The instant the "seawater" came crashing down, there was simply nowhere on the ground to dodge to. No matter how slippery Iain was, he only had time to suck in one last breath.
"Glug, glug, glug!"
And then he began gulping down free tap water by the mouthful.
He had no choice.
The torrent wrapped itself around the little wizard and swept him toward the deeper forest. Trees toppled one after another along the way, utterly unable to withstand a flood that felt like the end of the world itself.
Even the giant boulders were not spared.
Those enormous stones that had lain deep in the woods for who knew how many years, half-covered by moss and vines, were ripped from the mud by the rolling "ocean" like teeth being yanked from a jaw. They tumbled and crashed in the current, booming like muffled thunder.
"It's been five whole minutes! Why hasn't my body learned how to swim yet?!" Iain thrashed in the water with all four limbs, like a cat that had been thrown into a bathtub.
His head popped above the surface for a moment, then sank again, then surfaced again. Every now and then he managed to catch a glimpse of the dragon in the sky bearing down on him.
"I'm just giving you a bath, little brat." The woman still sat on the dragon's back in exactly the same posture as before. By now, she did not even need the diary to speak to Iain anymore.
"I'm not dirt! I hate baths!" Iain forced one hand up out of the water. The pressure was so strong that lifting it felt like raising a slab of stone.
But his finger still rose and pointed toward the sky, toward that direction. His thoughts sank into his mind, and the flowing runes within him began to surge.
Iain activated his first innate magic.
Necromancy.
"Clack, clack, clack!"
And so, in the church graveyard that had already become a total wreck, countless skeletons clawed their way up from the mud.
Some of these skeletons wore rotted armor. Some were draped in robes that had decayed to scraps. Others were nothing but stark white bones shining dimly against the backlight of the flood.
Fortunately, the old witch's control was precise enough that her "sea" had not swept away innocent houses or townspeople. That was why the bones in the churchyard had not been dragged off with the current.
Even so, the eternal rest they ought to have been enjoying was still nowhere to be found. Once again, Iain had hauled them up to work for him.
Iain flailed in the water, broke the surface, swallowed another mouthful, broke it again, and shouted:
"Stop her!"
His voice was not loud. Most of it was swallowed by the roar of the water. But the skeletons heard him.
No sound transmission was needed. These were commands they could receive directly.
"Clack, clack, clack."
The skeletons began to move.
The Muggle skeletons started climbing utility poles, perching on those swaying posts that looked ready to fall at any moment, and hurling all sorts of farm tools at the dragon in the sky.
Of course, some of the more imaginative skeletons threw dung instead. To be fair, they actually did more damage than the farm tools. At the very least, the squeamish witch in the air made the dragon dodge.
The wizard skeletons, meanwhile, did far more useful work.
They raised their hands, some of them still clutching the wands buried with them. Various streaks of light shot from their wand tips. Stunning Spells. Full Body-Binds. Disarming Charms.
There were plenty of basic spells.
But there were darker things too.
Dark magic that existed only in ancient legend.
One crimson beam in particular shot from a skeleton's wand tip, slicing through the rain of water and streaking straight at the woman on the dragon's back.
That skeleton wore a robe so decayed its original color could no longer be guessed. Its jaw opened and shut as though speaking an incantation, though no sound came out.
The only certain thing was that it must have been extremely powerful in life.
"Oh? Some unusual death curse?" The woman raised an eyebrow on the dragon's back. She lifted her wand and, without even bothering with an incantation, spread a translucent shield before herself. Protego. The spells crashing into it splashed out in ripples like raindrops on glass.
Then faded helplessly.
"Ignotus Peverell!" the woman's voice rang down from above, not loud, but perfectly clear, as though someone were speaking from the far side of a curtain of water.
Her voice passed through the flood, through the wind, through the explosive sounds of the skeletons casting.
"Back off. I'll handle this brat myself."
The witch flicked her wand, and the flood hanging over everything suddenly changed direction. It was like the sea itself had reversed, surging back from the deep forest toward the clearing.
It swept up the skeletons that had been casting, along with the one that had fired that ancient deathly spell, the former master of one of the Deathly Hallows. The fragile bodies of the skeleton wizards were smashed apart on the spot.
Bones rolled through the water one by one.
Then, just as the witch finished dealing with the cannon fodder and looked back toward Iain, she made a small, puzzled sound.
"Hm?"
What she saw was this:
The little wizard, who should have remained trapped in the flood, had somehow been rescued onto a hilltop in the forest by a skeleton wearing a distinctive cloak. That skeleton stood there while the water parted around it, and Iain lay beside it on the ground, gasping for breath.
"My magic… it's like dead water…" Iain could no longer feel the activity of his magic. He immediately realized it had something to do with the newly risen skeleton in front of him.
The force sustaining those revived dead, sustaining the very concept of their "existence," came from his magic. And any undead that could consume this much magic merely by staying active had to be incredibly powerful.
"It's a thigh! A real thigh! Hurry up and hit her! Beat the hell out of her! Smack her butt!" Iain's voice rang out again, full of the excitement of surviving disaster and the same old total inability to learn caution. He pointed at the woman on the dragon. His finger was still shaking, but all the earlier groveling in his tone had vanished.
"?"
The cloaked skeleton lowered its head and looked at Iain. Its skull tilted slightly, its jaw opening and closing once, and then it gave Iain a thumbs-up.
Clearly, this skeleton appreciated his nerve.
"Well, well."
The witch hovered on the dragon's back, about fifty feet above Iain's head. On the alchemical puppet's face, those features sculpted with exquisite care lifted faintly at the brow.
"You really are gutsy, little brat."
Her voice drifted down from above, each word clear.
"Scared? If I begged, would you let me go?" Iain had thought it through already, so his answer came bluntly. His super-brain had analyzed the situation completely.
The witch actually considered it for a moment.
Her brows drew together slightly in thought.
"No. I definitely wouldn't."
Sure enough, the witch was honest.
"I knew it!" Iain at once shook the water out of his hair and turned toward the cloaked skeleton, stabbing a finger at the sky and at the woman floating on the dragon's back.
"You heard her! Get her! Carry my hopes with you! Carry the family bond we definitely shared several thousand years ago! In seven-point-twelve seconds, beat her!"
His voice was loud.
He was clearly trying to add some mystical emotional buff through sheer force of language.
"????"
The cloaked skeleton stood still, then slowly turned its skull toward Iain. Its jaw opened and closed, opened and closed again, as though saying something, but no sound came out.
Then it lowered its head and looked at its own hands.
Its fingers spread, then clenched, then spread again.
As though adjusting to the body.
"Finished?" the witch asked, watching the skeleton that Iain had summoned. Her intelligence did seem just a bit better than Iain's. She already seemed to have guessed who it was.
The cloaked skeleton said nothing. It merely raised a hand, and then, from thin air, drew out a longsword. Ripples spread through the air around its fingers.
It was a pure silver sword set with gemstones.
"Holy hell… sword, come?" Iain was dumbstruck. He thought it was unbelievably cool. He swore that if he survived this, he would learn that move from the skeleton. And if he died, he would go find him in some trance or illusion and learn it there.
Either way, that move
had to be learned.