Chapter 24
“How indeed, little mortal.” Hermaeus Mora crooned. “It is ever such a pity that the linguistic divide is so vast, with all the languages of the Aurbis residing within my realm as they do.”
“You are very obvious.” Harry whispered. “And I am very much going to regret this but… I need to know how to speak and understand Dovahzul.”
Harry was, of course, correct that he would regret the act. Every glyph, every phoneme, every conjugation of every word. Every tiny piece of information about a writing system, a language, every nuance and intricacy of an esoteric system of speech and magic was immediately placed in his brain all at once. The headache was splitting, as was the pain on the inside. A slight metallic tang filled his mouth. It seemed he had bitten through his cheek as a reaction.
A quick Restoration spell dealt with the pain in his cheek, and then he was edging out from around the corner, calling out.
[Mighty Dragon, I come in peace! By whose actions do you come here?]
[It is not the actions of a being that has brought myself and my kin to these lands, Chosen, though it is the actions of a being that lead to our entrapment.]
[I require passage to the vault which you guard. Do you grant me passage?]
[To do so would be a violation of the mandate given by those who keep me within these bonds.]
[An item I require to assist my quest lies within. Without it, I will be unable to fulfill the first of my fates.]
[Then you may pass. One must not interfere with the mandates of prophecy.]
Edging around the dragon, Harry finally found himself in front of the vault holding the chalice he was aiming for. Deciding to risk it, Harry stepped through the shadows nearby and into the vault proper.
Thankfully it worked this time, with Harry landing right in front of the vault door. It was quite clear which chalice was the one he was looking for, given the framing of a single golden chalice at the very end of the vault, surrounded by what were, doubtless, cursed artifacts.
A runeform and some blood later, and the chalice was dispatched, concluding his business in the bank. But there was the problem of still being in the bank.
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“Harry?” Ron asked as he entered his bedroom, seeing Harry fiddling about with a mirror. “Where have you been? No one’s been able to get in touch! We’ve been worried sick!”
“I was travelling.” Harry replied, still fiddling with the mirror. “Did you ask Lovegood? Because we’ve crossed paths during the summer so she could’ve- ah-ha!”
Harry’s exclamation was at the fact that the mirror was now displaying what seemed to be a fairly normal bedroom, with perhaps a few more bookshelves than normal. In front of the view was Hermione.
“I had wondered why there was a message on the answering machine telling me to be in front of my mirror.”
“Did you just-“ Ron began.
“Connect your mirror to a completely different one in a location I’m unaware of, in such a manner to transmit sound and image? Yes. That, however, is unimportant.”
“Yeah, at least we agree about that.” Ron replied. “You know what is important? The serial killer that’s after you!”
“Wait what?”
“Sirius Black broke out of Azkaban.” Hermione replied, seemingly unconcerned.
“Yeah, and I overheard Dad talking about how he’s after you!”
“Oh, like he’ll be a problem.” Harry said, waving his hand dismissively. “I have a bigger problem, though.”
“What have you done?” Hermione asked, sighing.
“Okay, so, to preface this, Voldemort is technically kind of immortal.” Harry began, waiting until the noises of horror died down. “I said technically. He’s essentially a lich, though he split his soul into multiple phylacteries rather than just the one. My mum’s contract with Lord Mora can’t expire until Voldemort is dealt with.”
“So you’ve been hunting the phylacteries.” Ron stated. “Except the only reason you’d be telling us this sort of thing is if you’d gotten rid of all of them, but you said he is technically immortal. Present tense, not past.”
“Correct! I’ve managed to hunt down all of the intentional ones, now I just have to wait for something from Lord Mora’s end. That isn’t the problem though.”
“How?” Hermione asked, confusion lacing her tone.
“Well, the last one was held in Gringotts, you see. And they don’t have any rules against keeping soul vessels in vaults.”
“You didn’t…” Hermione and Ron said at the same time.
“Oh no, it’s so much worse than you’re thinking.”
“How could it be worse than breaking into a vault in Gringotts and stealing, or destroying, one of their clients’ items?”
“Well, killing a goblin would qualify.”
“What.”
“Yeah, I may have killed a goblin who was trying to kill me. So… they kind of want to kill me as vengeance.”
“There’s something else.” Hermione said, narrowing her eyes. “What else did you do?”
“Ah, fuck.” Harry muttered. “I completely forgot about the Flame Atronach I summoned.”
“Is it going to get out of the tunnels?”
“Uh… probably not? Now that we’re on the topic of Tamrielic things, however, have you two chosen an Aedra yet?”
“Well, there was only one logical conclusion for my choice.” Hermione answered. “Julianos makes the most sense. Wisdom and knowledge, with frequent associations to magic? It was a foregone conclusion.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve decided to go with Stendarr. The justice and providing charity stuff… being able to help people that need it just seems appealing, you know?”
“Okay, I’ll need to get some brass, silver, quicksilver, steel, and ebony.” Harry muttered before returning his attention to Hermione and Ron. “Do either of you know any metallurgy spells?”
“No, Harry, we do not.” Ron answered slowly. “That is not something your average fifteen year old needs to know.”
“Well, you’ll need to learn some then. You two might not have access to magicka, but the items coming from Tamriel should be enough of a link that making the amulets, then the shrines should fully bring their attentions to you. Plus, making everything yourself should be enough to get their blessing, thus a link.”
“You don’t sound very certain.”
“Well, I’m about as certain as I can be when the topic is dimensionally separated gods that are as close to dead as a god can get.” Harry replied. “God, I’m sounding like Lovegood now.”
“So, what’s next?”
“Now, I need to talk to a dwarf to get some construction fast-tracked.”