The Soul Vortex
The people in the room screamed. Asher immediately disarmed and stunned the assassin in the audience, but it was too late. There was a flash of green light, and Thomas Griffin lurched back in his seat, his head hanging to one side as his lifeless body stared blankly at the ceiling. Two police officers and Silas’s dad rushed over to the fallen assassin and removed his wand, cuffing his unconscious body. Many people were clustering around the exits in mass panic, while the authorities in the room desperately tried to maintain control. I was still lying in my mother’s lap, my friends surrounding me. I felt ill.
Then we heard his voice.
“I would like to tell you about death.”
Everyone froze. The screams and panicked yelling from moments ago were replaced with dead silence. The low humming noise was coming from Griffin’s own cell phone, which was sitting on the desk in front of his corpse. When I heard that soft electronic voice, I felt like I had been thrown into a frozen pond.
“Death is an illusion,” said Donovan Trackwell. “One which I have mastered. When one understands the secrets of magic, they understand that all reality is an illusion. As the saying goes: life is but a dream. We wizards and witches have been gifted with the power to change that dream, to influence reality. We transcend the limitations of the natural and muggle worlds.”
The muggles in the audience were horrified. Mom, Dad, and the other wizards and witches had expressions of utter shock and disbelief. Asher had a grim look on his face. Silas’s jaw was hanging open, and my other friends were white with fear. Everyone’s attention was focused on the dead man’s phone as Darkanoss continued his message.
“The first attack was just the beginning. The Death Eaters will have Salem, and Salem will become a beacon for all wizardkind. We have become immortals. Together, we take the next step to deliverance.”
The windows of the room shattered.
The screams returned, mixing in with the sound of glass crashing against the floor. Mom shielded me with her body, but thankfully none of the glass came close to us. When she moved aside, I saw the bleeding and injured members of the city council struggling to get away. The panicked audience rushed out of the room. A few moments later, my parents helped me to my feet, and all of us hurried after the crowd to escape from the building.
“What the hell is happening?!” Dirk’s eyes wide with terror.
“I don’t know!” Liam responded, panting heavily.
“Alan?” said Silas, looking at me expectantly. Zoe and Jared looked at me too, but I didn’t say anything. I was still reeling from the vision earlier, and the attack on the city council had only further disoriented me. Everything was a blur. The only thing on my mind was the message that seemed to repeat over and over again. The Death Eaters will have Salem. We have become immortals.
Dad slammed open the door of city hall, and we hurried outside. The fleeing crowds had made a path through the snow in all directions. I noticed that we were accompanied by Asher and Silas’s dad, as well as Jared and Liam’s parents.
“Get the children to safety,” Asher told Silas’s dad. “I need to regroup with the other Aurors and determine the origin of the threat. This is...”
At that moment, a loud noise rang through the whole city, a sound I was unfamiliar with. It was the sound of sirens. I later learned that these sirens were a new emergency alert system that had been set up by the government after the Battle of Salem, in the event of large-scale magic-related violence. It wasn’t nearly as robust or nuanced as it should have been, but plans to improve upon it had been botched the moment Thomas Griffin was struck by the Killing Curse.
“The sirens...” said Silas’s dad quietly. “Then that means...”
“It’s an attack,” Asher confirmed. “The Death Eaters...”
All eyes fell to me. I could tell they were all thinking about what I’d said in city hall. There was no direct proof yet, but the intuition from my vision left me with no doubt. The Death Eaters had returned.
“Another faction,” Asher surmised. “It must be. He must have gathered other followers before he died, and instructed them to attack after the first battle. The broadcast was a recording he left behind.”
Though Asher’s conclusion made perfect sense, for some reason, I couldn’t believe him. Deep down, I felt convinced that the Death Eaters who were attacking now were the same Death Eaters who had attacked five months ago. But that was impossible. Right? The Death Eaters were all dead. I witnessed their deaths with my own eyes. I killed Donovan Trackwell. That battle was over. It had to be.
“I’m going,” said Asher, and he disapparated. As soon as he was gone, Mom, Dad, and the other wizard parents began apparating us away, beginning with the children. I was one of the last to go, but just as Mom was about to grab my arm, I stopped her.
“Wait! Peter lives nearby! I need to tell him what’s happening!”
“Sweetheart, there’s no time,” Mom insisted. “Get in, quickly.”
“No! I have to get him!”
“I agree,” Silas chimed in, quickly running over to my side. “I’ll go with you, Alan.”
My cold heart warmed a little at Silas’s support. Mom exhaled. “How far is his apartment?”
“Five blocks from here,” I responded.
“Okay, go get him. But hurry! We don’t know how much time we have.”
Silas and I nodded. With one last look at the others, I began sprinting down the sidewalk, and Silas followed right behind me. Having him with me made me feel a lot better, but it didn’t make the events of the past few minutes any easier to comprehend. Darkanoss’s message was repeating over and over in my head, and the blaring sounds of the sirens gave me a headache. Occasionally we ran past panicked civilians sprinting in random directions, though I wasn’t sure where they were going. I just focused on the sidewalk ahead of me, determined to reach Peter’s house.
Peter lived in a ground-floor apartment in an old brick building on the north end of the city. When I spotted the front door, I ran up the short flight of concrete stairs and pounded as hard as I could. “Peter! Peter, open up, it’s me!”
It took a little while before someone appeared. When the door flew open, I saw the frightened face of Peter’s father. “Alan? Oh good, it’s you. What is going on?”
“Death Eaters,” I said hurriedly. “Where’s Peter?”
A moment later, my friend appeared from inside the apartment, wearing a white coat with his thin blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Seeing him was another brief relief from the terror I’d been feeling for the past few minutes. “Alan! You’re here?”
“Come with us,” I insisted. “Our families are waiting. You’ll be safer with us.”
Peter’s dad looked down at his feet. “I don’t...”
His mom showed up and put a hand on his shoulder. They looked at each other for a moment, and then Peter’s dad nodded. “Okay. Let’s go. Quickly.”
Peter ran past his parents and jogged down the steps with us, and his parents shortly followed. The five of us hurried down the wide street. Even though the sirens were still ringing, I didn’t see anyone around, let alone any Death Eaters. Maybe the violence was taking place elsewhere in the city. But that didn’t mean we were safe. As we ran, my heart throbbed uncontrollably. Flashes of the first battle ran through my mind. Was it all happening again?
We crossed over to the next block, and were just about to reach the street where city hall was located when I heard a loud crack behind us. I immediately recognized it as the sound of an apparition. Peter, Silas, and I whirled around and pulled out our wands, pointing them at the wizard who had appeared behind us.
My heart stopped beating.
It was a boy with golden hair and a long, flowing robe, decorated with ornate designs. He was tall, with broad shoulders and a physique far beyond his years, like that of a star athlete. His right hand brandished a wand. His pale blue eyes glistened with delightful malice. That face was one I would know anywhere. But it couldn’t be him. It was impossible. I remembered the sight of him falling in a burst of green light. I remembered the flames that consumed his body, turning him into ash. He was dead. I was certain that he was dead. But here he was, like he had never been gone in the first place.
It was Nick Varennikov.
My wand began to tremble. I felt like I was staring at a ghost. Nick looked back at me with a silent smirk, as if savoring my horrified expression. Silas and Peter looked equally flabbergasted. Peter’s parents backed up slowly, taking shelter behind us. Nick bowed slowly, a graceful mockery.
“Quite the magic show, isn’t it?”
Silas was the first one to speak. “How... how are you alive?! The Killing Curse...”
“Were you not listening to his words? Death is an illusion. The Death Eaters have mastered it. We are immortals.”
“That’s not possible,” Silas sputtered. “That... that’s not possible!”
“Close-minded fool. Anything is possible with magic.”
The specter of Nick Varennikov stepped forward, and all of us took two steps back. He relished in our fear.
“It can’t be...” Peter muttered. “It must be... a ghost, or an impostor...”
Nick laughed. For some reason, that laugh dispelled any doubt that it was really him. It was the same haughty laugh from whenever he bullied an innocent muggle kid at John Proctor.
“I’m all flesh and blood, Peter. In fact, I’m more powerful than ever. Oh, what an incredible feeling! Like being born again through the flames. A cleansing.”
I pointed my wand at his face, my eyes shaking as they scanned his cloaked body. “You’re not real. This can’t be real. None of it is.”
For the first time, Nick’s smile faltered. He gave me a long, cold stare. “I should be thanking you for being the one to deliver me to the Limbo. But to be honest... I’m rather annoyed with you. No one bests Nicholas Varennikov. I’ll make you pay dearly for what you did.”
He arched his wand toward me. “Crucio!”
I barely had time to block the curse. The cores of our spells locked again, but this time, Nick suddenly dragged his wand left, and the flaming energy collided with the front of an apartment building. The wall was blasted to smithereens, bits of brick and glass and snow splattering across the asphalt. Peter and Silas fired offensive spells, but Nick brushed them both aside, then aimed another curse at me. I blocked it a second time, but it was much harder than before. Nick’s spells were as overwhelming as ever. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to give in to them.
That was when I heard thunder.
Our spells ceased. Nick looked up at the sky, and grinned. “Ah. It’s begun.”
Dark clouds began to roll in. They enveloped the mountains around the sides of the Salem Valley, the silver-gold billows covering everything in a vast dome. Through the clouds, I saw countless black shadows emerging and floating into the city. Dementors. I couldn’t count how many of them, but it dwarfed the number that we had seen five months ago. I heard screams and explosions all throughout the city. It was the Battle of Salem all over again.
Nick took advantage of my distraction, and tried to fire a hex at me. I had no time to block it, but something else ricocheted it away from me and into a wall. Nick angrily stared past me, and then gave me a sly look.
“We’ll finish this dance later, Alan. First, I have a duty to accomplish.”
And then he disapparated.
* * *
The one who had rescued me was Mason Randall Asher.
He hurried us as quickly as he could back to the city council building. Our families were no longer waiting there; they had relocated to a sheltered alley about a block west. Most of them had disapparated away, and the only ones left were Mom, Dad, and Silas’s dad. As soon as Asher was certain we were under their protection, he disapparated, saying something about a large attack force near Lynnville. I took one last glance at the city council building, and the great spiraling vortex above us, before Dad took me and Peter by either arm and we disapparated.
We apparated to a snow-covered field northwest of Salem, not far away from where Silas, Peter, and I had reappeared when we ran through the Limbo Mist five months ago. There were a lot of people there, mostly other wizards and witches, but quite a few muggles too. As soon as we arrived, we split off into separate groups; Jared and Zoe went with their parents, while Dirk and Rosemary ran off to find theirs. Silas’s dad and my parents kept apparating back to the city with the other wizards and witches, helping bring as many people as possible out of the line of fire.
I sat with Liam, Peter, and Silas on a low hillside facing the city. The great dome of Limbo clouds had returned. It enveloped the city just as it had five months ago, but unlike last time, it was joined by an unfathomable number of Dementors. I had thought there were a lot of them at the prison at Shichang, but these numbers were utterly absurd. I wondered if there were millions of them, though realistically, it was probably only about ten thousand. They were pretty far away from us, but with their sheer numbers, it was difficult to feel completely safe from them. What would happen to us if they came over here?
For a while, none of us said a word. I didn’t understand how any of this was possible. I had seen Nick with my own eyes, but I still couldn’t comprehend that it was really him. I’d seen the Killing Curse strike him. I’d seen his body burn to cinders. The Killing Curse was supposed to be irreversible. It was one of the most powerful curses known to wizardkind, the most unforgivable of the Unforgivable Curses. How had Nick survived it? Only one person had ever withstood that spell in history, and those were unique circumstances. I doubted anyone had placed a love-based countercharm around Nick to shield him. Besides... what if he wasn’t the only one to return?
More and more people gathered in the snowfield. Roughly fifteen minutes later, Asher returned, seemingly out of breath. A small gathering of wizards and witches surrounded him. Silas noticed and gestured to us, and we all walked over to overhear what he was saying.
“There is a very large detachment of Death Eaters assaulting the city from the southwest valley. The Dementors have overtaken the city, and are attacking civilians indiscriminately. The muggle military forces have already fallen. The scale of this attack is much more significant than the previous one.”
“What do we do?” asked a fearful witch.
“There is very little hope of defeating the Death Eaters with our current forces. Our safest option is to evacuate as many civilians as possible from Salem.”
“How are we going to get out?” asked a wizard. “The Limbo cloud has surrounded everything, and we can’t apparate through it.”
“A mass Patronus,” Asher answered.
The group went quiet. I looked at Silas, whose eyes were wide. “What’s a mass Patronus?” I whispered.
“It means corporeal Patronuses from multiple casters working together,” he answered.
“My Aurors studied the properties of the Limbo cloud that Trackwell summoned last summer,” Asher explained. “We found that the Limbo Mist had properties similar to the dark magic inherent in Dementors. It has been theorized in the past that Patronuses can dispel Limbo Mist, though because standard countercharms are easier, they’ve generally been favored. But the previous battle already proved that countercharms are not enough to breach the dome. We need a stronger method.”
“So we gather as many wizards and witches as we can,” said Silas’s dad. “And we breach the wall.”
Asher nodded. “It will likely be a very small hole, and it won’t remain open forever. But we can sustain it long enough to save as many people as we can.”
“I’ll spread word to have the residents evacuated to the northeast,” said a witch.
“Where will we take them?” asked Angel Carson.
“St. Isadora,” said Asher. “It’s a village across the northern mountain range, about ten miles from Salem. The north-south state road leads directly to it. We’ll defend the civilians as they evacuate up the road.”
Hearing Asher’s words made the reality of the situation sink in. I was reminded of the discussion held at Angel Carson’s house on the eve of the Battle of Salem. The city was at war a second time.
“The Death Eaters will try to attack the evacuees,” Silas’s dad pointed out.
“Then we defend them with everything we have. We will need every last wizard and witch to participate, including the Reborn...”
“I’m afraid I cannot allow that.”
Everyone whirled around.
There, standing just a few dozen meters away from us on the snowy plane, was a living shadow. The pitch black of his cloak juxtaposed perfectly with the snow, a black stain on the white expanse. He was tall and featureless, like a Dementor, a wraith that drained all happiness and hope. My heart tightened, and my head began to spin again with fear and disbelief. There were a few screams from the crowd. The faceless man looked at us, and bowed his head modestly.
“There is a plan for Salem. Escape is not acceptable.”
Asher fired a curse. It arched in the air directly at Darkanoss’s face, but the spell passed right through him, like he wasn’t even there. I realized a moment later that his body was partially transparent. He was like a ghost, or a hologram from science fiction. He wasn’t really here; somehow, he was projecting his image in front of us. Fearful chatter spread through the crowded field. Darkanoss spoke calmly.
“I have foreseen what the future of wizardkind shall become. The world needs to know that this will be our bastion. A safe haven from muggle hatred. The show must carry on according to plan.”
Asher stepped forward fearlessly, eyeing Darkanoss face-to-face. “You will not harm the people of this city. We shall not permit it.”
Darkanoss seemed to ponder his words. The cloaked man brought a hand up to his chin, and shook his head slowly. “You misunderstand me. I do not wish to harm any wizards or witches... only those who resist will be hurt. The first battle was just a demonstration. This time, I offer you all the opportunity to join me.”
He extended his robed arms invitationally to the crowd. “Brothers. Sisters. I apologize for those you have lost. Truly, I regret every moment of agony you have suffered. But do you see the truth? I am alive. All of my Death Eaters are alive. We have surpassed death, and so can you. That is our great gift!”
“What is your goal?” Asher demanded flatly.
“I want Salem to be our capitol. Our shining beacon of magical triumph. When this city falls, it will prove to the muggles that they can no longer force us to live in fear. It will be a call to action for other witches and wizards across the world. There will be a great war, and the wizards will emerge victorious, as the rulers of this world that we were meant to be. We will build a school here, grander even than Hogwarts. We will form a new magical government, one dedicated to emancipation for all magical peoples.”
“You are a psychopath,” said Asher coldly. “The wizarding world will never yield to you.”
Darkanoss sighed. “I wish I did not have to resort to this. I have deep respect for the magical community of Salem, especially your Reborn. But I cannot allow you to interfere with my plans.”
He turned around and gestured to the huge cloud of Dementors in the distance. As if prompted by his gaze, they suddenly began to move as one, converging on a point that appeared to be just south of the city, in the fields between Salem and Lynnville. When the Dementors drew closer together, they looked like a single black mass, a snaking vein of black smoke.
Silas gasped. “That’s where...”
Darkanoss raised his transparent wand. “I have become one with the Limbo. That is why the Dementors obey me. They are the same, part of the uninterrupted whole between life and death. Through our connection, I have discovered the great powers that lie dormant within them. Behold... the Soul Vortex.”
There was a sudden thunderous bang. The force of the blast nearly knocked over everyone in the crowd. A resounding gust of wind swept across the field. The sound had come from miles away, at the approximate location where the Dementors were clustering. They drew even closer together, spiraling around one another in a huge cyclonic formation. It was a surreal sight, a bit like watching black ceramics being formed in a potter’s wheel. The clouds in the sky turned from gray to black. Wind whipped behind us, though I realized it was being sucked toward the cyclone. Snow flew off the ground and was pulled across the valley, revealing the dead grass beneath. Then the clouds began to descend from the sky, enveloping the Dementors in a spiraling column before touching the ground.
It was a tornado.
Darkanoss raised his wand directly above himself. “Comedite Infideles!”
There was a flash of blue light from his wand. At the same moment, far in the distance near the base of the tornado, a bluish beam rocketed up into the sky. I realized that was where the real Darkanoss was, broadcasting his image to us. The beam flew silently upward until it crossed the spiraling clouds into the neck of the tornado, and vanished. I heard a distant screeching, like a million ghosts crying out at once. The tornado lit up blue from the inside, and I saw long, white strands emerging from its sides. They brushed over the surrounding landscape, like vast feelers or tentacles. Countless tiny white lights were sucked up from the ground into the tornado, as if it was absorbing something from the city itself.
Darkanoss bowed to us. “Doleo. Requiescet in pace.”
Then he looked directly at me. “I will see you soon, Alan Doe.”
The New Dark Lord vanished.