybe that was happening too — but she saw the shivering in the walls and ceiling too, like the big damn monstrosity of a living ship was having a muscle spasm or something. A few of them were pitched to the ground by the shivering, Beth stumbled—

And then, with an odd twist that felt almost like a friction burn, the internal gravity went out — instantly turning the hallway into an elevator shaft. Taken by surprise, Beth fell backward, after falling a couple feet her back scraping against the floor, the friction pulling her into a tumble, and then the floor was gone and Beth was spinning through the open air — the ship must still be tilting — she passed through a spot where the gravity was still working, for whatever reason, saw the 'wall' coming in time to put her wand away and tuck her shoulder, rolling against the 'floor'. (Thankfully, the strangely organic materials of the ship's insides made it a relatively soft landing.) But then her roll took her past the working gravity, her head spinning as her sense of down rotated 90 degrees twice in the space of a couple seconds, and she was falling again—

Someone had conjured a plug over most of the hallway, once again putting a ramp along the edge to slow them down a little. Beth still banged her wrist really hard on something, but she actually landed on someone this time, cushioning part of the impact — landing face up, she saw someone falling straight toward her, rolled out of the way just in time for the person under her to get squashed by a second person, both of them letting out pained shouts. Beth scrambled to get her feet underself, and—

Hot, sharp pain stabbing up her arm, wrenching some kind of noise out of her throat, Beth flopped over onto her side, cradling her wrist. For fuck's sake, ow! The pain diminished into a background burning, pounding with her pulse, white sparks of agony following every twitch of her fingers. Right, she'd definitely broken something. Kind of surprised, mages were pretty resistant to physical hits like that, must have fallen at a funny angle...

The conjured floor tilted underneath her, mages and veela/lilin and corpses — whoever'd done the conjuring had done it low enough that they'd caught some of the aliens they'd just fought in it — sliding toward one side, Beth's stomach lurching and her head spinning. Partially from the pain, yeah, sweat already breaking out, but it also felt like the room was spinning, her weight decreasing, nearly enough to lift her into the air.

They were falling.

"We got the brain!" came a magically-amplified voice, somewhat strained — if Beth had to guess, having their own trouble dealing with the ship's tumble. "It's going down, everyone get out!"

Beth was a little startled that the ship apparently had a brain, but why not, she guessed. There were flares of fire as veela and lilin teleported out, pops of apparation, Beth shakily pushed herself up to her feet, still cradling her wrist. Taking a deep breath, trying to focus through the pain, she dug in her feet and—

The floor suddenly titled beneath her, nearly forty-five degrees, Beth tumbled to the side, reflexively threw out her hands to stop herself from slamming into the 'wall' (actually the floor?) — an overwhelming piercing pain stabbed all the way up to her elbow, her vision going white and her head spinning, loosing her balance. Gritting her teeth against a scream, she hugged her wrist against her chest — reflexively, that probably wasn't actually helping — blinking the spots out of her vision. There was a harsh hissing noise, she glanced around, one of the snake-spear-things was nearby, rearing up to—

«Stop!» Beth could feel the parselmagic didn't quite take properly, but the living weapon seemed confused, hesitating for a couple seconds — long enough for Beth to get her wand out and take its head off with a distona.

The room was still spinning, tilting, Beth sliding against the conjured floor the opposite direction now. Keeping her injured wrist close against her chest, she tucked her wand away again, turning against the direction she was sliding she managed to get her knees under herself. She started pushing herself up to her feet, but then there was a shiver in the room around her, heard as a thrum in the air, and the ship sharply tilted, flinging her off her feet and straight into what was supposed to be the ceiling — the landing was fine, the glowing mossy stuff soft and fuzzy to the touch, but then something heavy slammed into her, a hard edge digging into her hip. She wiggled herself out from underneath, belatedly seeing the heavy thing was an alien corpse, helped along a little by the continued spinning of the falling ship taking some of the weight off of her, her back bruised and that spot on her hip twinging — must have gotten caught on an edge of its armour, ow — she tried to get up to her feet but the floor tilted under her again, she fell against the conjured floor, dammit!

She'd gotten back up to her knees, the pain in her wrist and the spinning of the room making her terribly nauseous, the dizziness making it even harder to stand — and she jumped at something wrapping around her shoulders. Beth recognised Sirius the instant before they disapparated.

A twisting, uncomfortable trip through apparation space later — really not helping with the nausea — and reality came crashing back into existence, the daylight almost hurting her eyes, the smoke on the wind almost pleasant after the ever-present raw meat smell of the ship. And then the wind grew faster as Beth dropped out of the sky, immediately wrenched into an uncontrolled tumble as Sirius let go — obviously he would have apparated into mid-air, momentum was preserved through apparation. Beth reached for her broom, she needed to carefully tuck it into her elbow so she could get her wand out, cancelled the shrinking spells. The broom pushed itself out of her grip, immediately carried up away from her by the wind, "Accio!" Beth managed to catch the broom under her arm, so she could tuck her wand away again.

Grabbing at it with her good hand, a bit of shuffling around, not helped by the wind clawing at her, crawled around until she thought she had more or less a decent grip. She started the flight spells up gently, worried too quick of a stop would just have her torn away and start falling again — and good thing she did, too, she was still tumbling, her momentum enough she ended up hanging on to the broom by her good hand and one knee. Slowly increasing the power to the flight spells, she was gradually pulled out of her tumble, finally came to a stop upright, one shaking hand tightly gripping the handle and breathing heavily, practically vibrating with nerves.

Looking down, by how small the buildings were she was still at leat a kilometre above the ground. Good thinking on Sirius's part, bringing them out that high, that could have gotten messy...

Sirius swooped up next to her just as she spotted the alien ship, several kilometres away, above and to her right. Falling mostly tail-first, wobbling and spinning, the thing looked a mess, blackened by fire in patches and with countless holes punched into it. It was leaking, thin orange filaments of lava-ammo-stuff trailing out of one spot, the spin drawing an uneven spiral in the air. It was hard to tell how far away it was for sure, but Beth was pretty sure the impact would still be in the city somewhere, if not in the city proper at least the built-up area around it — hopefully people saw it coming in time to get away...

"You okay, kid?"

"More or less. Thanks for coming back for me, I couldn't get good enough of a grip to apparate out." Apparating into that hallway while the ship was falling couldn't have been easy, Beth definitely would have splinched herself trying it.

Sirius gave her a funny look — probably thinking of course he would come back for her, that was a silly thing to thank him for. "If we have a minute one day, we'll work on unrooted apparation. It's not something most people learn, but it can come in handy sometimes."

'Unrooted' because there was no way to 'root' yourself, she guessed. Some of the language used to describe magic stuff could be very silly sometimes. "Like when bringing down an alien spaceship, I guess."

"I guess," he drawled, smirking a little. "But seriously, are you okay? That was probably the sloppiest flying I've ever seen you do."

Beth grimaced. "I think my wrist is broken, banged it tumbling around in there."

Mirroring her expression, Sirius nodded. "Yeah, that can happen — if you're too shaken around and disoriented, the instinctive magic people do to resist injuries doesn't work right sometimes." Beth was slightly confused why he was bothering to explain it right this second, but then remembered how most everyone had mocked Neville for hurting himself at their first flying lesson way back in first year. The point was probably to reassure her that she wasn't a weak mage or something. Which was ridiculous, she was well aware that she was almost unreasonably powerful for age — her personal theory was that it was a side-effect of the ritual Lily had done to protect her from Voldemort — but whatever, purebloods were just silly like that. "Andi's off somewhere helping the injured, I think. Let's land somewhere quick, and pop over to the Refuge to find a healer to take a look at it."

The big magical settlement in Ireland, he meant — Beth had never actually been there before, but apparently there was a hospital, a fair number of the injured had been sent that way. Ireland hadn't been hit by the aliens at all, for some reason, so. "Okay."

"And, I think we're going home after that. I suspect bringing their big ship down here was a last fuck you — I'm pretty sure the invasion in Europe is mostly done for now. We'll be able to take it easy for a few days, at least."

Beth blinked at him for a moment, confused. They couldn't go home, London was a fucking mess, who even knew if Grimmauld Place was still standing. It took her a few seconds to realise he meant Rock-on-Clyde. "Oh. Sure." This wasn't the time to argue about her volunteering to help with the big landings in Africa and Asia, and he hadn't brought it up himself, no point in starting an argument now.

"Also, don't be angry with me — I know how the ladies can be about getting grooming tips from men — but you could use a shower."

She rolled her eyes. "I know, ugh, I was trying not to think about that."

"You realise 'bathing in the blood of your enemies' is supposed to be metaphorical, right?"

"Shut up, Sirius. Can we just go already?"

With a last toothy grin at her, amused with himself, Sirius started on the way down. In a somewhat lazy dive, at a shallower angle and much more slowly than they'd normally fly — probably out of respect for her only being able to use one hand. And she had to be careful, too, keeping her arm close to her stomach and ducking against the wind, so it didn't get jerked around too much, so she wasn't complaining. As they descended, Beth watched the big spaceship fall, and fall, and fall, gracelessly spinning and wobbling, only moments left before it crashed.

She didn't want to think of how many people that thing had killed — there were patches of the city below that were still glowing from the lava-bombs, the jagged tapestry of buildings noticeably flattened in places. And it had been doing a big circuit around Europe before showing up to finish them off, all those bombs dropping over the last few days, thousands of people, all around the world maybe millions...

Her chest clenched tight and cold, jaw clenched hard enough her teeth squeaked, Beth turned back forward, glaring down at the ground ahead. They'd lost a lot of people, she was sure, but they'd managed to fight the aliens off — they'd won this battle...or at least hadn't lost it. But the war wasn't over yet.

She was certain Sirius would not be happy with her volunteering to go help with the big landings, but she honestly didn't give a damn, she was going no matter what he said. Beth would make sure these bastards fucking regretted ever coming here.

(Her vision wavering, she twisted to wipe her eyes on the sleeve of her injured arm, kept silently following behind Sirius.)