The moment we reached the edge of the diagram, the maid smoothly relieved me of control over Amber's chair and, inaudibly to me, delivered a short and evidently thorough report. What had I gone and got myself mixed up in this time? All I'd wanted was ingredients for my wand! Then again, this sort of turn of events was in any case more interesting than the fairly monotonous school life that it had, in fact, largely become.
"It seems," Amber turned her head towards the depths of the forest, "the time has come."
Honestly, even without a soul made of shards from various magical creatures, even as an ordinary human being, I would have felt that distortion in the magic. It's comparable to a change in the composition of the air. One moment it's clean, pleasant, familiar, and then, in an instant, a single breath sets off an alarm you can't quite place. But with the sensitivity and phantom experience of the shards, I can say one thing — I'd felt this before, on Samhain, a couple of years ago. A thinning of the Veil. An elf would have called this a Convergence of Worlds; a dwarf: "Don't go pokin' where ye don't know what's pokin' back, seal it up, is what I say." Even a void pilot had some notion of the phenomenon, despite having no connection to magic and being an utterly mediocre psion — a primary interspatial distortion arising from the alignment of warp coordinates.
The diagram on the ground activated, glowing brighter. In the distance, somewhere deep in the thick of the forest, a purely magical noise arose, a vibration, and I could clearly sense its source steadily approaching us.
"I thought," I began voicing my thoughts aloud, "that thinnings of the Veil like this only happened on Samhain."
"On a global scale — yes," Amber replied, still gazing into the thicket, towards where the thing was advancing from. "But small, localised ones, not as strong — those can happen anywhere, anytime, though their area is small."
"And… what exactly is coming towards us?"
"As I said, a purely magical entity. In essence, concentrated magic that's taken on form, manifesting itself in space. Not our space, mind you — but right now, quite specifically, in ours."
"And you want to…?"
"Crystallise it. For experiments, and possibly to solve a few problems of mine."
Out of the forest, straight into the middle of the diagram, a translucent, black-grey mass began rushing in, resembling a sort of amorphous smoke with constantly shifting limbs, terrifying faces, and other things clearly meant to inspire fear. This still-endless stream radiated cold, death, and something else — elusive, but understandable and familiar.
"Functioning correctly," the maid stated flatly, as a simple fact.
"Yes, I see," Amber nodded. "Now we only need to wait."
And so we waited. Now and then Amber or the maid checked the integrity of the diagram. A couple of times, wizards from the camp stopped nearby to watch the spectacle, but… it's extremely engaging and unusual for the first ten or twenty seconds, until the shock and surprise wear off, and after that it becomes monotonous, since nothing much really changes, and the stream of unknown grey-black energy doesn't diminish.
Before long, the stream stopped, and the black-grey substance, trapped within the field of the diagram, began slowly but surely to shrink, contracting.
"Final stage."
Meanwhile, I noticed the camp had begun gradually packing itself up — gathering belongings, packing up, taking down the extended-space tents.
"Why do you need all these people," I asked Amber, "when I'm sure you're perfectly capable of managing all this yourself?"
"I don't want to use Dark magic unnecessarily, Mr Granger. If it were simply a matter of arriving, quickly completing the task, and leaving, that wouldn't be a problem. But setting up a camp, running preparations, fending off local creatures and so on — that's a lengthy process, requiring magic continuously, and in that case it would inevitably draw the Ministry's interest. I may well have all the necessary paperwork, but against the general chaos surrounding the Dark Lord, it would look problematic. This way — no Dark Magic gets recorded, and so no DMLE, no Aurors."
By now Potter had emerged from the tent too, walking towards us with Amber's gifted bag tucked under his arm. He was about to say something — judging by his pleased expression, undoubtedly a thank-you — but at that exact moment, a shout rang out:
"We're under attack!"
My white mask was on my face at once, wand in hand, and a swarm of little triangles flew up out of my bracelet, circling around us in a ten-metre radius — that's the range I find most convenient for controlling them, building up defensive or offensive arrays — while the little triangles themselves remained invisible, both to us and to any potential attackers.
The wards around the camp cracked, quite literally, but the epicentre was in only one spot — and that's where the wizards not otherwise occupied went rushing, of whom there weren't many. The rest were guarding the property.
A barrier, invisible until now, shattered into shards, collapsing on the side facing the Forbidden Forest, and we could immediately see a group of wizards in dark clothing. Nine of them, six in white masks, plainly taking no initiative, standing like statues — but the other three were an entirely different matter. No masks, and one of them stepped forward, pointed his wand at all of us, and shouted:
"They stole our prize! Priority targets — take them alive! The rest — kill on sight!"
Two ranks of wizards instantly tore the darkness of the night, dimly lit by the glow of low campfires, apart with multicoloured beams of countless spells and flashes of shielding. Two wizards in white masks broke away, charging straight at us, evidently intent on close combat — besides their wands, they carried what looked like swords, something like rapiers. A thought flitted through my head that there was really no point distinguishing between all these variations of medieval swords — rapiers, épées, one-handers, and so on — a sword's a sword the world over.
"Protect us, Mr Granger, I know you're capable of it. I'll speed up the crystallisation. Potter — stay by her side," Amber gestured at the maid, "not one step away, understood!"
"Yes, ma'am…"
Potter positioned himself to the right, behind the maid, while Amber conjured a staff into her hands, more resembling a long gnarled branch, and drove it into one of the symbols on the diagram. Such an insane wave of darkness and death poured off Amber that an ordinary person would have drowned in it outright, choked to death by the sheer flood. It felt as though everything around us was turning into complete armageddon, all darkness and nightmare — yet, paradoxically, without pain or fear. And the most curious part, I noticed, was that this magic had no effect whatsoever on its own source — on Amber herself. A Dark creature, exactly as advertised.
These thoughts flew through my head in a single brief instant, and in the next I was already personally managing every one of the countless little triangles of my bracelet, moving them through the space around us and the diagram at a frantic speed, building up now ordinary Protegos, now pairs of them layered together, now Dark variants, drawing on my connection to my phoenix-self.
Fully setting aside any unnecessary feelings or personal opinions, I felt as though I were playing some arcade game on autopilot, focusing solely on defence and deflecting attacks. Flawless, magnificent — shields flaring up and collapsing, over and over. Potter stood there gawping at the whole bacchanalia, the maid stood like a breakwater amid a raging ocean, while Amber, with her own magic, drove the diagram's work with such force that it seemed the pattern was about to burn straight through the ground to the very core — and the shift in its glow, from bluish to red, hinted that it might reach not only the planet's core, but Hell itself.
Unfortunately, the attackers' strength, along with their abilities, proved considerable enough to press through the camp's not-especially-powerful defences without any serious losses, only a few wounds — after all, as I understood it, these mercenaries weren't here to fight other mages. But the lads in masks reminded me, in their calculated precision and coordination, of Romanova under that strange compulsion — far too many similarities. I checked that particular point, and didn't find Romanova herself among them — evidently she hadn't taken the same hook twice. As for the rest, I felt no pity for them…
Just as I was about to start going on the offensive, since our none-too-talented little defenders were "flying off," one after another, on automatic Portkeys triggered by their wounds, Amber finished crystallising whatever spirit it was, drew a small black-grey crystal into her hand, and decided to act. To act before me. Well then, I'd just have to protect Potter and the maid.
With one imperceptible movement, Amber removed and pocketed her blindfold, and out of the corner of my eye I caught that her eyes were entirely black, laced with bright green veins. An instant, and she levitated herself out in front of the advancing wizards, without fear and without reproach. And I finally understood what the blindfold was for — too much darkness and death streamed from those eyes, as though from a portal into another world.
With one short sweep of her staff she flung all the attackers back, tearing up clods of earth and trees, roots and all, shattering every one of their defensive constructs like fragile balloons. A couple of the wizards met a rather unpleasant fate — the pressure of dark, deathly magic literally knocked the souls out of them, tearing every connection, quickly and painlessly.
"As a Master of Dark magic," Amber briefly materialised a ring on her hand, and her opponents were simply paralysed by her magic, their own energies utterly suppressed, "holding all the necessary permits to operate within Magical England, alongside citizenship of this country, I invoke the right of defence of my wards, my property, and intellectual property in the form of a Class Two experiment of significance to the magical community and Guild. The sentence — death."
Amber traced a circle in the air with her staff, magic surged, and out of the ground, instantly, like stakes, sprang up hundreds of thousands of two-metre translucent green blades, like grass, skewering every last enemy, tearing out their souls, severing their bonds to their bodies. An instant, the blades vanished, and the souls departed skyward as tiny white sparks.
Levitating herself back into her chair, Amber tucked the staff away somewhere unseen and allowed herself to relax slightly. The blindfold was already back over her eyes.
"You oughtn't have overexerted yourself," the maid said, offering Amber a small vial of some potion. "It's harmful to your health."
"We'll all get there eventually," she replied indifferently, downing the potion in one go. "You young people, it seems, ought to be getting back to school. And I'd earnestly ask — this applies especially to you, Mr Potter — that you not mention having met me, or my circumstances. There's no point to it anyway, and any friends of yours who don't approve of Dark Magic will fry your brains to a crisp with their lecturing."
"Who were they?" Potter asked, seeming to have finally adapted to the day's surprises, with the one thing still throwing him off being simply too much magic all at once.
"You needn't concern yourself with that," Amber waved it off. "Though if you're wondering whether they're worth pitying — the answer is unequivocally no. Put simply: terrorists, sadists, and immoral bastards. And if some sudden urge towards heroism and world-saving has taken hold of you, I'd recommend staying well clear — you're no match for even one of those wizards, let alone the organisation behind them."
Within a couple of seconds, those who hadn't been wounded and had been guarding the property vanished by Portkey, and a moment later Amber and the maid disappeared as well. In the end, Potter and I were left standing on the barren patch of ground where the camp had been, in the dark of night, surrounded by the Forbidden Forest.
"Well… that was eventful," I remarked, stating the plain fact, and we set off back towards Hogwarts. "Let's hope that's all for today."
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