Chapter 122: Blood
Within the ring of red‑gold fire.
Seeing the savage, blood‑slick gash torn across Asterion's neck, Seleneia loosed a keening cry of grief.
A wrenching pain speared her belly again, far worse than the first.
She dropped to her knees despite herself, eyes swimming, fixed on Asterion as he slumped, strengthless.
From the wound where black smoke curled, silver‑white blood ran without stop, muddied with mire.
A clear, furious Qilin cry split the air. The surrounding flames rippled outward in waves.
At the sound, "Quirrell" curled his lip, unmoved. "Such abundant vitality. Since when did the wizarding world add a creature like you to its menagerie?"
His answer was a storm of red‑gold fire‑dragons, and from the curtain of flame, thin streamers of fire snaked out like living serpents to bite.
There was no panic in "Quirrell's" eyes. He flicked his wand at ease, like a master conductor.
The air warped and boiled under the ferocious heat.
Red‑gold fire roared and rolled in from every side.
"Fiendfyre."
Dozens of tar‑thick torrents of cursed flame gushed from "Quirrell's" wand tip and, in a blink, became pythons, smashing headlong into the red‑gold dragons.
Their mutual tearing loosed deafening blasts. Sparks fell like rain.
A few thin fire serpents slipped past and darted for "Quirrell."
"Protego Vorago"
A spinning vortex, a light‑devouring hole in the air, twisted the onrushing fire serpents and swallowed them whole.
As the flames neared the brink of the vortex, they shrieked thinly, as though ground to dust by an unseen force and snuffed out.
"Quirrell" answered the fire only with raw spellwork, not with counter‑curses like Finite.
He had noticed something odd. For all their heat, these flames seemed to hold no magic.
As if they were pure natural fire, raised by heaven and earth alone.
In the brief lull, cautious Voldemort snapped off a Finite at one of the smaller fire streams.
Its size remained unchanged.
"Interesting. Interesting."
By his own reckoning, with his power and his mastery, no magic should shrug off his Finite entirely.
The conclusion was obvious. The strange beast's command of flame truly contained no magic at all.
In that heartbeat of pause, Aurelius simply vanished, the motion smooth as breath.
He flashed into being at Asterion's side.
"Ptoo."
A great glob of crystal‑clear spittle splashed over Asterion's wound.
The roiling black smoke thinned by half at once. The clean‑cut gash began to knit before the eye.
The flow of blood finally stilled.
"As expected."
Joy surged in Voldemort's chest.
Spit alone that could scotch a Dark curse and heal the wound itself.
The creature was extraordinary. If only he could take it…
"Quirrell" suddenly spat a mouthful of dark red blood.
"Hmph. Such a wretchedly feeble body."
Ignoring the body's overload, Voldemort wrung its flesh and life hard, turning them with Dark magic into a torrent of power.
He sent it racing through twisted pathways and out into dazzling spellwork.
Black lightning. Cold ravens. Flickering flying blades.
And "Quirrell" himself kept twisting out and back, vanishing and reappearing in new places.
They were deep in the Forbidden Forest now.
Hogwarts' anti‑Apparition wards did not reach this far.
High, complex transport magics, in Voldemort's hands, were nearly routine evasions.
Aurelius was growing flustered. He had far too little true battle experience.
Practice with his master was one thing. This was another.
It was not enough. Not nearly enough.
The enemy edged, whether by aim or instinct, toward Seleneia. Aurelius dared not flash with Asterion lest the instant's gap be caught.
Light flashed and flowed in his glass‑bright eyes as he tracked the enemy's place.
Boom.
Purifying flame burst from Aurelius without limit, becoming a sea of fire.
He drew it up around Asterion and Seleneia.
He was about to throw everything he had when a dead‑calm space opened in the fire sea. "Quirrell" stood in the center. The flames slapped and broke like waves and could not come near.
He tossed several vials and jars into the air. Liquids and crystals in every color are scattered.
"Sanguinisectum."
At the word and sweep of the wand, the searing air seemed to congeal for a heartbeat.
The potions fused and gathered in an eye‑blink.
No fewer than a hundred varicolored blood‑blades lanced out.
Aurelius's eyes went wide. The blades were streaking straight for…
Seleneia.
He readied himself to flash without thinking, but the edge of his vision caught a blurred, near‑invisible figure.
Clang.
Pfft.
Metal sang. A blade bit flesh.
The transparent figure bared its true face: the hood and ghoul mask of "Quirrell."
The "Quirrell" in the calm center fractured like a mirror and drifted away.
With a clean pull, "Quirrell" drew a pale green dagger from Aurelius's flank, and a string of gold‑red blood followed.
Pain scorched Aurelius's eyes.
He spared the unicorns not a glance. His gaze burned greedily and hotly on the gold‑red drops, swollen with life.
He had not used the Killing Curse. He meant to take the creature alive.
To climb back to his peak.
But as the fight ground on, Voldemort changed his mind.
Quirrell's body would not last. The fight had to end now.
The goal shifted to harvesting the creature's body.
He reached to catch the blood.
A different heat slammed into "Quirrell's" face.
Driven by pain, Aurelius felt something break inside him. Flames so rich they neared pure gold burst from his body and swept outward.
At the same time, the light in his glass‑clear eyes burned even brighter.
At the sudden surge, "Quirrell" only smiled and snatched one drop of blood.
His form twisted and went out.
His Apparition would fire before the flame arrived.
But the glass in Aurelius's eyes flared.
"Quirrell" froze where he stood.