Loki felt a slight shift, not in his position in the physical world, but in the position of his Body of Heart and Mind.
As if the world had split in experience but not in reality.
As his vision slowly adjusted to the sudden brightness all around him, Loki looked at the place he found himself to be.
The world was still dark. However, it now held a bulbous source of light in the darkness that wasn't present before, making Loki have to squint for a moment.
'Where…'
The world was blinding, with flashes constantly assaulting his vision as he studied the view.
He stood on a soft meadow at the edge of a cliff overlooking what looked like a vast sea.
Breeze blew touchingly as the world seemed to breathe it gently, whispering along with the soft rustling of knee high grass sprinkled with spurts of young fresh trees that held birds singing in little chirps of excitement for their new visitor as the deer underneath raised their heads to look at him.
The scene would've been fantastic had it not been for a single detail.
Loki's eyes landed on the obvious first, and then he looked around as if completely ignoring the fact.
His eyes continued afterwards to scan the terrain of the cliff side slowly before landing on the sky as he studied the position of the moon and the stars for a moment from in between the dense set of clouds.
'....still on Earth…the northern hemisphere…the sky matches the date…but the positions…are we in the atlantic?'
The grass suddenly rustled behind Loki allowing him to speak without looking, "It was here all along?" he asked with slight amazement. "The Bermuda?"
The person didn't respond, but simply came to a stop beside Loki, causing him to have to turn and look at the strange humanoid figure beside him.
The figure had no mouth.
Only a single absurdly large eye plastered on the centre of their face as they looked over at the wildly raging sea that seemed to be wreaking a storm only a couple feet away from them.
The figure stretched their hand, as if trying to grasp the raging storm, but a fragile, almost invisible, translucent barrier put a stop.
Loki heard a soft sizzle, and even smelled toasted flesh as he watched the fingers of the being burn before they were pulled back.
Loki then raised his hands.
However, unlike the sizzle he expected, his hands passed through unobstructedly. The barrier even felt like it caressed his fingers gently, as if making sure that his hands reached their best shape they could for whatever was about to happen next.
"Ah~. That feels so good…it feels like a massage…been flexing these fingers a little too much recently….I even almost developed calluses on my fingers from snapping too often you know?" Loki rambled, his eyes closed even as the strange being beside him looked at him with obvious disdain and hatred.
It went so far as to raise its hands and grab Loki, but its hands passed right through.
"He~ seriously? You think I'll let you touch me again?" Loki mocked.
His illusory figure vanished as his true figure appeared on the other side of the barrier.
The being's head turned slowly, as 'Their' gaze shifted from the illusory Loki to the real one with annoyance and anger clearly visible in 'Their' cyclopean eye.
But Loki had already vanished again.
Loki stood hovering over the sea.
His robes billowed wildly with the stormy air as his hair still remained in its resting position as if it had lost its ability to interact with the wind.
Except, as the cyclopean eye observing him blinked a thin slit carved under it to reveal a set of thin and spiky razor sharp teeth that grinned manically.
The view of the world started to change.
Slowly.
The world behind the cyclopean being changed first.
The gentle trees shifted, their roots extended to pierce the birds and other animals all around, killing them as their eyes popped out and fell to the ground.
The trees soon collapsed and rotted, decaying into deathly pale wooden mites that split up and began to consume the wood from inside out.
The remaining bodies of the trees struggled, writhing on the ground as their roots dragged them towards each other.
Only to stand up once again as they merged, intertwined like branches, with the flesh of dead animals hanging down like ripe fruits, morphing slowly by fusing with the bodies of the trees themselves, covering them in a strange ethereal dense red mass of flesh that formed various reproductive organs.
The eyes that had popped to the ground exploded.
However the resulting shower of blood was well controlled as it rearranged itself to give birth to a new pair.
Now fleshy tree roots stabbed them, and wore them like beads on a string, tightening the grip on them as they were woven into the feminine face forming at the top of the fleshy tree.
Everything fell silent the next moment.
The gigantic fleshy tree that looked like it held the world stopped moving.
Instead the pair of eyes that had just settled in what appeared to be a face that carried a Motherly charm, twisted and rolled around before landing on the Cyclopean Creature.
Suddenly, the flesh of the animals hanging on the tree like structure shuddered before an eerie inhuman chirp resounded.
The chirps didn't stop there however, they started to repeat themselves, producing noise for only seconds before sounding more and more human-like with each attempt.
Until.
"You've done your part…Herpo…or is it Grindelwald now?"
…
Loki looked at the crazed vast sea before himself.
It felt a little unreal to be in the presence of another Sefirot.
And Loki could feel it.
He could feel the strange form of corruption it tried to actively unleash upon him through his projection of Body of Heart and Mind for simply being so close to it.
Even his own Sefirot, it seemed, couldn't protect him from it because of how close he was to it.
So Loki relied on himself. Continuing to steal any corruption he could see on his Body of Heart and Mind that his Sefirot failed to stop in time.
And while the projection of his own Body of Heart and mind was being treated as a battlefield, Loki observed the Chaos Sea for what it truly was.
The storms that raged within it felt much random. With lightning striking the ocean very often.
But Loki's quick mind could see it.
A pattern.
'....what is this? Medieval Cloud computing?'
The lighting strikes carried requests.
To be precise they carried the requests of the wizards casting magic. Runes regarding the domain of the spell, the intent of the caster, the amount of spiritual energy used, the location, the target.
It was all recorded in those lightning strikes delivered right from the cloud down to the sea.
However Loki simply couldn't believe it.
Because it was all a complicated affair of Godly Domains and impossible connections.
Each lightning strike only originated as the carrier of the information.
Lightning in its pure form, when it naturally occurred in nature formed in two parts.
The first part was the one that everyone usually observed. The downwards strike from the cloud. While the second was usually hidden, invisible, the bolt that snaked up from the ground and reached for the skies.
It was only when the two connected, from the above and below, that all the charge of the cloud instantly drained in a grand discharge, in a lightning strike.
And this principle applied here too.
Each time a corresponding tendril roared out of the cloud, a corresponding accepting tree formed on the ocean.
A tree of lightning of the True God of the particular domain that the spell dropping from above through lightning called for emerge from within the Chaos Sea.
And this was what surprised the hell out of Loki.
Humans could cast spells by using incomplete fragments of a True God's mystical symbol. For simply seeing a True God's complete symbol was almost as good as beholding them yourself. A sure way to true madness and death.
But what was in front of him seemed to be an entirely different beast.
The Sefirah Castle couldn't directly bear to behold the symbol of a True God on its own.
While it could recover over a period of time, it would still feel quite a heavy burden each moment a True God's symbol was made available inside it, since that symbol wouldn't just 'exist' but it would manifest the very domain of the True God that it was a part of.
So how could the Chaos Sea bear the constant harassment of the symbols of so many True Gods appearing all over it constantly?
The answer was quite simple.
Brilliant really, according to Loki.
It was to add a buffer.
A buffer that would take the brunt of the damage.
And the lightning was the buffer.
Loki's eyes fixed on the single large crown within the clouds, glimmering briefly each time they thundered before vanishing and reappearing at a different position again.
It was the Uniqueness of the Tyrant Pathway, Loki guessed.
The Uniqueness of the Tyrant pathway was being used to coat both the symbols of the True Gods and the runes in the magic in lightning and transmitted to the Chaos Sea directly through it since the Tyrant Pathways had dominion over the Seas.
And once the connection between the upper lightning and the lower lightning bolts was established, the 'prayer' of the magic was transmitted directly to 'Them' to allow 'Them' to respond.
How did the Chaos Sea help in all this?
Well it was the key.
Or rather it was the lock in which everything was and worked like clockwork to keep everything 'encrypted'.
Since each lightning strike happened in the vicinity of the Chaos Sea, each transfer of information, from the magical ritual to the True God was thoroughly 'washed'.
A True God only received the 'prayer' of the magical caster, not their personal identity, or their 'expectations'.
This had a two fold reason, or at least Loki thought so.
One was to keep the True Gods sane by giving them anonymous prayers.
And the next was to keep the one performing the prayers from interfering with the personality of the True Gods.
But then Loki paused once again since he noticed something rather strange.
'What's stopping people from simply apparating to this point? What's stopping a different no orthodox True God from coming to this point?'
There were several reflections that formed in the sea, over the surface of the water as a result of the lightning strikes. Why couldn't Cheek just use them to figure out where the Chaos Sea was and interfere with the system that way?
After all, an ancient True God surely had one or two tricks to keep themselves safe from the corruption of a Sefirot while interfering with its actions, right?
Loki paused as the True Creator came to mind.
'Was I really right?'
'Is the True Creator really functioning as an antivirus for the whole thing?'
Loki frowned for a while, hanging around in the air before pulling out his wand.
'So all magic happens here, huh…'
'…doesn't hurt to try…'
Loki gave his bone, white, wand a simple flick.
And for the first time Loki noticed how 'magic' actually happened.
A bolt of lightning flashed in the sky, arcing out on a small bolt that rose out of the sea, but instead of letting the spell finish properly, Loki did something strange.
He canceled his request mid way through.
Stopping his spell after having cast it.
And that's when he saw it.
The shadows cast by the lightning of his spell rose with surgical precision, flying through the air at the same speed of the lightning as they erased the entire bolt from existence using the domain of degeneration and corruption.
It ate up the entire spirituality within the magical ritual.
At one point in his research, Loki had tried to concentrate and manipulate the spirituality that had been left hanging for the few moments after he canceled his spell.
He had hoped that he could find the chaos sea through this by changing the left over spirituality to apparate him to its location, but it was far too hard to do so, as if the spirituality vanished before he could even sense it.
And now Loki knew why.
It was the method the entire system was kept safe.
Any excess spirituality that was left over was eaten up by the True Creator with the help of his domains.
Possibly to keep him sane enough to keep him protecting the system day and night.
So any True God trying to perform magic would have to send their spirituality into this place and not just bear the Tyranny of the Tyrant Pathway Uniqueness, and the Chaos Sea's corruption but also the True Creator's anti virus scan.
'Are the uniqueness of the other pathways being used like this too?'
Loki shook his head.
'That's not important…'
'What's important is that…'
'To corrupt the Chaos Sea, I have to first corrupt the True Creator so that he doesn't reject/stop my symbol from appearing in the Chaos Sea…and then I can handle whatever mechanism is buried inside the sea itself to connect the prayers to the True God…'
And with that Loki turned around.
"Oh…"
…
Nicholas kept his eyes focused on the darkness as a soft voice rang in his mind.
'Why did we come here!'
It was Perenelle, she was speaking through Legilimency probes.
'...the spell was supposed to-' Nicholas started but Perenelle interrupted again.
'Yeah! I know! The spell was supposed to superimpose our situations so that we could fight for our fates on more equal grounds!!'
'...'
'But why is our equal grounds here!!?!?? I know you got a 'one' on your die! But does that really mean that our equal grounds are on 'Her' turf!? How bad can your luck be!?'
Nicholas stayed silent.
In truth he too didn't have a response to what was happening.
The spell they had used in tandem with each other, the Impose and Super position spells, worked rather uniquely.
Impose was a Beyonder spell that Perenelle completed after years of dedicated study to various other Beyonder Pathways to create a grand repository of elements which could be manipulated.
It allowed Perenelle to grab any single element about their current situation that she recognised, as in she could grab concepts like 'truth' or 'victory', and in this case, Perenelle had dared to grab the 'fate' of their current situation.
While Nicholas's Super Position was a Beyonder spell that he created after becoming an Angel, he could superimpose two things onto each other in the same position. Meaning, he could simply cause a table and a fridge to occupy the same position in space while allowing them both to function individually.
But in the case of the properties of two alive beings being superimposed, things got a little complicated. Either they could live in peaceful coexistence, or both the living beings would be forced into a common 'arena' within their minds, one that they both know off and one that neither had any direct advantage in.
And whosoever was the victor in this mental arena, would be able to select whichever of the initially superimposed properties they desired for themselves. That could involve simple things like stealing the luck within someone else's fate, or much more complicated things like taking over entire identities.
In the current situation, the doll that Grindelwald held was the most important if either side wanted to stand a fighting chance against the Great Old One outside the golden domain.
So Nicholas had superimposed the two fates that Perenelle had gathered, the fate of Gellert Grindelwald, and that of their own group.
For enhanced Luck, Nicholas even rolled the die of sacrificed luck that he had been given by Mr. Error for help in tough situations.
A die that could manipulate the accumulated luck sacrificed to it over the years to best manipulate the situation around them. However, it would only do so based on the number rolled by the user at the time of usage.
One for the die having full control, which would mean that the user would be at fate's mercy since fate would decide when they would get lucky, while six meant that the caster could bend fate to their will.
Either way would help the caster, but getting a one would mean that a lot more things might be exacted as a price for getting the new outcome, while getting a six would mean that Fate would sacrifice itself to work to your whims.
Except, things didn't work out like they'd planned.
Firstly he'd rolled one. The worst possible outcome when rolling the die of sacrificed luck, being lucky after death wasn't something either of them were keen on.
But even worse was the fact that Grindelwald seemed to have been hiding something. Something quite deep.
Instead of them coming to a common location like Hogwarts, Numenguard, or even the Department of Mysteries, they had arrived at what looked like a Sefirot.
A sefirot that was taboo to even speak about in the high level Beyonder Circles, as taboo as using the crimson moon in rituals.
'....how did we end up in Brood Hive..' Nicholas lamented.
He silently gazed at the kids that were frozen like statues, contemplating for a few moments seriously if he should abandon them and simply rush away with Perenelle using some esoteric way.
But things weren't so simple.
When their fate had been superimposed, the kids were on their side. And so killing the kids was the equivalent of killing them.
Perenelle caught Nicholas's gaze and sighed mentally.
She too didn't particularly like her life being chained to a particular bunch of nobodies. After all, the kids were already well out of their means, the Abyss should've been their time to die, but not only had they miraculously survived through that because of the doll with Grindelwald, they'd even come to the Brood Hive.
A sefirot.
Nicholas and Perenelle could already feel the Sefirot starting to detect their locations.
'We have to do something!'
'...'
'FAST!!!'
Nicholas sighed audibly. Not caring if the Brood Hive felt it or even locked onto his position.
He looked at Perenelle and spoke softly.
"Keep the kids safe."
Perenelle looked into Nicholas's eyes and after a soft sigh of her own nodded.
Perenelle snapped her fingers and within moments turned completely invisible, along with everyone else as Nicholas simply sighed again before kneeling on the uneven terrain and bringing his hands together with his head bowed.
There was no other option than to do what he was about to do.
A mere Sequence 2 Angel being able to fend off a Sefirot? That was rather hard to believe. Especially when you were trapped with the damn thing. Even if it was purely inside the Mental World.
And so Nicholas did the one thing he could.
He repeated the phrase that he'd been given a long time ago to use in case of a strict emergency, by someone who he wanted to curse at now.
Even before he could recite his first words, the mountain tens of thousands meters high trembled.
"The Aegis Of Time."
A sharp instinctive sense of fear and dread arose within Nicholas as he felt his very life become tainted.
Yet he continued fearless.
"The Dominator Of The World."
The Seirot finally roared in protest as millions of creatures all a part of it woke up on instinct.
"The Lord Of Heaven And Earth Who Rules Over Death."
Nicholas finished as the roars reached their peak.
However in his ears there was only silence.
A sudden chill spread up his spine as Nicholas felt someone place 'Their' thin bony hands on his head, holding it there as if wondering if 'They' should rip his head off before pausing to look at the situation around 'Them'.
"I wake up after so long…and it's here?"
"...where's 'He'!!! 'He' told me 'He' would be the first thing I saw after I awoke!"
"...goddamn liar. Went into limbo for no good reason."
…
Grindelwald looked at the hoards of creatures all suddenly start rushing towards the base of the mountain while keeping himself hidden using psychological invisibility.
Except he just as suddenly felt a terrifying gaze fixate on him.
And then he heard it. A sudden mocking laugh. Right inside his mind.
'Haha~ What have you been reduced to you fool!!?'
'Hmm…? Oh, my time here is short. My source is running out of life…'
'Well doesn't matter….you're going to die soon anyway. I shall see you at the end of the River.'
The voice soon left along with the terrifying gaze that had locked onto him. Except the world seemed to not forget what he had just been touched by.
A cold numbness spread from his arms as if the doll in his hands had turned cold with frost.
His eyes snapped down at it only to realise that the doll had been replaced.
In its place was an icy clone that started to freeze and decay his hands as if they shouldn't exist.
He wanted to jump, to react, to use his Beyonder abilities to break out, to survive, but it was impossible.
The ice, which seemed to have frozen him already, mystically, slowly spread around, climbing up his arms, around his shoulders, onto his neck and finally over his head.
Grindelwald took his last breath in an expression frozen in terror.
However the ice didn't stop there.
The ice continued to spread.
Climbing over the mountain, crawling inch by inch, moving as fast as it could until it had covered the entire thing in a paradoxical moment.
…
Nicholas felt the presence vanish from around him and so he slowly opened his eyes.
His body ached.
He looked down at it and sighed audibly.
His skin had wrinkled. His nails had decayed and his muscles had sagged. His bones felt brittle and his mind seemed fragile.
Nicholas had aged almost to death in mere seconds.
But then he looked back up at the Sefirot in front of him.
There wasn't a single living being that had remained a part of it apart from himself.
Another hand soon placed itself on his shoulders, this time holding a feeling of warmth in it, causing him to look up and see a worried Perenelle.
"It'll take time but you'll live…"
Nicholas nodded, but the mere act of doing so caused a sharp spikey pain to shoot up his neck.
So he did his best to keep quiet while standing up and looking at Perenelle to communicate with his eyes. He no longer had the spirituality to do much of anything else.
And Perenelle seemed to understand so she nodded.
"Yes, I'll pick up our spoils and finish this quickly."
But Nicholas's gaze sharpened at that moment.
Everyone heard a soft clink at that moment that sent chills up their spine.
That was the sound of ice.
Someone had survived all that?
Perenelle's eyes instantly locked onto the position the noise came from as she prepared herself for a sacrifice if needed.
And what she saw only made her tremble in fright.
The ice over Grindelwald cracked lightly.
Before it shattered in a spectacular and dazzling shower of icy crystal light.
…
Cedric Diggory looked around himself in confusion.
He then looked at the book on the table of the room of requirement.
"Where is everyone?"
"Did I end up coming early?" Cedric mumbled as he picked up the book that contained Mr. Error's spells.
However he paused at the last moment as his eyes snapped to an unassuming corner at the end of the room.
"Oh. It's just you, Luna."
Luna looked at Cedric with wide dreamy eyes.
Her gaze lingering not directly in the same place he was, as if it were observing something immaterial.
"You're trying to steal my soul…" Cedric made a dead panned guess.
Luna had been trying to do so since the very beginning after they'd all learned the basics of the spell from Mr. Error's gospel with Hermione teaching them.
But luckily she never succeeded.
Or at least Cedric thought so.
In reality, Luna looked at Cedric's soul that was hovering in front of her in the form of a rune, a little confused.
'Are the crumple horned snorkack keeping him alive?'
Was stealing someone's soul not risky?
It was.
Then was Luna a dark wizard or a mad beyonder?
No. She was not.
Luna had already succeeded in stealing the souls of little bugs and creatures. But when she realised that they could live even without their souls as long as it was stolen using Mr. Error's spells, she was baffled.
So she proceeded to study by stealing the souls of animals. Except she didn't find any clues in them and so she began to steal the souls of humans.
Only the Nargles at first, but once she found nothing wrong happening with them, she proceeded to steal the souls of people around her.
Holding a soul in the form of a rune felt rather exhilarating at first, but it had lost its novelty soon after.
And by now it was nothing more than a magical curiosity.
How could people live without their souls?
She had already confirmed that as long as she returned the soul to its rightful owner before she canceled the spell, nothing happened to them.
But the body and the soul weren't so easy to separate. Or rather shouldn't be so easy to separate.
The soul and the body were intertwined with various layers of deep intrinsic connections, at least below the Sequence 4.
And so 'stealing' a soul was equivalent to chopping off those connections, much like what a dementor did to a human while performing the kiss.
However Mr. Error's spells were nothing of the sort. In other words, Mr. Error's spells felt like miracles to Luna.
'Maybe Mr. Error is a crumple horned snorkack.'
"Guk."
Suddenly Cedric's expression scrunched up in pain as he clenched his chest with horrific terror.
Luna's eyes immediately widened as she saw the soul in the rune form slip out of her control!
The rune floating in front of her eyes suddenly collapsed, as her spirituality was rejected and it lost its form, causing Cedric's soul to be released into the air.
"L-UN-A" Ceric coughed out, but collapsed before he could say much else.
…
McGonagall flicked her wand, expecting the fireplace to light up, except nothing happened.
She'd already turned around and walked away so she hadn't realised it for a moment until she paused and looked back after not hearing the ever so familiar crinkle of wood in the fireplace.
'Hmm..?'
She frowned for a moment and looked at her wand before flicking it again.
Her spirituality left her wand. Formed the appropriate runes for the Incendio charm, except nothing happened once again.
Her eyes widened as she looked back at the fireplace with slight shock and surprise.
…
That was the moment the Wizarding world fell into chaos.
…