Everyone on Moody's team stopped breathing.
Not just because what they were seeing was strange and unbelievable, but also because Snape's breathing potion had run out.
That was when everyone behind Snape heard a soft but authoritative voice repeat inside their minds, "Those who do not follow the holder are Violators. Violators are not allowed to speak as the second punishment!"
Harry's heart trembled as he opened his mouth almost immediately to reach out to his parents, and although his lips moved and his throat appeared to tense up as his lungs tore open what would've sounded like a screaming shout, yet nothing happened. His voice remained trapped to the confines of his mind while his body strained itself for nothing.
"Huh…can't even scream Potter? I was quite looking forward to that…" Bellatrix frowned but chalked up his strange behaviour to the book in Snape's hands since it was an artifact powerful enough to hurt her using the connection between her and the Gate to the Underworld.
Unable to reach out to his parents through words, Harry did the unthinkable, he rushed towards them, breaking the line formation that Moody had asked them to hold until now.
Harry's already tense muscles tensed further as he pushed his body to his limits in hopes to reach them before Bellatrix did anything to them, however he was too late.
Bellatrix made clear eye contact with Harry and then with a haughty sneer brought her hand marked with the rune of the Gate to the Underworld closer to James.
"Come a step closer and you'll lose your father, oh wait…you're an orphan, completely parentless."
But the words didn't seem to land.
Harry rushed forwards almost like he cared for nothing other than ripping Bellatrix apart at this moment.
His speed doubled as he pushed his body to its limits, almost transforming partially into a mythical creature form to give himself an extra boost in strength.
The whites of his eyes reddened and the veins of his arms burst open, but Harry didn't stop.
Or at least he didn't plan to until he crossed Snape, only for Snape to grip Harry's neck and slam it into the ground, forcing Harry to only be able to look as Bellatrix brought her hand closer and closer to James.
Even still, James and Lily finally breathed a sigh of relief.
They both looked at Snape with a sense of gratefulness but Snape only spit on the floor beside Harry's head in disrespect even though Snape's expression wasn't much different from Harry's at this moment.
And even though a restriction hadn't been imposed onto him since he was the new holder of the brass book, Snape hadn't spoken ever since he had laid eyes on Lily.
A soft, kind and soothing voice resonated in Snape's mind at that moment, reminding him of something he already knew. 'You need her soul to complete the ritual…'
Snape didn't say anything but his eyes gained a rather wild ferocious glare that hadn't existed only a few moments before.
He hid it well from everyone else given his rather strange shadowy moonlight form but Lily saw right through it.
Her eyes looked at Snape softly before for the first time since both she and James had been 'summoned', she spoke to break the otherwise suffocating silence, "It's been a long time since we last met, brother."
Bellatrix froze.
Harry's eyes suddenly widened. His eyes lost their rage as his body trembled with shock and what felt like fright.
'What!?'
The word didn't leave anyone's lips because of the rule, but it was still there, resonating loudly in their minds.
Even Moody stood shocked, a rare expression of surprise and confusion appearing on his otherwise stern face.
Snape stood silently, his shadowy form flickering slightly as it glimmered while emitting faint rays of moonlight. His eyes remained locked on Lily but he said nothing.
"Argh, what is this? A twist?" Bellatrix asked with slight disgust, interrupting out of turn before looking at Snape herself as she spoke boorishly. "Give me that book. And you can have her, Severus."
Snape said nothing for a few seconds, his hands holding the book trembling but still holding onto it with great strength.
The silence only stretched since no one else could interrupt and they were all holding onto their breaths, saving it, for the right moment of action as they were losing strength because of lack of oxygen, preferring a burst instead of a prolonged fight.
James spoke up then, "Don't do it Snape. You know 'He' is untrustworthy. 'His' promises can never be-"
"Crucio." Bellatrix whispered, flicking her master's wand, causing James to freeze instantly before a gasp of pain escaped his lips as he froze in agony, doing his best to keep himself from tearing his throat because of the sheer tortuous assault on his soul by the spell.
Disappointment flickered across Bellatrix's eyes before she spoke with disgust, "You're like them, Longbottoms, they held it all in, just like you, unfortunately I didn't have the time to amp up the power then, but…" Suddenly Bellatrix's eyes flared up with vile power as she spoke in a tone dipping with malice and madness, "But now I do."
"James!!!" Lily tried to hold James and pull him away from Bellatrix but her hand simply slipped through, unable to touch him or even block him from Bellatrix's spell as its effects slowly turned visible causing James' soul to show signs of cracks that made visible the chilling frost within.
James felt death touch his spine. A chill far beyond what he could imagine branded him like hot iron, making each part of his soul ramp with pain. It felt like a thousand beetles were clicking inside his ears, crawling under his skin as they ate up his flesh, driving him towards madness with each click, torturing his mind by breaking down every thought he could have to save himself before it even manifested.
Everyone watched as James slowly transformed, first from a normal looking human into one that was slowly turning into a monstrous amalgamation of otherworldly horrors.
Moody attempted to flick his staff towards everyone other than himself, to knock them out, to put them to sleep before they were corrupted but he couldn't. His already weakening body, ridden powerless due to the lack of oxygen, didn't support his rapid movements.
And so while his normal eye darkened, its vision slipping, his magical eye each watched keenly how Ron was the first to mutate, the boy's eyes elongating until they fell out of their sockets as his whole body became covered in shiny ethereal scales before the boy fell on his now transformed fore limbs while he snarled looking at the rest of them.
Belmont was next as his body proportions suddenly changed, his gender becoming androgynous as his curled moustache grew like a robe around himself and became tinged a sharp crimson, as if dipped in blood. Turning him into a blood soaked monstrosity.
Only before things could progress any further, Hermione and Tonks almost simultaneously flicked their wands to steal the corruption in their teammates.
Daphne acted along with them and flicked her wand again and transfigured a portion of the earth in front of them into a thick wall to block their sight.
Moody noticed that the Greengrass girl still hadn't used her beyonder abilities and grew a little worried about why she had held it in.
But time for further thoughts didn't exist at this moment.
Harry roared, his scream that would've been heard throughout the entire forest was still silenced by powers beyond his control. His hands struggled to push away Snape's iron grip on his neck as his nails bled freely, snapping like opening shells as they caught on Snape's hard inhumane body and the uneven ground.
Bellatrix's smile only turned crueler, her eyes glimmering in enjoyment of the show in front of her, in which she participated as an active member, as an audience director, where all eyes were on her, each looking at her with fear and hatred but completely powerless to change anything about her actions.
Bellatrix finally stopped after a few more seconds when she saw Harry losing control. James was beyond hopeless at this stage, his knees buckled as he collapsed in the air, hanging, floating while completely unconscious, as if he'd died a second time. But with Bellatrix stopping herself, he regained some control.
Snape's eyes openly displayed disdain but he remained put.
However, Bellatrix needed to get things done since she'd already had her fun, so she turned to Harry and looked into his half dead eyes as he was forced to watch what was essentially the second death of his father. One where his inaction was going to be burnt into his memories.
She looked at his helpless expression, his bleeding nails, his broken teeth, and his hopeless expression and smiled with delight as she spoke in a sharp tone, "...do you want to save your mother Potter?"
A sinking feeling that Harry didn't know was possible gripped Harry's guts. His chest felt a rather strange feeling, as if someone had stabbed a knife into it and twisted it on purpose, drawing it out slowly to let him feel every single inch of the blade.
Tears spilling out of his eyes as he appeared to mouth the words, "Don't."
But Bellatrix didn't mind.
Instead she continued to speak with an air of power about her, an air of superiority while standing on her rock.
"The next time I won't be as kind as I was with your father…" she said, bringing her left hand with the rune of the Gate of the Underworld shimmering on its surface closer to Lily, about to grip her who was standing in front of James, trying to support him and bring him back to consciousness.
The silence after that lasted longer than anything else in Harry's life.
He heard the desperate sobs of his mother as she cried softly while patting the trembling James, "You need to get up honey, it's for Harry. We need to help him. Look how strong he's become, we can't let ourselves disappoint him now can we?"
With James still unresponsive, Lily turned towards Snape, "Snape, go away. Take Harry and go away. You know what is best for us all. 'He' cannot be allowed to gain an advantage!"
But seeing Snape's red eyes and his sharp gaze on Bellatrix's hand that was hovering beside her shoulder, Lily practically screamed, "Go away Snape! Or are you still the coward who can only save himself while sacrificing everyone else!"
Snape's hand on the book in his hand and on Harry's neck tightened.
While everyone else was slowly blacking out because of lack of oxygen, Snape was because of sheer anger.
A dangerous sense of despair seemed to cloud his being as he stood with a remarkable sense of despondence.
To an onlooker it would seem like the world had isolated Snape, painted him all alone, as if placing the burden of the entire world on his shoulders while leaving his sacrifices unrecognised, made fun of, or even spit on.
Snape took a deep breath in before looking directly into Bellatrix's eyes.
The silence tensed for a moment before Snape took a single step forward, only for Bellatrix to move her hand even closer to Lily's head.
"As much as I would love to see you wail…" Bellatrix said as if pondering on something before making up her mind as she demanded, "Get the Potter boy to do it. I want to feel his rage, the rage as I hold the lives of everyone he's ever cared about in my hands."
Snape stopped. His eyes flickering to Bellatrix, then to Lily who only slowly shook her head before it slipped down to Harry whose gaze had lost its previous shine.
His gaze looked broken, dim and almost dead.
Harry closed his eyes, the strength in his body slowly leaving, even as he felt Snape's grip on him lighten.
He'd already given up.
It made him look forgotten, burdened, and above all, almost alone.
Memories that he could've never had came flooding, teasing him, prodding his defences, testing his commitment, each one its own sharp burden that hurt his being.
'What would life have been like had I never been introduced to the world of Magic?'
'What if Mum and Dad remained dead in a car crash?'
'What if I wasn't Harry, but Dudeley?'
'Would Aunt Petunia love me then?'
'Would I have been able to call her a Mother?'
'Maybe I'd have gone to Smeltings instead of Hogwarts…'
'Maybe I'd never have to face the horror that is the world of magic…'
Harry's expression kept devolving into a forced forfeit. A myriad of thoughts had been unravelled in front of him all because of the current scenario he had been thrust into.
If Bellatrix could use his parents to stop him today. What else could Voldemort use to force him tomorrow? The lives of all those around him? The lives of his friends? Of random muggles? Could he bear the burden of those lives by himself? Lives that will be lost fighting in a battle caused by his existence?
Some sanity remained behind those eyes when he reopened them but they looked only enough to comprehend the pain. A flicker of hope sparked in Harry's eyes, constantly battling the wind as it struggled to think of hope in this scenario while stopping the dangerous but constant ramblings in his mind that he could already hear as an early sign of losing control.
He stood up quietly, his breath still frozen as he grabbed the book Snape was holding and began to walk towards Bellatrix.
Was he a coward for wanting the people around him to be safe?
Harry's eyes blurred in and out of focus as the world around himself faded from colour to black and white.
Harry saw his mother scream out something at him, but he couldn't seem to catch what she was saying.
Perhaps the strange book in his hands had imposed another punishment upon him?
That wouldn't be so strange. After all, that was what he was, a violator, someone who should've died on the night he was given the scar on his head. He should've never been the boy who lived. He should've died. Then none of all this would've ever happened.
Harry felt something cold touch his chin as his head was forcibly lifted to make his gaze meet Bellatrix's.
Her gaze filled with an indescribable joy bore back into his as she carefully brushed the blood that had trickled out of the corner of his busted lips.
She brought the finger to her mouth before she carefully licked the blood. She revelled in it for a second, as if it were a ritual of triumph, only-
'Hmm…? Why is there no fea-'
Bellatrix looked back down at Harry, but as soon as her gaze met Harry's, it froze.
All she found in Harry's eyes was a gaze of a predator looking down on its prey.
Even though she stood above him on a rock that stood about as tall as the boy's knees, Bellatrix felt herself lesser.
'Lo- Lord!' Bellatrix's mind panicked.
Her plan had finished. She had tricked everyone into thinking that she was ordered to bring back the book and not Harry Potter, now all she had to do was bring the boy back. All she had to do was bring Harry Potter back to the Dark Lord so that he could finally claim victory over him and tarnish Dumbledore's reputation and ruin his ritual!
But instead, meeting Harry's gaze sent a deathly chill up her spine.
And no matter how she tried to suppress it, it only suddenly heightened however when she felt an even more dangerous gaze lock onto her.
It was Snape.
Bellatrix only matched gazes with him momentarily but she could no longer remember what she saw, for her head was stabbed with an incomprehensible amount of pain.
Her hands brought themselves up to her face as she felt a strange wetness that she recognised almost instantly.
'...blood?'
'Why is there blood on my face?'
'Why can't I see?'
'Did the Potter boy's head explode and fall into my eyes?'
Bellatrix with the last shred of her sanity slowly licked the blood that she had just touched with her fingers.
She recognised the taste.
It was her own.
Bellatrix didn't give herself the time to comprehend the information.
She already had Harry Potter within her grasp, all she had to do now was apparate back to her master. Everything would be fine then.
'Right?'
Only almost as soon as Bellatrix spent her spirituality to apparate, her fate took a turn for the worse.
In the distance, over the pristine wall Daphne had just transfigured now stood heiress Greengrass looking at her with a gaze that could freeze the world.
Bellatrix obviously couldn't see it but she felt it.
A chill that gave her an intuitive dream that warned her that the apparition, something that she could do almost instinctively, would abruptly fail, splinching her.
She twisted her actions immediately, hoping to touch Lily with the rune on her hands to warn everyone to back off while simultaneously pushing Harry Potter into the failed apparition so that he wouldn't be able to take advantage of her momentary disruption and the apparition wouldn't fail since he would be splinched too otherwise and her enemies wouldn't want that.
Only Harry Potter was no longer underneath her. He was also no longer in her grasp.
Bellatrix's hands flailed aimlessly for a second after she failed to touch either of her targets, only by the time she realised what had happened, it was too late.
Her head suddenly turned upside down and backwards as the world twisted around her before she found herself rushing past a flurry of colours only for it to all stop when she landed at her destination.
Her mouth opened to speak when she felt her object of worship near by. Her lord who had let her run wild.
She wished to call out to 'Him' once more, one last time before the light left her 'eyes' but she couldn't. She didn't need anyone to tell her that the call of death was approaching since she could feel the pull of the eternal river of death already laying claim on her undying form.
The only thing she could do at the last second was open her mouth and reveal the rune of the Gate of the Underworld on her tongue. It glimmered with the final faint pulse of spirituality before dispelling to reveal a brass book falling out of it.
And the light of her 'eyes' vanished seamlessly after that.
Yet, Voldemort who was standing and looking down at her cared not for any of it.
He simply stretched his hands and seemed to grab something ethereal in the air which caused Bellatrix's face to morph, unfreeing her frozen expression of the acceptance for death into one of shock that slowly became tinged with horror as she was pulled out into a deep murky black liquid blob in Voldemort's hand, keeping her alive.
Voldemort's hand kept the murky tar like liquid from touching anything around it no matter how hard it bubbled or exploded, keeping it firmly contained in an invisible field of spirituality as he slowly placed it into the skull that had been hanging from the wall until now.
An eerie crimson flame lit up inside it that attracted Voldemort for a few seconds before he calmly waved his hand and tossed the empty body of Bellatrix into a pile of eternally smouldering skulls, adding another tortuous scream to the faint taint of madness that was immersed in the air around the bone cathedral.
Voldemort's attention then turned towards the brass book.
He casually waved it over, pulling it closer to him by grabbing the fear the object displayed in his presence.
He flipped the brass pages slowly for a few seconds in slight confusion before he landed on a page without any rules on it at all.
It was an empty page, polished to the extreme, making it almost mirror-like.
Voldemort saw his clear reflection in it as it stared back at him, only the reflection pulled out a distinctly golden monocle and placed it on his right eye before smiling eerily.
…
Loki looked carefully at the strange door sitting in the middle of the sky, about ten feet off the ground.
'Someone from the door pathway?' Loki guessed rather easily but then stopped.
'Or is it someone from the death pathway with the gate to the underworld?'
'Hmm…but the gate to the underworld was supposed to have a suction force right…so this one's probably not that, so the door pathway…'
'But which door pathway ability allows you to create doors in midair disobeying physics? Not even Minecraft allows floating doors…'
'Is that the Uniqueness of the Door pathway?'
Loki quickly shook his head.
"No way." he mumbled, "A uniqueness out in the open and no one's attracted to it? Too easy."
'But then what exactly is it?'
Loki frowned, unable to quite figure out what the door hanging in the air above him was before he gave up and decided to walk a different way because it gave him an eerie feel. He almost didn't want to be around it.
'I'm close to that village I was supposed to reach soon…I'll just ask the people there about it.'
With a simple logical answer known to him, Loki began his journey towards the village while following the poorly drawn map in his hands.
'Hmm…two hills about thirty feet high, and an eye-like large rock protruding out of the centre, towards the east?'
Loki looked around and found something similar on the horizon using his sharpened vision.
'That's not thirty feet high though, it's more like forty or even forty five.'
'I guess the map maker really was just that bad.'
The sun was setting behind him, but he continued to walk unobstructed since he was now out of the forest and in a deep rocky valley that had nothing but rock and gravel in it.
'About a half a dozen kilometers, I should reach it by sunset.'
With a short walk ahead of him and no external threats, Loki's mind began to drift with thoughts that he hadn't had the time to think about before.
'I wonder how everyone else I left behind is doing back home…'
His eyes traced the rocky outcroppings around himself making him feel a little alone as he walked among them without any other soul in sight.
'Did Mum return the Harry Potter book I borrowed from the library?'
'I borrowed it only because I was hiding my phone using it during the night, pretending to read Harry Potter when I was actually reading Lord of the Mysteries.'
'It was a half decent book since I finished it after I finished Lord of the Mysteries, but it was too, 'nice'.'
'What would I do if I were in the world of Harry Potter instead?'
'Maybe develop a cultivation method to make and condense a mana core like in a xianxia?'
'Perhaps I could even make a secret organisation to take out Voldemort before he came into power in book four…'
'Oh I know who I'd include in that organisation! Sirius Black, Hermione and Snape!'
'Hermione for her magical skill, Snape for knowledge on Voldemort, and Sirius for keeping track of Dumbledore! A perfect idea!'
'Maybe even someone from the ministry to make things secretive!? So that there's an arc where I want to get a secret identity like Klein and I can ask the Ministry employee to help me get it?'
'Oh! I could even involve some non-human creatures for representation!'
'Haha, how funny…'
'Maybe I could tell Voldemort-'
'Courting death! Knowtow before this celestial wizard and cripple your cultivation before I erase you from this world!'
He giggled softly at his strange ideas before remembering something silly.
'Oh! Maybe I could even kill him and then pretend to be him and then use his identity to bend the Wizarding world to my needs? Maybe I can then extract money from the Wizarding Families, the nobles and all the Wizengamont members before funneling them into my own pockets and making my own new laws so that I rule the place and not Dumbledore?!'
'Hahaha~'
He sent a passing glance at his target, the mountain, and realised that he'd already walked quite far somehow.
'Hmm…? Only half a kilometer left?'
'That's funny, I didn't realise time passed so fast while you were lost in your thoughts.' Loki thought before humming a random tune as he began walking towards the strange mountain.
He took a few more steps in a happy mood as he rushed up to the crown of a rock formation with nimble steps while shouting out into the air-
"That has got to be the best pirate I have ever seen!"
"So it would seem…"
"Captain Gerhman Sparroooo…w?" Loki's eyes froze as he reached the peak of the short rock formation.
His eyes drifted over to his target, the mountains beyond which his new village was supposed to be and he froze.
'Half a dozen kilometers away…'
He then raised his head and looked up into the sky.
The door in the sky was right above his head and he was right where he'd started.
Loki's body trembled slightly, both in shock and surprise.
He felt his finger tips turn cold as he held his breath and turned towards the sun.
'It's already setting…'
"Wha…what is this?"
…
Harry looked at his parents with soft pained gazes. And even though he wasn't restricted in his speech anymore, he couldn't bring himself to speak as he simply stared at them with equal parts, frustration, remorse and happiness.
"How?" Harry finally asked Lily who was the only conscious person of the two.
Lily, who had remained silent until now, admiring her son for how much he had grown and into what he had become, finally opened her mouth to speak up.
"It happened on the night we died. 'He' found a way to become immortal by splitting his soul. And so, when his final killing curse rebounded, he could only remain immortal by splitting his soul. And the price for that is the eternal torment of another. Given your dad and I happened to have just died and were lying right there…"
Harry nodded, feeling even worse now that he was informed that his very existence had caused the two people he looked up to, to be tortured for eternity in the hands of the man or rather animal who had tried to kill him too.
But Lily quickly grabbed Harry's hands.
Her hands passed through, and only caused a rather ethereal chill to spread in his body, which only made him feel worse, but Lily spoke boldly nonetheless.
"And I wouldn't have had it otherwise no matter how many times I was given the choice to go back to the same day given that you would live."
Harry's eyes widened slightly before he grew teary eyed.
He sniffled softly before someone pushed him aside, not gently, but by a sharp thrust as if they were getting rid of garbage by kicking it.
"Severus!" Lily said sharply but Snape didn't have the time to handle the complaint, instead, benefiting his potion as a Shaman, Snape wrapped his arms around Lily, her chill failing to do anything to his already cold body making it feel at most like the warmth of another person that touched his heart.
Everyone in the area grew shocked, wide eyed and a little loose jawed as several gasps rang out among the participants of this heartfelt reunion.
Harry however seemed like the only calm person, regardless of having just been kicked, as if he were expecting such a reaction already.
Lily, who was frozen in place by the suddenness, calmed down in a few seconds as she too wrapped her hands around Snape before whispering, "Brother…it's been so long."
Snape stayed there for a few seconds as those with keen eyes watched his shoulders tremble slightly before he pulled away and spoke in a rush.
"You need to come with me. I can bring you…back."
Before Lily could say anything however, Moody thumped his staff.
"Don't be ridiculous, Severus! Or have you already succumbed to the very thing you fight!? Death by the killing curse is permanent! Not something you can simply undo unless you want a monster wearing human skin, the skin of your loved-."
Moody however was silenced by a glare from Snape.
A glare so sharp and penetrating that it was clear to anyone that met his eyes that Snape knew what he was doing.
He slowly turned back to Lily and looked deeply into her emerald eyes.
"Are you sure?" Lily asked again, a little uncertain as her eyes flickered towards Harry momentarily before landing back on Snape.
Snape only nodded without explaining much or even saying anything to reassure her.
Yet, Lily felt reassured.
So she did what every little sister would do and shamelessly added on her own condition to such an offer, "James too!"
Snape's brows furrowed and Lily caught on to it, shamelessly adding, "I won't agree if it's not him too!"
Snape's furrowed brows bent some more before he turned to Harry and glared at him with anger, causing Harry to almost feel like Snape was about to somehow take away a thousand points for Gryffindor for him simply existing.
But Snape did no such thing, instead he turned back to Lily and nodded with a soft sigh which caused her to break out into a beautiful smile.
With that settled Snape pulled out a carefully prepared straw doll from one of his pouches and handed it to Lily, surprising everyone when she could hold it, before he picked up a random leaf off the ground and placed it on James' head.
He also pulled out a few fragrances and spread them around in the air before closing his eyes as his shadowy form receded to reveal a resplendent milky sheen, making his body appear as if it were made out of moon light, shimmering like the full moon reflected in a lake.
His form slowly tinged in a soft crimson before Lily suddenly froze. Her eyes seemed to see something beyond what everyone could see as she gulped visibly before looking at Snape in shock and awe before sinking into the straw doll in her hands.
James too similarly floated into the leaf placed on his head.
The two objects floated in space for a few seconds until Snape's eyes snapped open and he grabbed them, stuffing the leaf rather rudely into his pockets before placing the straw doll on his shoulder warmly.
"...mother?" Harry asked with slight weariness which lasted only until the straw doll turned to look at him and spoke in a chirpy, slightly nasal, tone.
"Harry!!!"
Harry's eyes widened, before it slipped to Snape's robe rather uncomfortably.
'So dad's a leaf?'
…
Loki looked up at the door with a strange sense of weariness.
His heart beat stiffly and his palms turned sweaty.
'This can't be the uniqueness, can it?'
'No way…' Loki quickly shook his head, dismissing such a thought almost immediately. 'If it were the uniqueness, I wouldn't be the only one here… there would probably be half a dozen mad angels and True Gods battling for it to accommodate its authority.'
'...or perhaps because it is the Uniqueness of the door pathway it teleports around and doesn't let anyone find it?'
Loki suddenly felt very confused.
The door in the sky was out of his very short range to properly tell just how valuable it was. But simply given its strange glassy appearance, it was definitely more valuable than anything else he'd seen in his entire short life as a beyonder. Yet he couldn't understand what it was doing here, if it was the Uniqueness.
'Why would it teleport near some random village?'
'...and why would it trap me in its influence?'
Loki thought for a few seconds before coming to a short conclusion, 'Oh? Perhaps because of my speciality about being incorruptible by high level knowledge?'
'Maybe it tried to simply corrupt before thinking that I was just another low level beyonder but then failed to do so and control me in any way, so it now wants to study or use me for something else?'
Loki didn't have any reason to think so with a hundred per cent certainty, but he felt that he was right almost instinctively since the Door hadn't harmed him in any way, yet.
"Hey! Door! What do you want me to do!?" Loki shouted out loud, but true to its apparent inanimate nature, the door remained still and the silence in the impromptu valley remained undisturbed.
Loki walked around a few more times, hoping to leave or even find an error in whatever method the door was using to keep him contained, but he failed and kept getting teleported back to the spot under the door after only a few dozen steps.
'...it truly would've been rather strange if I could break out of the influence of a Uniqueness when not even angels could break from the Quill of Alzuhood and the Turnsoest Brass Book.'
Loki sighed as the last light of the day vanished under the horizon.
'Perhaps someone from the village will come out here to scout this place?'
'No, why would they come out at night, and I'm sure the village probably already has tales about people going missing in this area, making it forbidden to travel to.'
'...but, wait a minute…'
'If people came here before and were trapped or corrupted by the uniqueness…'
'Why aren't there any bones of the people that died because they couldn't handle the corruption?'
'There could've even been stronger people who managed to fight against the door, right? So why aren't there any signs of battle anywhere?'
Loki carefully studied the area for any signs of battle but even though the darkness made it a little hard for him to go through it all, he didn't find any obvious signs of anything occurring on a large scale.
Walking to the border and teleporting back to the spot under the door because it was shorter, Loki stared up at it for a few minutes in silence before picking up a rock from the ground.
He took aim using his dextrous hands and launched the stone up into the air ten high.
The rock landed on the door with a fwoping thud, as if hitting something solid, something metallic, before simply vanishing as if it never existed.
Loki's eyes sharpened.
'Hmm…'
'So I can get out of this place if I touch the door?'
'...interesting.'
And so, with a goal in his mind, Loki began to gather the large rocks around him.
His aim?
To build a short pyramid to touch the door up above.
Given Loki could only travel a short distance all around, he had to be particularly clever in getting his rocks, making sure that none of the taller ones fell the wrong way when he fell them by digging underneath a corner so that he could transport them without issue.
He did have some strength to carry them, but it wasn't enough to continuously drag around a bunch of one ton rocks and stack them upon each other. So Loki let physics do the work. Why waste effort when things could be done easier.
'The night's really getting colder.' Loki whispered, rubbing his arms while looking around into the darkness.
Except-
Loki suddenly raised his head and looked up above when he heard a short rumble.
Given the door was the only object close to him that could make such a noise, Loki naturally looked up at it.
His eyes first saw the twinkling stars in the background before he saw the door tremble under pale moonlight.
'Hmm…'
Loki had a sinking feeling that something was not right, but he couldn't put a finger on what it was, so he was about to continue his thankless task of building his pyramid only to suddenly realise something rather strange about the door.
'Did the distance to the door just…shrink?'
Loki picked up a short stone from the ground and took aim at the door before launching it once again with the same amount of force he had used earlier.
Only, the stone shot past the door this time, missing it entirely as it arched above it and returned on the other side.
'...so the door is falling.'
Loki didn't know why, but he didn't really like the sound of that.
He then looked at the pyramid he'd just built and then up at the door whose strange instinct was to reach the ground below and felt a little afraid.
He couldn't quite put it in words, but a strange chill spread through him, instinctively warning him to keep away.
'Alright…'
'...inverted pyramid it is.'
And so Loki started to undo hours of his work from earlier and began to clear up the stones he'd piled up, before digging down into the ground underneath the door.
He didn't know why, but he felt like there was something strange about the situation he hadn't fully realised yet.
As if there was a lingering piece of the puzzle right in the background that was waiting to be picked up.
But Loki didn't give himself the time to figure it out. Instead, he became busy digging in the darkness of the early morning.
'Survival takes priority.'
It was only after the sun went past noon during the day that Loki slowed down.
'...at least the door hasn't dropped again since then.'
Loki looked up at the bright sky and sipped a bit of the water remaining in his leather sack while making sure it was only enough to wet his lips and nothing more.
He didn't know how long he'd be stuck in this place, and the last thing he wanted was to die of thirst.
The walls of the pit he'd dug rose around him like a well, making him wonder if it might become one should there be some rain but given there were no clouds in sight he put aside the thought and went back to looking at the door and thinking about the strangeness surrounding it.
'All the time I dug, I never came across any remains, either animal or plant. It was all gravel or hard rock.'
'A stark contrast to the forest that borders this region.'
'Shouldn't there at least be a grassland before such a large rocky region suddenly shows up?'
'And…' Loki looked at the strangely tall mountain in the distance that was his target on the map and mumbled, "There's that mountain that's taller than the one in the map."
"Plus if this place is a valley with a rocky bed, shouldn't it have formed a lake simply from rains?"
That was when the creeping sensation from before crawled back into Loki's mind.
'I'm missing something…'
Loki climbed out of the pit and looked around himself, staring at nothing in particular, trying to glean an insight into his current predicament before he suddenly realised.
"Ah…" Loki whispered as he looked back up at the door in the sky and mumbled softly, "Did it swallow everything in a radius around itself?"
He remembered the stone he'd thrown at the door and realised exactly what it was that had made him so uncomfortable about it.
"So its power fluctuates throughout the day… and at midnight when it's the highest, it consumes everything around it in a certain radius?"
Things started to fit in just the right places in his mind as he drew several other new speculations simultaneously.
"...does it send everything into the cosmos?"
"Perhaps during the dead of the night when its connection to the cosmos is the strongest it moves down and sends everything it comes in contact with outside the barrier protecting the planet?"
"Did it consume the village that was here before and send it into the cosmos too then?"
Loki's hands trembled unknowingly as his mind felt rather weak and rattled.
Only a single fact remained in his mind that kept the embers of hope in him burning.
"...but it hasn't sent me to the cosmos, yet."
'Perhaps the thing the door sends away needs to be corrupted by it first?'
'Then, I'm just immune?'
Loki didn't think so.
If he were truly immune to the influence of the Door then he should've never even been trapped to forever remain confined in its vicinity. And the very fact that he had meant that the door had some control over him in some way.
'Perhaps the abilities of the door get stronger the closer I get to it?'
'Then it doesn't matter if I get corrupted by it or not, I'll simply get teleported at that point? Like the stone that touched it during the day?'
Loki broke out into an immediate run towards the mountain that was his target, only, this time even before the previous couple dozen steps that he could take, he was teleported back to the centre at only about a dozen plus some.
All of a sudden, the door in the sky that moved when it wished started to seem like a fancy guillotine.
Loki looked at the pit underneath him that he'd dug out of a sense of instinct and then back up at the blade hanging in the sky with a sense of dread.
'Will the door move the same set amount each day?'
'What if it moves directly to the bottom of the pit tomorrow?'
Loki didn't have answers to these questions.
But trapped in this fateful encounter, all he could do was observe.
So Loki quietly, very quietly, climbed back into the pit he'd carved out for himself and holed himself in it.
…
Hermione broke the stiff silence that had befallen the group after they all realised James' current condition since a separate important matter was on her mind.
"Erm…what about that book?"
The silence lingered for a few seconds before Moody thumped his staff onto the floor, releasing a powerful burst of spirituality to clear the air of the smell of the undead that was still lingering around them before speaking like someone had gutted him.
"Those dastardly cowards stole our trap!" It sounded like a typical Moody but the words and the tone didn't quite make sense to them.
'Why's he upset about our trap being sprung? Isn't that good?'
Moody's eyes spun around quickly before it landed on Harry as he asked, "How did you figure it out, Potter?"
Harry rubbed the back of his head slightly before looking Snape's way as he explained, "I don't really know, but Professor Snape 'embedded' the instinct of using the item as a means of bargain when he…punched me earlier."
"Severus punched you!" Lily's high pitched voice shot sharply out from beside Snape's ears but he didn't even flinch. Instead looking at everyone with a sense of superiority, like they all owed him the world and he owed them nothing.
"He hit me too!!!" Ron said suddenly from the forest floor since he'd partially recovered from his corruption after Hermione stole it using the Error pathway steal spell.
Everyone looked at him for a second before glossing over as Harry continued with a wry smile, "So I pretended to be slightly angry and followed Professor Snape's plan to use me as the one that took the book to Bellatrix Lestrange."
"Hmm…so you knew all along…" Moody thumped his staff again while giving Snape a deep look as did everyone else.
Hermione was rather reverential while Tonks was still a little skeptical like her master.
Ron was constantly fluctuating between wanting to criticise Snape for putting their lives in danger and praising him for such a simple yet brilliant plan, emotions spurred by his changes in betraying his pet spider. Of course he didn't know his own conflict stemmed from such feelings, to him it was only a feeling of not wanting to criticise Snape since no one had been harmed and everyone was safe and sound.
"...but what was that trap? Was it to harm you-know-who?" Ron asked suddenly, causing everyone to nod and look at Moody who was the one who'd brought over the book.
To their surprise, Moody feigned ignorance, "I was only the transporter. Didn't learn what it was so that if I were captured I wouldn't know how to deactivate it."
The sudden tension in the group to learn more about you-know-who and the trap was released and everyone relaxed, but only until Moody barked out their new orders.
"We must still go to our destination while pretending that we're travelling with the book! One enemy might've been taken down, but if we can still become a flame to draw out the moths for the other teams risking their lives, we must!"
Tonks' eyes lit up with admiration before she saluted and quickly stood in line behind him.
Hermione followed and then Belmont along with Ron stood in it too.
Harry looked at Snape who was looking at it all with absolute and utter disgust like he was about to recall his bats all around the forest and apparate away until Lily spoke up again.
"Hmm? Where are you going brother? Harry's going with them right?"
Snape looked at Harry, giving him a glare that made Harry feel like he was laid on a butcher's table, pinned to it with sharpened bones while being cleaned for prepping.
Harry gulped but the silly looking straw doll on Snape's shoulder balanced the sharp glare so he managed to speak out his thoughts, "We can't just abandon our mission, can we, professor?" before he stood behind Ron, leaving a single person space, just enough for Snape to fit in.
And Snape did not want to fit in.
He looked like he'd do anything but it.
Eventually however, Snape fell in line after recalling his bats. Regaining his rather human appearance as the straw doll still on his shoulder commented.
"Your hair's just as greasy as ever brother."
"Pfft." Ron quickly stuffed his knuckles into his teeth but failed to keep his laughter to himself.
And even though for the rest of the way after that he felt Snape's icy glare piercing his unprotected neck, his shoulders kept quivering ever so slightly, as did everyone else's, including the straw doll's.
…
It was the dead of the night again.
Loki sitting in his hole, stared right up at the sky.
His eyes watched the door with careful precision, each blink taken consciously, only after he'd memorised the position of the door in the sky each time.
"Five…"
"Four…"
"Three…"
"Two…"
"One…"
Rumble
The sound was there again. And Loki saw it this time.
'The distance shrank…again.' Loki noted.
The distance it dropped by was the exact same as the last time, "About a foot again."
The echo of the rumble faded away as reality started to finally sink into Loki's mind.
Throughout the dig today, it had been a far away thought in Loki's mind. After all, he could always just keep digging and lengthen the time it took for the door to reach him.
Except, by the end of the day when he'd reached about fifteen feet deep, the second he stepped a single foot deeper, he found himself back on top of the pit, where the lack of ground caused him to fall once again, in a cycle again and again until when he managed to wedge himself between the walls of the pit and drop some gravel to cover the gap below.
Sitting on that same uncomfortable gravel right now Loki released a warm puff of air and watched the condensation make it visible despite the darkness.
'It's getting colder.'
Time passed and Loki spent all his time looking up at the door throughout the night.
Countless thoughts passed by his mind as he thought of everything he had so far.
'But how does one even fight a Uniqueness as a Sequence 9?'
'How does one fight being flung off into the cosmos as a Sequence 9?'
Loki sat there, pondering the same questions with his hands around his knees, stuffed into his sleeves to conserve heat as he strained his neck to remain vigilant of the door dropping any further.
Night slowly turned into day, and Loki, not having slept in a while, sank into the comfortable coolness of the rock around him while the rays of the afternoon sun wrapped around him like a blanket.
Day slowly turned into night again as Loki awoke.
His first instinct was to look up at the door with sharp eyes, measuring it for any changes as he watched over it carefully.
'No movement…yet.'
As it reached midnight, Loki began counting backwards once again-
"Five…"
"Four…"
"Three…"
"Two…"
"One…"
Rumble
The door sank again.
By a single foot.
'About twenty three feet remaining.'
But Loki didn't dare move.
He waited, staring at the door throughout the night before sleeping for a while in the morning and then trying to dig underneath himself once again.
However, as soon as his shovel hit the gravel floor and siphoned off a bit of the gravel to sink underneath the line he'd measured earlier he found himself back at the top of the hole.
Luckily the Door was still a good eight feet above so he didn't have to worry about touching it, yet.
So he only undid his digging before sitting calmly in his pit.
Night passed again.
'Another foot.'
'Twenty two feet remaining, seven feet from the top of the hole.'
'It's gotten colder still.'
Loki felt a comfortable chill during the nights now. Enough to make him want something to cover himself with.
A couple of days passed once again as the situation turned for the worse.
'Twenty feet remaining.'
The chill had now made Loki feel uncomfortable even during the day.
He didn't know if it was real, or if he was simply hallucinating things, but he felt he could hear a strange wailing at the edge of his senses.
He didn't know what it was and given his incorruptible body and mind he'd tried paying attention to it, but he failed.
The sound was too far away, for now.
A few days rolled away with Loki in his pit.
'Too cold…' Loki thought. He couldn't speak anymore since his lips were so dry, the water in his pouch had long since finished.
There was now frost during the day on the upper walls of the pit.
White flakes often drifted down during the day like winter snow.
Touching them often brought him closer to hearing the wailings of the people beyond.
There were several questions, but Loki neither had the energy to come up with them nor answer them.
Loki blinked his eyes, only to find that days had already passed again.
His body was covered in a dense pile of those white flakes from before, preventing the rays of the sun from embracing him.
Constant wails assaulted his ears but they seemed merely like background noise now.
They were much louder than before, but still couldn't be communicated with.
Loki's frozen eyelids pained to keep open as he stared at the walls of the pit that had become fully encased in ice.
His broken reflection showed in a few unnatural mirrors that had spontaneously formed in them. But even they were covered when the days rolled by and the snow covered him fully.
Loki had only a single hole above his eye.
'Six feet…'
'Ten…' Loki whispered soundlessly as he pushed himself.
His skin, a deathly blue, twisted as his fingers scraped the icy walls.
'Eight…' Loki whispered as he took the first step counter clockwise with great struggle in the narrow pit. His blackened lips moved after much effort, prying apart with skin ripping itself as blood flowed.
It was faint but among the loudest wails, one could hear the faint, tender voice of a child, "The Immortal Lord Of The Universe For Blessings."
'Six…' Loki whispered as his body tilted for the second step, his leg slipped as his skin was pulled away, but he managed to stay awake.
"The Sky Lord of Heaven and the Universe for Blessings."
'Four…' Loki whispered as he took the third step, his body turning numb as he began to feel the result of exerting his body on fumes. The wailing forced him awake, if only to wish it were turned off.
"The Exalted Thearch of Heaven and the Universe for Blessings."
'Two…' Loki whispered, hoarsely as his throat felt like the driest of deserts, taking the final step.
His leg lifted as his body twisted to complete the step while his lips moved to finish the final chant.
"The Celestial Worthy of Heaven and the Universe for Blessings."
'...'
RUMBLE
The world around Loki reached an incomprehensible still at that moment.
The door that had slipped down by a foot again, touched his head. The wails that had turned into roars reached their crescendo. The chill that laid an eternal rest on all that it came in contact with singed Loki with burns. His eyes slowly flickered away their light.
Only, at the very edge of death, a different roar echoed in Loki's ears. And this roar extended not just to his mind, but to the very universe itself.
For a second the Beyonders in the entire universe stilled, maddened or otherwise.
True Gods trembled.
And Great Old Ones added to the wails as their bodies tore away.
The universe itself felt like it was being rearranged. The cosmos that held recognisable constellations suddenly became incomprehensible. The Suns that existed in the wide cold of darkness, erupted in a blast of fire and light. Space bent in strange ways giving way into the Abyss. Minds lost their strength and collapsed in on themselves as the darkness in their heart split up into a multitude of personas leading to madness.
And Loki, who was nearly dead, felt a strange sensation grip his soul as it dragged him through what felt like a cacophony of torturous wails that nearly exploded his ear drums.
Crimson light flooded his vision.
And before he knew it he was thrust upon what felt like an untouched marble floor surrounded by an eerie grey fog that swept over it like a rug.
Loki barely comprehended what was around him before collapsing into an unconscious slumber.
…