TEN - The Eye
Sam winced as the old coarse rope dug into her wrists chafing and scraping at her now tender skin. The pain was a welcome one, it helped distract her from the fear and uncertainty that plagued her since she was grabbed by her captors.
The forest was dense and the terrain beneath her feet uneven and treacherous, often leaving her to catch and balance herself if she didn't want to sprain her ankle. Limping forward in front of her was Mathias with horrible wheezing breaths accompanying his determined gait. From the way he swayed unevenly as he trudged ahead, and the wounded skin she could see, Sam suspected that the pain he was in was unimaginable, and yet his determined grunts and hoarse exhales with each step he took would put any seasoned hiker to shame.
Looking behind her, she saw his henchmen follow suit, albeit with less zealous fervour as their leader. She studied the distance to them, the gaps between each of them, and possibilities to snake through them. She could envision it, bending and turning amongst them as they would try to clamp their large arms around her as she'd try to flee.
She wanted to run, to get away from them so desperately, to take her chances in the forest.
But each time she gathered the nerve, one of the men would push her or bark at her, reminding her that it was not possible. But even if she died of hunger or thirst, or to the wolves. It would still be better than whatever fate the monster that was Mathias had in store for her.
"I know what you're thinking," said Whitman from behind her, his familiar voice a blessing for one moment before it tore through her for the betrayal it was. She stumbled over a tree root in her attempt to look over her shoulder, falling to her knees in an attempt to break her fall. He reached out to help her up, she recoiled in disgust as his hand touched her shoulder.
"Don't touch me!"
Whitman forcefully pulled her up this time, and pushed her forward. "Stop being a child, you keep fighting, but you just don't understand. We're going to bring her back, bring Himiko back! If you've seen what I've seen, Sam, it's incredible!"
"You're insane," she ground out between her teeth as she pulled away from him. "These people murdered Grimm, and they tried to kill Lara! And you're helping them..."
Whitman grabbed her by the fabric of her shirt and forced her to walk with him, when something caught her eye – a knife tucked into his belt.
Their heated words weren't left in private conversation and surely made it even to the very last hanger on of their group. However, Mathias and the other Solarii members barely spared them a glance, they just kept moving while ensuring Sam and Whitman remained in the centre of their group and could not escape.
"Of course, I'm helping them. I'm a realist, it's the only way we're getting off this rotten island, and if Himiko sees fit to reward me, well–"
"You're wrong," said Sam, suddenly, breaking his tirade. "You're not getting off this island!" She lunged, and grabbed the knife, despite her bound wrists, she was able to pull the blade from its sheath. Whitman had barely a moment to raise his voice in protest when it was reduced to a pained gasp as the cold steel slipped in just below the ribs.
She never had the chance to pull the blade back out before one of the men grabbed her and pulled her off the quickly paling man. She didn't scream, or flail, or resist. Instead, she just watched as Whitman stumbled back, wide-eyed and trying to palm the handle of the knife that was stuck in his chest. He lost his footing and fell backwards, with his head hitting the base of a tree with a heavy thump and consecutive crunch.
The slight elevation meant that Sam could see his face and the panic in his eyes as they darted on and around her, trying to piece together what had just transpired.
The closest man went to check on him, and Sam watched in sick glee when Whitman strained to cobble words together that were hindered by spit and a numb tongue.
"I—hngh I can–hngh 't mov— I can't—hngh"
It didn't take long for everyone in their group to realise what was wrong with him. Sam figured he must have landed awkwardly on a rock or something and injured his spine. She caught herself hoping for a worse outcome. Something permanent.
Mathias, still breathing roughly and now exhaling with little patience, walked over to see the damage for himself. Everyone was silent as the burnt man looked down upon the now crippled form of Dr Whitman. Surprisingly, he kept his mouth shut, having realised his life was in the hands of the Solarii leader.
"Leav—e him," wheezed Mathias. "H—e was a trai—tor to his people. If s—uch is to be h—is fate, the-n it is des—erved."
And just as resolute as Mathias had stepped down to Whitman's ruined body, he now stepped back up to their group.
It was all so perfect. The irony. Sam couldn't help it, she giggled uncontrollably, before it dissolved into barely restrained laughter.
"Shut her up!"
The butt of a rifle filled her vision and everything went black.
Hermione held onto the Persian carpet for dear life as it soared through the air, far faster than any floor covering had any right to.
She still couldn't believe that she'd let them convince her that a piece of fabric was the best form of transport to get them to Yamatai. Sure, the choices were slim, but–
"Relax," chided Ron, as he rubbed her back comfortingly. "You're not going to fall off. It's charmed."
"I know that!" she snapped back before her shoulders sagged. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for."
"It's fine," replied Ron, understandingly. He couldn't help but feel apologetic, since he'd been all for using the carpet out of excitement.
After a moment of deliberation, he reached into their bag and removed a wooden box.
"Wizard's Chess?" he asked to distract her, dangling the box in front of her, eliciting knocking wood noises from inside it.
"What?" She mouthed perplexed.
"Want to play? Think of it as a distraction?" He clarified.
"What! No— I mean, ah, fine!" She turned around, leaving enough space between them to place a chessboard.
"We should be getting closer now!" called Bill from one of the other carpets. In his hand was the life ring that his boss Bognuk had used to show him that Harry was still alive.
The inner ring was spinning far faster than before. Any minute now they should at least see something.
"What do you think we'll find?" asked Sandra. "Potter's good, if he's still trapped then—"
"I don't know," answered Bill, cutting her off. "But Harry's in trouble, I don't care what we find, we're getting him out of there."
Sandra felt for him and his friendship but to her this mission had remained a big unknown with factors in play that have been left unexplained entirely."Of course we're getting him out but what if the stories of Himiko are true–"
"Then I'd say we have our work cut out for us," he finished for her, leaving no room for disagreement.
"I hate chess!" Hermione yelled from the other carpet.
Lara followed closely behind Harry who was in his dog form. They weren't moving nearly as fast as either of them would have liked, but with the sheer multitude of scents within the forest, it made tracking that much harder.
While Reyes and Jonah had protested against the pair of them going alone, Lara had managed to convince them that someone needed to stay with Alex who was still too weak to travel through the forest. Besides, with him being an electrical engineer, it meant he was at least able to assist Reyes with repairing the boat faster.
Jonah had tried to argue himself into the rescue but Harry had pointed out to the bear of a man that he'd only slow them down. The reasoning had caused a pained expression to cross his face, but he'd relented because he knew Harry had been right.
Harry stopped in his tracks, nearly causing Lara to trip over him. She moved to stand beside him and looked down at his head and then followed his doggish gaze.
"What is it?" she asked as she watched Harry lift his snout and sniff repeatedly. He shifted back into his human form with a serious expression on his face. For a moment she thought she spied a look of recognition.
"I can smell blood," he replied without much fanfare, his eyes tracking an invisible prey. "This way."
He walked ahead of her and she followed him wordlessly. Lara's brow furrowed in worry as he led them a short distance through a dense thicket in the direction of the scent.
They finally came out into a small clearing that led them toward a path up the mountain.
For a moment, Lara thought they'd found their way up and after Sam and Mathias and made to move toward it but Harry hadn't moved an inch since they'd cleared the wild forest behind them. Instead, his gaze remained transfixed toward the far left of them.
She followed his stare and noticed a patch of colour that did not mesh with the background, a colour that couldn't possibly fit with the rest of the flora around it.
First she spied the pale beige, then the blue vest and then, "Is that?"
Harry didn't respond but began to move forward, while she soon raced past him.
"Dr Whitman!" Lara called and dropped to her knees beside him, almost sliding her way down to him. He laid in a very uncomfortable position, with his head bent forward so that his chin touched his chest.
It was then that she took a moment to look at his body and noticed the awkward position it was in. She found a knife stuck in his abdomen and the pool of blood surrounding the stab wound, and winced at the sight of it.
Before she could try to provide first aid, Whitman's chest rose and his lips quivered in an attempt to speak.
"L—ar—," choked out the prone man, drool obstructing his ability to form coherent words and pronounce her name properly. He didn't say anything further but the tears in his eyes told her everything.
She looked his body over again and knew right then that none of what she learned about first aid would fix the man's broken body and obvious injury. So she turned to the one person who could do something about it.
"He needs help," said Lara, barely glancing at Harry.
If she expected him to jump at her request, she would be disappointed because Harry did not move at all.
Lara noticed his lack of a response and finally looked up and over at him. "Harry?"
Calling his name seemed to do nothing. He ignored her, his gaze transfixed on Dr Whitman and his injuries. He seemed to study the man and then glanced back to the path they had followed earlier, the path where Sam's scent had led them so far.
A look of stark suspicion drew on Harry's face and his eyes narrowed callously as he regarded Whitman again, who'd gone paler than he already had been.
He retrieved his wand and held it tightly with a white knuckled grip. Lara took note of this and half lifted herself up as she stared at him questioningly.
In that time, Harry met Whitman's eyes with a hard glint and it looked like he'd drawn some sort of conclusion. "It was you, you helped them take Sam, didn't you?"
When Lara heard the accusation, she stood hesitantly, her focus switching between the two in bewilderment. "Wha—"
Harry shook his head, telling her wordlessly to let him pry and voice his suspicions. They needed to know.
"Pl—eazz," struggled Whitman from the ground, his eyes now glassy, tears flowing over dry tracks of earlier ones.
His incoherent words tore at her, the once proud and arrogant man rendered a drooling, broken mess. Yet she returned her gaze toward Harry who looked like he'd never once in his life had exhibited empathy for the suffering. He seemed to radiate that kind of cold now.
He then looked at her for what seemed like the first time in a long time, a silent request for permission hanging in the air between them.
Lara glanced down at his wand and then at Whitman who eyed the wand and then her again, pleading.
The decision wasn't easy, he had always been an asshole to her but he had never been an enemy deserving of what would come next. If he had been able to speak, she wouldn't doubt he would try to lie his way out of whatever had happened to Sam, of his involvement in her kidnapping. The longer she thought about it, the more she felt like this was fate playing into their hands, rendering the outcome as straight-forward as possible. There was no choice and Harry was waiting for her regardless. For her to let him.
"Do it," she said.
Harry nodded and stepped forward, levelling his wand at Whitman's face.
"Legilimens!"
It was quick, as soon as he had uttered the spell, Whitman's eyes had gone wide. If he had any sense of resistance before, he would now have none left to put up, allowing Harry to glean his recent memories effortlessly.
At first it was a haze of memories and voices and thoughts, errant and wild, unstructured and disjointed. Whitman groaned and whimpered but could do nothing to stop him.
He began focussing on Sam, her looks, her personality, her usual vocabulary, her fears, her joys, her hobbies and dreams, and soon enough, Whitman's most recent encounter became clearer and focussed, as if he was the one seeing her, talking to her.
Sam looked tired, afraid, exhausted, and worried. She tripped and he pulled her up. She looked at him in disgust, heard her harsh words thrown at him, her quick gaze to his midriff, and soon enough, the stinging pain in his abdomen.
He moved backwards as she was grabbed from behind, he looked down at the knife stuck in his body and caught something on his heel. He lost his balance and fell backwards. He felt a dull thump and an odd hot burn on his back.
Harry was ejected from Whitman's mind and his vision returned to the clearing, to the same clearing he had fallen into just moments ago when Sam had stabbed him. Had stabbed Whitman. For what he had done.
The more he replayed the memory, the angrier he became. He glared hatefully at the prone man. Repeating the spell, but this time with his focus on Mathias, and Himiko, and their plans for Sam.
Lara, who could only look at Harry's face for any information, quickly understood that Whitman had done something, perhaps something unforgivable.
"What happened?" She demanded of him. "What has he done?"
Harry's jaw tensed and the grip on his wand tightened noticeably. "He helped them take her. And she stabbed him for it."
At first she couldn't quite believe it. Whitman had been a thorn in her side for the longest time and she always thought he had been a spineless prick. She also thought that his actions when they'd just landed on the island had been borne out of sheer fear and the need to survive. His actions then she didn't much like but she could understand, given the circumstance. He had been captured and used for Mathias' ends.
But this, this he had done of his own volition. He had led them to Sam, had helped take her, and had helped keep her prisoner. For that, she'd have done much worse to him. And she still could.
She felt her face relax and turn stoic as she now moved to look at Whitman. His own expression morphed into one of realisation. He'd recognised that he'd just burned the last bridge that would have meant his rescue. It had been the final nail in his coffin.
"La–ra, pl—ease," pleaded Whitman pitifully, knowing full well that if she left now, she'd never come back.
She didn't respond, she didn't want to even look at him anymore. It was no choice, really, she would get her bare hands on him and do terrible things.
Before she could begin to mull it over, she heard Harry move. "Let's go, I know where they're headed." He walked away in the direction Mathias had gone, without so much as a second glance at Whitman.
She followed his gait and took a deep breath. Then another. And another, until she'd cooled down enough to speak. She numbed her heart to the pleas coming from behind her and moved to catch up with him, droning out any further calls for help.
"What did you learn?" asked Lara.
Harry sighed, trying to rid himself of the feeling of Whitman's mind. "The monastery. You remember the mural?"
She nodded, recalling the colourful and harrowing depictions.
"We were right before, they're headed for the mountain with the highest peak. That's where they're going to attempt the ritual to bring Himiko back."
This wasn't exactly news to her, this much had been hinted at in the murals. "But why did they wait? They already had Sam, why didn't they just start immediately? Unless… They couldn't?"
Harry nodded at her own conclusion, helped by the fact that he had looked into Whitman's mind and knew so. "That's what Whitman believed. It's what Mathias believes. The Solarii had Whitman study what they'd found. A priestess, the one who was to be Himiko's next vessel, she took her own life to sabotage the ritual from succeeding. To break the cycle and trap Himiko."
"And for all Mathias' madness, he's no fool," affirmed Lara. "He saw an opportunity in Whitman, scumbag aside, he's still an archaeologist."
…
The rest of their trek was quicker now that they had a definitive destination, and all the better for it as the rain had returned and done so in force. Had they still relied on Sam's scent for direction, the rain would have stopped them in their tracks and ended any chance of finding her that way again.
As they neared the base of the mountain, they soon came across a small group of Solarii who were patrolling the area. Lara placed her palm on Harry's chest to stop him from moving any further.
She pointed through the trees that randomly grew along the mountain path and offered concealment when the need to hide arose. It didn't take long for Harry and Lara to spy a few of the islanders. To their surprise, the usually chaotic and erratic henchmen of Mathias seemed organised and disciplined. These were not lazing about, instead they were stone faced, scanning the tree line with their rifles set against their shoulders, ready to take aim at the slightest snap of a twig.
Harry took the movements in and nodded and without her having to ask, he tapped his wand to her head, disillusioning her before repeating the spell on himself.
As the men neared, a particular spell came to Harry's mind. One that Hermione had used years before when Lockhart had unleashed that swarm of pixies on him and his classmates. He didn't need to explain his intent to Lara, he trusted that she would seize the opportunity as soon as it presented itself.
"Immobulus," he incanted, and a purple light flashed at the tip of his wand. The Solarii men suddenly found themselves moving very slowly as if trapped in thick mud, their eyes wide with shock and fear, flicking left and right in a desperate search. Since Harry and Lara were still mostly invisible to the naked eye, spotting them would be nigh an impossibility unless one knew where to look.
The thwip of a bowstring filled the air, followed by many in quick succession. When Harry lifted his spell, it was to allow the now dead men to fall to the ground, each with an arrow shaft penetrating their bodies.
One of them was still alive, twitching and choking on the blood that was filling his lungs. The terrified eyes looked up at him, manic in their desperation for help. Harry grimaced and finished him off with a cutting curse aimed at his throat. The man's eyes grew still and his stare bore into Harry.
He felt Lara step up beside him and place her palm against his back. "We should hide the bodies."
A few flicks of his wand had the bodies transfigured into bits of rock and suddenly the killing scene was no more. Lara knew that the spell would not last very long, but it was enough. She gave Harry a small squeeze of her palm before she moved away and pushed on ahead through the trees and the heavy air.
BANG*
The sound of a gunshot echoed through the trees and along the valley, followed by the rustling wings of fleeing birds. It was barely a few seconds before a second, and a third and before long it sounded like a full-on firefight.
The brief moment of quiet was over and they moved quickly, emerging from the tree line at the edge of a short cliff, to see a worn-out stone and wood bridge. On the other side of that old wood bridge were vivid sprays of red strewn across the ground and rock walls. Further ahead were a multitude of mutilated bodies, both Solarii and Stormguard. And even further ahead was an ancient old monastery gate that looked like it had been battered open by unimaginable brute force. Pieces of thick oak beams layed scattered around the ground. The echoes of gunshots continued, the fight had not ended and continued further along the path of death and destruction.
Before Harry could suggest a change of plans to avoid running into the fight, Lara already moved and studied the area for options.
Looking at her from afar now, he felt his heart skip a beat.
"There," she said, pointing to a hole in the wood on the far right and above. "I bet we could sneak in if we enter through there."
Harry agreed with her and let her lead the way. They deftly avoided the broken gate and the attention of anyone on the inside and arrived beneath the opening. The climb was barely a few metres, and easy enough that Lara didn't even need her climbing axe, or Harry, his magic. The inside was in extreme disrepair with sections of ceiling and wall laying collapsed in a heap. There was none of the opulence left that such a structure must have had in its prime.
Lara dropped from the hole to the floor and looked up as Harry followed suit after with far less grace than she had. While he patted himself down and ruffled his hair which puffed out chalky dust like an old blackboard sponge, she couldn't hold back the little prideful smirk from her lips.
Seeing this, Harry opened his mouth to comment when he realised that he could see her. "What the—" He looked down at his hand and found the charm had been dispelled.
"Well, that's just brilliant," he commented sarcastically before sighing and dusting off the last of his pants. "I should have expected this, to be honest."
Lara gave him a questioning look to which he answered, "there are enchantments that prevent disillusionment. We've been able to hide easily enough until now, but wherever we are now, the wards still hold. I could break it down, but that—"
"Would take far too long… Sam doesn't have time to waste. We'll just have to try and hide the old-fashioned way."
"Yes and no. There is my cloak you could use. It should work," he suggested but Lara shook her head. "We wouldn't both fit, and it's cumbersome."
Right then they heard the heavy steps of the armoured Stormguard. Lara grabbed Harry with a fistful of his clothes and pulled him down behind a thick fallen pillar. It was right in time to see a group of the undead Oni walk across the end of the passage they were in. Thankfully they did not turn and head in their direction.
"We can't stay here," whispered Lara. "We've got to move."
Harry followed her to the end of the passage where she peaked around the corner before turning right and going in the direction the Stormguard had come from. The sound of more approaching guards forced them to turn down a partially collapsed passage. They had to crouch to make it through and almost wished they hadn't, when they came out into a large hall with a literal procession taking place.
The pair quickly ducked behind a half wall that ran the length of the room, and climbed up along the railing of heavy stone steps. They kept moving, crouching behind it to stay out of sight while an easy dozen or more of the Stormguard marched side by side through the centre with their swords held up ceremoniously.
In the centre was a platform surrounded by the warriors, and in the middle of them was an absolutely massive Oni. Harry even wondered if that one had been an half-giant like Hagrid when it was still a living thing. The huge Oni was standing with its arms out to the side while three other, far smaller ones, were adjusting its armour.
Careful to remain unseen, especially by the grouping in the centre, Harry and Lara forced themselves even lower as they crouched along. When they reached the upper floor, they could see that the room led to a large Buddhist-like statue of Himiko, and above it was a broken window into the next room.
"Through there," whispered Lara into his ear as she tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
Harry eyed the window and knew that there was no way he was getting up there without being seen.
"We need a distraction;" Lara voiced, sharing his thoughts, "do you have any more of those little shoe-horns with the feet?"
"I think I actually might," responded Harry. He reached into his bag and grinned when felt the telltale shape in his hand.
He handed it to her. "I'll let you do the honours."
Lara couldn't help but feel a bit of childlike glee when she held it and watched the little feet waving back and forth like an excitable puppy. She placed it on the ground and watched as it scurried off down the steps, and out of the large room, all while managing to remain firmly out of sight of the numerous Stormguard.
A feature of such structures that could be very frustrating, unless used to your advantage, was how well sound travelled through the passageways. The decoy detonator released its annoying racket far from them, echoing against the walls and causing the Stormguard in the large room to rush out in pursuit of their believed intruder.
Before they could come back, Harry quickly boosted Lara up to the ledge which led to the opening, before making a running jump to reach it himself.
He grunted in exertion as he shimmied the short distance. Lara climbed in the opening but didn't go through yet, instead she waited for him and grabbed him by his clothes to help pull him in.
They found themselves in a tunnel of sorts. The floor was made of thick wooden planks and beams, while the walls and roof were the solid stone of the mountain.
"Torii arches?" said Lara as she observed the old wooden arches that were spaced regularly through the tunnel.
"That is not creepy at all…" commented Harry.
"They're meant to mark the entrances to sacred areas, there's nothing 'creepy' about them," she replied amusedly.
"I have an aversion to arches…" He grumbled beneath his breath.
Lara blinked at that but chose to ignore it.
"Harry?" she began after a pause. "This ritual, would they really be able to do it? Without you know, being—"
"Like me?"
She nodded.
"It's possible, muggles or non-magicals, have been performing rituals for millennia, rarely succeeding, though. It's one of the more heavily studied areas of magic, but also amongst the most obscure. What they all have in common is cost, whether it's power, or life, or blood, or even something more abstract, an emotion, love, or hate. There's always a sacrifice involved."
He ruffled his hair in a stressed gesture. "I don't know what exactly Himiko has left in place… The ritual might be fuelled by her own power, or the island, or it could drain the lives of everybody… So, if all the pieces are there, then it is definitely possible for Mathias to bring her back."
Lara stopped walking, she rested her palm against one of the wooden arches, with a troubled expression on her face and her shoulders tense.
Harry touched her back comfortingly. "He'll fail. We'll make sure of it."
Her shoulders relaxed slightly. "I'm going to kill him," she said and before he could respond, she began walking again.
The tunnel began to change, there were candles of that deep red wax spread out in clusters all over the ground and in little nooks in the walls. It was shortly after that they reached the end and found a heavy door. There were statues of Himiko sculpted out of the stone on either side of it, each with their hands held out but not in a manner of prayer, more in presentation.
Harry flicked his wand at the door, causing the lock to vibrate slightly before a loud click emanated from it and the metal lever fell open. Before either of them could pull it open, the wind did that for them, slamming the two sides apart and forcing them to brace themselves.
It wasn't strong enough to knock them over, but rather the suddenness that caught them off guard.
They stepped out and found that the tunnel led them to a wide ledge than ran the length of the mountain, at the end of it was what a small settlement of buildings, or rather what remained of them. They were old, weathered and barely standing. The style was not the same as those of the Solarii. These were remnants of Yamatai. Perhaps it was where the monks who cared for the temple lived. The area where the small village was set up connected their mountain to the one across, and what they saw there had Lara screaming out.
"Sam! SAM!" Her calls were drowned out by the wind.
As quickly as they saw her, she was gone. Pulled roughly along by a Solarii, while Mathias walked behind. They were on a ledge, similar to the one they were on and had entered a passage, where they lost sight of them. Harry growled in frustration at his inability to apparate on the island. He could have gotten to them in an instant.
Mathias must have known of a secret path, one that allowed him to circumnavigate the Stormguard. He figured the previous fighting at the temple entrance was a distraction meant to draw the undead warriors away.
Lara, having seen her best friend, was filled with a renewed and burning urgency. She rushed on ahead, quickly making the descent into the small village, with the intent of crossing through it. Harry followed, and something in the corner of his eye had him react. He grabbed Lara by the arm and pulled her to the side right as an arrow passed through the area where she had just been and impaled itself to the ground.
"Shit!" In a turnabout, she pulled Harry this time, behind the corner of one of the dilapidated buildings. Lara peaked around the edge and swore when she saw dozens of the armoured undead charging out of the mountain into the village, including the gigantic behemoth of a samurai they'd witnessed earlier.
The unearthly voices of Stormguard warriors screamed out their rage at the trespassers, prompting Lara to open fire, immediately bringing one of them down with bits of armour and grey flesh blown away from its head.
"Come on, you bastards!" yelled Lara, emptying her clip. She ducked back to reload when he began his own assault. He swiped his wand from left to right, lifting the remains of a broken shrine and slamming it into the sides of three samurai with enough force to send them hurtling through another building, bringing it down in the process.
He knew fire was their weakness, so that is what he used most. Balls of flame, hot enough that even at a distance you could feel their heat, shot from the tip of his wand, igniting any who were hit by it.
One particularly fast samurai neared them, only for him to get wrapped in a rope of fire which constricted, burning and crushing until he collapsed.
Lara had not been idle, she'd been covering his back, killing what Stormguard found their way into her line of fire, but her handguns weren't cutting it.
"Your bag!" She called out to Harry.
He didn't ask questions, simply taking the few seconds to quickly pull it over his shoulder and hold it out to her.
She grabbed it but had to fire at an archer who'd already notched an arrow. Her shot hit the shoulder, causing him to miss. Before he could prepare another arrow, she fired again, and again. None of her shots hit the head, but they did manage to bring him down to his knees. Which gave her enough time to quickly retrieve one of the rifles from within Harry's bag.
"They're too many. Get down, trust me!"
Lara ducked low and close to Harry as she heard the end of whatever spell he was casting.
"—cendium!"
A massive inferno roared to life, circling them and moving to the command of Harry's wand. The heat was nothing like anything she'd ever felt before, if she moved any closer, she feared she would burn like the screeching Stormguard.
That's when the wind that had been ever present in the chasm suddenly grew to a rageful hurricane of force. It slammed into them and blew the fire out into embers before they vanished completely, leaving scorched buildings and the pair of them along with the miniscule remnants of the Stormguard desperately trying to keep from being blown away.
Harry and Lara held onto each other and to a wooden beam from the closest building to keep from being swept apart and away.
…
"I hate flying!" screamed Hermione as they flew headfirst into a storm. The weather protection enchantments on the flying carpets were pushed to the limit at keeping them from being thrown into the sea below.
Sandra pulled on her carpet to regain control. "This isn't a natural storm!"
"You don't bleedin' say!" barked Ron as he held onto Hermione and the fabric beneath them.
"I don't know how much longer the spellwork on these things are going to hold," said Bill, urgently. "If we don't see Yamatai soon, we're going to be swimming back!"
"There!" Stevens' sudden exclamation barely carried over the rain, but they heard him, and he was right. In the distance, hard to spot in the grey waters, was a landmass.
…
"Madoshi!" screamed one of the few Stormguard who had survived until then. It was the massive one, whose weight had kept it from being blown away, albeit barely. It was making its way to them painfully slowly as it fought against the incredibly strong winds.
While the position they were in meant Harry couldn't point his wand, Lara could still reach for her handgun. She lined it up from within Harry's embrace, but the wind made aiming nearly impossible.
She fired and missed, again, again, and the warrior kept getting closer and closer. It was right as panic bled into her psyche that she finally hit it. The shot was nowhere near enough to usually kill it, but it didn't need to.
The sound that came from its lips was more a scream of frustration than pain or fear as it lost the battle with the wind and fell into the chasm.
"I don't think it's going to stop!" screamed Lara at him, the only way to be heard.
He looked over her shoulder at the open doors of their destination. "I'll try to shield us!"
Seconds later, a shield of pale green light covered them, stopping the wind. Lara breathed out in relief until she saw the painful concentration on Harry's face. He was still holding back the wind.
"Go!" he ground out.
Lara grabbed his free arm and threw it over her shoulder as she half carried him. She could feel his strained effort and the way he buckled when the gusts grew in strength, so she tried to move them as fast as possible, more out of her concern for him than herself.
When they finally reached the other end, and the safety of being within the mountain, Harry dropped his shield and collapsed to the ground, breathing great big gasps of air, like someone who had run a marathon.
"Harry?" Lara helped turn him onto his back and worried when she saw his nose had bled. She used her sleeve to wipe the blood before grabbing her canteen and lifting his head to give him a drink of water.
He drank greedily, before he leaned back and let out a satisfied, relieved breath.
"Did you get the number?" he asked.
"Number?"
"Of the truck that hit me…"
"Ha ha," she laughed. "Very original."
She shook her head at him, knowing how much it helped that he had the time and energy to offer her some lighthearted banter in the literal storm they found themselves in. Looking at him, he wiped at his face with his sleeve. She felt her heart squeeze for a moment.
"Come on you," she said quickly and pulled him up. "It's not over yet."
"Right, of course, stop the baddy, save the world," he mused. He got onto his feet and felt his blood flow again, warming his extremities.
"This is just charming," he commented as they finally took in their surroundings. "I'm really getting sick of all the Himiko statues..."
They were in the centre of a chamber surrounded by aged, dusty golden statues who stood in a circle. Harry saw them and couldn't help but let out a small laugh. "At least the Goblins will have something to show."
Lara nearly tripped on their way out. "Goblins?"
"My bosses, greedy buggers… They're the ones who funded the whole thing, they don't care much for anything besides gold and gold," he explained, lighting his wand with a silent Lumos and flicking the ball of light down the winding passage. There were steps throughout and murals etched in the stone. The path led upwards, and by the cold air coming through, back to the outside.
It did in fact lead back to the outside and into winter.
Harry stepped out, his boot crunching the snow as his breath misted. Lara stood beside him as they stared in awe at the incredible structure ahead of them. It was something between a tower and a temple which stood, surrounded by mountains on all sides as snowy winds circled it and lighting strikes peppered its sides.
Lara checked her gun and without any hesitation, stepped onto the bridge to the tower. Harry followed her, into the eye of the storm.
END CHAPTER TEN
11 available at / Office_Sloth if you want to read ahead! Thank you!
