Post by MEG on Sept 11, 2022 17:46:27 GMT -5
●●●
i am the
monster
you
created
Ignotus Peverell’s grave was barren and faded in comparison to the other headstones around his.
When Piper had lived within Godric’s Hollow, she had paced through the graves every so often - mostly to visit her parents. They were buried together, just a short distance away. Piper hadn’t realized that their grave had been so close to Peverell’s - not for years. She’d known where the Potters were buried far sooner than the Third Brother, despite being across the cemetery from them.
So much history in such a small space, confined within black iron fences.
Piper had asked Felicity, Temperance, and Shui to meet her near her old home. It had been vacant for several months, though it still held most of her possessions. She wasn’t sure why - she’d officially moved in with Damien, most of her important belongings were there. Still, this home had been her parents, once. It seemed a shame to sell it. Piper had no use for an empty property either - it was bittersweet, her childhood home becoming a glorified storage unit. Still, she couldn’t let go of it.
Once the trio had arrived on the steps of her home, they had moved into the cemetery. The ritual they’d found was simple enough - a mix of alchemy, divination, and necromancy.
Digging the grave out was, admittedly, the hardest part. Even with magic, removing all of the dirt to reveal the wooden coffin that the brother had been laid to rest in had taken a toll on the four of them. Felicity flicked her wrist, lighting the five black candles that they’d placed around the casket. Shui took the time to carve several runes into the coffin - a task that he tackled with his mouth set into a firm, slightly uneasy line.
One for alchemy - for life.
One for necromancy - for death.
And one for the Sight - for the realm in between.
Piper and Felicity joined hands as Temperance stood up to the grave. There was nothing but determination on her face - even the ghost of a smile danced within her eyes. Piper envied her confidence, her free hand drifting to cradle her stomach. The ritual had already been risky for her, for them all… but, it felt especially terrifying now.
Felicity, as if sensing her anxiety, squeezed her hand in response. Piper glanced over at the woman - her mentor, her friend - and gave her a half-smile in reassurance.
They began to chant, murmuring words in an old, long-dead language that Felicity and Piper had discovered in a book within the Malvolio Manor, mixing in some of the traditional voodoo that Temperance had taught them. The blending of magic was dangerous, particularly with the level of necromancy they were trying to achieve. To reanimate a corpse was one thing - to bring back its autonomy, its memory, was something else entirely.
The runes on the casket began to glow a deep blue, pulsating with the rhythm of the words they spoke. With one final repetition of the chant, the runes on the coffin cracked, splintering the wood. There was one final burst of sapphire light, and then silence. The quartet waited with baited breath, barely moving.
There was a creak at last, breaking the silence of the night, and the lid of the coffin lifted. By then, there was nothing within the coffin but ash and bone fragments, the body completely decomposing over the centuries. The ghostly blue light, however, had created a mostly solid form - the third brother, elderly and as he was before he’d greeted Death.
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Silence filled the void of the dead, filled with black nothingness where the dead slept and Death ruled. This was where it came to rest when not toying about on the mortal plane, the dimension only it could come and go from. Once a mortal creature died, its essence was trapped within the void, never to leave - though that hardly stopped the mortals from playing with the balance of life and death. The more mortals that died, the stronger Death became feeding from their souls, though it had not been able to reside over its void without the power of the cloak.
Here, Death rested, plotting, watching…
Without warning, there was a crack that broke the silence and an explosion of light deep in the depths of the void. Chanting voices in a language it had not heard in some time echoed through the chamber - three female, and one male.
Resurrections and reincarnations were more of a commonplace occurrence than most mortals tended to realize, though they were the only ones foolish enough to toy with the scales. It was common for the life force of the recently deceased to be pulled from the void, souls Death couldn’t be bothered to care about, that it would reclaim with time.
But, this was different. This was deeper than surface-level necromantic magic. A group digging this deep into Death’s domain meant it was someone who had been gone from the mortal plane longer than most others that were called from its realm. A blue light pulsed with the chanting, growing stronger and the chanting growing louder. Death rose, approaching the epicenter of the anomaly in time to see who was being pulled from its realm.
Ignotus Peverell, the last of the treacherous three to find his end within the void. There was another crack, the light growing to a blinding level. With one final snap, the light collided in on itself before disappearing.
The void settled back into its black endless existence - and Death was gone.
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Ignotus’ gaze shifted between the quartet that stood around him, empty and lost. There was fear painted plainly on his face, confusion boring into each line of his wizened features.
Piper was the first to step forward.
“We’re sorry to disturb you, Mr. Peverell. We needed to speak to you… about Death,” she said, hesitating for only a moment. There was no point in taking their time or tiptoeing around the reason they had resurrected him. Merlin only knew how much time they truly had to get all the information they needed.
Ignotus’ face twisted into one of fear, and the ghostly visage of his form shivered slightly, as if brushed by a rush of the cold, December wind. “So… it’s escaped, then,” he murmured, shaking his head. Piper nodded.
“Yes. It’s been a while. We’ve been attempting to stop it, to keep the Hallows from it, but it has two of the three. It’s missing the stone - and so are we.”
Ignotus winced at the mention of the Hallows, his arms coming up to wrap around himself, comforting himself. “It will get the stone. It’s smarter than it lets on. But, it is not infallible. We… my brothers and I, we trapped it, tricked it.”
“You were the ones who trapped it inside the castle?” Piper asked. Ignotus nodded, eyes darting between the quartet that stood before him.
“We told it that we knew of a place that it could… that it could feed freely,” Ignotus admitted, voice hoarse. Anger flashed within Piper, and she could feel Felicity stiffen around her.
The Peverells had used the children of the school to lure the creature in. Ignotus’ face was filled with remorse as he continued. “My brothers… I don’t know that they cared about the lives of others. I didn’t either - not at first. We saw an opportunity to take from Death… no matter the casualties.”
Shui stepped away from the ghost, something akin to disgust on his features. Only Temperance was calm, stoic in the face of this truth. They had all known what hardships and sacrifices were often made for the sake of power - but, she was the only one who had truly accepted that fact of the four of them, and had dedicated herself to necromancy as a result. Life and death were simply things that happened, and the power that came from each was unmistakable. It was what pushed forth the human race, and was at the height of all conflict - Piper steadied herself, pushing that to the forefront of her mind.
Still, all that she could see was the screaming of the children when Death had escaped, the horror that had ensued when the Gryffindor girls had been slaughtered in their beds.
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The cloak of the night was enough to shroud Death’s arrival to the graveyard, the usual misty indicator of its presence concealed by darkness. The ethereal blue light that had drawn it to the ritual hummed with life and power several yards away. Death could see the faces of the quartet that had summoned the brother, washed out by the cerulean light of the brother himself. Even viewing the ghostly figure from behind, unable to make out his face, brought forth a rage that Death hadn’t felt in centuries.
But, Death was careful.
And so, Death waited.
It shifted closer under the cover of blackness, until it could make out the words of the traitorous Peverell.
At mention of the betrayal of the brothers, the entity trembled with a silent rage.
“There were six of us. My brothers, myself, and three others. We had found a spell, something old and archaic,” the brother explained.
The dark-haired witch tilted her head slightly to the side as she listened.
“A spell? What spell?”
“I do not remember. My brother, Antioch, he is the one who found it. He hungered for strength. Antioch is the one who copied the spell from its source - and then burned the original, so as to claim the knowledge for himself.”
The witch frowned, eyes skirting to her companions. Death noted with a twisted glee that they looked concerned - afraid. They knew of its power, respected it, even. The dark-haired one was one Death had seen in the mind of the witch who had chosen immortality over her own child.
And, she was with a child of her own.
The young, pure life force was one Death had not immediately noticed in its rage at the situation, but it was unmistakable now. It drifted closer, still shrouded in darkness, drawn in by the smallest fluttering of the new heart.
“It requires sacrifice. Loss of life. We had the three others bring artifacts of their own to channel the spell.”
“The Hallows,” the vampire of the group murmured, nodding slowly as the pieces began to puzzle themselves together. Ignotus nodded along with her solemnly, guilt rising in his features.
“We performed the spell - or, rather, we had the three perform it. They… they did not know what it would do to them. Once we lured Death in, we turned on it, sealing it away and draining its power into the cloak, the wand, and the stone. Once it was over, we took the objects, one for each of us, and sealed the room with Death inside.”
“Did Antioch keep the spell he copied down? Where is it?” The dark-skinned voodoo priestess asked, voice far stronger and more stern than her companions.
“He did. He—“
From the darkness behind the headstone, Death rose, growing twice the size of the tallest mortal within the group. Its hand came down upon the brother’s head as the quartet shrank away from Ignotus.
“That is quite enough of that. You’ve been away too long, old friend,” Death crooned. Its skeletal fingers flexed over the ghostly apparition of Ignotus Peverell, the spirit shaking in fear and shock and shrieking as if in pain. The body faded in a cascade of light, absorbed into Death’s fingertips. The coffin slammed shut with a crash, the force of which knocked the light from the candles surrounding it out.
“Very clever,” Death taunted, sliding from behind the headstone and hovering over the grave. The mortals had all drawn their wands, relighting the area with magic.
“But I believe it is time to put a stop to all your knowledge seeking. Too much of a good thing - you understand.”
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They had been so close.
Piper knew that she should have known better, that they should have taken more precautions, set up a diversion… She was a fool to think that necromancy of this level would go unnoticed by the entity. As it rose above them, removing the brother from play, the quartet took a step back. Felicity, the only one within the group who knew that Piper was pregnant, positioned herself protectively in front of her.
They needed to leave. They needed to run.
But, neither of the four humans buckled when it came to Death - they had all known what the risks were, and were prepared to fight, wands pointed at Death in a matter of moments.
Temperance was the first to cast a spell, launching a barrage of wordless attacks against the entity. Despite its size, it slithered to and fro, dodging each with ease. With a wave of its hand, it knocked the voodoo priestess back several feet - though, to her credit, she remained standing.
Felicity moved, ushering Piper further from the fight. Death turned its attention on her, making a sound of disappointment.
“You could have been so useful to me, child. Instead, you play pretend with these mortals,” Death crooned, rising up against her. There was only a flicker of fear in Felicity’s stance - even from behind, Piper could sense it. Still, she didn’t balk at her creator’s proximity, didn’t cower.
“The world needs balance, but not as you claim to promise it,” Felicity said, “but as it currently stands. Humans are vital to that balance.”
Death laughed, the sound chilling Piper to the bone. “Vital,” it repeated, tone mocking. “Perhaps. You will learn to see things my way very, very soon, my child.”
It rose up, hand raised, when a blinding curse shot at it from behind. It hissed, recoiling and whipping around. It was on top of the spell caster in an instance, toppling Shui to the ground. It leaned in, hand outstretched.
And then, it paused.
It was only for a moment, but that pause was enough for Piper. She stepped around Felicity, firing a curse at Death’s back. It connected firmly, and the entity melted away in the light of the spell. When the light had faded, Death was gone.
The tension within the quartet didn’t subside as Piper rushed forward to pull Shui from the ground.
“Are you all right?” She asked, hands on his shoulders as she surveyed him. Breathless, Shui nodded.
“Now what?” Temperance asked, coming up alongside them. Piper glanced over at Felicity, frowning. The vampire looked concerned, but she merely shook her head. They knew of the vision she’d had - of the terror to come. They’d learned plenty in this endeavor - but, had they learned enough?
“I don’t know,” Piper said.
“I don’t know.”
When Piper had lived within Godric’s Hollow, she had paced through the graves every so often - mostly to visit her parents. They were buried together, just a short distance away. Piper hadn’t realized that their grave had been so close to Peverell’s - not for years. She’d known where the Potters were buried far sooner than the Third Brother, despite being across the cemetery from them.
So much history in such a small space, confined within black iron fences.
Piper had asked Felicity, Temperance, and Shui to meet her near her old home. It had been vacant for several months, though it still held most of her possessions. She wasn’t sure why - she’d officially moved in with Damien, most of her important belongings were there. Still, this home had been her parents, once. It seemed a shame to sell it. Piper had no use for an empty property either - it was bittersweet, her childhood home becoming a glorified storage unit. Still, she couldn’t let go of it.
Once the trio had arrived on the steps of her home, they had moved into the cemetery. The ritual they’d found was simple enough - a mix of alchemy, divination, and necromancy.
Digging the grave out was, admittedly, the hardest part. Even with magic, removing all of the dirt to reveal the wooden coffin that the brother had been laid to rest in had taken a toll on the four of them. Felicity flicked her wrist, lighting the five black candles that they’d placed around the casket. Shui took the time to carve several runes into the coffin - a task that he tackled with his mouth set into a firm, slightly uneasy line.
One for alchemy - for life.
One for necromancy - for death.
And one for the Sight - for the realm in between.
Piper and Felicity joined hands as Temperance stood up to the grave. There was nothing but determination on her face - even the ghost of a smile danced within her eyes. Piper envied her confidence, her free hand drifting to cradle her stomach. The ritual had already been risky for her, for them all… but, it felt especially terrifying now.
Felicity, as if sensing her anxiety, squeezed her hand in response. Piper glanced over at the woman - her mentor, her friend - and gave her a half-smile in reassurance.
They began to chant, murmuring words in an old, long-dead language that Felicity and Piper had discovered in a book within the Malvolio Manor, mixing in some of the traditional voodoo that Temperance had taught them. The blending of magic was dangerous, particularly with the level of necromancy they were trying to achieve. To reanimate a corpse was one thing - to bring back its autonomy, its memory, was something else entirely.
The runes on the casket began to glow a deep blue, pulsating with the rhythm of the words they spoke. With one final repetition of the chant, the runes on the coffin cracked, splintering the wood. There was one final burst of sapphire light, and then silence. The quartet waited with baited breath, barely moving.
There was a creak at last, breaking the silence of the night, and the lid of the coffin lifted. By then, there was nothing within the coffin but ash and bone fragments, the body completely decomposing over the centuries. The ghostly blue light, however, had created a mostly solid form - the third brother, elderly and as he was before he’d greeted Death.
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Silence filled the void of the dead, filled with black nothingness where the dead slept and Death ruled. This was where it came to rest when not toying about on the mortal plane, the dimension only it could come and go from. Once a mortal creature died, its essence was trapped within the void, never to leave - though that hardly stopped the mortals from playing with the balance of life and death. The more mortals that died, the stronger Death became feeding from their souls, though it had not been able to reside over its void without the power of the cloak.
Here, Death rested, plotting, watching…
Without warning, there was a crack that broke the silence and an explosion of light deep in the depths of the void. Chanting voices in a language it had not heard in some time echoed through the chamber - three female, and one male.
Resurrections and reincarnations were more of a commonplace occurrence than most mortals tended to realize, though they were the only ones foolish enough to toy with the scales. It was common for the life force of the recently deceased to be pulled from the void, souls Death couldn’t be bothered to care about, that it would reclaim with time.
But, this was different. This was deeper than surface-level necromantic magic. A group digging this deep into Death’s domain meant it was someone who had been gone from the mortal plane longer than most others that were called from its realm. A blue light pulsed with the chanting, growing stronger and the chanting growing louder. Death rose, approaching the epicenter of the anomaly in time to see who was being pulled from its realm.
Ignotus Peverell, the last of the treacherous three to find his end within the void. There was another crack, the light growing to a blinding level. With one final snap, the light collided in on itself before disappearing.
The void settled back into its black endless existence - and Death was gone.
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Ignotus’ gaze shifted between the quartet that stood around him, empty and lost. There was fear painted plainly on his face, confusion boring into each line of his wizened features.
Piper was the first to step forward.
“We’re sorry to disturb you, Mr. Peverell. We needed to speak to you… about Death,” she said, hesitating for only a moment. There was no point in taking their time or tiptoeing around the reason they had resurrected him. Merlin only knew how much time they truly had to get all the information they needed.
Ignotus’ face twisted into one of fear, and the ghostly visage of his form shivered slightly, as if brushed by a rush of the cold, December wind. “So… it’s escaped, then,” he murmured, shaking his head. Piper nodded.
“Yes. It’s been a while. We’ve been attempting to stop it, to keep the Hallows from it, but it has two of the three. It’s missing the stone - and so are we.”
Ignotus winced at the mention of the Hallows, his arms coming up to wrap around himself, comforting himself. “It will get the stone. It’s smarter than it lets on. But, it is not infallible. We… my brothers and I, we trapped it, tricked it.”
“You were the ones who trapped it inside the castle?” Piper asked. Ignotus nodded, eyes darting between the quartet that stood before him.
“We told it that we knew of a place that it could… that it could feed freely,” Ignotus admitted, voice hoarse. Anger flashed within Piper, and she could feel Felicity stiffen around her.
The Peverells had used the children of the school to lure the creature in. Ignotus’ face was filled with remorse as he continued. “My brothers… I don’t know that they cared about the lives of others. I didn’t either - not at first. We saw an opportunity to take from Death… no matter the casualties.”
Shui stepped away from the ghost, something akin to disgust on his features. Only Temperance was calm, stoic in the face of this truth. They had all known what hardships and sacrifices were often made for the sake of power - but, she was the only one who had truly accepted that fact of the four of them, and had dedicated herself to necromancy as a result. Life and death were simply things that happened, and the power that came from each was unmistakable. It was what pushed forth the human race, and was at the height of all conflict - Piper steadied herself, pushing that to the forefront of her mind.
Still, all that she could see was the screaming of the children when Death had escaped, the horror that had ensued when the Gryffindor girls had been slaughtered in their beds.
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The cloak of the night was enough to shroud Death’s arrival to the graveyard, the usual misty indicator of its presence concealed by darkness. The ethereal blue light that had drawn it to the ritual hummed with life and power several yards away. Death could see the faces of the quartet that had summoned the brother, washed out by the cerulean light of the brother himself. Even viewing the ghostly figure from behind, unable to make out his face, brought forth a rage that Death hadn’t felt in centuries.
But, Death was careful.
And so, Death waited.
It shifted closer under the cover of blackness, until it could make out the words of the traitorous Peverell.
At mention of the betrayal of the brothers, the entity trembled with a silent rage.
“There were six of us. My brothers, myself, and three others. We had found a spell, something old and archaic,” the brother explained.
The dark-haired witch tilted her head slightly to the side as she listened.
“A spell? What spell?”
“I do not remember. My brother, Antioch, he is the one who found it. He hungered for strength. Antioch is the one who copied the spell from its source - and then burned the original, so as to claim the knowledge for himself.”
The witch frowned, eyes skirting to her companions. Death noted with a twisted glee that they looked concerned - afraid. They knew of its power, respected it, even. The dark-haired one was one Death had seen in the mind of the witch who had chosen immortality over her own child.
And, she was with a child of her own.
The young, pure life force was one Death had not immediately noticed in its rage at the situation, but it was unmistakable now. It drifted closer, still shrouded in darkness, drawn in by the smallest fluttering of the new heart.
“It requires sacrifice. Loss of life. We had the three others bring artifacts of their own to channel the spell.”
“The Hallows,” the vampire of the group murmured, nodding slowly as the pieces began to puzzle themselves together. Ignotus nodded along with her solemnly, guilt rising in his features.
“We performed the spell - or, rather, we had the three perform it. They… they did not know what it would do to them. Once we lured Death in, we turned on it, sealing it away and draining its power into the cloak, the wand, and the stone. Once it was over, we took the objects, one for each of us, and sealed the room with Death inside.”
“Did Antioch keep the spell he copied down? Where is it?” The dark-skinned voodoo priestess asked, voice far stronger and more stern than her companions.
“He did. He—“
From the darkness behind the headstone, Death rose, growing twice the size of the tallest mortal within the group. Its hand came down upon the brother’s head as the quartet shrank away from Ignotus.
“That is quite enough of that. You’ve been away too long, old friend,” Death crooned. Its skeletal fingers flexed over the ghostly apparition of Ignotus Peverell, the spirit shaking in fear and shock and shrieking as if in pain. The body faded in a cascade of light, absorbed into Death’s fingertips. The coffin slammed shut with a crash, the force of which knocked the light from the candles surrounding it out.
“Very clever,” Death taunted, sliding from behind the headstone and hovering over the grave. The mortals had all drawn their wands, relighting the area with magic.
“But I believe it is time to put a stop to all your knowledge seeking. Too much of a good thing - you understand.”
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They had been so close.
Piper knew that she should have known better, that they should have taken more precautions, set up a diversion… She was a fool to think that necromancy of this level would go unnoticed by the entity. As it rose above them, removing the brother from play, the quartet took a step back. Felicity, the only one within the group who knew that Piper was pregnant, positioned herself protectively in front of her.
They needed to leave. They needed to run.
But, neither of the four humans buckled when it came to Death - they had all known what the risks were, and were prepared to fight, wands pointed at Death in a matter of moments.
Temperance was the first to cast a spell, launching a barrage of wordless attacks against the entity. Despite its size, it slithered to and fro, dodging each with ease. With a wave of its hand, it knocked the voodoo priestess back several feet - though, to her credit, she remained standing.
Felicity moved, ushering Piper further from the fight. Death turned its attention on her, making a sound of disappointment.
“You could have been so useful to me, child. Instead, you play pretend with these mortals,” Death crooned, rising up against her. There was only a flicker of fear in Felicity’s stance - even from behind, Piper could sense it. Still, she didn’t balk at her creator’s proximity, didn’t cower.
“The world needs balance, but not as you claim to promise it,” Felicity said, “but as it currently stands. Humans are vital to that balance.”
Death laughed, the sound chilling Piper to the bone. “Vital,” it repeated, tone mocking. “Perhaps. You will learn to see things my way very, very soon, my child.”
It rose up, hand raised, when a blinding curse shot at it from behind. It hissed, recoiling and whipping around. It was on top of the spell caster in an instance, toppling Shui to the ground. It leaned in, hand outstretched.
And then, it paused.
It was only for a moment, but that pause was enough for Piper. She stepped around Felicity, firing a curse at Death’s back. It connected firmly, and the entity melted away in the light of the spell. When the light had faded, Death was gone.
The tension within the quartet didn’t subside as Piper rushed forward to pull Shui from the ground.
“Are you all right?” She asked, hands on his shoulders as she surveyed him. Breathless, Shui nodded.
“Now what?” Temperance asked, coming up alongside them. Piper glanced over at Felicity, frowning. The vampire looked concerned, but she merely shook her head. They knew of the vision she’d had - of the terror to come. They’d learned plenty in this endeavor - but, had they learned enough?
“I don’t know,” Piper said.
“I don’t know.”
and so the end begins
MADE BY VEL OF GS