Chương 339: Ch329- Merge

Cassian closed his eyes. The full picture had finally caught up with him.

"Ah," he said softly. Bathsheda turned to him. She'd caught part of it too. Before either of them could speak, the dread hit. The light in the pit shuddered. The runes in the wall dimmed for a heartbeat, then flared weakly back. Bathsheda's hand clamped round his. The spirit turned toward the mouth of the cave, her whole form tightening. Something in her face changed.

"The Veil," she said. Cassian's stomach dropped. Bathsheda looked from the spirit to him.

"No." The spirit turned back, and there was fear in her now. Real fear.

"The Veil must have been destroyed." If the Veil had fallen... Cassian swore under his breath. Bathsheda had already gone pale.

"Nicolas. Perenelle. Albus."

"And everyone else who was there," he said. The spirit looked toward the tunnel again.

"If it is broken, what was severed will join." Cassian stepped back from the pit and tightened his grip on Bathsheda's hand.

"We're leaving." She was already moving with him. Behind them, the pale light in the pit and the spirit's glow thinned like a flame caught in wind. If the Veil was gone, then the Crown was no longer crippled. Soul and body would merge. Greece and Yucatán would stop being separate disasters and become the same catastrophe. And if that had happened, the people standing in the way of it had just been standing at the worst place in the world to be. His jaw clenched.

"We check them first," Cassian said.

"Then we move." Bathsheda nodded, lifted a hand, and drew a line through the air. The space in front of them split with a tearing hum. The cave wall opened to a long vertical seam of silver-blue light, and then the seam widened into a standing cut through the world. Cassian whistled as he saw the other side. The Department of Mysteries. He stared for half a second. Two years ago, two of them had nearly driven themselves mad trying to bind two spaces together through Vanishing Cabinet magic.

That had taken weeks, blood, chalk, arguments, and enough failed attempts to make any sensible person give up and take up knitting. Compared to this, that old work looked like children trying to build a bridge out of spoons. Bathsheda's jaw tightened.

"Go." They stepped through. The cave's cold damp vanished, replaced by smoke, dust, blood, and the stink of broken enchantment. The Hall beyond the Veil looked as though a storm had been trapped inside it and forced to claw its way back out. The stone floor was split in long dark lines. Chunks of the black archway lay scattered across the ground like broken teeth. The Veil itself... Cassian stopped dead. Nothing hung beneath the arch. No shimmer or the ancient whispering beyond the stone anymore. Just absence.

A raw, ugly wound in the middle of the chamber where something fundamental had been ripped away. Bathsheda took one look and sucked in a breath through her teeth. Bodies lay across the floor. Unspeakables in dark robes. A few twisted in unnatural angles, others simply down and still, wands loose in dead hands.

There were Covenant corpses too, scattered across the chamber and the adjoining steps, some half-burnt, some cut open, one fused into the wall up to the ribs by a curse that had gone far beyond ordinary duelling. A dozen, at least. The living were easier to spot only because they moved. Dumbledore was on one knee near the shattered dais, one hand braced on the floor, the other still gripping his wand. Blood ran from a cut along his temple into his beard. His spectacles were gone.

Coriolanus stood several feet behind him with one sleeve burned clean away and his shoulder blackened underneath, though he was still upright out of what looked like stubbornness and old habit rather than comfort. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Sabine had a hand clamped to her side, blood seeping through her fingers, but she was standing guard over two unconscious Unspeakables and one very conscious Miranda Goshawk, who looked as if someone had dragged her through a curse storm and then thrown a shelf at her for spite. Her cheek was split, one eye swelling, robe half-charred down one side. Bagshot sat against a fallen slab with her back to the stone, breathing slow. There was blood at the corner of her mouth and far too much dust in her hair.

One of her hands was shaking, though she was doing her best to pretend otherwise. Nicolas and Perenelle were both relatively okay. Cassian let out a relieved huff so hard it almost hurt. As they entered, others looked up. Cassian crossed the chamber fast, stepping over a dead Covenant witch whose hand was still clenched round a snapped wand.

"What happened?"

"Really?" Miranda said hoarsely.

"You can't guess?"

"Marauder," Dumbledore said before Cassian could answer. His voice was rough. Cassian looked round the ruin again.

"How many?"

"Three dozen," Coriolanus said.

"Give or take the bits." Cassian glanced at the dead Covenant bodies and did the maths. Marauder had left half his team in here.

"Bastard came loaded for war," he muttered.

"He came for the Veil," Perenelle said. Her voice wasn't shaking, which was impressive under the circumstances. Bathsheda had reached Bathilda by then and was already touching her shoulder, frowning.

"You shouldn't still be standing." She winced.

"Help me sit before my pride does something irreparable." Bathsheda eased her down beside the broken platform. Cassian crouched near Nicolas.

"How bad?" The old Alchemist looked at the empty archway.

"Bad enough," he said. That answered absolutely nothing and far too much. Cassian pushed a hand through his hair and looked again at the missing Veil.

"Tell me he didn't walk in and smash it with his fist like some deranged idiot in a tavern."

"No," said Bagshot from the floor.

"That'd have been easier." Sabine let out something that might've been a laugh if blood hadn't been involved.

"He had a ritual team." Of course he did. Marauder had known exactly what he was doing then. This wasn't a raid that got out of hand. This was the point. Three dozen Covenant fighters to break the room, pin the defenders, and buy enough time for the arch to go down. He looked at the dead Unspeakables.

"How many of ours?" Miranda glanced at the bodies and then away.

"Too many."

"Five," Goshawk said flatly.

"Three more if help doesn't get here in time." Cassian just nodded, because there wasn't anything useful to say to that. Bathsheda stood and turned back to him.

"The merge?" Nicolas answered before he could.

"It has started." The room went still again. Even the injured looked up at that. Bathsheda rose slowly.

"How long?" Perenelle wiped blood from her wrist with the heel of her hand.

"It won't stay apart for long now that the only thing holding it apart is gone." Cassian looked from Nicolas to Dumbledore to the wreck of the chamber.

"Then we haven't got time to stare at this and swear about it."

"That was my next idea," Coriolanus said.

"But do go on." Cassian sighed.

"Who can still move?"

"Most of us," said Sabine.

"Depends how much dignity you require from the word."

"Low bar," Cassian said.

"I'm travelling with Dear Uncle Coriolanus, aren't I?" Coriolanus gave him a filthy look. Good. If he had enough strength left for that, he wasn't dying in the next five minutes. Cassian huffed through his nose.

"Then let's move." Miranda pushed off the wall with a pained hiss.

"Someone tell me we've got a plan."

"No," Cassian said.

"But we've got panic, several concussions, and enough old monsters in one room to improvise something nasty." Bagshot coughed out a laugh and regretted it instantly. Dumbledore's hand tightened round his wand.

"Cassian," he said.

"He took the Elder Wand." Several of them looked away. They'd seen Marauder rip one of the oldest weapons in the world out of the middle of a battle already going sideways, and they'd been too badly hit to stop him. Cassian chuckled.

"It doesn't matter." Every head in the room lifted.

"What do you mean, it doesn't matter?" Sabine asked. Cassian rolled one shoulder.

"I've already beaten Albus's wand once. That's for starters." He looked at each of them in turn.

"And more importantly, the Elder Wand was crafted in the Valley." He then grinned.

"Nothing made there is turning on me." Nicolas went still. Perenelle's eyes sharpened. They looked from Cassian to Bathsheda and back again, releasing something in both of them changed. Coriolanus blinked.

"You're going to have to explain that one."

"Later," Cassian said. He lifted one hand and made a quick motion through the air, pulling it inward as if drawing something through from somewhere just beyond sight. The white staff slid into his grasp as though it had always been there waiting for him to remember where he'd left it. A breath caught somewhere in the room. Bathsheda was the only one who didn't flinch. Two years ago, the goblins at Gringotts had handed it to him without explanation. They'd said only that when the time came, he would understand.

He understood now. Magic rolled off him the moment his fingers closed round it. The whole room reacted. It pressed through cracked stone and blood and smoke and snapped wards, and every scrap of old enchantment still clinging to the chamber reared up in answer. Coriolanus actually took a step back. Dumbledore's eyes widened. Then everyone froze. The burns along Coriolanus's shoulder began to knit shut. The blackened skin lightened, torn flesh drawing together before the eye could catch up.

Sabine's hand jerked away from her side as the blood under her fingers slowed, then stopped. The split in Miranda's cheek closed in a thin bright line and vanished. Dust slid from Bagshot's hair as she pushed herself upright, coughing once in astonishment instead of pain. Even Dumbledore's cut temple sealed over, the blood drying where it had been. Miranda touched her face and went still. Sabine stared at her own side. Coriolanus looked down at his shoulder, then back at Cassian. Nicolas took one step forward.

"That's-" He stopped there, because for once even Nicolas Flamel didn't seem keen to hope aloud what it might be. Miranda blurted out.

"Gods." The Elder Wand had come from the Valley. So had this. No... Not really. This staff was beyond that. Marauder thought he had stolen the source of the Valley, but the Elder Wand could never grant access. Cassian lifted the staff, and the air split again. This time it opened onto the temple in Greece. He tightened his grip.

"Let's go."