Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my Patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
The approaching Dragon was wasting no time in covering what little distance existed between us, and I sighed before opening the cage and flying out to the side. I expected the Dragon to continue on towards its egg but the opposite happened. It banked sharply, chasing me through the air. And it was fucking fast. Feeling the heat from behind, I dove with the broom, barely managing to avoid the fire that flooded the area I'd just been standing. I turned and fired a piercing curse, but it clattered against the creature's scales with no effect. Another blast of flames. This time, too plentiful to dodge easily, I was forced to erect a mage shield.
The force of the flames pushed me backwards until I was almost crashing into the island. Once the fire died from its maw, and the Dragon became visible again, I noted that it was much closer. Only mere feet away from swallowing me whole. I leaned to the left in a feint before sharply turning right, missing the dragon's snapping teeth by mere inches. Its tail arced around, and I was forced into a half-barrel roll to avoid its path. The dragon turned again, bathing the area I'd just occupied in flames. This time, I reacted swiftly and began to rise, rising above the fires that tried to engulf me. Shielding the flames was a mistake. It had taken more power than expected, and had given the beast the opportunity to close the distance.
I turned to the approaching beast and tried aiming carefully, but it just sent fire in my direction. I sharply turned left, applying a cooling charm to my body as I felt the heat of the flames sting at me. A flame freezing charm would have been a great idea, but dragon flames could eat straight through magical protections of all forms— fucking cheats.
This time, I turned and trusted my instincts to aim the conjucvitis curse properly. It went wide of the rapidly approaching figure, and I absently noted that aiming while on a broom going a few hundred kilometers an hour and doing so wile standing still in my pre-selected stance were too different things. In the first, my aim was a 10/10. In the latter. It was worse than shit.
The dragon continued its chase even as I dove towards the ground. I banked right, and then began to zig and zag to prevent it from getting a clear shot with its flames. I shot down, seeing the rapidly approaching embrace of the earth but trusting instincts not wholly mine to make this work. When we were close enough, I pushed down with my magic as I came out of the sharp dive. It was a perfect wronski-esque dive. Reckless as all hell, but not enough for the dragon— a creature of air and fire. It leveled out just as I did and began to chase me as we flew parallel to the ground. I took off one hand from the broom as I dragged my wand upward. Spikes rose from the ground in front of me. I weaved through them while the Horntail just crashed through with a roar.
I turned behind me and used an overpowered blasting curse specially designed to work on inanimate objects (and non-magical beings, but that was the quiet part that we didn't speak out loud) to make the spikes the horntail was yet to crash through to explode just as it was about to hit them. It flew straight through the concussive force as if it couldn't feel it, and I banked hard to the left, rising as I did so to allow the dragon crash through the forest. At least, that was the intention. Instead, the dragon matched my movements, almost as if it wanted to show that it was king of the skies, and I, a mere interloper. Air elemental spells were too difficult when used offensively for me to whip one out right now, so I had to stick to the basics.
I turned around and nailed the dragon's crest with a powerful confringo that did naught but hit the scales, explode in smoke and fire, and reveal a completely unscathed Dragon some seconds later. I heard a ding sound come from the cage as Krum opened it, and the Dragon turned away from me, flying straight in his direction. I wondered why for a second before deciding not to question my luck and flying straight to the next test. Or at least I tried to. When I tried to take the broom into the tunnel, I found my momentum grind to a halt.
I scowled and got off the broom before propping it against the wall and making my way into the tunnel— down into the deeps where light itself fears tread. I chuckled at the dramatic phrasing as I began to walk down for a few minutes. The first part of the tunnel was just a straight talk down, and at the present state of slope probably had me about halfway through the island itself by the time I came to a stop and had to decide whether to go right or left. Since the briefing said nothing about it being a labyrinth of any sort, it seemed fair to assume that each turn led to an exit— if with different routes to get there.
That meant I could just pick one at random. Trying to use a 'point-me' to find the exit had my wand spilling listlessly for a minute before it ended up turning back in my direction— that meant the closest way out of here was back the way I came. I turned left, and the tunnel suddenly plunged in darkness. Against my better judgement, I found myself instinctively taking a step backwards, and I froze when I felt my back against a wall rather than the open space I'd just walked through.
When I heard the sound of skittering as the creatures accelerated towards my position, I took a shallow breath, and then fire exploded around the tunnel with a slash of my wand.
Fire breathed, fire bloomed, fire rose with the slash of my wand and washed across the creatures as they approached, both destroying them and revealing them to my sight at the same time Tiny little buggers that crawled along the earth. Each one was like a crab, earth shell fang the ceiling, with six pincers being used both for mobility— and most likely offense. Then there was their inside. Because they did not go quietly when the fire took them. No. They raged, screeched, and when the hot flames I'd conjured finally penetrated those shells, they exploded. A shield charm by rifle had saved me from the worst effects of the first one, but the rest had been easy enough to avoid.
In the end, I walked down the tunnel with burns along my robes, but skin unmarred, and magic roaring for the next challenge. "Lumos", I intoned with a flick of my wand while I reshaped the simple spell with my intent. Instead of a single ball of light in front of my wand, I created multiple balls that shot out of my wand and raced down the tunnel, finally giving me a good look at what I was working with. The answer? Not a lot, apparently.
The tunnel was sparse, but well-designed. The walls had grooves and images carved into them. This wasn't just a task for the triwizard, I realised. This was someone's life work. Why did I think so? A hunch, more like. But the fact that of all the moments in wizarding history they could have chosen to document, the story of Ekrizdis building the famed Azkaban Prison was a strange choice. Especially because Britain was the only nation that hadn't declared him proscribed— leading many to suspect that he was actually a British National, and we were just hiding the information about it. That was a theory I could get behind.
I walked down the tunnel for a few more minutes, until I suddenly found the world turned upside down. I was walking along the ceiling, not the floor anymore. The actual fuck? I froze for a second before sending my magic out of my body, trying to overpower the illusion that the undoubtedly was, except that nothing happened when I did so. Reality did not even so much as stutter when I did. With a shrug, I kept walking along the ceiling, and then arms made of stone began to rise from the ground. They did not reach for me. Only moving to the roof and attaching themselves in front of me, forming multiple earthen pillars that I had to duck around to make progress.
It slowed me down almost to a halt as I had to squeeze between the pillars at different spots to make it through. Part of me ached to just blow up the hole thing ad bring it down. But I had little idea what kind of knock on effects destroying the pillars would have— especially because any spell I used powerful enough to destroy the pillars en masse would be too powerful to keep aimed at them. Add that to the fact that if I tried to pair it back, then whatever I used would only destroy a few at a time and in that case, I would still be moving nearly as slowly, with the only exception being my magic capacity slowly running out as time passed. This way let me conserve magic at the very least.
As I walked, I had the inexplicable feeling that something wasn't quite right. There was just something I was failing to see out of the corner of my eye. Like a bit of static. Just a small bit of static interference in my vision, like reality wasn't rendering itself properly all the time. I ignored it for a while as I focused on trudging my way through the labyrinth of earthen pillars that had once been hands. But as I walked through, it felt like there was always more in front of me and there was nothing forward but the pillars. They continued on and on, almost until infinity, and it was then that the ringing in the back of my head became unbearable.
I ducked, barely managing to avoid the grasping claws of the bear as it tried to swat me away. I rolled along the forest ground and came up with my sword— when did I get a sword? Part of me wondered for a second before I was forced to slash at the bear's eyes to force the much bigger creature to yield enough space to allow me to take a breath. Once I did, the next thing the bear did was charge my position. I dove to the side, enhanced reflexes allowing me to keep up with a creature that should have been my physical superior in all matters. Nevertheless, it came again, rounding the turn with impressive dexterity.
This time, I remained still for as long as I could before I pushed down with my knees, generating enough force to flip straight over the bear. As I flew, I was in the air for a second less than planned, but there was still enough time for me to manage to slam my blade into the bear;'s hind quarters. It roared in pain as I landed in a superhero pose right behind it. It screeched as it shifted forms, turning from a bear into something else.
Voldemort, I thought with a shudder. I kept the shudder internal, though. This beast would never know how much trepidation it inspired in me. The bald head, red eyes, noseless face, and skin that was pale as chalk came together in a visage that had been slightly comical in the movie, but was positively fearsome in person. This was the man who had brought the most powerful magical nation in the world to its knees. I thought about it's we shot into motion.
Two confringo curses spun from my wand at pace, while I twirled around his return, a black spell that turned the tree behind me to ash. I twisted my wand to the left to form a fire whip that I cracked in his direction. He turned his wand against mine, creating his own fire whip that met mine in midair. Both spells collided, and then he won the contest of wills before it could begin. He took control of my spell, transfiguring our shared flames into a giant serpent that reared up in my direction. I hissed and fired a blasting curse that hit the snake and was deflected to the side.
With a heave, the ground rose under my control. I skewered the snake from beneath with one giant spike, feeling the drain on my magic hit a crescendo as I moved. I danced to the side to avoid a green spell I recognized as the Avada Kedavra. He'd cast it silently? How? Come to think of it, he hadn't said a single word all fight. That was strange. Very strange for Voldemort, especially. He loved to hear the sound of his own voice more than he loved to have his dick sucked, I was sure. Did he even have a pecker? That was a strange thought to have, I thought as I bent backwards, going near parallel with the ground, to avoid a blast of chilling blue magic. It hit the trees behind me, and spread frost far as the eyes could see. Of course, ice would be his element.
The cold, the unfeeling, and the stagnant. I breathed, and fire breathed with me. I swept my wand from left to right, calling upon the black magic eating flames that a Black Lord from the 15th Century had considered his magnum opus. What was funny was that he had been a counterpart to Ekrizdis in his youth. It wasn't something widely known, but in his own accounts of his life, he talks about the help Ekrizdis had given in developing the spell.
Of course, it was magic draining like nothing else. It ate magic actively, and if it couldn't find I from an outside source, it would consume its caster's magic. It was almost comparable to fiendfyre in the danger it posed to the caste, except that fiendfyre could be avoided by just apparating away. Voldemort and his death eaters had used the tactic quite widely in the first war until anti-disappirition jinxes began to be added to everyone's repertoire, and it became dangerous to throw around Class Five spells and expect to just have an easy escape available. The flames swallowed Voldemort's next salvo of curses whole and spat nothing out, only growing in intensity as it flew towards the Dark Lord.
He spun his wand to the side and tore the flames from my control. Dispelling them with a twirl of his wand and a sneer on his face that almost seemed to say— 'is that the best you have, Potter?', and that was the last straw. This. This couldn't be real. That was possible with other pieces of magic, maybe. But that spell? Not with that spell. That was one of the premier Black spells, so secret that only the Lord or his Heir could learn it. Sirius was a heathen who cared little for rules, but Arcturus Black definitely hadn't been. There was no chance he'd have taught Bellatrix or Narcissa that spell. And while Regulus was a vague possibility, it was unlikely that he wouldn't have been sworn to oaths otherwise to share the spells with any not of Black Blood. Sirius, bad as he was, at least had the good sense to make me swear something similar. It was a requirement to learn the magic, even.
He sent a series of spells and I spun my wand in a circle, creating a spinning mage shield that deflected the spells, still feeling the effects of all my magic expenditure before I retaliated with a spell chain that was at least 11 spells long. None of them were especially powerful, but they were quick to cast, and they at least kept Voldy busy deflecting nuisances, his pride not allowing him to do the logical thing here, and eat a tooth growing hex or whatever as the cost for managing to stop my casting and maybe even it me with one of his own spells. I tried to recall all the things that led me here. The black flames helped with that as well. Ekrizdis. He created the tunnel I had been in. So how was I now fighting in a forest. I had no recollection of the journey between one and the other.
Voldemort sent another series of spells in my direction, but I jumped to the side while trying to think through what had happened. My vision had turned topsy-turvy, and my reaction had been to send magic in its direction? That was silly. If this was an illusion, then the only logical solution was occlumency. I closed my eyes, allowing the moment to pass me. I heard spells and whatnot head in my direction, but cared not. I was right, I knew it. This wasn't real. I'd been in an illusion since I'd killed those critters. Maybe even since before then. When I walked into the tunnel? When I took a turn? It was impossible to trace when it began, but I knew this would be where it ended.
I cleared my mind, and then cleared it again. No thoughts, no emotions, nothing. Tom Riddle had been an unmatched prodigy in the mind arts. With that talent, it took me seconds to find the influence on my head, and even less to toss it out now that I knew it was there. I opened my eyes to see the shadowy wraith fleeing my form. I scowled and stabbed my wand in its direction. The blasting curse tore it to pieces before I could even guess at what creature it was.
A/N: Free spoiler? The dream-eating creature matters more in the later parts of this story. Back on the grind with the Second Task. Did I make the tasks bigger and badder because I was bored? Yes. Yes, I did. Bite me! Next two up on Patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) ( same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.