HP/LOTM: Visionary - 392

Chapter 392: Mythic Battle, The Seventh Is Born?

A roar split the sky.

In the centre of London, a colossal Gorgon threw back her head and bellowed. Muggle crowds froze at the sight, terror locking their limbs for a heartbeat before raw survival instinct surged up.

Shoving, trampling, people broke into a blind stampede. Streets that had been bustling moments ago collapsed into chaos under the crush of bodies. Even in the midst of catastrophe, some still thought of profit; they slipped through the confusion, looting shops as they went.

Every act of panic and greed only fed Tom’s power.

Boom.

The ground erupted a second time. A huge dragon, covered in pale grey scales etched with shimmering sigils, burst from the rubble. It clamped its jaws around the Gorgon’s tail as a dream labyrinth descended upon reality.

Endless grey fog swallowed the city. London sealed itself off under that curtain of mist, and those who had been fleeing suddenly fell into step, retreating in an orderly flow under the push of an unseen will.

Aiden’s long dragon neck snapped, and Tom’s massive body whipped up into the air.

“Prewett!” Tom roared mid-flight.

Enhanced lungs powered by magic turned her voice into a shockwave. Towers around them shattered beneath the impact. The gale that followed carried dust and masonry toward Aiden.

He opened his jaws. A breath of pure mind-force gathered in his mouth. Once he had Tom in his sights, he let it go.

The invisible breath spread like a storm front, sweeping toward Tom. She twisted in the air with unnatural grace and exploded into black gel, collapsing out of the line of fire.

Wherever the breath brushed those fragments, blue fire flared. The gel burned to ash.

The rest fell to the ground and pooled, drawing back together. The Gorgon rose once more.

Her mass of snakes turned toward Aiden. Violet light built in open maws.

A shriek of air, and six purple beams tore across the sky at him. He beat his wings and surged upward. Just before the beams struck the ground, they hooked sharply and curved toward him again.

Space rippled. Above Aiden’s head, a figure in a white-gold robe appeared out of nowhere.

Oliver raised his wand. “Protego Totalum.”

A transparent barrier blossomed behind Aiden. The beams slammed into it. Chaotic power distorted the air, then stripped everything it touched, magic and matter alike, back toward nothing.

In Tom’s eyes, light flared. She hurled that brilliance at the dragon in the sky.

Aiden rolled, diving into the shrouding fog. In the next instant, he plunged straight down into the Sea of Collective Subconscious.

Behind Tom, a vast dragon’s shadow reared up out of nothing. The gel wrapping her writhed, lancing at it in a barrage of needle strikes.

The wounded dragon shadow peeled away. A heartbeat later, a hurricane roared through the Sea of Collective Subconscious and, driven by magic, punched straight into reality.

The storm came howling down on the gel around Tom. Chaos crashed head-on into the gale Aiden had raised. In moments, the black mass that had seemed unstoppable began to give way under the pressure of so many minds woven together.

“This won’t do. I’d rather tomorrow’s headlines not read ‘Britain destroyed by wizards,’ you know,” Oliver said dryly, patting one of Aiden’s horns.

“I could drag her fully into the Sea of Consciousness and fight there,” Aiden said, rolling his great dragon eyes.

“…Let’s not,” Oliver said. He could already picture the scene: two titans brawling through the Sea, a whole city of minds polluted in the crossfire.

Tom roared again and charged.

Aiden planted his claws, spun, and his long tail whipped around like a steel cable, cracking across her face and sending her crashing away.

“Don’t you lot in the Department of Mysteries have anything useful? What about that astral stuff…” A hint of greed flickered in Aiden’s mismatched eyes.

“Forget it. You are not using that in the material world,” Oliver shut him down at once.

“What a shame.”

Tom, knocked semi-senseless by the dragon’s tail, shook herself and forced her mind back into focus. She poured magic into the Chaos within her. A field burst outward from her body.

Everything the wave touched lost its colour and began to fade, turning slowly toward oblivion.

“This again. Troubling,” Aiden muttered.

He raised a hand. The ossuary he had anchored in Avalon descended, smashing into Tom’s domain head-on.

The clash between those opposing forces triggered chain reactions that birthed black lightning, melting what remained of London’s shattered buildings, scarring the ground like spilled molten steel.

“At last, Aiden Prewett,” Tom said, straightening with a smile. The madness warped by Chaos in her mind suddenly seemed to clear.

“What?” Aiden’s pupils contracted.

Right in front of them, she put on a live performance of… childbirth.

A pitch-black infant tore its way out of her and crawled free.

A massive and intricate alchemical array unfolded across the ground beneath them.

“The Ministry…” Oliver snarled, whipping his head around.

It was too late. A pillar of light shot into the sky. Counting the Fool and Life, which had already been seized, and the Chaos Tom now offered, three Deep Realm King cores lay in human hands. The beam linked three distant points.

In Avalon, the Fool’s core shuddered violently and snapped free of the alchemical matrix Aiden had left to bind it.

Far to the east, in the depths of the Huntian Ritual, Zhang Chengrui poured all his strength into suppressing the Life core. The ceremony cracked under an abrupt surge of life force. A splinter tore loose and escaped the constraints of the rite.

The three fragments flew straight into the newborn. In two seconds, it grew from infant to adult.

Wielding the strength of three Deep Realm Kings, it shattered the ossuary’s suppression from within and tore the Entropy core free.

“Not happening,” Aiden snarled, forcing his power into the thing’s weaknesses.

He wove the dragon of fantasy he had once seen into being in a dream and rammed that unreal beast into his enemy’s mind.

The blow staggered the newborn abomination. It cried out, losing the core. Entropy’s heart shot into the sky as a streak of light.

Aiden opened his jaws and loosed dragonfire at the weakened Tom, burning her mythic body to ash.

A small black snake shot out of the flames and Disapparated.

Neither Aiden nor Oliver had the attention to spare for the fleeing Tom. Compared to the enemy before them, she no longer mattered.

“Looks like this might be to the death,” Aiden said with a crooked smile.

“Since I met you, when have we not been fighting for our lives?” Oliver replied, laughing as he shook his head.