Harry Potter, Hero of Legend, Stories and Elves Part 3

Harry cast his new spell, summoning a floating creepy looking black quill with nasty looking spines that dripped a pitch black ink that evaporated before it hit the ground. "That's creepy."

"Any desire to touch it?" Hermione asked as she studied the quill.

"Not in the slightest," Harry replied as he used his Appraisal ability on it. "Huh, that's interesting and disturbing."

"Care to share with the class?" Hermione asked, wondering what he'd noticed and curious if the elves had any items that could duplicate his Appraisal ability.

"It has four qualities, five if you include the quality that turns the quill into something that can be summoned. The Shadow Well quality, continually refills the small well with a fast drying shadowy ink. The Demonic Madness ability causes the spines to induce madness in anyone that isn't a demon if they prick you or if someone sings a song from a page of lyrics that the quill copies down. It's also responsible for the dripping ink since that also causes insanity if it soaks into your skin."

"That's disturbing," Neville said as he took a step back from the floating quill.

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "The Ghost Writing ability lets it float, follow the summoner and take notes. The Demonic Parchment ability lets the quill conjure a permanent copy of the user's skin to use as parchment for its notetaking ability."

"That would actually be useful without the madness ability and the spines," Hermione said thoughtfully, wondering if Harry's ability would let them get rid of that particular quality.

"Yeah," Harry agreed as he let the quill vanish and used the last token, giving him the ability to conjure cursed loinclothes. He cast the spell, conjuring a crimson silk loincloth with a silver belt that dropped to the dirt in front of him. "That looks better than I was expecting."

"What is it enchanted with?" Hermione asked as she studied the loincloth, wondering if the chain was actually silver.

Harry used his Appraisal skill on it. "Hair Loss, Friday Flip, Random Invisibility, Descent into Madness and Topless Armor."

"So, nothing good?" Hermione asked.

"The hair loss only applies to your hair below your waist and it only lasts for a week after you wear it so that's probably fine. The Friday Flip quality encourages people to flip your loincloth up on Fridays, which is annoying but not crippling since you can just avoid wearing it on Fridays. The Random Invisibility quality just means that your loincloth vanishes from sight randomly which is more annoying than actually dangerous."

"And the Descent into Madness ability?" Hermione asked.

"The longer you wear it, the more it degrades your inhibitions when it comes to nudity. It also helps train your mental defenses against other types of mental attacks. The Topless Armor quality increases your entire armor rating by a small amount as long as you're not wearing anything that covers your breasts. It also protects you from bugs."

"That's less cursed than I was expecting," Hermione admitted, wondering if the bug protection quality worked if you weren't topless. "You should try conjuring another one and see if the curses change."

Harry conjured a green silk loincloth with a silver chain for a belt and checked the curses. "The curses are the same."

"At least they're relatively harmless curses, assuming it's just inhibitions and not common sense," Hermione mused, fairly sure they'd find a use for the loincloths, even if they just gave them to people so they could avoid shaving their legs. She quickly dismissed her spell when she realized that the counter was up on her spectral cock, causing it to vanish.

"Just inhibitions," Harry replied as he opened his Synthesis ability and dropped the green loincloth into the box in his interface. He conjured a yellow loincloth and dropped it in the other box in his interface after checking to make sure the curses were the same. He hit the button as Sirius reappeared in the clearing.

"I found the town," Sirius said cheerfully. "I wanted to check in and give you directions before I checked it out."

"I appreciate it," Harry told him. "How long do you think it will take?"

"Ten minutes?" Sirius replied as he gestured in the direction of the town. "It's about a mile and a half that way. I'm just going to pop over there and then back after I do a little bit of poking around."

"That would be great, it would be nice to have a better idea of what was going on," Harry admitted.

"Back in a flash," Sirius replied then apparated outside of town so he could plan his approach.

"Did you get anything from your ability?" Neville asked Harry.

"Let me check," Harry replied as he checked the loincloth his Synthesis ability had created. "The Hair Loss quality was 'upgraded' to include arm pit hair. The Friday ability swapped to turning invisible on Fridays. It picked up another quality that gives you glowing handprints on your behind that decrease your armor while you're wearing it. The Rocking Music quality causes it to randomly start glowing and playing suggestive music to attract attention. Descent into Insanity is worse than the Madness ability and the Topless Armor quality was upgraded to the Sparkling Topless Armor quality which does the same thing only it also keeps you clean."

"How much worse is Descent into Insanity?" Hermione asked.

"You start losing your inhibitions about killing arseholes," Harry said as he grabbed the red loincloth off the ground.

"That sounds like a quick road to prison or execution," Hermione admitted, thinking about the number of times she'd seriously considered killing Umbridge.

"Yeah," Harry agreed as he opened his Property Translocation ability and dropped both of the loincloths in the boxes, causing a list of the loincloths' magical qualities to appear next to each of the boxes. "Let me try something." He selected the Descent into Insanity and Descent into Madness qualities, causing the Swap button to light up. He hit the button, causing the two qualities to swap and everything to unselect. "I think I just figured out what to do with the cursed loot."

"What's that?" Neville asked.

"Property Translocation," Harry replied as he checked the loincloths with his Appraisal ability, checking to make sure the abilities had swapped. "I just managed to swap the Descent properties, leaving the better one on the loincloth with six properties."

"Can you swap everything around or just similar properties?" Hermione asked, hoping that meant they could fix the various cursed items they'd looted.

Harry selected several properties, causing the Swap button to light up, proving that he had a lot of freedom in how he swapped everything. "It looks like I can swap all of the qualities around and I have entries for physical properties so I can probably fix the bracers."

"And the rest of the cursed gear," Hermione mused, looking forward to seeing what he could do with it. "Does the handprints apply a negative or is the value negative?"

Harry checked. "The value is negative, I could probably swap it."

"That means you'd get handprints that would give you armor, right?" Hermione asked, curious how far they could push things.

"Let me check," Harry replied as he grabbed the enchanted cup out of the box. He swapped the cup for the basic loincloth and selected the handprint quality, causing two more boxes to appear next to the handprint box. "It has an armor and a glowing property." He selected the armor property on the handprint then selected the armor property on the enchanted cup and hit the swap button, causing a decent chunk of his mana to vanish before his pool quickly refilled.

"Huh, I wasn't expecting that to actually work," Harry admitted after checking the results with his Appraisal ability. "It looks like the loincloth would give the wearer a handprint that gives a lot of armor and I haven't swapped the armor value on the other print."

'Just ask, you're on another world and Ron isn't here to laugh,' Hermione told herself. "Hypothetically, how amazing do you think you could get the loincloth if you swapped things around?"

'Don't be Ron, don't say something stupid,' he told himself as he tried to focus on the problem and not what Hermione would look like wearing the loincloth. "You're probably going to want the Madness quality to work on improving your mental defenses, the handprint quality because that's two potentially large increases to armor for the price of one quality if I can find the right parts and the Sparkling Topless quality because that's another excellent source of armor and protects against bugs and dirt. That leaves us with three qualities to play with and I might be able to improve the basic armor value since the loincloth counts as armor."

"That's a good start. We should probably help Xander and Tonks pack everything up," Hermione said as she started walking toward the tent, changing the subject because she was having trouble not blushing at the idea of her friends seeing her wearing the loincloth.

"Good idea," Harry agreed as he and Neville followed Hermione. 'If I'm going to do this, I might as well do it right.' He swapped the cup for one of his silvertine daggers. He smiled when he noticed that swapping the metal would drastically increase the loincloth's durability and armor value and give it an additional boost against demons because of the magical properties of the anti-demon metal. He swapped the metal properties, ending up with a silver dagger and a much nicer loincloth.

He put the loincloth and the dagger in his inventory and closed them, figuring he'd work on the loincloth once he had a chance to look through the local magic shop.

0o0o0

'I'm not sure the illusion did them justice,' Sirius mused as he watched a pair of nearly identical smoking hot and rather busty dark haired women with pointed ears saunter down the street. 'Black skirts, boots and white shirts that don't hide much, yeah, I could stay a while. No, you need to help Harry with Voldemort and the Demon King. Fine, I could retire here after Harry kills the idiots.' He turned his attention to the pair of elven men that were complaining about the war with the demons once the women walked around the corner.

"I'm just saying, what's the point of having priests if they can't fix your family jewels rotting off?" Alivan complained.

The other man gave his friend's crotch a warily look. "You realize the curse doesn't actually rot them off, right?"

"Figure of speech," Alivan replied with annoyance. "Not only did the bastard curse every last male elf so we couldn't have children, we might as well be cripples. I tried three different working girls, nothing, it's as limp as a wet noodle."

"He's a fucking demon lord, what did you expect, pupplies and rainbows?" the other guy asked, wishing his friend would shut up about the curse so he could go back to trying to ignore it. 

'Nice to know they have dogs,' Sirius mused, happy to know that his animagus form was probably a valid disguise.

"What's the point of life if you can't go out fucking?" Alivan asked, less than happy about the curse or the fact that his ex-girlfriend had told him that she wasn't interested in fucking a limp slug.

"Have you considered using your hand?" the older guy running the stall asked, having gotten tired of the pair looking through his wares for the third straight day without buying anything while venting on anyone that couldn't avoid him, which had driven away a couple of customers. "I mean, even if you can't get it up, you can still make the girls happy."

"Not the fucking point," Alivan complained. "They need to summon a fucking hero to kill the demon lord, I want my mojo back!"

The old elf shook his head, fairly sure the man had never had any 'mojo' to start with. "I'm pretty sure summoning a group of heroes would just activate the prophecy of the heroes of legend and that they'd repopulate the world themselves. Which means you're basically fucked or at least shit out of luck since I doubt the priests can fix the curse."

"What the fuck do you know?!" Alivan demanded then stormed off to grab a drink.

"That was harsh," the other guy complained.

"Everyone lost something, if you want to do something productive sign up with the army, they need people to volunteer to fight the demons, there might even be a cure if you kill enough of them," the old guy said.

"Really?" he asked.

"Look, you didn't hear it from me but if you cut off the balls of twenty demons and take them to the local alchemist he can mix up a potion that can get things working again or at least let you get it up," the old man lied, looking forward to seeing his friend's face when he complained about the idiots bringing the demon balls into his shop.

"Thank you," the man replied and hustled off to talk to a recruitment officer.

"Idiots," the old merchant muttered under his breath then looked at Sirius. "If you're a demon under a veil, I'm going to kill you."

Sirius glanced around to see if there was anyone behind him since the man was looking straight at him. 'So much for the illusion being good enough.' He cancelled his disillusionment charm, glad that he'd had the foresight to put the hood of his robes up so they couldn't see his ears. "No, I'm just a traveler that's been out of touch for a bit. Can you catch me up?"

"The Eastern gate has fallen and the demons are rampaging in the heartlands, the king is doing what he can but half of the royal guard got destroyed by several thousand demonic talismans going off at once when they walked into the Valley of Thorgun so they're scrambling and trying to raise a proper army. I'm sure you've heard the priests calling for people to join up."

"Hard to miss," Sirius replied. "Do you think the prophecy is true?"

"I think it would take more than a handful of people to rebuild the elven population, but if the gods want to give us heroes that can fuck day and night for a couple years, I have a couple of granddaughters that would appreciate it."

"I'll drink to that!" a busty red haired elf girl said as she walked over. "I want a hero that can bend me over in the middle of town and have his wicked way with me, is that too much to ask?"

"Considering the normal laws about public indecency don't apply to the heroes of legend, not really," the old man replied, trying to keep her spirits up since she was a friend of his daughter despite the fact that he wasn't sure the prophecy was true.

"Damn straight!" she replied and gave Sirius a wink. "I don't suppose you want to help me practice. A hand or tongue would do after this dry spell and I really will make it worth your while."

Sirius pulled his watch out of his pocket and sighed when he realized that he was late. "I'm rather tempted but I need to check on someone, raincheck?"

"I'll be at the bar," the young woman said cheerfully then headed for the nearest tavern with a spring in her steps.

The old elf smiled as he watched Sara dance down the street. "That's probably worth paying the fine to fuck her in the middle of the street." 

"What's the fine?" Sirius asked, trying to get an idea of their legal system.

"You have to buy a couple of rounds of drinks at the tavern for making a spectacle of yourself. If you put on a good show people will generally let you off with one or two rounds. If you were an asshole, word has a tendency to spread and they start bringing in new people to collect the free drinks. I've seen minor nobles driven into debt," the old man replied with a grin.

"Makes sense, one last question before I go, if someone were to stumble into a couple of heroes from another land, where should they send them?" Sirius asked.

"Sending them to the church would be the best, the priests are good at getting information out and they're honest," the old elf assured him. "I know the curse sucks but we have to stay positive, at least the army is overflowing with volunteers."

"Thanks," Sirius replied and headed for the nearest alley so he could apparate away without making a scene.

0o0o0

Harry pulled his attention away from the last of the demonic corpses that the slime was devouring and focused on the rest of the group. "Should I wait for Sirius to get back or should we try to interrogate the demonic captain since we're basically just wasting time until he gets back?"

"You should start by summoning one of the children, they're probably weaker and easier to deal with," Tonks suggested, figuring it would be a good test of his ability.

"They're also probably more likely to talk," Xander agreed.

"Hopefully," Harry agreed as he focused on his Demon Binding power and summoned the weakest and most intelligent of the alchemist children that he'd bound, causing a naked purple skinned little girl with glowing red eyes, short crimson hair and pointed ears to appear in front of them.

The girl opened her mouth, revealing her shark-like teeth. "Master calls, I appear," she announced in a deep voice that didn't have any business coming from a child then promptly coughed a couple times. "Yeah, that's unpleasant," she admitted in a much higher and more normal tone of voice for a child. "Minion fifty seven reporting."

"Minion fifty seven?" Hermione asked warily.

"We don't get proper names until we've proven ourselves in battle," the girl explained.

"Why was he tossing a bunch of children into combat?" Hermione asked, trying to understand the demon's motives.

"The boss said we're trash," the girl replied with annoyance.

"You won't have to worry about the captain anymore," Harry assured her, his already low opinion of the demonic captain dropping even more. "Do you like mixing potions?"

The girl nodded enthusiastically. "Making things go boom is fun!"

"Good," Harry offered, making a mental note to have someone keep an eye on the alchemists. "What's the last thing you remember before you were summoned?" he asked, trying to figure out if the demons were aware while they weren't summoned.

"A flash of light," the girl replied as she glanced around the ruined field with child-like curiosity.

"If that's all you remember, why did you call Harry your master?" Xander asked.

"Because he's the boss," the girl replied, as if that explained everything.

"Do you know what the old commander was planning on doing with the town?" Tonks asked, trying to get an idea of his goals.

The girl nodded. "The Captain was going to make more demons and food."

"I'll call you back in a bit," Harry told her then dismissed the demonic child, causing her to vanish with a pop as the air rushed in to fill the gap. "Is it wrong to feel guilty about killing the demonic children?"

"That's probably one of the reasons they're using the children," Xander suggested. "As long as they keep their mouths shut, wear a blindfold and use some makeup, they could probably walk into town looking like a lost child then cause havoc."

"Or they're just sadistic," Tonks offered. "Some people just want to watch the world burn."

"Do you think we can save them?" Hermione asked, rather unhappy about the situation.

"I think that depends on the demon but we have a Demon King that is hell bent on taking over the world so I don't think we'll have the luxury," Xander warned him. "Harry's power is probably influencing their behavior considering the rest of the children didn't seem to have any issues with attacking us even after the captain was killed."

"They're children," Hermione argued.