“Who are you?” Harry demanded, pointing his wand at the man, but unsure what to do considering he had never actually been taught an offensive spell that wasn’t for disarming his opponent.
The man didn’t answer, instead he just crossed the room, pointing an odd keylike item at his head.
“I’m warning you.” Harry backed up, trying to think of a single useful spell he had learnt in his years at Hogwarts and wondering why Defence Against the Dark Arts had never actually covered defensive magic.
The key touched Harry’s forehead and with a twist of the man’s wrist the key turned and Harry’s world went spinning away.
Powel had awakened the moment that the Shadows had activated against his host but there had been no time to do anything about it besides pull his host into his room and start towards the door to confront the intruder.
On the other side of Powel’s door, Shadi was stunned by what he was seeing. When entering a normal person’s mind, he would have landed straight in their soul room, which was the personification of what a person was. Everything that defined a person was in that room and it was easy to see what a person’s strengths and weaknesses were, just from what the room looked like and had in it.
The Millennium Key had, however, not led him to the Soul Room of the boy who he was testing, but to a corridor. A corridor that had not one, not two but three doors attached to it. One was an enlarged version of a door to a cupboard under the stairs, one was metal in origin but had a crest engraved on it that he had never seen before while the last door was bolted and padlocked so many times that it was a miracle that he could see the door beneath it.
That wasn’t anywhere near normal. Two doors would have suggested a split personality at best and possession at worst. Both he had dealt with in the past. Three, however, suggested that there was much more going on here than he knew and made him rather wary. After all the boy had held not one of the true Shadow Set, but an item of the secondary set, created by a wizard attempting to copy the power of the Millennium Items.
He moved towards the cupboard door and looked through the slats in the grate attached to it. The room on the other side was lit surprisingly well for the dark soul he had sensed earlier and he could make out the four poster bed on the other side of the room, it’s red and gold drapes offending his sense of propriety. He reached for the door handle, intending to enter and find out more about the boy before he decided what to do about him, only to turn around as the heavy metal door on the other side of the room swung open and a teenager stepped out, amber eyes glowing and very dark brown hair obvious.
This one, he realised, was the one he had watched challenge the thief to a Shadow Game and issue a Penalty.
“Are you here about the eviction?” The teen asked with a scowl, gesturing towards the bolted and padlocked door, “Because if you’re not I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“And who are you?” Shadi asked, “And what gives you the right to demand the eviction of another, when you have no right to be here yourself.”
Powel laughed, irritating the Guardian of the Millennium Items, “I obviously have more right to be here then whoever lives on the other side of that door. I’m allowed to come and go when I please, whereas that door was sealed like that long before I got here. I doubt, if my host’s subconscious truly wanted me to stay in the Bracer, I would be any freer than them...”
Shadi’s eyebrows raised as the spirit in front of him trailed off, glowering at the other door as he did so, though that was the only sign of his emotions he allowed to be seen, “You take refuge in the mind of a child. That is a mark against you. That you use the powers of the false Shadow Set is ano...”
“False!” Powel spluttered, turning his glower on Shadi, “The Serpent Items are not fake!” Then he paused and considered Shadi properly, his tone taking on a low growl, “I know of your people. You are from that cult that attacked Salazar and attempted to wipe his mind clean of all thoughts.” Powel’s right hand went for the wand in his back pocket, “I would have thought that after a thousand years you lunatics would have died out.”
“Us? Die out?” Shadi asked, his tone revealing much more about his emotions than his, ever expressionless, face, “We have waited for over five thousand years for the Pharaoh’s return and while your mere copies jeopardised everything the Pharaoh gave his life for, we have stood the tests of time and fought against the likes of you.”
“The likes of me?” Powel asked, incredibly ill amused, “And what, pray tell, do you mean by that?”
Shadi was about to retort when he realised that he was allowing himself to get distracted. “I do not have time to converse with you.” The ancient spirit informed the much younger ghost, “Your actions today have long reaching consequences and I must correct them before the fallout is too great, starting with freeing this young one’s mind...”
Powel’s Bracer glowed as Shadi turned away from him, towards the locked door, unwilling to let this threatening stranger mess with the balance within his host’s mind, only for the spirit to get a shock as Shadi’s Key lit up brightly and he was sent crashing into his door. It slammed open under his weight and he went tumbling through it and into the room inside, landing on the floor hard as the door was pulled shut by an invisible hand.
By the time Powel had picked himself up, the Millennium Key was already doing its job, unlocking the mental defences that Harry’s subconscious mind had thrown up against the less welcome intruder, undoing over a decade of resistance in less time than it took Powel to get up and find that the door was stuck fast, trapping both himself and his host inside the Bracer.
With the spirit of the Bracer out of his way, Shadi planned on removing the second door that wasn’t supposed to be here, with plans of removing the foreign influence within before erasing the Bracer and any information about the Shadows from the room of the boy’s soul.
The last bolt on the door slid open and Shadi opened the door, only to have to step back to avoid a blast of corrupted air that leapt forth through the crack. The wind widened the gap between door and doorframe, the rancid stench of decay leaking into the corridor and offending Shadi’s senses, causing him to choke, though he had ceased to need to breathe thousands of years ago.
Shadi was left with little time to recover before a figure stepped out of the door and into the corridor that led out to Harry’s body. The being that the ancient tombkeeper spirit beheld was unlike anything he’d ever seen, a horrifying, twisted, malformed, mutilated child like creature that stumbled out into the corridor, its features twisted into a delighted and amused grin and when it spoke, there was a hissing behind its voice that meant something but Shadi wouldn’t tell what.
“Free at last...” The creature said, looking up and down the corridor before considering Shadi properly, “You’ve even emptied the body and provided a trio of Shadow Items for me...”
“You’re not welcome in this boy’s mind...”
“And yet you unbound me.” The creature snorted, interrupting Shadi before he could bluster on, “So either you’re a fool, or you’re seeking to turn this vessel into a mindless slave. So which is it?”
Shadi stared at the childlike wraith. He had never seen such a creature before, nor had he any idea on how such a monster could live in the child’s mind, for it certainly would not have the power to overwhelm the boy’s mind directly, though a two pronged attack from both it and the spirit of the Bracer would have worked.
Not that the Bracer spirit seemed inclined to share his host’s head space if the plans for an eviction were anything to go by.
“I am the Guardian of the Shadows until the Pharaoh’s return.” Shadi informed it, his eyes locking with the creature’s, staring it down and threatening it with his Millennium Key, which glowed brightly. “You will... what?”
Shadi looked around quickly as the creature vanished only to let out a sharp gasp of pain and hold his head as he staggered backwards, leaning heavily against the wall, his head pounding as it felt like fingers were tearing through his memories and soul, trying to find out everything.
‘A tomb keeper.’ The creature sounded excited as its voice echoed at the back of Shadi’s mind, ‘Oh how I’ve waited to get my claws into one of you.’
“Get out of my head!” Shadi demanded, realising he’d allowed himself to forget the most important thing about entering someone else’s mind. In the real world he was little more than a semi-corporeal shade, making him invulnerable. Here, however, he was just as vulnerable, if not more so as the people he was testing.
And he had let it in.
‘I remember you.’ The voice continued, taunting the ghostly Tomb Keeper, who even as it spoke was trying to muster the powers of his items to repel the intruder, trying to prevent it from reaching any important information or worse accessing his semi-mortal form, ‘I remember how you tried to break my mind with your Shadow Games.’ The voice turned vindictive, ‘I thought I destroyed you then... guess I’ll have to try a little harder.’
The pain coursing through Shadi increased at those words and the spirit collapsed to his knees, trying to hold back the scream that tried to escape his throat.
‘Surrender,’ The voice whispered to him, ‘Surrender and it’ll all be over. I might even let you keep part of your mind intact. Keep fighting me and well...’
Shadi couldn’t prevent the panicked, agonised cry from erupting as it felt like something sharp pierced into the depths of his soul.
Inside Powel’s room the spirit of the Bracer heard the scream and froze momentarily. He’d known whatever was behind the locked door was bad for his host, he had been able to sense that much from the door even before he’d known about the extreme measures the boy’s soul had taken to protect itself from the other intruder.
“Wh...Who?” The sound of another voice made Powel wheel around and glower at the speaker, only to realise with a shock that his host had woken up and was staring at him.
A second cry broke the staring contest that had begun between Powel and his Other and the spirit of the Bracer snarled and tugged on the door again, angry that the intruder had basically handed over his host’s body to a malevolent spirit without a second thought. That he was now paying for it was slightly better, but considering that the end result would likely be that Powel and his host would remain trapped inside the Bracer while the other spirit, the one Powel had tried and failed to evict, did as he pleased, Powel was in an incredibly foul mood with the Egyptian man.
To the Ex-Teacher’s shock, the door opened, the spell holding it shut failing when Shadi had left the corridor, unable to focus on the spells in Harry’s head while he needed to turn all of his focus inward to prevent the creature he’d freed from the second room from destroying everything in his own mind.
Powel and Harry darted out of the door, Powel turning to his host, who was looking incredibly sleepy and had only woken up because of the agonised cries within his mind, and putting his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Stay here. I’ll deal with this.”
Harry would have complained but the combination of shock at actually getting to meet his lodger face to face and the little voice at the back of his mind that told him to listen to someone for once before diving into danger. Instead he gave Powel a small, determined smile and said, “Let me help.”
Powel groaned slightly in his mind, having forgotten that the boy whose vessel he shared was almost as stubborn as Gryffindor himself, but didn’t let it show in front of the child, who was, at least reacting much better than Powel had thought he would.
There wasn’t time to argue, so Powel nodded his acquiescence but held up a hand before Harry could take control of his body, “I’ll go out, you can back me up from in here.”
Harry looked put out but he agreed to Powel’s terms and the Ex-Teacher, who only looked like a teen in the soul rooms due to being linked to the mind of a teenager, took control of their body, finding it strange to have his host’s thoughts running around in his head along with his own, though they weren’t as clear here as they were while Powel was in the corridor.
Shadi had backed away from Harry and dropped the Millennium Key as his mind fought with the presence that had stolen into Shadi’s mind using the bond created by the Milllennium Key, trying to expel it before it could take root and finding it difficult.
Powel tensed up when empty brown eyes took on a red glow and Shadi’s features seemed to blur slightly, becoming more serpent like.
“Finally.” The voice that spoke most definitely wasn’t Shadi’s and Powel felt Harry freeze, a weird sensation that threw the Shadow spirit for a moment until Harry realised what had happened and tried to calm down. Powel got the weird sensation that Harry was trying to tell him something but he couldn’t understand what the boy was saying. “What a stubborn fool. No matter, this body is mine now.”
Powel let out a soft growl as he realised why Harry had frozen. He recognised that voice. It was older but it was practically the same as the voice of the boy whose basilisk he had fought in the Chamber of Secrets, the boy who had called himself Lord Voldemort.
Powel tried to move between Voldemort and the Millennium Key but unlike the Transfiguration Master who was still getting used to being a scrawny teen again, Voldemort’s host could just ghost through whatever objects he chose and proceeded to do just that, beating Powel to the Shadow Item easily.
Powel backed off quickly, Bracer glowing as he prepared for a battle between his Bracer and the items held by the spirit controlling Shadi, only to realise at the same time as the other spirit that the Millennium Items were refusing to work for Voldemort.
“Why?” Voldemort protested, glowering at the items in question as if giving them the most powerful death glare he could muster would make the ancient artefacts behave. “This is my body! That means these are my items!”
“But they’re not.” Powel had to choke back his amusement, “Because you’re trying to steal them.”
“What?” Voldemort turned that same death glare on Powel who felt his host recoil slightly but held the body in place, “Explain yourself.”
“You can’t just take control of someone and expect their Shadow Items to work for you.” Powel practically crowed, “You have to defeat them to take control of their items and seizing control of someone doesn’t count! As long as you’re in that body you won’t be able to challenge him. Those items will never be yours! And...” He held up the arm with the Bracer on, the serpent on which was glowing, “I challenge you to a Shadow Game. You win you can take this.”
He felt Harry’s shock but stayed strong. He knew exactly what he was doing. He could still sense the creature’s link to his young self’s mind and wanted to sever it forever. While the creature had been firmly entwined in Harry’s mental defences it had been impossible to get rid of it, but now he had this chance, this one chance and he was willing to stake the Bracer on it.
“Oh really?” Now Voldemort looked intrigued, “You’d be willing to stake your Bracer on a game you can’t win?”
“Oh I’ll win.” Powel retorted, “And when I do, you’re done.” Powel drew his thumb across his throat.
Voldemort looked even more amused than he had previously at that little statement. “I can’t die. I’m not truly alive.”
Powel just smirked at him, “Is that a refusal?”
No comments:
Post a Comment