Chapter 121: Hunting the Unicorns, Treading Fire
Asterion and Seleneia were pinned near the nest.
They drove their magic to a peak, and the silver‑white light on their foreheads burned brighter and brighter.
Fine, transparent fractures spread through the air, fanning out from each horn and straining to wrap back over their bodies.
One moment more and they would tear free of the binding.
Both unicorns turned toward the nest's dark corner.
With that thin, cold voice, a hooded figure in black robes stepped out of the shadows.
He lifted his head. A silver‑gray ghoul mask, coiled with a faint haze of black mist, stared back.
The hooded man raised his right hand. A pale, gaunt palm gripped a wand, its tip leveled at Asterion.
Dark red light, veined with crackling arcs, crawled along the wand and gathered at its point.
"Do not bother with the male," the voice rasped in his skull. "I want the foal in the belly of the mare."
"I can feel it. That pure and lovely life has ripened. This is the perfect moment to dine."
At the shrill, needling command in his mind, Quirrell clenched against the pain and swung the wand toward the smaller unicorn whose belly was visibly round.
Porcelain shattered, sharp and sudden.
Asterion broke free first. Without a heartbeat of hesitation, he threw everything he had into a charge, hooves drumming as he drove straight at Quirrell, swathed in black.
On the spiraled horn, a nearly tangible silver radiance condensed, the tip seeming to lengthen as it flared.
A unicorn's horn bore a magic of its own, and wounds dealt by it were hard to heal.
Against a wizard's body, one clean thrust ended a fight.
Asterion aimed at the chest, at the heart.
He wanted one blow, certain death.
Quirrell could not react, could not even twitch the wand.
The unicorn's burst of speed was terrifying, more so in righteous fury.
The silver point was an instant from touching the robe when the earth around Quirrell turned to sludge, a gray‑black mire that yawned open under Asterion's hooves and climbed in a living crawl up his body.
Asterion froze in place as if a hand had hit a pause charm.
Only then did cold sweat break on Quirrell's brow.
"M‑Master, it worked."
"Well done, Quirinus."
"It was your magic, the powerful magic you gave me…"
Quirrell brushed a shaking hand across his chest, forcing his pounding heart to settle.
The trap to halt and seize a unicorn was a defensive Dark charm Voldemort had taught him, one that could trigger on its own.
Each use required preparation: the live butchery of ten morph lizard hearts and a complex potion smeared over the entire body.
These last weeks, if Quirrell was not stalking unicorns in the Forest, he was preparing that charm.
Another clean crack rang out.
Seleneia tore free as well.
Before she could move, Asterion loosed a short, urgent whinny before the mire sealed his mouth.
Run. Do not look back.
Seleneia did not get to decide.
From the soil and trees, numberless straw‑yellow thorns thrust upward, climbing skyward, knotting, twining, piercing each other.
In a blink, they wove a shell that shut out the Forbidden Forest and the moonlight.
Only Seleneia's own soft white glow pushed the darkness back a little.
For a moment, she panicked.
Free Asterion first, or try to break the thorn cage.
She did not consider striking down the wizard outright. Terror gnawed at her that he had more ways to bind Asterion again.
Anxiety, fear, fury, all surged at once.
A lance of pain ripped through her belly.
The silver‑white light rippling from her dulled and faltered.
In that same instant, a point of dark red sparkled behind her.
Quirrell's wand was ready. He could not wait any longer.
Voldemort's voice harried him in his skull.
He needed that foal's blood. At the rate his life force was draining, he would be dead in a month.
Crackle.
A faint thread of sound slipped into Quirrell's ear. It was not the snap of his wand's arc. It sounded more like…
Fire feeding.
In the dark, a tiny flame lifted, and red‑gold light kissed the straw‑yellow thorns.
The instant Quirrell saw that flame—
Boom.
The entire cage vanished into a bloom of red‑gold fire.
The sudden scorch stunned him, and the wand's arcs went wild.
His eyes jerked toward a seam in the curtain of flame.
A strange beast stepped through the blaze, as large as a camel, its body sheathed in fine, pale‑gold scales that shone like metal in the firelight.
A pair of short white‑jade horns swept back to keen edges.
Its mane flowed like molten red‑gold, drifting on the heat.
Glass‑bright eyes blazed, reflecting Quirrell's blank, helpless stare.
With every step it took, the air grew hotter.
"I want it."
"Quirinus."
"This surging, dense, pure, and spotless life force will restore even more to me."
Voldemort's near‑howl lashed Quirrell's nerves like needles.
As if to escape that pain, Quirrell flicked his wrist. A dark red arc tightened into an arrow and shot straight at the creature.
Pop.
The arrow struck true. Faint currents chased across the pale‑gold scales and then—
Nothing.
The Dark curse that should have blossomed into a roaring thunderball did not even make Aurelius pause. At the same instant, jets of purifying flame surged from the Qilin's body, thick red‑gold dragons of fire that lunged at the hooded man from every angle.
Quirrell did not have time to grasp what had happened.
"Waste."
The word detonated in his mind, ice‑cold.
Control vanished. His body was no longer his.
The eyes behind the ghoul mask flushed scarlet. The black mist boiled.
A heartbeat before the fire‑dragons swallowed him, "Quirrell" twisted and was gone.
He reappeared at Asterion's side.
The wand traced an elegant line.
Thick, viscous silver‑white blood fountained from the unicorn's neck.
Within, his warped magical pathways bellowed with power, vast and vile.
Bathed in unicorn blood, letting it run in sheets over the mask, "Quirrell" did not lower his head to lick and drink.
He had a better option now.