Assault on the Soul Vortex
They all had their reasons. Jared told me the only reason he was coming because he wanted to protect Zoe. I don’t know why Jake came. As for the rest, they seemed to have mixed feelings, but the fact that they all went along with my plan shows that there must have been something I said that resonated with them. Maybe they agreed with my rationale that the Reborn were the only ones capable of stopping the Soul Vortex. Maybe they just wanted to do their part to keep their families safe. But the fact that every one of them came, even the ones I thought would walk away and tell on us, still amazes me. Maybe children are more courageous than we give them credit for. It was their spirit that got us through that terrible darkness. Without them, I don’t think any of us would have survived the war.
I didn’t know most of the other kids in the group. Peter, Silas, and Liam were my friends, and Jared and Zoe to a lesser extent. Matilda, James, Eliza, and Lisa were just acquaintances, and though I’d gone to school with most of them at some point, we were never close. Jake outright despised me. The remaining six were unknown faces from a variety of backgrounds. Some were former students of Summerroot or John Proctor. Many had been in Lynnville during the first battle, but others had been with Liam in East Salem. That was probably why a lot of them chose to come with us: they believed in Liam. Or maybe, some repressed part of me says, they believed in me. But that’s a thought I can’t permit myself.
We knew the adults would never allow us to go on this mission. Our involvement in the war thus far had been circumstantial, but there was no way they would be okay with us putting our lives on the line to stop the Soul Vortex. So we had to sneak out. We went in waves, small groups separating and then regrouping on the dark road leading back to Salem. It was only once we started walking through the frigid night that I truly realized what we were doing. Not only were we disobeying our parents, but we were about to willingly go back to the battle we all ran away from. It was terribly frightening. I doubt most of us would have gone along with this plan, if it weren’t for the fact that all of us subconsciously realized: if we didn’t fight now, we would probably die later. We weren’t stupid enough to think that Darkanoss would stop at Salem. This was our one chance to end this nightmare before it could destroy everything.
Despite their allegiance to me, the other kids didn’t really talk to me as we walked. It was awkward. We didn’t feel like some team of brave war heroes. We felt like a ragtag group of strangers, united by a common cause, but nonetheless completely distant from each other.
I briefly talked to Eliza Medley as we were walking, since she was the youngest of us. “Are you... sure you want to come? I mean, won’t your parents...”
Eliza gave me a vicious glare. “What, you think you can do more than me just because you’re older?”
“No, no... I didn’t mean...”
She snapped her hair away from me, her hair whipping. “Save it. I’m gonna protect Salem no matter what. That’s why I’m coming. You can’t change my mind.”
I smiled meekly. She reminded me of Emma. “Okay, then.”
It was a long walk, just as it had been before. It was freezing cold, the night air seeping through our layers of protection and chilling our skin to the bone. We had plenty of chances to regret our decision. Every time we stopped to rest, I thought of how far we were from St. Isadora. Had our families noticed our absence yet? I hadn’t seen Mom and Dad all night, nor had I seen my friends’ parents. The only one in the tent now was Clea, who had slept through our deliberations and never noticed our departure. As the great dark dome appeared on the horizon, I wondered if I was truly ready to uphold the task that Sam had given me. I thought of the army of Death Eaters racing at the tunnel through the cloud. I thought of Rosemary and Dirk dying. Truly, we were vastly outmatched. But we had to try.
It was a few hours later when we arrived at the edge of the dome. There had been a few conversations beforehand, but when we got there, all voices had gone silent. We kept staring around warily for Death Eaters, perhaps thinking we were more likely to run into them now that we were closer, but there was no sign of them. I almost moved to the spot where the tunnel had been, but Silas stopped me.
“Wait. We should pick somewhere else. There’s probably Death Eaters through there.”
“How do you know that?” Jake asked impatiently.
“This is where we exited from. It stands to reason that they would probably have guards stationed here in case we came back the same way. Besides, when the evacuation order was given, this was the place the people were told to go to. If there are still civilians in Salem, they might try to come here, which is all the more reason for the Death Eaters to defend this position.”
I was once again impressed with Silas’s intelligent deduction. I shivered at the thought of muggle civilians working their way up the highway in hopes of escaping, only to find the tunnel closed and guarded by a battalion of Death Eaters. I prayed that none of them had met that fate.
“So where should we enter from?”
To answer, Silas pointed at a winding dirt road leading off through an adjacent canyon. “That road there leads to Summerroot. I doubt the Death Eaters are guarding it closely. We’ll enter from there.”
Nobody had any objections to this. Silas led the way, and we began walking down the dirt road. This one was a lot more winding than the other one, and had several steep inclines that took a toll on us. But nobody complained, at least aside from Jake. We never apparated, partly because we could only move a few dozen meters with each apparition, but also because we were afraid of making too much noise. We were walking right along the border of the Limbo cloud, and I could hear the faint rumbling of the Soul Vortex somewhere within it. I felt like it could hear us lurking along its edge, hungering for our souls.
We finally reached a turn in the road where it ran directly into the clouds. Silas nodded at me. “This is it.”
I looked at the others. “Do all of you know how to cast Patronuses?” It occurred to me that I probably should have asked that question earlier, given that our whole plan depended on casting a mass Patronus. They had all come along, so I’d assumed they all could, but it didn’t hurt to check.
Thankfully, everyone nodded, even the young Eliza Medley. “Asher taught us,” said Matilda Ashmore.
“Okay. Then let’s do it. On the count of three.”
The others raised their wands, including a reluctant Jared and Jake.
“Expecto Patronum!” I yelled.
“Expecto Patronum!” the others cried.
Sixteen glowing animals appeared in the air before us. I recognized some of them right away: Peter’s courageous falcon, Silas’s great owl. A huge polar bear burst out of Liam’s wand. Jared cast a dog, and Zoe cast a mouse. My silver doe swam right in the middle, and the sight of her made my heart lighten just a little bit. The Patronuses all spiraled together in a great spiritual dance, before turning their attention to the Limbo cloud and rushing at it.
I could immediately tell just how much more powerful our Patronuses were than the adults’ had been. The instant my doe touched the cloud, it exploded backwards in a silent burst. Silas and Peter’s Patronuses soon followed, along with the rest of them. The tunnel they bore was wider than it was long, like a gigantic hole in the wall of the dome. The light of our Patronuses pierced inside of the dark valley like sunlight leaking into a dark closet. I could see the black clouds overhead, hiding the stars and moon that I could see from the other side. Beyond the rooftops of suburban houses, I saw the skyline of the city of Salem, and there in the dead center of it all was the Soul Vortex.
Seeing that black column of biblical proportions, I was one again reminded of just how dangerous the task we were about to undertake was. I felt so small compared to it, like an ant looking up at a skyscraper. But there was no turning back now. The hole we’d made in the wall of the dome was enormous. It wouldn’t take long for the Death Eaters to notice it. With one last regretful glance at the safe-looking world outside the dome, I stepped through the hole, followed by the others. Our Patronuses disappeared when we made it through, and the clouds rapidly swept back in, sealing us in.
Summerroot looked the same as always. The same cute houses, the same nature trails, the same narrow avenues. There wasn’t a sign of life anywhere. Though it was dreadfully cold, the snow was all gone, leaving only dead trees and grass. I didn’t like being back in that neighborhood. It brought back too many memories. We deliberately walked down a road that would lead us far away from Summerroot School. None of us wanted to see that building, not after what we’d seen there in the first battle.
We had come to Salem partly to see if there were any surviving civilians, but we never did see any. I’d later learn that many had taken shelter underground or in their homes, but they were being systematically hunted down by the Death Eaters, who captured them and brought them to the Soul Vortex. The great monstrosity itself had rested itself near downtown, tearing up buildings and creating a gigantic crater where an urban neighborhood had once been. Its neck bent and twisted like it was alive, the blue tendrils fingering the rooftops and parks, searching for more victims.
When we passed under the highway in the direction of downtown, we encountered the Death Eaters.
They had been waiting for us. They must have seen us enter, but they didn’t attack us until we had left the Summerroot neighborhood and were on the Soul Vortex’s doorstep. Nick Varennikov stood before us with a group of of six wizards and witches. Aside from Nick, we couldn’t see their faces. They were all wearing masks, but their heights gave away their age. They were all kids, just like us, most around twelve years old. The Reborn Death Eaters.
“Did you really think you could just sneak in without being caught?” Nick asked mockingly.
The sixteen of us took battle stances under the bridge. I pointed my wand at Nick, who seemed unfazed. Despite the fact that they were outnumbered, the Reborn Death Eaters were fearless.
“The New Dark Lord has been waiting for you. He wishes to speak to you.”
“Tell him to send me an email,” I snarled.
“What are you even doing here?” Nick half-laughed. “Did you think that you would be able to stop us? Salem is ours. You’ve lost. You should’ve stayed outside where you were safe.”
When none of us answered, Nick sighed. “Well, not that it matters.” He side-nodded at his Death Eaters. “Capture Alan Doe. Kill the others.”
The Death Eaters obeyed wordlessly. They spread out into formation and raised their wands in unison, like a bunch of marionettes being controlled by a single puppet master. Nick stood behind the flank with his arms folded, not even bothering to participate. My group enclosed on itself as they approached, wands pointed in every direction. Nick raised his hand, and snapped his fingers.
Spells flew everywhere. The first few that I noticed were Shield Charms raised by my friends, blocking a few of the initial attacks. The Death Eaters no doubt hoped to enclose us quickly, but Matilda suddenly burst forward with an aggressive spell that hit a Death Eater girl in the chest. She fell to the ground, which gave Liam the chance to point his wand at the Death Eater next to her. “Flipendo!”
The Death Eater was launched backwards. His head smashed hard against the side of the tunnel, and he fell limp. The red flames were already sliding up his unconscious torso when his allies attacked again, aiming the bulk of their curses at Liam. Silas blocked them, and spoke to me over the din of spells.
“We’re sitting ducks here! We need to get away!”
I nodded at him, then looked over at the others and yelled. “Everyone! Disapparate!”
Most of them listened in time to get away. I twisted my heel and teleported a short distance away, landing on the concrete near a gas station. A couple of the kids who hadn’t apparated in time were hit by spells, and I could only pray they weren’t dead. The Death Eaters adapted quickly, apparating en masse and appearing all over the place. They clearly relied on a strategy of overwhelming their opponents with sheer power, a method favorable to the Reborn. These weren’t like the adult Death Eaters we had faced. Their powers were in a different league.
I couldn’t see the others. I was standing with Peter and fighting one of the Death Eater kids from the shadows of the gas station, and couldn’t look away for even a second for fear of his rapid-fire spells hitting me in the face. Our superior numbers proved advantageous, however. I backed him against the gas pumps, and Peter cast a Reductor Curse that blew the whole thing to smithereens. I hardly caught a glimpse of the red flames before they were washed away by a huge cloud of smoke. I suppose it should have unnerved me how easy it had been to kill that Death Eater, not just physically, but mentally as well. I told myself they weren’t really dead, and that I didn’t have a choice even if they were. But really, I think the truth was that I was becoming desensitized to it. Like so many other things, I was numb to my feelings, acting on my instincts. The gruesome reality was clear: in this situation, we could either kill or be killed.
A Death Eater was knocked from atop the bridge and landed on his back. When I looked up, I saw little Eliza Medley standing triumphantly above, looking down with scorn as her opponent was reduced to fire and ash. Two more Death Eaters fell; one was slashed at by Silas and bled from their arm, while the other was pushed against a wall by Jared. Nick, who up until that point had been quietly watching the battle from afar, started to look agitated. With only one ally left, he glared at the surviving members of my group.
“No! You worthless fools! Can’t you do anything right?!”
Silas stepped past the burning body of a Death Eater, and pointed his wand at Nick. Peter and I approached from the other side, and Matilda and James moved in from the back, flanking him. Nick suddenly flailed his wand, creating a shock wave around him that knocked all of us back. Nick took advantage of the distraction, and fired a Killing Curse at James, which hit him squarely in the chest and knocked him off his feet. Matilda screamed as his lifeless body hit the pavement.
Nick pointed his wand at me. “I won’t fail my master’s orders. He wants you. I don’t care if it’s now or later, I’m going to make you kneel before him!”
“You’re outnumbered and beaten,” said Silas. “Surrender.”
Nick didn’t move his wand away from my face. Eliza Medley got impatient. “Screw this! We can’t waste any more time!”
She fired a curse at Nick’s face. Nick reflexively gasped, and blocked it. From the look on his face, he was clearly frightened by how closely the attack had come to striking him.
I stared at him. “What’s with you? I thought you didn’t care if you died!”
“Yeah,” Peter chimed in. “You came back to life. You said that you and the Death Eaters are immortal. Why would you be so afraid to get hurt now, Nick?”
Nick’s glare trembled between the two of us, but he said nothing. Silas, looking on from behind, seemed to realize something. “Aha... so that’s what’s going on.”
“What?” I asked. Nick looked at him as if panicked by his sudden realization.
“You’re the one who’s supposed to perform the ritual, aren’t you, Nick?” Silas pointed directly at him. “The Ritual of the Blind.”
Nick went pale. “How do you know about that?”
Silas didn’t answer. He continued to read Nick like an open book. “The Phoenix Stone requires a living Death Eater to perform the resurrection ritual. That means that Darkanoss has selected someone to fill that role, someone who has to survive the battle. You aren’t supposed to be here right now, are you? He ordered you to stay away from the fighting. But you wanted to capture Alan. You wanted revenge. You wanted to show off to your master just how powerful you think you are.”
“SHUT YOUR MOUTH!” Nick screamed. But his agitation only proved that Silas’s words were true. When it all sank in, a realization came upon me. If Nick was the one in charge of the Ritual of the Blind... then he knew where the Phoenix Stone was. If we stopped him now, we could prevent the Death Eaters from ever coming back. We could end the war, here and now.
Nick noticed the realization dawning on me, and acted immediately. A curse flew at me. I managed to dodge it, and the others quickly began firing at Nick. There were far more of us than him, but he was still the most powerful Reborn, and kept all of us at bay. But he was panicking. Silas had exposed his secret. I pushed desperately through Nick’s defense. I had to stop him at all costs. If he got away now, then even if we destroyed the Soul Vortex and defeated Darkanoss, he would just perform the Ritual of the Blind in five months and bring them all back. I couldn’t allow there to be a third battle. Nick had to be stopped.
Silas disarmed Nick. It happened so fast that he barely noticed. He was too busy trying to hurl a Killing Curse at me. Now defenseless, Nick was backed into a corner. He tried to use wandless magic on Silas, but Liam fired a spell that knocked him down. He tumbled down the street and fell into a heap near a sewage grate, gasping for air.
But then he laughed.
Liam angrily aimed his wand at him. “What’s so funny?!”
Nick looked up at us. His usually perfectly-styled blond hair was hanging in his face, a mad look in his eyes.
“So... are you gonna kill me?”
My heart skipped a beat. Nick laughed again and stood up fully, his dirtied robes dragging on the asphalt. The fear that he had felt moments ago seemed to have suddenly vanished.
“If you kill me, then you’ll never find the Phoenix Stone. It’s hidden quite well, far away from here. Besides, did you really think I’m the only Death Eater who can perform the ritual? I didn’t perform it last time. There are others. My master plans for every contingency.”
Silas grimaced. Nick stepped forward, and all of us backed up instinctively.
“You’re all a bunch of naïve children who can’t see the big picture. Darkanoss is here to save all of us. But infidels like you won’t get to taste salvation. You lost your chance to become immortals like us. I will live on for centuries. I will see this city become the great haven of wizardkind. But you will all die today, whether by my hand or his. Your names will be forgotten, just like those of your fallen friends.”
I had absolutely had enough of his rambling. I was prepared to shoot a Stunning Spell directly at his twisted face, but then Nick whispered something under his breath. “Suscipe me in terram promissionis.”
A Death Eater apparated out of nowhere behind him. Before any of us could make a move, they took him by his shoulders, and both of them disapparated into thin air.
For a while, there was no sound but the distant howling of the Soul Vortex as it continued to tear its way into the heart of Salem. I exchanged glances with Peter and Silas, both of whom looked like they felt about the same way I did. We hadn’t seen the Death Eater approaching. They must have snuck up when we weren’t looking, and helped Nick escape. If he was gone, then that meant the ritual was still...
“Shoot!” Silas yelled angrily. He kicked the street curb fiercely, in an uncharacteristic display of anger. “I thought I had him! I thought I...”
“Silas...” I said worriedly.
Silas shook his head slowly. “Dad would have never made a rookie mistake like that.”
“We can’t worry about it now,” Peter insisted, in his usual reassuring tone. “Don’t beat yourself up.”
“Um, guys?” said Lisa. “What do we... what do we do now?”
We all looked at her, and then looked around at the others. Matilda was sobbing over James’s dead body. The handful of kids who hadn’t apparated out of the way when we were under the bridge were also on the ground, motionless and bleeding. The sight was so repulsive that I had to look away. I was instantly struck with a freight train’s worth of self-hatred. I was the one who convinced these kids to come fight with me. I was the one who told them it was the only way. Now they were dead because of me. What would I tell their families?
Peter noticed the look on my face, and put both hands on my shoulders. “Alan. Please look at me.”
I looked at him. That freckled face, those lazy green eyes. The one who had been there for me through thick and thin, since the day I first fought Nick on the schoolyard of John Proctor. I breathed slowly, even though my chest spasmed as the air left my lungs. Peter was here. If Peter was still here, then everything was okay. He was what Salem meant to me, a reassuring presence that I had to protect.
I looked at Matilda. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. “We need to get everyone out of here,” I said to Peter. “Get them back out of the dome, and...”
“No!” Eliza Medley yelled. “Are you kidding me?! You’re going to let their sacrifices go to waste now? No way! We’re seeing this through to the end.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but didn’t say anything. Zoe ran up to my side and took my hand, something she always seemed eager to do. “She’s right, Alan! We can still win this! You’re our leader, so I know we can do it!”
Jared was irked by what she said, and frowned at me. “If you give up now, then you’re just a coward.”
Then Matilda looked at me. “I’m going,” she said quietly. “I can’t... I couldn’t live with myself if I knew that he died for nothing. We have to stop the Soul Vortex.”
The other kids seemed to agree with her. I stared at them for a long time, then looked down at the ground beneath my feet. Now more than ever, all I wanted was to leave, to get us as far away from this terrible battlefield as possible. But they weren’t willing to quit yet, so I couldn’t quit on them either. That’s not what Emma would have done. I’m not sure why she came to mind, but that cemented my decision.
“Where do we go?” I finally asked.
Silas gestured to the monstrous weather formation in the city. “The same place we were going in the first place. The Soul Vortex.”
* * *
The assault on the Soul Vortex is another moment of the war that I’m asked about frequently. In society’s endless crusade to misrepresent and oversimplify history, I am often depicted as the mastermind behind the whole assault. But while it was my vision from Sam that revealed the truth behind the resurrection, and while I was the one to come up with the idea of a mass Patronus cast by the Reborn, I was not the leader of that group. We had no leader, even if Zoe said I was one. The only thing that guided all of us was the shared objective of destroying the Soul Vortex before it could hurt anyone else.
The closer we approached, the worse the atmosphere around us became. The pitch-black sky somehow became even blacker. It became hard to see more than a few hundred meters beyond where we stood. As we entered the row of tall buildings in the old downtown district, we could hear their foundations rumbling from the pressure beyond. It was like a constant earthquake. I don’t know how powerful the Soul Vortex was by the standards of actual tornadoes, but what it may have lacked in destructive power, it made up for in its soul-sucking powers. That didn’t make the actual object any less dangerous, though. As we passed one boulevard, we could see a wide trail burned directly through the buildings, marking the path of the tornado as it had shredded its way through brick and mortar to reach its current position.
We began to see the bodies then. Muggles were sprawled across the streets, lying in their last positions from when they had desperately tried to get away. Many of the bodies were damaged, but some were completely untouched, yet no less dead. Their skin was white and withered, everything that made them alive drained from their bodies. It was a hard sight to see. I thought I saw a little girl lying dead next to her mother, but looked away before I could confirm. I couldn’t bear to dwell on the loss of innocent life now. All I could do was focus on the mission.
Peter glanced behind us as we walked through an alley. “Hey, where’s Jake?”
I looked around, but didn’t see him. When I thought about it, I hadn’t seen him since before we fought Nick and the Reborn Death Eaters. “Think he ran off?”
“Seems like it,” Liam said distastefully. “That guy’s garbage. It’s not even worth thinking about.”
We turned a street corner. This was one of the longest and widest avenues in Salem, and led directly to where the Soul Vortex currently rested, amidst the tallest buildings.
The avenue was filled with Death Eaters.
Like Nick, they seemed to have been expecting us. They were all adults, unlike the Reborn we had fought before, but their numbers were nothing short of absurd. They were everywhere, grotesque masks staring behind hundreds of black hoods, like a zombie apocalypse had overtaken the city. When we approached, they didn’t give us the luxury of long villainous speeches like Nick. They instantly opened fire with all manner of offensive spells, and with a start, my friends and I counterattacked.
A cascade of curses beat against my Shield Charm like rain pouring during a thunderstorm. Even all of these spells combined were only almost as powerful as the ones Nick had been firing, but that didn’t mean I could let my guard down.
“We can’t cast our Patronuses with all of these Death Eaters around!” Silas yelled. “Should we retreat?”
“How do we know there aren’t more of them everywhere?!” Liam retorted.
“We have to push through!” I insisted. “This is the only way to get to it. We beat Nick, we can beat them!”
“That’s my Alan!” Liam grinned. Peter frowned at him.
Matilda shot an angry burst of spells at a group of Death Eaters, who were all knocked backwards. Eliza made a nearby bush transform into a swarm of wasps, which flew at the Death Eaters and temporarily distracted them, long enough for Lisa and Zoe to stun them all. Even though we were hopelessly outnumbered, we definitely had a fighting chance. We just had to keep this up.
“I’d estimate it’s maybe ten blocks to the Soul Vortex,” said Silas. “If we keep moving at this rate, we should be there...”
Suddenly, I felt something grab me by the arms. I had been so preoccupied with what was in front of me that I hadn’t even thought to check behind me. When I turned my head to get a look at what had grabbed me, my stomach flipped. It was a short witch with blonde hair and gaunt features, who grinned with psychotic joy as she gasped me with her spindly fingers. It was Jenna Widow.
“Alan!” Peter cried. He tried to grab me, but it was too late. Jenna twisted her heel, and for the second time in my life, I felt myself dragged against my will into an infinitesimally small tube. My body was pressed tightly. A split second later, there was a loud crack, and I was thrown against the pavement.
Everything was dark. It was darker than the vacuum of space, darker than even before, under the night sky covered in black clouds. The ground was covered in frost. I tried to stand up, but there was a pressure on my back. I turned my head slightly, and caught sight of a nearby building. I was somewhere in the middle of the city. There were no more sounds of battle. I couldn’t hear my friends. All I heard was the thunderous roaring, which was louder than ever before, beating in my ears with my throbbing pulse.
I turned the other way. There it was. The Soul Vortex was right in front of me, just a few blocks down from my position. It motionlessly whirled, digging up dirt and rocks and tossing them around haphazardly. From my position, I surmised that I was on the opposite side of it from where my friends were fighting.
There was a cloaked man standing between me and the vortex. He gazed up at the glowing blue tendrils as they swished and swashed in the air, moaning as they searched for souls to consume. The man turned around, and his faceless gaze fell to me. I dragged my fingers across the asphalt into tight fists.
“Darkanoss.”
* * *
“Please release him, Jenna. I wish to speak to him.”
Widow kicked my wand out of my hand before I could raise it, then aimed another kick squarely against my chin. She wasn’t very big, but the point of her black boot made my jaw sting with piercing pain. After slamming her foot down hard on my back, Widow retreated to the side of a nearby building, where I spotted another Death Eater watching me quietly. The gargantuan, frog-like woman was unmistakable as Karen Blair. The sight of her made my blood boil again.
Darkanoss strolled forward. I could hear his cloak dragging on the ground. My mind rushed to figure out how to escape, or how to defeat Darkanoss without my wand. I was still powerful. I was Reborn. But with Blair and Widow right there, making a move would be dangerous. It would only take one flick of their wands, and the Killing Curse would finish me off where I stood.
Darkanoss knelt down in front of me. His body didn’t radiate heat like others. It was the opposite, like heat was drained in his presence. He was a cold spot, an emptiness, a corrupted soul.
“I’m sure you’ve realized it now, Alan. The truth about us both. Our fates are intertwined.”
I had the strength to glare up at him, though it took a lot of self-control to hide my fear. There was no way to tell what his expression was behind the mask.
“Some time ago, I met a phoenix in Saudi Arabia. Phoenixes are fascinating creatures. They are able to move between the worlds of the living and the dead. From the feathers of this phoenix, I forged a Phoenix Stone. Did you know it has been attempted before? A dark wizard once tried to perform the Ritual of the Blind with a phoenix in Great Britain, but was stopped by a great teacher of magical arts. That teacher later took that phoenix under his care, and kept it until the day he died.”
“I don’t care... about your history lessons...” I choked with vile anger. My torso was still sore from Widow stepping on me, and it made it hard to breathe.
The New Dark Lord ignored me. “My ritual was successful, unlike that of my kindred spirit. I bound the souls of my Death Eaters to the Phoenix Stone. I made us immortals. But there was something I overlooked. Something I could not have predicted. A prophecy. For you see, the very same phoenix that gave birth to my stone... was also connected to you. You share a soul with that bird. You are familiars.”
Darkanoss unsheathed his wand, and placed it against my forehead. For the first time, I caught a hint of anger in his voice. “I can’t kill you. I gave a piece of my soul to create the Phoenix Stone. Your soul has its essence. If I cast the Killing Curse now, it would rebound and destroy me. We are like Riddle and Potter. We are destined to be enemies, to repeat this dance over and over until one of us is destroyed.”
Darkanoss stood up slowly. I could see the Soul Vortex vibrating wildly behind him, huge gusts of air spiraling up into the sky. “But I am not willing to sacrifice my plans because of you. I must free wizardkind. I truly regret this, Alan, but I can’t allow you to live any longer.”
Jenna Widow stepped forward. It looked as though she had been waiting for this moment for a long time. Her long wand raised above her head, and she awaited her master’s word to strike. I stared helplessly at her face, and then at Darkanoss, who remained hidden behind his mask. I thought I saw a silvery light somewhere behind him, near a rooftop, but couldn’t make out what it was.
“Doleo,” he said. “Requiescet in pace.”
But before Widow could cast the curse, she was blasted off her feet.
The jinx sent her flying wildly towards a nearby wall. She slammed against it hard, bones crushing against the bricks, and then slumped back onto her knees and burst into flame. By the time her ashes had scattered across the sidewalk, Liam Manfred had run between me and Darkanoss.
I stared in disbelief. “Liam?!”
“My Patronus led me to you!” he answered. He pointed to a rooftop behind Darkanoss, where I spotted a great silver polar bear standing proudly at its edge. The polar boar roared and reared its body upward proudly. Darkanoss stared at the animal in shock.
“Your Patronus?” I said slowly. “Then that means...”
That was the moment when it happened.
From behind the Soul Vortex, there was a great light, brighter than anything I had seen before. It was like the sun was coming up, but the sun was silvery-blue like the moon. The light pierced through the thick black coils of the Soul Vortex, stabbing it with millions of little holes, like laser beams piercing the veil. The vortex moaned and swished like a living thing in agony, but the light didn’t relent. I saw a collection of little glows rising up around the tornado’s sides, spiraling in the opposite direction, against the current. An owl. A dog. A mouse. A falcon. They were the Patronuses of my friends. With each movement of the spirit animals, the tornado buckled and shrank, slowly being defeated by the power of their happiness.
“Incredible...” Darkanoss said breathlessly. Even as he was losing, he seemed mesmerized by the power on display. “So this is the Rebirth Generation...”
Blair was not so keen on standing idly by. “You worthless brat!” she screamed at Liam. “Avada Kedavra!”
I pushed Liam out of the way just as the green light flashed by, barely missing us both. When both of us were down, I hurriedly grabbed the wand from the ground that Widow had kicked out of my hands. We stood up quickly, and both of us began dueling Blair with everything we had. My heart pounded with newfound energy. I could feel the warmth from the mass Patronus even from all the way over here. The Soul Vortex was slowly dissolving. My friends had worked together, and they were winning. The Death Eaters had lost.
Blair blocked our spells with her usual grace and indifference. She was as skilled as ever, but this time, I had the training from Mason Randall Asher on my side. I had become wise to her tricks. Blair relied on defense, trying to force her opponents to make sloppy and aggressive attacks, and making well-timed strikes whenever they let their guard down. To defeat her was all a matter of outsmarting her. Each time she thought she had an opening at one of us, the other one fired a spell to keep her guard up. She never had the chance to counterattack. I could see her greasy face growing sweaty. She was losing.
At last, I saw my opening. When Blair had her attention on me, Liam fired a huge burst of flames directly at her. She blocked it fully with her wand, which gave me just enough time to cast a spell. “Supra Volant!”
Blair’s eyes widened. She immediately twisted her wand back toward me, but then realized her mistake. The spell wasn’t coming from that direction. The pinkish-red light twisted widely in the air, and struck her squarely on the shoulder. She screamed in pain, and was blasted backwards, toppling over the curb. Her heavy body rolled onto the sidewalk.
Liam grinned at me, and lowered his wand. “Nice job, Alan! You really are the best...”
“Liam!” I yelled. “Look out!”
But it was too late. The moment Liam heard the words leave my mouth, a green light flashed from behind and exploded around his back. Liam had a confused look on his chubby freckled face, and that was the last look I ever saw. He went limp, and drifted to the ground as if in slow motion, settling at my feet. His blond hair spread out and blew in the wind, dancing like blades of grass.
Something began to ring in my ears. I felt a throbbing deep down inside of me, pulsating through my head. There were no thoughts, only a maddening scream through my mind. I struggled to process what I was seeing, but I was in denial. Liam just lay there, never moving no matter how much I thought he should. He should get up now. He should stop pretending. Liam, you’re not dead. Get up now.
Darkanoss sighed deeply. “I hate to spill the blood of Reborn. But these are the sacrifices of freedom.”
I looked slowly up at him. The numb feeling in my mind was immediately replaced with intense hatred. Without warning, I threw my wand out in front of my body and cried at the top of my lungs. “CONFRINGO!”
The explosive spell launched out of my wand directly at Darkanoss’s face. He reflexively raised his wand to block it, but the resultant collision caused a massive explosion. When the cloud of smoke cleared, Darkanoss was hunched over and clutching his face. When he looked up again, I saw fragments of black fabric and metal dropping from under his hood. Pale skin showed from behind his black gloved hand. Half of his mask had been blown off. I could see his face.
He was so young.
I couldn’t have known that he was only nineteen. It still baffles me to this day. He had the face of a boy who had just barely grown up, refined and handsome, but still smooth and untainted by wrinkles and scars. His eyes were jet-black, and his hair matched, its wiry bangs hanging in front of his face. His skin was unnaturally white, like the skin of a vampire. This young man, who had only graduated from Hogwarts two years prior, had single-handedly raised the deadliest army in wizarding history. He had mastered the Dark Arts that had taken his predecessor decades to control. He had made a contract with the Limbo. He controlled the Dementors. He had created a Phoenix Stone. And he was only nineteen.
The boy who called himself Darkanoss frowned calmly at me. I was still too shocked at the sight of his face to say anything. Blair stood up from her position on the sidewalk, and strolled slowly over to her master. Even though he was nearly forty years younger than her, he towered over her, and she obeyed him unquestioningly.
“I wish I could make you see,” said Donovan Trackwell. “I am doing this for all of us, Alan. This is for our future. But your future... ends now.”
Blair pointed her wand at me. “Avada Kedavra!”
I pointed mine back. “Expelliarmus!”
The two spells interlocked. Blair hadn’t been expecting me to resist directly, and at that moment she realized her fate was sealed. My spell was more powerful than hers. I channeled all of my rage into that single spell. I thought of Emma. I thought of Liam. I would make them pay for what they did. That was all I cared about now. I didn’t care about Salem. I didn’t care about my friends. They have to pay. They all have to pay. I have to make them pay.
The core of the spells hit Blair’s wand, and detonated. She screamed, but then her voice was sharply cut off as her own spell hit her in the chest. A low, guttural gasp regurgitated from deep within her diaphragm, and she fell on her face against the ground. Her body burned away seconds later.
At that moment, the Soul Vortex finally dispersed. The dark rumbling that had shaken the city finally went still. All that was left was a crater where it had once been. The sky turned from black back into silvery-gold. Darkanoss gazed up at it with a serene expression, taking in the silence. He looked at me.
“And so it begins again. See you in five months, Alan.”
He raised his wand to his face, and whispered “Ad liberationem.”
The spell was quick and silent. Darkanoss’s body was nothing but flames and ashes by the time it hit the ground. Morning sunlight pierced the clouds, and the dome slowly receded, revealing a sky at the very breaking moments of dawn. A pair of jets rocketed overhead, and helicopters flew into the city. The sunlight caught on the broken windows and shattered glass of the downtown district, illuminating the avenue where I stood with Liam’s body at my feet, and the ashes of our enemies all around us, blowing away in the cold winter wind.
The Second Battle of Salem was over.