Chapter 36: Rebirth. Part 2. Horror
Outside, the Auror team had finished their survey of the area and were hammering the barrier at the cave entrance with everything they had. It held without so much as a tremor. All they managed was a handful of shallow scratches on its surface.
"Commander."
"Go on," the commander said, without particular interest. His eye showed him considerably more than the others could see: the barrier would not last indefinitely, and what it showed to the outside was simply an illusion. "Whoever raised this has serious experience. Even with my eye, I can barely make out what is inside. We do not drop our guard. This will not be an easy opponent."
Down in the cave, at the same moment, the thing that only vaguely resembled a living person grinned down at its wrist, where there was no flesh at all.
I did not expect the second stage to take another half hour, and the anaesthetic is nearly gone. Another few minutes and I would have had the full experience of decomposing in real time.
Severus extended the bony hand he was controlling with telekinesis and reached toward the last vial of golden liquid. He looked up at the crystals, drew an absorption rune on his rotting chest through which his beating heart was plainly visible, and tilted his head back. The liquid went down his throat in one motion, and in that same instant a purple aura surged out of the crystals and rushed toward him.
The final stage. Rebirth. I can let the magic take over now.
The anaesthetic ran out before the thought had fully formed. He lost consciousness a fraction of a second before it did, and his body was taken by wild tongues of flame that began, slowly, to devour it.
Above, under the combined assault of thirty wizards, the first barrier finally gave. They had not managed ten metres before the second one stopped them cold. The commander's irritation sharpened. This one was nearly identical to the first, and the first had cost them the better part of thirty minutes.
"I am coming for you," he said under his breath, tightening his grip on his wand. He turned to the motionless Aurors. "Why are you all just standing there?! Get to work!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Everto Statum!"
"Descendo!"
"Diffindo!"
"Bombarda!"
"Expulso!"
Idiots. He pressed a hand to his forehead, watching a barrage of multicoloured beams crash uselessly into the barrier at scattered points. Now I understand why Charlie called this posting a punishment. There is not a competent one among them. Hit the same spot! Did you all pick up a wand yesterday?! What are you staring at me for?! Attack the barrier!
Deep at the bottom of the cave, Nagini listened with one eye twitching as the commander's shouts reached even her.
"Something tells me they will not be getting through any time soon," she said, looking toward the sealed entrance. A deep unease sat in her chest, and the only thing keeping it at bay was the link, still faintly present.
Behind the barrier at her back, wild flame raged, consuming the crystals' energy. At the centre of it, where Severus had been standing, a crimson stone hovered, absorbing the fire at a staggering rate, its colour deepening with every passing second.
Over the next few hours the Aurors broke through six more barriers, losing nearly half their number to the traps along the way and having their pace cut by half. The commander sent one man back to headquarters for reinforcements and help for the wounded. Even so, most of the barriers were cleared. Only three now stood between them and Nagini.
She did not simply wait. She shrank back to her normal size and began preparing for a fight, though what she desperately wanted was for Severus to come out first.
Meanwhile the flame had nearly burnt itself out entirely, leaving a scarlet stone roughly the size of a ping-pong ball behind. The crystals had all but lost their colour.
While the Aurors breached another barrier at the cost of two more people, the flames around the stone suddenly flared back to life. Had anyone been nearby at that moment, they would have been staggered: the stone was rapidly growing flesh.
The moment the wizards saw their commander raise his palm, they stopped, wands in hand, glancing at one another in confusion.
"We go no further," the commander said flatly, a genuine sense of danger prickling at him from beyond the remaining barrier. With his eye he could just make out, with difficulty, a massive shadow and a pair of yellow eyes that communicated one thing clearly: do not. He had built a habit of trusting that sense. It had kept him alive more than once.
The Aurors did not ask questions. They fell into line quickly and quietly. After this particular assignment, they had a very complete understanding of why the captain who had transferred to their department only yesterday was called Mad-Eye. The eye part of the nickname had been self-evident. The mad part they had absorbed gradually, all the way down to the bottom of the tunnel: the screaming, the inventive insults, the occasional kick, and one phrase above all others, constant vigilance, that would be visiting their nightmares for some time to come.
"Set up a temporary camp until the reinforcements arrive."
He did not finish. A group of Aurors in uniform had appeared further down the tunnel, and when he focused on the one leading them, his expression curdled.
"Only what you would expect from the legendary Mad-Eye Moody: more than half the squad gone on his very first assignment." The voice was mockingly pleasant. The man himself looked unremarkable; without the different uniform he could have passed for any other Auror in the corridor.
"Travers. I was under the impression you had been thrown out of the Ministry some time ago. How does it feel, being a dog among wolves?" Moody replied, his voice level, almost bored. It irritated Travers, who had been hoping for more.
"How would I know? The interior life of dogs like you is a mystery to me."
Travers walked past with a grin and went straight for the barrier.
"I would not recommend breaking it."
"You want to give me advice? I have served considerably longer than you."
"Poorly, apparently, since we hold the same rank." Moody turned to what remained of his squad. "Everyone, with me! Anyone who falls a step behind runs a hundred laps around the training grounds when we are back!" They moved with him at once, as one.
You damned one-eyed bastard. I hope they knock the other one out too. Travers did not look at Moody again, already turning to his own squad. "Destroy that barrier."
They did not need telling twice, and they did not attack it haphazardly the way the previous squad had. From the first moment they focused their spells on a single point, coordinated and effective: the difference in training was not subtle.
Eight minutes was enough to cover the barrier in deep cracks that the illusion could no longer conceal. A few seconds later it crumbled, its fragments raising a cloud of dust as they hit the ground.
At that instant, a hissing sound rang through the cave, followed immediately by a scream.
"What is that?!"
"A huge shadow, I saw it!"
"Hold your positions!"
"Aaaah, something grabbed my leg! Help me!" A thud cut the voice off.
The remaining wizards pulled together quickly, back to back, wands out. But Nagini was almost impossible to pin down. Despite her size she was extraordinary fast, weaving among them with ease, her movement keeping the settled dust churned up constantly.
"Damn it. Ventus!" Travers raised his wand and swept his wrist in a circle. A directed wind erupted from it, pulling all the dust toward the exit like a current.
The creature became visible at last: nearly twelve metres long and as thick as a small column. Her colouring sent a flicker of genuine panic across several faces: it announced her nature immediately.
Hesssss. Go away. Nagini hissed toward them, planting herself in front of the barrier that led to Severus and pointing the tip of her tail at the exit.
"It is only a snake!"
"Do not underestimate her. She is extremely venomous."
"Surround her. We want her alive, she is a remarkable specimen." A greedy gleam had come into Travers's eyes.
"Be careful," Moody called from further back. He was scowling at the barrier behind Nagini while something unpleasant pulsed in his head from the magical eye. Damn. What is happening with this thing today.
While Moody worked on that, the Aurors had already encircled Nagini. She had no real appetite for this fight: even the ones she swatted aside were only unconscious, though her venom could have ended them in seconds.
Do I really have to do this? But I cannot let them get to him. Determination came into her eyes. She bared her fangs and began, slowly, to let her animal side rise.
"Enough."
The barrier behind her shattered, and Severus stepped out, wrapped in his robe.
"Who the hell are you?!" one of the Aurors demanded, and then went very still, mouth open, as an enormous snake pressed her head joyfully against Severus's hand.
"She is my companion. On what grounds do you think you can take her from me?"
That question threw most of them. Not all.
"You have violated the Statute of Secrecy. You will come with us regardless of your preferences, and we are taking the snake. Remove the hood." Travers's voice was confident and carrying.
"How generous of you." Severus's tone shifted into something almost conversational. "If I were in your position I would simply kill everyone here and save the trouble. Perhaps I should." The next moment a wave of pure bloodlust rolled off him, and every Auror in the cave went rigid and began to tremble. In less than a second he had ceased to look like anything approaching a vagrant. "You are an interesting specimen." His gaze settled on Travers's chalk-white face. "A choice: your life, or the lives of your men. Three seconds. One."
"Mine! Take mine! Please, I do not want to die!"
"Fast. Good."
"Thank you, thank you, I." The temperature spiked, and then Travers was on fire.
"AAAH! HOT! DON'T! AAAAAAH!"
In front of the pale-faced, frozen Aurors, Travers burned alive and screaming. The smell of scorched flesh filled the cave. Several of them were sick.
"I am in a good mood today," Severus said, looking across the rest of them. "I will not kill you." He turned to Nagini. "Let us go."
They had not managed to hurt her. That was the only reason for the mercy. Travers was the one exception, and the reason for that exception was simply that Severus had genuinely disliked what he said.
"Yes!" Nagini's response had something almost puppyish in its brightness, and a quiet warmth came onto Severus's face.
He was about to move past Moody's group when he stopped and looked their way with interest.
"You. The one with the magical eye. Come here."
Moody, characteristically grim, was notably less affected by the bloodlust than the others had been. He walked over without much difficulty.
"Strong will. My bloodlust barely touched you. I may not have released it fully, but still." Severus studied him. "You can see what I actually look like, yes?" Moody's face stayed even, though something went cold inside him. "That is an interesting eye, if it could see through that barrier." He met Moody's gaze, slipped through his mental defences without effort, spent a few seconds in his memory, and erased his own face from it. Then, while Moody stood in a trance, he checked his pockets and extracted a small vial of something that appeared to be halfway between liquid and gas.
Constant vigilance. That really is a useful phrase.
He looked across the remaining Aurors, all of them shaking like schoolchildren caught out after curfew.
"Tell your superiors I have no interest in a war and that I am leaving the country today. In the meantime, stay here for a couple of hours. If anyone tries to make contact with anyone else."
The entire length of the tunnel caught fire in the same instant, leaving two untouched islands of stone where the wizards were standing.
"I will burn every one of you."
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