Chapter 161. Consequences.
Gloucestershire. Several dozen kilometers from the nearest settlement.
Severus appeared on the front step and was met almost immediately by a house-elf who happened to be tidying the garden pavilion at that moment.
"W-welcome back, Master!" the elf greeted him timidly. He gave a silent wave in reply and walked inside.
The moment he crossed the threshold, a staircase opened in the floor, leading straight down to the large crystal that served as the core of the House as an artifact.
Gorby had already repaired the fence and everything else, which meant Severus could move straight to the enchantments that had been damaged by the artifact the intruders had used.
The house did have a self-repair function, but how they had gotten inside had introduced errors into the rune work and the core's operation. Severus needed to correct those immediately. Leaving them was not an option; they would only worsen with time.
The next half hour was devoted entirely to that work, until he finally sealed the breach in the barrier and restored the artifact to full function.
Throughout, he was also trying to work out who had attacked him and why. The first question gave him nothing no matter how long he turned it over. The second was easier. From Nagini's memories, which she had allowed him to read, he learned that their first target had been Macmillan, whom José had managed to save after noticing the barrier surrounding the shop. He had arrived at the end of the attack, when the intruders were already preparing to finish Macmillan off.
Given that their next target had been Severus himself, the reason wasn't hard to guess. Either they were after the cube, or they were after the method he had used to conceal the runes and enchantments on it. There was no third option. He had made the glasses using the script of his world, so he hadn't bothered to hide those enchantments.
There could always be something else, something he didn't know and that Macmillan had uncovered on his own, but he doubted it. Even if that were the case, it changed nothing. The attack had happened, and he had no intention of letting it go until he had the heads of the people who had attacked his home with such arrogance: striking directly at his property, wounding and killing many of his creatures, and nearly murdering someone who had helped him greatly.
He left the house and Apparated to the cave at the center of the territory that the Dark Hound had claimed. A grim atmosphere greeted him. The wolves barely acknowledged his arrival, moving across the clearing with a dull, hollow quality, as though the life had gone out of them.
Twenty wolves. A sense of displeasure came over him as he looked toward the graves.
"Agnes asked for those to be made. She wanted her fallen pack buried properly. She loved watching television with me and saw something like it on one of the channels..." Nagini explained quietly, her voice tinged with sadness, having noticed where his gaze had fallen.
"I see." He drew a slow breath, suppressed the negative feelings that served no practical purpose at that moment, and headed toward the cave.
He never reached it. A wolf with a slight limp met him halfway. Agnes's right rear leg and chest were wrapped in bandages. She had sensed her master's return and, as always, came out to meet him.
"I'm well..."
"I watched how you fought." Agnes fell still at those words, lowering her eyes in shame. "Before, you could have taken three of them immediately without taking this kind of damage. You've lost your edge because you've been lazy. Do you understand that?"
"Yes... I let myself get too comfortable."
"I share some of the blame. I underestimated how capable those wizards were and assumed your strength would be enough to protect this place in my absence." Severus walked up to her, crouched on one knee, and laid his hand on her head. She hadn't expected it, and her eyes showed it. "Starting tomorrow, I'll be training all three of you personally. You'll have to cut back on your idle time until you're strong enough that nothing like this ever happens again. Understood?"
Her expression made it clear she wasn't thrilled by the idea, but the moment her gaze landed on the graves, her reluctance vanished entirely. Over the past three months, she had grown genuinely attached to these wolves, and losing so many of them in a single day to her own weakness had struck her like a physical blow.
"Yes! I will give everything I have!"
"Good. And you want this too, I take it?" Severus turned his gaze toward a large boulder, a faint smile on his lips.
A few seconds later, the alpha of the Bloodwolves emerged from behind it. He had been injured in the fight as well. He bared his teeth slightly, swallowed his pride, and gave a silent nod. He had not forgotten that day in the jungle, but right now, as the pack's alpha, his duty was to protect his pack. He refused to feel that helplessness again—the helplessness of watching his kin being killed right in front of him while he could do nothing.
"Then be at my front door first thing tomorrow morning, and bring those other seven along. I think we can still make something serious out of you." Severus rose and looked at the remaining wolves, who had straightened slightly the moment their alpha appeared. "And you two will handle the others. Understood?"
"Hrm!" The alpha gave another nod.
"Good. Rest and recover for now. Nelly will bring medicine tonight, and you'll be back on your feet soon." He gave Agnes one last pat on the head and disappeared, leaving the two wolves to exchange a puzzled look. They pulled themselves together, nodded to each other, and headed back toward the cave.
Over the next half hour Severus visited the rest of his creatures as well, with the exception of the Chimaera King, who would have torn the intruders apart without any difficulty had they been foolish enough to push through his territory. He also knew the Chimaera King would come on his own: his cub had befriended the Thunder Tiger's cub, and the Thunder Tiger would certainly bring the small one along, as well as Lucky. The three of them could often be spotted on weekends tearing across the grounds together.
He Apparated back to the house, went inside, and climbed the stairs to the second floor where Toby was resting. Instead of abandoning the shop, the house-elf had chosen to defend it, and he had paid a heavy price for it. José had saved him by pulling him into shadow just in time, while Nestor had gotten Shafiq out. After the shadow mage had already saved Macmillan once, repeating the same trick immediately would normally have been impossible. But the Aurors who arrived drew the intruders' attention long enough for him to get Toby out without being caught.
Severus walked in and his frown deepened the moment he saw Toby lying in bed, wrapped in bandages from the neck down, the right half of one ear simply gone.
But it was not the sight of the elf's condition that made him react that way. It was the wounds themselves, from which he could still feel that all-too-familiar necrotic magic, faint now but unmistakable.
He crossed to the bed, pressed his hand to Toby's chest, and a red wave burst from his palm, passing through the bandages. In a matter of seconds it destroyed every remnant of the dark magic, and the slightly strained expression on the sleeping elf's face gradually softened.
"A Necromancer... I didn't expect to encounter anyone like that here." Tom was one thing. He had only a surface understanding of the discipline and could only loosely be called a Necromancer. A true Necromancer was something else entirely, someone whose magic was a genuine poison to every living thing. "My teacher was right. Rest is something we can only dream about."
"Are these the people who can raise the dead as zombies?!" Nagini asked, genuinely shaken. She had never really recovered from the film "Night of the Living Dead" they had watched one night, and had asked him about it extensively afterward. That was how she first learned about Necromancy and what it was capable of.
"Exactly. Given enough time, they can build an entire army of the undead. But..." Necromantic Archimagi were the only ones capable of enhancing those undead and granting them intelligence. So even facing an army of them, destroying it would not be especially difficult. "But?"
"Don't worry about it. They're very weak, and they'll never get through your hide. They're half-rotted corpses, marginally stronger than a human because of the magic in them." He stroked the top of her head and placed his other hand on Toby's forehead, closing his eyes.
In the next instant, images began rushing through his mind: the thin figure of the house-elf surrounded by flame, holding off a group of six wizards alone, each of them wielding a different element.
From those scenes, he could read them clearly: three had only reached the peak Mage rank, two had recently crossed into the Magister rank, and the woman using wind magic was already approaching the upper end of her initial rank. Her core's condition put her on par with Dumbledore, who would reach the middle stage of the Magister rank in perhaps five to ten years.
Just as Severus had taught him, Toby had prioritized eliminating the earth and water mages first and had used the wind magic against them, turning it to his own advantage and amplifying his fire. His defense was precise and his use of his element's strengths against the opponents' weaknesses was excellent. But there was one vulnerability, and the enraged wizards found it. They had been shouting as they attacked, incensed that six of them were being held off by what they called a slave, and that vulnerability was the shop itself.
The moment they understood that, they began targeting the building deliberately, forcing Toby to divide his attention and suffer wound after wound in the process, including the one that cost him half his ear. Even so, he kept holding them off and managed to leave a few marks in return.
But a house-elf, however skilled, could not hold that position forever. Even with a middle-rank Magister core, he could not have won against that many at once, and fighting while simultaneously shielding the shop drained him far more quickly than a straight fight would have. His movements slowed. His reactions dulled.
When the last member of the group entered the fight, the one who had been observing throughout and who turned out to be the Necromancer, the battle moved toward its conclusion quickly.
The house-elf had the elemental advantage, but the dark mage was far more experienced and knew exactly how to deploy both his own magic and his companions'. Within seconds, they had overwhelmed Toby completely. The Necromancer landed the blow that took the last of the elf's strength, and he lost consciousness. The memories ended there.
Watching it all play out like a film, Severus felt two things at once: a cold, savage fury at the people who had done this to a creature who had long since become far more than a servant to him, though he had never thought of Toby as a servant in the first place, but rather as a colleague on par with Shafiq; and grief and helplessness at having been unable to protect someone he had taken responsibility for, even though he knew rationally that there had been nothing he could have done.
Still, he had learned something very useful. He gave the sleeping elf a gentle pat on his thin arm and left the room. A happy smile slowly appeared on Toby's face as he slept.
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