Capítulo 34: CH34 - Moros
A chill went down Edmund's back as he gazed into the endless darkness that lay before him. His unease had only grown the more he learned about the area as well as the guardian that stood between him and the Chamber of Secrets.
This was going to be dangerous.
He turned to the speaker one last time.
"Is there no other information you can give me?" he asked yet again.
The speaker sighed, shaking her head regretfully.
"Divination involves interpretation of the future. It only allows me to see that which may come to pass in the world, at least without your interference within it," she explained.
"And there is nothing more you can tell me about this guardian from the knowledge you possess?" he reiterated.
"He is powerful," the speaker said grimly. "So powerful, that no fight he encounters lasts more than a few minutes, if even that. I have nothing to report because he never has cause to show off his full strength."
They stood quietly for several minutes before Edmund spoke up.
"Nothing in my research has mentioned a beast anything like this one," he revealed.
"I am not surprised. I have never come across such a thing in all my visions either. You will have to fly in blind," she replied, before adding reassuringly, "I will be here, awaiting your return."
Edmund inhaled deeply, before letting his occlumency take effect. The time for fears and doubts had passed.
He nodded at the speaker resolutely, before stepping forth into the yawning chasm.
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The earth around him was odd.
At first glance, it seemed completely natural. Moss lined the walls, growing from the cracks and crags in the stone. The ground was rough and uneven, eroded by the elements. However, closer inspection confirmed what Edmund already knew to be true. The pathway had been constructed with magic. It was far too smooth, too consistent in its shape to be otherwise. It was only age that had given it the weathered appearance it bore now.
Soon, the little bit of light that guided his path ended, leaving him in darkness. He was alright with that. Magical light was a risk he was unwilling to take. Besides, he knew his vision would be restored soon anyways.
Sure enough, only several minutes later, a gurgling sound became audible, growing louder as he progressed. An underwater river stretched out in front of him, extending as far as his eyes could see. The water ran swiftly but silently, less than an inch in depth. The stream ended right in front of his feet, disappearing into a lengthwise gap in the floor, before continuing into the depths underground.
He could no longer remain on dry land. Reapplying his silencing charm for his own peace of mind, Edmund determinedly marched on.
As he trudged forward, little spots of light began to fill his eyesight. Edmund would have believed he was hallucinating them if he did not know better. Similar to the spores of the Hesperides' tree, the blue glow Edmund was seeing now seemed to ebb in and out of being. Instead of being plant-like in nature, it was owed to a fairly common creature, indigenous to many areas of Europe.
A sprite. The tiny magical beings were some of the smallest that were known to exist. With their synchronous blinking glow, they could attract a variety of microscopic prey. When their target was in range, their mouths would rapidly snap open and shut, devouring it in less time than the blink of an eye.
To humans, thankfully, they were harmless.
The deeper he went, the more of the creatures that he saw. Sprites only needed to feed less than once a decade, and as a result, they were incredibly numerous. Eventually, the entire tunnel's circumference was covered with them, leaving not a single spot empty. The sight of the walls glowing and fading together was eerily beautiful.
Edmund's attention had not wavered for a second from in front of him, and it was only thanks to his focus that he saw the first attack coming his way. A bolt of scalding water shot out at him, followed by a thin tentacle that attempted to wrap around his wand. He avoided the strike with a deft step to the side, before whispering the spell he believed would do the most damage.
"Bombarda," he incanted, aiming the spell at the would-be thief of his magical focus.
His aim struck true, and Edmund was rewarded by a grunt of pain as the appendage withdrew back to where it had come from.
The assailant wisely decided that long-range was the better option for now, sending a continuous volley of boiling water his way. Unfortunately, the more that Edmund dodged, the faster the attacker became. While he might be invisible and inaudible, he could do nothing about the ripples that were created by his footsteps every time he moved.
Transfiguring several platforms for him to step on above the river's surface, Edmund leapt to the wall, hugging it with his back. Hiding his wand behind his cloak to disguise its light, he began to form the sickly-yellow colour of a bone breaker.
Suddenly, a low musical note rang through the air. The tone was oddly sweet, like a wooden flute, but the urgency with which it erupted was jarring.
Edmund's eyes widened in recognition.
Too late.
A splash of water hit him, searing his skin badly. Against his will, a shout escaped from Edmund's lips because of the pain.
Desperately, he cast healing charms on his abdomen, relegating his defence to merely dodging for the time being. His efforts were to no effect. The burn he had received was resistant to magic, rejecting all the spells he cast at it.
"What will you do next, human, I wonder?" a deep voice growled mockingly.
Edmund looked down with shock, realizing his error immediately. The demiguise hair's magic had dissipated where he had been hit, leaving a crucial gap in his invisibility.
"I see you, boy!" the voice cackled with bloodlust.
Edmund tensed, before rotating the break in the cloak to his back. It would have to do for now.
"Yet I cannot see you!" Edmund retorted. "A powerful creature like you, too cowardly to show himself?"
There were few things Edmund knew about the beast he was fighting. However, he did know that the creature was absurdly prideful.
As expected, it snarled loudly in displeasure at the taunt.
"Cowardice," it spat, before regaining its calm once more. "What right does a human have to tell me about cowardice."
"Show yourself then," Edmund challenged.
With a flash, the veil of darkness in front of him fell, revealing the monstrosity the speaker had talked to Edmund about at length. The descriptions did not do it justice.
Seven heads of various magical creatures greeted him, stuck to one another in a row, adjoined at the central trunk of a neck.
In the very center was the face of a human. With olive skin, a thick red thatch of facial hair, and a feral look on his face, the man seemed exotic and wild. The lion's body and scorpion's tail connected to it clearly gave away its identity.
A manticore.
And yet, it evidently was not. No manticore had ever been sighted with multiple heads, nor had any displayed such signs of intelligence. This creature was an anomaly, a singularly unique being.
To its immediate left was a horned serpent, black-scaled, with a bright white jewel embedded into its forehead. The beast was undoubtedly the one responsible for the sound that had alerted the mutant manticore to Edmund's location. Its ability acted as a sort of danger sense, alerting it of threats nearby that could cause it harm.
On the opposite side of the horned serpent was a graphorn, a creature with grayish-purple skin powerful enough to resist spells to a degree even greater than a dragon. In place of its eyebrows, it possessed two golden horns sticking out of it. The graphorn would have looked quite majestic, were it not for the mass of tentacles that made up its mouth and could latch onto prey from afar.
The leftmost head was that of a shrake, the creature that had already struck him. The magical fish species was decorated with massive spikes that ran down its length, and was capable of shooting out magical bursts of hot water from its jaw.
To the right of the man's face was a skinny silver-haired bear. The hidebehind was an unimaginably rare breed, the cross between a demiguise and a ghoul. Its powerful ancestral abilities made it uncommonly unique, able to both shapeshift and turn invisible at will. The carnivorous beast was a man-eater, an infamously successful one at that.
On the opposing end of the hidebehind was an erumpent, a magical rhinoceros with astounding strength and power. The erumpent's claim to fame was its horn, filled with a fluid that would explode within whatever was pierced by its tip. Unsurprisingly, erumpents were extremely dangerous to approach.
Finishing the lineup was a creature with eight eyes, spindly black hair, and pincers for a mouth. It could only be an acromantula, highly poisonous and deadly.
Seven heads. Seven of the deadliest magical beings on the planet. Together, an amalgamation of horror.
Edmund looks on with wide eyes and a growing sense of terror.
"Ah, that fear," the beast inhaled with pleasure. "It feeds my soul."
"You are truly a monster," Edmund whispered.
"I am what I was made into!" he roared in reply, anger filling his core.
"By who?" Edmund asked, cautiously curious.
The beast seemed interested in talking, and each second that he could gain to heal would only help Edmund.
"Who else," the manticore spat. "Humans."
"I was stolen away as a baby from my family in Greece, where we lived on a small island. The wizard who took me owned a magical menagerie, and he believed I would draw eyes," he said bitterly before his tone turned prideful. "And I did. I was an attraction like no other."
"My master at the time, however, was still not happy. My appetite was large, and feeding me consumed the majority of what he earned. Slowly, he began to starve me, and eventually, it was noticed. When the show-goers saw that I was mistreated, they boycotted him," he recalled. "The wizard who owned me was stuck. But he was crafty in his moments of greed, and found a solution quickly enough."
"My friend here," the manticore signalled to the right of him, "is a hidebehind. Unknown to most, its ghoul heritage gives it the property of regeneration when fed with enough negative emotions. I would feed on his body as my master would whip me. The pain would make him grow once more, providing me with more food. A perfect cycle."
Edmund listened with morbid fascination. "Something changed after a while?" he guessed.
The manticore nodded, smirking cruelly.
"He never anticipated how the meat of the hidebehind would change me. Slowly, its ability to shape-shift merged with mine. As I consumed more of it, my blood began to call for something else. Something I could not identify," the manticore continued. "My chance came when another of my master's pets was on the brink of death—the horned serpent to my left. Using my claws, I cut off his head and affixed it to my own neck. My magic did the rest."
"Was the wizard not frightened?" Edmund could not help but ask.
"Frightened? The fool was ecstatic!" the manticore bellowed with laughter. "In his mind, he had won the jackpot! A never before seen magical beast, available for viewing solely at his menagerie! As usual, though, he was not satisfied, and it was his undoing. He gave me more and more heads to merge with, every one of them more vicious than the last. Each granted me more power and made my mind even sharper."
"Then, I only had to look for a single opportunity to strike when my master's guard was down. I ate his body whole and disappeared. After that, I wandered for a time, before I finally found this place a few decades ago. A place to grow fat and old," he finished with a grin.
"Why tell me all this?" Edmund questioned. "Why spend all this time talking when you could try to kill me? You are not that foolish, I can tell."
The manticore exhaled theatrically.
"The others around me," he gestured to the other heads, "are content with sitting in this cave and feeding on those foolish enough to come in. I, however, am bored. You are the first that has approached in decades that can fight. The first that can speak. I had almost forgotten the sound of my own voice."
"You want a challenge," Edmund deduced.
"A challenge? No. I just want my prey to have a little fight in it. Playing with my food is a luxury I have not had in many years," the manticore licked his lips.
"Enjoy your fun while you can then, beast," Edmund said as he raised his wand in front of him.
The manticore flashed its teeth in a sharp smile.
"Moros. My name is Moros, the greek god of doom," he corrected, before leaping towards Edmund with a cry.
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