The Patronus dissolved the moment it delivered its three words.
Greece. Now. Ayda.
Cassian looked at Nicolas and Perenelle. There was more to say. But it wasn't the time.
"Go," Perenelle said.
The Apparition cracked him out of the Department of Mysteries and across the continent. He landed on the hillside above the Greek temple site with his wand already in his hand, and he had about half a second to take in the scene before a killing curse screamed past his left ear and hit the rock face behind him.
The site was a disaster.
Ten figures in dark robes were attacking. Hoods were down, faces visible and entirely unconcerned about being seen, which told Cassian plenty. They'd spread across the hillside in a loose formation that covered the temple entrance.
Leontis was behind a collapsed section of the outer wall, one arm pressed to his chest, blood dark across his shoulder, firing back with the other. His shots were good, but he was losing ground. Two of the Covenant figures were working toward his position, one drawing his attention while the other advanced.
Edevane was flashing, moving between positions with a speed that made her difficult to track, firing from angles that kept changing before anyone could adjust. She'd taken a hit somewhere, one side of her robes was burned.
Ayda was at the temple entrance itself, both hands planted on the stone either side of the door, and whatever he was doing it was clearly the reason ten heavily armed Covenant members had come here tonight. The ground around him was humming. The ward lines Edevane had laid across the entrance were shining bright. He was feeding everything he had into keeping the door shut.
But he couldn't move. Which meant he couldn't defend himself. Which meant two of the Covenant figures were advancing directly toward him with nothing between them and him except the two local Keepers who'd apparently arrived some time before Cassian, both of whom were fighting with the ferocity of people defending ground they considered sacred and personal.
One of the Keepers, a stocky woman with a short staff, had one of the Covenant figures locked in, neither side was winning. The other Keeper, younger, faster, was buying Ayda space by simply refusing to stand still long enough to be targeted properly.
Cassian took all of this in the time it took him to get back to his feet. He raised his wand and fired at the figure advancing on Ayda's left, hitting the man's shield from a direction he hadn't been watching and cracked it sideways. It didn't break. These were not people whose shields broke easily. But it staggered him and Cassian was already moving.
The nearest one turned toward him.
"Rosier," the woman said. She sounded pleased.
"If you know my name," Cassian said, "you know this is a bad idea."
She fired at him.
It was an excellent spell. Fast, complex, layered with a secondary curse that would have activated if the first landed. He caught it on a shield and redirected the secondary into the hillside, where it tore a ragged furrow through the rock. He felt the impact through his wand arm all the way to his shoulder.
He moved immediately, cutting left, because standing still after a block against these people was how you died. She followed, tracking smoothly, and a second figure swung toward him from the right.
He waved and Lumos Noctis swept across the ground and ate the light and every wand-glow in a thirty foot radius. He could hear them adjusting, feel the shift in the air pressure as spells went out blind and hit nothing.
He came up behind the nearer one and hit him at close range with a stunner. It caught the man on the back, his feet leaving the ground on a rocky hillside in the dark. The shield stopped being useful very quickly.
The man went down the slope in a tangle.
"We can't see!" some of Leontis' people shouted as the screams grew louder.
Cassian clicked his tongue and let the darkness drop. Covenant lot were much better fighters in the dark than Leontis and others. He had no other choice but to drop it.
The other woman had already adjusted. She was three feet away and she fired the moment the light came back. He got his wand up and the spells met in the middle and the air between them cracked and spat and neither of them gave ground.
From above, Edevane dropped out of the air directly behind the woman. The woman twisted, firing backward without looking, and Edevane threw herself sideways and the spell went past her and Edevane came back in with something old and sharp that cut through the woman's rear guard like it wasn't there. The woman's deadlock on Cassian snapped.
"Thank you," he said.
Edevane gave him a look that said don't mention it and was already moving again.
Leontis shouted something. Cassian looked toward the wall.
The two figures bracketing Leontis had peeled off toward the entrance. Toward Ayda.
The young Keeper who'd been moving and drawing fire was fast, but he was between two targets now and he couldn't cover both directions and he knew it, and he chose Ayda, planting himself in the path of the nearer figure and firing everything he had.
The Covenant figure walked through it. Not unaffected, he staggered, took the hits, his guard flickered, but he walked through it, and the Keeper's expression shifted just as the retaliatory spell picked him up and threw him into the temple wall with a sound that made Cassian's stomach turn.
He didn't get up.
Cassian fired at the figure from across the hillside. The shot hit. The figure turned toward him instead of Ayda, which was something, and Cassian had bought maybe five seconds.
To his left, the stocky woman Keeper was on the ground. The Covenant witch she'd been holding off was stepping over her.
Seven Covenant members were still standing. Four of them converging on the temple entrance. Two on Cassian. One going for Leontis again.
Leontis, one-armed and bleeding, still behind the wall, still firing.
Ayda at the entrance, hands on stone, still holding.
Edevane somewhere around, taking hits and not stopping.
The rune on his finger pulsed again.
Cassian blocked a curse on instinct, barely, the impact rattling up his arm. The rune ran warm, then warmer. Bathsheda was hurt.
He knew she was hurt. He'd known since the first pulse, when he first arrived. She was hurt and he was on a Greek hillside fighting people who didn't go down, and those two facts were sitting on opposite ends of his chest pulling in opposite directions.
His jaw clenched. He fired back at the nearest figure, forcing the man sideways, and moved to close the gap between himself and Edevane. Four of the Covenant had reached the temple entrance.
Ayda was still holding. The ground around his feet was cracked from the effort of it, stone fractured in a ring around him. His face was white and wet and his hands hadn't moved from the stone.
One of the four at the entrance raised a wand and fired directly into the ward lines. The lines flared, held, and Ayda's head snapped back like someone had hit him. He didn't let go.
The second one fired immediately after. Then the third.
They were taking turns. Layering impact so there was no recovery time between strikes.
From the wall, Leontis called out. "Can't hold much longer."
Cassian looked across the hillside. Leontis was on one knee now. One figure had him pinned against the collapsed wall, just keeping him down and occupied while the real work happened at the entrance. One figure had broken off from the entrance group and was circling toward Edevane's flank. The two that had been on Cassian were pressing forward.
Still too many standing.
The rune heated up. Burning against his skin.
Cassian's hand closed into a fist.
The trunk hit the hillside with a sound, stone shifting and compressing under roots that drove down through the rock like they knew where they were going. The branches spread above the site, canopy filling the air above the temple entrance and the hillside and the wall where Leontis crouched.
The warmth came with it. Settling into tired muscles and cold-stiffened fingers. Leontis looked up from behind the wall. Something in his face changed. Edevane stopped moving for a beat. Her eyes went to the tree. Then she turned back to the figure flanking her and hit him with the hardest spell Cassian had seen from her all day. Clean through the shield. The man went down.
Ayda's hands tightened on the stone. A sound came out of him that was somewhere between a gasp and a laugh.
The four at the entrance had stopped their rotation.
They were looking at the tree. There was a hesitation in them.
The figure flanking Edevane was still on the ground. The two pressing Cassian had stopped advancing.
Before Cassian could sigh in relief, a cold went through him, from the finger upward, through the wrist, into the chest. He knew that feeling.
His stomach dropped. He was running out of time. Bathsheda's signal was getting colder and Ash's distress was getting louder, both of them bleeding through the rune at once. He needed to end this. He needed to end this now and go before...
He moved before the thought finished forming. For a second, he almost did. Almost abandoned the hillside entirely. But Bathsheda would spank him if he left his post.
The two figures pressing him swung back into motion at the same moment, apparently deciding the pause was over, and he hit one of them with the hardest concussive blow he'd thrown all day, and the man's shield shattered, and the man behind it hit the ground and stayed there. The second one fired at him and he took it on a deflection that sent the spell into the hillside and kept moving.
"Edevane," he said. "Entrance."
She was already there. She came in from the left, driving two of the remaining four away from the ward lines. Leontis had somehow gotten himself back to his feet, one arm still pressed to his chest, and he was firing at the third figure.
The fourth turned toward Cassian. He and the Covenant figure exchanged four spells in rapid succession, each one blocked, each block costing both of them, and on the fifth exchange Cassian didn't block. He stepped into the spell's path, let it graze his shoulder, felt the burn of it through the fabric, and fired at the man's feet. The ground beneath the figure's boots erupted, stone splitting upward. The man lost his footing and in the half second of imbalance Cassian had enough angle to hit him properly.
The figure went down.
Four of the ten were still standing. One of them had gotten to the ward lines and was pressing both hands against Ayda's working and pulling at it like he was unravelling thread. Ayda made a sound that Cassian had never heard from him before.
He got to the figure at the ward lines and grabbed him by the robes and physically wrenched him back. The man spun and slashed at him with a curse that opened a line across his forearm. Cassian brought his elbow into the man's throat, stepped through the follow-up, and planted his wand against the man's sternum and fired point blank.
The man collapsed.
The ward lines blazed as Ayda forced them back into place, re-establishing what had been pulled loose. The temple entrance was sealed.
The remaining three Covenant figures drew together near the lower slope, hesitant. They must've realised their attempts were futile. Ever since that tree appeared, Cassian's side got stronger, as if the tree was helping them. They looked at each other, deciding whether to attack and die for Marauder's cause or just fall back.
Then a crack of phoenix flame split the air ten feet behind the three figures. Marauder stepped through it. He looked at the hillside. At the bodies on the ground. At Cassian at the entrance. At the tree above the site. At the three Covenant figures standing in the middle of it all with nothing to show for ten of them and however long they'd been here.
"Ten," Marauder said.
His voice was very quiet.
"I sent ten of you."
None of the three said anything.
"Ten," he said again, to the three in front of him. "And the door is still shut. We'll have words later."
The three figures apparently knew what that meant because none of them moved to defend themselves when the phoenix flame flared hot.
Marauder's mouth curved when his eyes landed on Cassian. "Well. Look who it is."
Cassian didn't return it. "Didn't think you'd show your face here."
Marauder clicked his tongue, glancing at the wrecked hillside. "Hard to find reliable help these days. For what it's worth, we cleared Yucatán." His gaze flicked, casual as anything. "Heard your girlfriend took a hit."
Cassian's grip tightened round his wand. The wood creaked.
Marauder caught it and laughed loudly. "Don't get sentimental. She stood in the way. That's all."
His eyes drifted up, taking in the tree, the canopy stretching over the temple like it had always been there.
"Don't worry," he added. "I'm not killing you. Not yet. I'll need you later."
Cassian's brow creased. "What the hell you're talking about?"
The man shrugged. "You'll see."
He stepped forward.
The air changed. Heat pressed in and the phoenix flame that bled off Marauder's shoulders burned darker. It chewed at the air instead of warming it.
Cassian moved without thinking, putting himself between Marauder and the entrance.
"Bad idea," Marauder didn't slow.
He lifted his hand. The flame snapped outward in a single arc. Cursed fire struck the ward lines Ayda held together and for a heartbeat nothing happened...
Then the wards screamed.
Ayda jerked like someone had driven a spike through his spine. His hands stayed on the stone, but pain was clear on his face.
"Hold it!" Leontis barked.
Edevane moved to flank, wand already up, but Marauder flicked his fingers and the ground surged under her feet. She skidded back, boots carving lines in the stone.
Cassian stepped in, snapping his wand down.
The tree's branches dipped, roots shifted.
Marauder pushed again. The cursed flame hit harder. This time the wards cracked. A fracture ran through them, thin as a hair and that was enough.
Something beneath the temple moved. Cassian felt it in his soul. The ground dropped. Pressure slammed into his chest like he'd stepped under deep water. His breath hitched.
"...no," he said.
The crack in the wards widened.
A sound came up through the stone. It carried hate. Age. Hunger. Rage.
Cassian swore. "You absolute-"
Years ago, just the stir of this creature was a nightmare. This was worse. Much worse.
The air bent, like something vast was pressing upward from beneath the stone. Every instinct he had screamed at him to run.
Edevane staggered, catching herself on one knee.
Leontis braced against the wall, teeth bared, blood dripping from his sleeve.
Even the tree shuddered.
Marauder's smile slipped. Even he landed properly this time, boots hitting stone with a heavy thud. Sweat already beaded along his temple. His shoulders tightened, like something had just doubled the weight of the world on them.
"...right," he muttered.
The thing beneath shifted again. The pressure deepened, spells around the site flickering like they didn't want to exist here anymore. Like they couldn't exist.
Cassian's knees threatened to buckle. He forced them straight, jaw clenched hard enough it hurt.
"Close it!" he snapped at Ayda.
"I'm trying!" Ayda choked, hands white against the stone. The wards flared, then dipped, then flared again, fighting to seal what had been split.
Marauder sighed slowly, eyes fixed on the entrance now. Phoenix flame curled up around him.
Before it took him, he looked at Cassian.
"Oh," he added, almost as an afterthought, "you might want to check your school. Tommy fancied picking something up while you were all busy out here."
Cassian's head snapped up.
"...what?"
Too late.
Marauder vanished.
The pressure didn't. Cassian staggered a step, catching himself. Something echoed at the back of his mind. It felt like a calling.
"Release us."
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People say words are powerful. Apparently too powerful. Dangerous little things. Best kept locked away, lest someone type 'good chapter' and destabilize Europe.
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