ACT5CH4 - THE SHAPE OF FEAR PART 2

Before you can name your enemy, before you can face it, you must first feel its outline in the dark. It is the shape that rises in your blind spot. It is the silhouette that breaks your map. It is the shape of fear.

....

The Lochness unit skimmed silently across the waves, a masterpiece of magical engineering — black-metal hull layered with enchantments, invisibility wards, defensive arrays tuned to pulse-dispel on contact. The ten Unspeakables inside were armed to the teeth, skilled in the casting of the dangerous and esoteric spells developed by the DOM. 

They were the Ministry’s finest.

And until tonight, they had never been afraid.

"Saturation layer complete," murmured Lin, fingers gliding across a runeplate. The tracer crystals flooded the sea, wrapping the island’s perimeter in a glowing web of detection so fine, not even a pinprick of unmarked magic could slip past unnoticed. Every Unspeakable aboard watched the monitors, breath held, as the massive absence in the tracer field began to take shape.

A corporeal one.

Lin whispered, in a tight voice “It’s solidifying. Readings— shifting. Not just an absence anymore. It’s a massive serpent.”

Malloran stood at the prow, one hand gripping the railing. “Maintain pattern. Any anomalies?”

Narex squinted at the secondary scry. “Strange. We’ve got drift distortion westward. Something part of the body but… is it some sort of giant squid? I didn’t think there was one outside Hogwarts—”

The rest of his words died as the ship shuddered violently.

On the main panel, the sleek tracer lines suddenly flickered. Then bent. Then collapsed inward.

Lin inhaled sharply. “Sir… I don’t think that’s turbulence.”

As if on cue, the sensors began to scream, and every panel and tracer glyph lit up in a blistering cascade of warnings. Enchantment after enchantment rippled across the displays, showing the same thing — an enormous void, a serpentine structure, only it had an extra tentacle — 

Then came the impact.

The Lochness shuddered, rocking hard as alarms blared through every corridor. Malloran clutched the side rail, knuckles white. Across the console array, Lin’s eyes darted over flickering runic displays, tracer webs collapsing into static.

“Where did THAT come from?” Malloran yelled.

A third tentacle shot from behind them — no, was pulled back into the main body. What sort of bizarre creature was this? Even the giant squid was — 

“Sir, it’s— it’s fully phased,” Lin breathed. “The absence… it’s here.”

Malloran felt a cold sweat trickling down his back. He leaned forward, eyes fixed on the projection. Where tracer lines once danced, where the water was charted in delicate, lattice-thin layers, there was now only a growing shadow — no signature, no essence — just a spreading, monstrous absence.

Across the projection, the shadow thickened, details emerging: massive coils sliding through the deep, stirring up currents, displacing sea life, generating unnatural thermal spikes. Scanners struggled to define its outline, but the pattern was undeniable — serpentine, layered, crowned with three massive, elongated heads.

“Is that….” Narex breathed. “A runespoor?”

“That big?”

It was a valid question. Runespoors could technically grow up to fifty feet, the most famous of them was the one resting around Ougadou, the African wizarding school. 

But even that was no comparison to the beast they were facing.

“Steady,” Malloran said. “Hold formation.”

“Activating armaments,” said Lin.

The Lochness’s hull flared with light as tertiary shield lattices snapped into place, overlaying the battered primary defenses. Along the flanks, rune-etched turrets twisted and locked onto the rising behemoth. 

“Target’s advancing!” Narex snapped. “Range: four hundred meters!”

The scanners wailed. Pressure spiked. Magic readings collapsed and rebuilt themselves, only to collapse again as the serpent coiled tighter, pressing closer. 

One heartbeat.

Two.

Then the tail hit.

The impact cracked the wards, shattered the first barrier layer, and sent the ship reeling sideways in a violent lurch. Sparks exploded from the ceiling as magical circuitry snapped, throwing half the deck into shadow.

“Reinforce! REINFORCE!” Malloran roared.

Secondary containment flared, golden lattices humming to life as runic anchors locked in. Along the flanks, heavy cannons spun to face the rising shadow, their mouths glowing with alchemical light. Rune-marked harpoons slid into place, each of them containing the equivalent of a lightning spell dialled at Maxima levels, with the tip containing a saturated solution of the Draught of Living Death. The heavy breaker cannons pulsed, core runes glowing, ready to unleash blasting curses capable of tearing through enchanted stone.

“Armaments ready to deploy!” Narex yelled. “On your —”

He froze, right then, for the beast’s form was no longer a shadow. The tracers were irrelevant now, for it was close enough to be seen by the hull’s lighting charms. Three massive heads turned, long forked tongues flicking out, tasting the waters. Its eyes glowed like small suns, pits of molten gold, fixed squarely on the Lochness.

And then it lunged.

One head shot forward, jaws gaping, at the vessel. It slammed into the forward barriers, ripping the magic apart like parchment. The Lochness’s hull screamed in protest, metal plating hissing as heat cracked it down to its bones.

“Fire! FIRE!” Malloran barked.

Breaker cannons discharged in a blinding salvo — beams of compressed, focused piercing curses — each of them capable of tearing a hole through five inches of lead — lanced into the beast’s flank. The harpoons followed, screaming through the water with disruptive spells primed to tear at enchantments.

Every single one of them detonated at the site of impact, sputtered and faded. The harpoons shattered on impact.

“It’s… deflecting them…” Lin whispered, horror threading her voice.

One of the heads looped back, striking the Lochness’s underbelly with crushing force. The ship lurched, klaxons wailed, bulkheads snapping, men and women thrown bodily across the deck. One engine blew out in a spray of magical sparks. 

“Sir! One of the heads has latched on!” Lin shouted, voice crackling over the comms. “Starboard flank — it’s pulling us under!”

Malloran’s eyes flicked to the external feed.

There, right beneath the water layer, was nothing but a wall of scales and teeth, tearing into the ship’s flank, and pulling it down with lazy, inexorable force. They could almost see the molten gold pupils, unblinking, focussed solely on dragging the Lochness into the black abyss.

“Brace for critical depth!” Narex barked. “Hull integrity failing!”

Malloran’s jaw clenched. They had no choice.

“Deploy DISTORTION GRID,” he ordered, slamming his palm against the emergency override.

Across the vessel, dormant runic bands flared to life — razor-thin filaments of spatial magic igniting along the hull, weaving a luminous web that twisted the very air around them. The ship itself became a throbbing nucleus of spatial instability, a pulsing distortion field ready to snap.

“Sir — engaging this could rip us apart!” Lin gasped.

“Either we risk it, or we die,” Malloran snarled. “FIRE!”

The ward grid pulsed.

For a heartbeat, the water around the Lochness folded — the world turned liquid, light bending at impossible angles as the distortion layers activated.

Outside, the monstrous head tensed.

And then — space split.

A shockwave rippled outward, lancing through her coiled mass — and in an instant, the serpent’s head convulsed violently as the distortion grid sliced across her length. The water fizzed and screamed as dozens of staggered phase-fields tore through matter, snapping bone, severing muscle, splintering the colossal serpent like an apparition gone wrong in two dozen ways at the same time.

Malloran slammed his palm onto the emergency rune. “Pulse charges! NOW!”

A chain of concussive detonations blasted outward, shoving the serpent’s coils back just long enough for the Lochness to thrash free. With a guttural shudder, the battered vessel surged upward, emergency thrusters kicking in, dragging it gasping back to the surface.

For one breathless second, there was silence.

“Report!” came the panicked voice from the comms. “Are you safe?”

“For some definitions of safe,” Malloran grunted, looking at his team still clinging to the shattered railings of the Lochness. The door to the main deck opened, and he climbed up, seeing his battered vessel bob up and down, steam hissing from ruptured enchantment seals, scorched rune schemes flickering dimly across the hull. Magical alarms blared in short, desperate bursts before cutting out, their cores fried from the overload.

“It seems to have worked,” he said, exhaling. Having one of the heads spliced apart like that would have scared anything — even a seventy-foot tall runespoor. “I don’t see anything. Narex, anything on the scanners?”

“Negative,” came Unspeakable Narex’s voice from the comm. “We’re still checking for what’s available to us.  That distortion grid did a number to the wardstone.”

“Yeah well, it was designed as a one-off,” Malloran muttered, casting an Episkey on his forehead that had gotten bruised from the attack. “Check the auxiliary systems. Recalibrate the cannons.”

“We’ve only got local magic left!” Lin’s voice answered. “The main core is drained, and we need the auxiliary cores to function. We’re dead in the water!”

“Then activate them and prepare to leave. Guess we can call it a day.”

“...Sir, I am registering an anomalous current. It’s —”

BOOM.

The sea parted, exploding like a boiling cauldron of doom.

From the depths, a shadow rose, and then it broke the surface — colossal, coiled, inevitable. The beast breached like the awakening of some primordial god, three serpent heads thrusting skyward in a writhing mass of gleaming scale and muscle. Two of its heads were still intact — each of them broader than the Lochness itself — loomed over them, casting a shadow of dread in the day, their hoods fanned wide, rippling with bands of black and silver. Gold eyes, immense and molten, glared down with the slow, precise patience of a predator that had already claimed the kill. Forked tongues flicked once, tasting the air, readying itself for an attack. 

The third head, once matching its brothers in monstrous glory, now rose as a mass of ragged ruin — bone spurs cracked and splintered, neck muscle severed in a dozen misaligned planes, shimmering bands of enchanted tissue hanging like shredded banners from a main stump. 

Where the spatial phase had sliced through, the serpent had not bled — no, it had simply… split.

Violently. Horrifically.

“Well,” Malloran grunted. “Guess the grid worked. Bet the Space division will love that!”

“Malloran, get out of there,” came Croaker’s voice from the comm. “It’s an order. Evacuate immediately!”

“What? But we just —”

“Sir,” came Lin’s voice from the cabin. “We’re registering a new energy flux. It’s —”

The rest of it fell on deaf ears, as Malloran’s jaw fell, staring at what was unveiling before his very eyes.

The spliced head — was moving. 

It shuddered once, twice — then, with a sound like wet stone grinding against itself, the torn flesh began to writhe.

Malloran let out a strangled sound. “No… no, that’s not possible…”

“It’s regenerating,” Narex whispered, voice hoarse, a wet laugh bubbling up. “It’s actually— Merlin’s bones, it’s—”

The crew watched, frozen, as the cleaved stump shuddered once… then twice… then split open wider, revealing a glowing seam of raw pulsing flesh. Strands of bone reached out, groping blindly, pulling back severed muscle with impossible precision. 

This wasn’t healing. This was… reconstruction.

“How…” he croaked. “That — that was a distortion grid. That should’ve—”

His words died in his throat, as the titan flared all three hoods and hissed —

“███████████!!!”

And Malloran’s world went white.

....

....

“I have listened to the opening statements of the Defence and the Prosecution,” said Albus Dumbledore, his voice carrying over the hushed chamber. “And I find no reason to hold Harry James Potter in contempt. Motion to suspend the rights of House Potter and House Black from participating in this session is denied.”

The gavel rang out, sharp as a crack of thunder.

Murmurs surged like a rising tide. Harry barely registered them.

For something was wrong. He could feel it. Just off the edge of his senses, but it was there.

Daphne’s voice reached him, soft, proud and oblivious. “See? There’s a reason no one wants to face Dad here.”

“Yeah,” Harry murmured, a flicker of a smile touching his lips — but it faltered almost immediately. His fingers twitched slightly at his side, like they were catching on something invisible, some unseen thread pulling taut. “I just… wonder if that’ll be enough.”

The smile didn’t return.

“Chief Warlock,” Mulciber began smoothly, standing, his lined face a mask of dignified condescension. “While I accept the court’s ruling, let us not deceive ourselves. This matter is far from closed.”

Harry’s brow furrowed faintly. A sensation — not in the room, not among the people — but inside himself. A hollow thrum. A faint reverberation.

Mulciber’s words droned on, honeyed and sharp-edged, stirring nods and murmured agreements among the Lords and Ladies. Joshua Greengrass sat still, his mouth twitching faintly, as if holding back a smirk.

Harry’s fingertips pressed against his own chest, feeling his heartbeat — steady, steady — yet threaded through with something foreign. Something faint. A pulse not his own.

It prickled. A tug behind his eyes. A breath he hadn’t taken.

“...containment,” Mulciber was saying. “Whatever momentary victories Lord Potter has achieved, this chamber, this government, has been left outside his decisions. Can we allow any one wizard, however storied, to act as the sole arbiter of magical thresholds?”

A ripple of agreement.

Harry’s skin felt cold. His magic — his magic was restless. Not flaring with anger. Not sharpening in focus. But straining, like it was trying to reach somewhere he couldn’t.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, trying to center himself.

—A flash—

A jolt. Pain. Not his own.

He inhaled sharply, chest tightening, fingers curling involuntarily. A flicker of panic rose.

“Harry?” Daphne’s voice brushed his ear. “What’s wrong?”

He barely heard her.

He could feel it now. The connection.

The Gate.

Hecate.

A surge of pain, a shock of disorientation, rushed through him like a tidal surge bursting through a narrow channel. His magic strained, threads of Binding warping under sudden pressure. He tried to follow, tried to sense, but it was like trying to look through a keyhole into a hurricane.

His heart thudded — once, then again — and the rhythm was off, like an echo stuttering where it shouldn’t. His mind reeled, dizzy, as if something far away was yanking at his senses, squeezing all at once.

He felt it before he understood it. The ache behind his eyes, the sharp stab through the bond to Hecate, the violent tug on the Gate inside him. Pain, flame, pressure, power — not his own — all rushing into him, as if something that should’ve taken minutes was suddenly crammed into seconds.

Time felt wrong.

Daphne was shaking him — shaking him — shaking —

His eyes opened wide, the green in them replaced by a putrid yellow.

And the material world was stripped away.

Physical constructs dissolved into dim silhouettes, grey and colorless, like dry husks. The Ministry chamber, the stone benches, the wooden desks — they existed only as faint shadows, pale echoes, because Death did not care for dead matter.

Every human form — Mulciber, Nott, Amelia, Susan, Daphne — existed as a glowing something — souls perhaps? — wrapped in faint magical auras. Some burned bright, Daphne more than anybody else, while others flickered, but all were tethered to the magic around them.

He saw the souls tugging faintly at the chamber’s wards, each connected by silken threads of oaths, bloodline magic, or tied magical signatures. One among them, likely Dumbledore — shone with almost unbearable brilliance, shot through with thousands of thin threads from past enchantments. Some held dark stains, cracks in their soul, the stains oozing out of their bodies and vanishing into thin fumes. 

Every ward, every enchantment, every protection spell became visible — some pulsing brightly in a multitude of colours, a vast, utterly, utterly complex web of interconnected Magic — some defensive, others lethal. And then there was that blue, almost crystalline weave — interlocking with Dagaz and Laguz runes — Time and Flow, encasing the entire chamber like a shimmering cage, and suddenly, everything made sense.

The sudden influx of emotions, of power, or sensory overload pouring into him at sudden, drastic paces…

The shimmering ward of Dagaz and Laguz…

The connection to the Gate and Hecate stretched tat — fraying slightly at the edges, as if he were being yanked away by space….

Or by Time.

“No,” he gasped. “Not. On my watch.”

He stood up. “I… I have to go.”

Unfortunately, he had been a little too loud.

“What?” demanded Mulciber. “Lord Potter, this emergency session was held to discuss the role you will play at Azkaban from henceforth. And it is the law of the Wizengamot that the session doors are not opened until the session is over.”

“I don’t have time for this,” said Harry, raising both hands, power surging. Peripherally, he noted several hit-wizards ever so subtly go for their wands.

“Lord Potter,” said Minister Bones sternly. “Surely you understand how this looks?”

“Sorry,” said Harry. “I’ll have to reschedule this pointless political backstabbing for another day. Duty calls.”

The wands aimed at him, but it was too late.

He was gone.

For Harry Potter, Gatekeeper, had just broken Time.

....

....

I AM GOING TO DIE.

That was the only realization Unspeakable Malloran could feel. His breath was hitching, lungs seizing, as if the world was pressing inward, squeezing him in a cage of unseen force. His vision blurred at the edges — colors dimming, lines warping — as though reality itself were shuddering under an invisible weight.

Moving was not an option, for his knees would buckle. His teeth clenched so hard his jaw spasmed. His heart hammered against his ribs — not in the surge of battle adrenaline, but in the raw, animal terror of a cornered thing knowing it had been marked.

Everything else was insignificant.

Just by merely standing there, the apocalyptic serpent made Malloran certain he was going to die. No previous experience he had had in life, not even in any of the terrifying missions for the Department, came close to this embodiment of destruction that stood before him. It was simply something he couldn’t comprehend, a preternatural instinct that screamed into the core of his being that he could not defeat it, could not fight it, could not even touch it, to do so would mean his end, or worse.

Around him, he could hear his team crying out — voices cracking, some keening with panic, others gasping as they fell, wands slipping from nerveless fingers. Those more skilled in Occlumency had already taken positions, wands drawn, potions uncorked, runic tools flaring to life. These were not mere duellists or Aurors — they were the Department’s best, trained in specialized combat using the Department’s own inventions.

And right now, every single one of them was looking up in mute horror. One of them had even attempted to apparate, only to be solidly rebuffed by the ship’s interior.

Malloran couldn’t blame them. There was nothing wrong in fighting an opponent you couldn’t beat, but one you couldn’t understand, that was another matter. And then there was that poisonous gaze from not one but three heads.

They told him he didn’t stand a chance in hell against this thing. If he fought, he would die. If he tried to run right away, he’d die. If he stood where he was, he would die. The only thing he could do was survive this monster’s wrath, get past the anti-apparition wards placed over the entire area, and escape by any means necessary…

The air split with a roar as one of the heads lunged straight toward the Lochness, jaws gaping wide, fangs like pale scimitars glinting under the seaborne moonlight.

“PROTEGO MAXIMA!” bellowed half the members, golden lines of force flaring out, knitting together into a shimmering dome of light and force — just in time as the serpentine maw smashed into it.

For one moment — a heartbeat, a flash — the impact held.

Malloran barely finished a breath —

BOOM!

The combined shield warped, and shattered under the monstrous strain, the detonation hurling several of the casters flying backwards, thrown across the deck like ragdolls, slamming into rails and rune-columns with bone-jarring crashes.

Fortunately, it had held for that split second, and hurled the lunging head violently backward, snapping it away like a struck battering ram, the shockwave splitting the sea’s surface into spiraling waves.

Malloran tasted blood in his mouth. His ears rang from the magical concussion, his wand hand trembled — but he forced himself upright, forcing his battered body back into the fight. The sudden confrontation had jolted him back to focus.

“That was— that was infrasound frequency,” he stammered. “Reporting. Target uses amplified parseltongue! We have to launch a multi-pronged attack. It’s a reptile, meaning —”

“Sensory overload,” claimed Narex.

“Freezing spells,” suggested Lin.

“Bombarding spells at vulnerable sites,” suggested a third.

“Spatial traps?” offered a fourth.

“As distractions, maybe,” answered Malloran. “The distortion ward didn’t take. I’m guessing we might have to corrode the stu — DEPLOY SHIELDS!”

Layers upon layers of wards enforced by dozens of wardstones within Lochness sprung into existence, enough to hold against untamed Fiendfyre and come out unscathed —

—And was nearly overwhelmed the moment it came in contact with the massive tail whipping at it from beneath.

An unstoppable force against an immovable object. The ward held, but the raw force of the collision sent the Lochness reeling in the opposite direction, leaving the unprepared Unspeakables hurling all over the deck.

“SPREAD OUT! FIVE FLANKS! LIN, YOU’RE WITH ME!”

The ten Unspeakables divided themselves into five teams and instantly rushed out, ascending charms to the rescue as they were hurled into the air, only to land on the water with anti-velocity and buoyancy spells keeping them standing on the water.

“LET’S TAKE DOWN THIS SON OF A BITCH!”

“Don’t you mean daughter—” Lin tried, but one look from Malloran told her everything he thought of her suggestion.

“...Copy.”

“SENSORY OVERLOAD!” yelled Malloran. “IN THREE, TWO, ONE —”

“AURIS SENSORA!” “SONOROUS HORRIBILIS!”

Ten beams of vibrating magic shot outward — waves of amplified, weaponized sound, tuned to ripple through the serpent’s senses. The air itself warped, vibrating in concentric rings as pulses crashed against the beast’s heads. 

The runespoor flailed, letting out choked, rattling hisses. The regrown head convulsed more than the others, slamming back into its own coils. Another head lashed blindly, smashing into the sea with an impact that sent columns of water rocketing skyward.

“YES! It’s working!” Narex bellowed. “GLACIUS MAXIMA!”

A storm of frost erupted from ten wands, glittering needles slamming into the creature’s eyes, nostrils, open maws. Chilled magic splintered across its sensory points, locking soft tissue in frozen cages. For a heartbeat, they saw — actually saw — one of the serpent’s eyes slam shut in pain.

“BOMBARDA! TARGET THE WOUNDS!”

Explosive detonations slammed into the half-regrown stump of the severed head. Chained blasts tore into its partially regenerated scales, bone cracking under concentrated magical fire.

“ALARTE ASCENDARE!” yelled several of them, hurling themselves into the air, their companions on the water level holding them steady with levitation charms, allowing them to cast without care — 

“AQUA ERUCTO!”

“FULMINATA MAXIMA!”

— Directly into the open maws, the nostrils, and the eyes.

Electricity surged through the soaked tissue, arcing from mouth to nostril to raw stump, crackling across flesh and bone. The serpent’s three heads snapped back violently, a high-pitched, shrieking hiss escaping its maws as the current burned through neural pathways, overloading its nervous system in a split-second shock.

Malloran could actually see it — the beast flailing, convulsing in a wild, agonized dance. Coils lashed the sea, sending waves rolling for hundreds of meters. One head smashed against the ocean’s surface, carving a crater of boiling water; another slammed into its own tail, biting down blindly in disoriented fury.

Steam erupted from its scales as the frozen points met sudden heat, and the electrified tissue sparked and hissed. For that single, staggering instant, the Unspeakables saw the monster truly falter —

—it was suffering.

They were hurting it.

Malloran’s heart pounded. His wand trembled in his grip. He knew — they all knew — they had a window. A real, lethal window. If they could keep the pressure on, if they could overload its regeneration, if they could —

But even as hope ignited in his chest —

—the serpent’s gold eyes flickered.

Malloran barely had time to yell — “REFOCUS! ALL UNITS! MAINTAIN PRESSURE!” — when the serpent’s gaze locked onto them.

The runespoor’s eyes no longer flickered with pain. They pulsed with cold, burning fury.

The trio of heads lifted — slowly, deliberately, the coils tightening beneath, the maws dripping with steam and blood, nostrils flaring, jaws parting —

Malloran felt the sudden, scorching shift in the air.

“SHIELDS!” he roared.

Too late.

Flame erupted.

“PROTEGO TOTALUM!”

A blast of raw, elemental flame poured from the serpent’s maw, not in the form of a focused breath weapon, but as an expanding, rolling inferno. The ocean boiled, steam and fire collided in a roiling superheated surge that smashed into the Unspeakables’ shields —

—Dropping them down to their knees instantly. 

It rolled through Malloran’s bones like a drumbeat, shuddering deep into his marrow, rattling his teeth in his skull. His mind buckled under the pulse, his thoughts snapping sideways as instinct screamed, die, die, die, run, run, run!

Around him, two Unspeakables collapsed outright, their wands falling from limp fingers. Another screamed as his spells rebounded, magic detonating harmlessly against the serpent’s layered scales. 

Malloran clenched his jaw so tight his teeth cracked. His vision blurred at the edges. He could feel his own heartbeat spiraling into panic, pounding against his ribs, a caged animal screaming in terror.

Focus. Focus!

He forced his wand forward, dragging his battered body to stand. Lin rose beside him, face pale, eyes wide, wand shaking but still ready. Narex clambered up on the other side, scorched and bloodied but alive.

Everything outside the defences were shattered and obliterated.

The Lochness. A good portion of the sea behind them turned into an explosion of steam. Four of the Unspeakables were already wounded without third-degree burns.

There was no getting out of here alive. 

“Malloran!” He heard Croaker’s voice through the comms. “Get out of there.”

“Huh, what do you know?” said Malloran, feeling a little tipsy. “Bloody things managed to regenerate through all that.”

“We thought it was runespoor. It’s a bloody Lernean Hydra,” said Lin, laughing softly, clutching her abdomen that had a fist-sized hole through it. And it was still burning.

“MALLORAN —”

“Not the Hydra,” said Malloran, chuckling. “The Lernean Hydra stood guard at the Gates to the Underworld. This… guards at the Gate to the Anima. It’s a conceptual overlap that draws on the symbolism of the Hydra’s legend.”

NOBODY. CARES!” snapped Croaker through the comms. “Just get out of there! That’s an order!”

“Heh!” chuckled Lin. “You might be right. As always.”

“MALLORAN —”

All Malloran could hear was Lin’s soft, crazy laughter. 

Narex was murmuring something about family. Lin… kept on laughing.

The jaws opened a second time. Malloran’s eyes met the molten gold in them, and found the color oddly hypnotic.

“Malloran — Malloran, do you copy? MALLORAN —”

“Too late,” he whispered. “It is too late.”

He closed his eyes.

“███████████!!!”

“MORS EXESA!”

Death answered Death.