>>6177903You run, racing the sun, racing the ending of the light, but it’s too late, the sun is too low down, you won’t make it-
You see the green flash behind the shadows, the lost moment between days.
The lowering top of the barrier reaches the ground.
And Hell is released upon the Earth.
--
In North America, they hear the sound.
In South America, they hear the sound.
In Europe, they hear it too.
Throughout Asia, throughout Africa, they hear it.
In Hogwarts, Ilvermony, Castelobruxo. Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, Koldovstoretz, Mahoutokoro and Uagadou, they all hear it.
In a small church in Abberton, they hear it.
Across the world, it is heard, as it is happening in every mythical city, in every reflection of Atlantis. Even over the ground shaking like the end of days has come, they hear it.
That horrible, awful, hooting sound. And the flapping of wings.
--
“Those were the small ones,” Arty says, for the first time you’ve ever heard fear in her voice. “They were pups!”
Through the funnel in the barrier, upwards and outwards, pours an ocean of horrors, larger, greater and more terrible than any of the ones you’ve seen. Some of them, most of them, fly away, off towards land and more bountiful prey, and their numbers darken the heavens.
And some… some target the easy pickings on the beach. Down they come, sliding down the barrier and bouncing off it to get speed, a cacophony of hootings coming at the people below, either frozen by fear and shock or on the floor from the earthquake beneath their feet.
You know it will be a massacre. You know every single person in that beach that isn’t in reach of a portkey is dead. Yet, right now, there is only one place that still holds them out.
“Back inside! Everyone! Get inside! NOW! LINDA! BRIGHTON! APOLLO! EVERYBODY IN!”
The children, some who had just raced out, come rushing back in. You watch, you can only watch as the wave of horrors comes closer and closer.
And Hermione Granger and her husband stand by the wall, close to some machine that appears to be half in, half out of Atlantis. She looks up, then at you. She has steel in her eyes.
“Wait for me, Elliot! Here! Sunrise!” She shouts, fierce. “You need to live, you understand!? We’ll fight! We’ll win! You’ll win! Show me you’re worthy of that sword!”
Her husband stretches an old book in her direction and she grabs it. They disappear an instant before claws sharper than knives cleave through the air where they just were.
The rest of the people on the beach aren’t so lucky. You are far enough away from the shore that even the most powerful apparition will end up in the middle of the sea, where they will be fished out by sharp claws. As for the others, their blood makes it through the barrier, their screams are loud enough you need to retreat several blocks before there are enough buildings between you and them that they are entirely muffled.
--
[Cont.]
