บท 363: Chapter 363: Warren’s Peak
If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
I would like to thank my beta, Awdyr, for his help in this chapter.
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17 April 1995, Mount Olympus, Greece
Well, that explained the sound of thunder. He knew that he was missing something. At least that was over, now he had to deal with the fucking Hydra. They weren't even two hours in. Who the fuck would ever come up with this shit?
Harry couldn't help but feel awed at the sheer scale of the beast before him. He knew that he was seeing nothing more than the tip of the iceberg. The creature had to be almost as large as an entire castle for the heads alone to be this large.
As the three heads opened their maws and released a stream of Lightning, Harry replied by creating bronze spheres that he threw in the air. The moment a few of them fell to the ground, the rest were magnetized and kept spinning very heavily. In the meantime, all three of the heads released their beams of lightning, which converged into one stronger beam coming at their frozen faces.
The creature probably expected them to be fried in seconds, and yet, Harry's floating circle of bronze metal balls absorbed the impact and seemed to electrify the ones on the floor, acting like a lightning rod pretending to be a shield.
Nevertheless, the Hydra, not having expected any resistance, kept its beam of lightning coming. A start of a plan started to grow in his head, but he was too preoccupied by Johnson's gasping, "What the fuck was that?"
"They're balls enchanted to act like lightning rods," he lied, "I thought they might be handy against some Greek mage that specializes in lightning magic. It wasn't really all that expensive, to be honest, and I'm certainly glad I bought them."
"How many balls do you have?" the girl asked once more.
"Enough," he replied cheekily.
Diggory seemingly didn't like what was happening and growled, "I'll take care of that!"
"No!" Harry explained, only for Diggory to send a spear of light at one of the heads, killing it.
To be completely honest, Harry didn't think that Diggory had anything in his arsenal capable of hurting a Hydra in any meaningful way. He wasn't being mean, but it was simply the sad truth. He hadn't wanted them to engage the Hydra since his plan was to transfigure the mountain a bit and trick the creature into thinking that it had succeeded in killing them.
Of course, one of the few times Diggory was able to be competent at something, he screwed it up. Angry, Harry growled at Diggory, "You fucking idiot!"
"What the fuck, Carmichael?" the older boy exclaimed, "Just help me take out the rest."
"It's a fucking Hydra. You kill a head, and two others will take its place. It's the most basic thing, you moron."
Exactly as Harry was describing, the head had visibly started to wither and fade into dust, only for two heads to grow in its place. He turned towards the blanching Diggory, "See, you made it stronger. For fuck's sake Diggory, even children know Herakles' tale of slaying the Hydra. This isn't exactly a secret."
Deciding that arguing with the moron wasn't a good idea, Harry sent an exploding charm up the mountain and a small avalanche of rocks fell down the mountain, ready to bury them all. Harry then threw some more metal balls, this time enchanted to mess with each of the heads' senses, more akin to a flashbang, and conjured a shield to protect them.
Thankfully, Daphne understood what he was going for as she grew a wooden dome of reinforced wood from the ground thanks to her family crest, finally letting Harry have a breather. They were immediately covered with rocks, hiding them from their predator.
Cedric growled, "Great! Now we're trapped and the Hydra is probably out there."
As if agreeing with him, Harry felt and heard the familiar Hydra's hissing as well as the sound of thunder. The monster was obviously still looking for them and it sounded pissed. He simply gave the older boy a blank look, "I'm sorry, I was too busy trying to keep us alive."
Johnson spoke up, "That's enough we need to get out of here and quickly, especially before the Hydra finds us."
Harry nodded and decided to walk around their wooden dome, trying to think. He wasn't that worried. In the worst case, he'd reveal himself and portal them all to safety, or even just warp space to take them away. He could theoretically fight the thing, but he didn't know its magical properties. There were too many unknowns. This was a creature belonging to another dimension entirely and everything had different rules there.
No, there had to be another way other than just brute force. There was something he was missing, something very important. It was at the edge of his mind, just in the corner, hidden in plain sight. They were climbing a mountain that wasn't a mountain. Legends of Olympus spoke of a palace above the clouds for the gods, of the gardens of Hera. That was impossible there considering the rocky terrain.
Unless…
Oh, this is brilliant. Whoever designed this place had to have been a genius because the entire thing was staring him in the face. The way space is warped, it wasn't random. It was a maze, and even the mountain's surface was nothing more than a single road, a single stage. They needed to get in, to find one of the anomalies he kept sensing. It was so discreet, like a small puzzle and Harry decided to trace it back to a certain direction.
Harry chose the destination and murmured, "Point me!"
His wand levitated towards the direction of the breach he sensed, and he spoke up to Daphne, "Hey, can you move the dome in that direction."
She nodded and the plants slowly moved away. Harry helped her by subtly moving the rocks to make things easier. However, this seemed to have cost them the chance to hold their presence. They arrived quickly to where Harry sensed the entrance there and he saw a carven in delta symbol.
Suddenly, Daphne yelped, "It found us. Whatever you're trying to do, you better do it quickly."
Harry nodded and used his Arcane Hearing to trace back the spell. It was waiting for an activation, some kind of weird password, but Harry didn't have the time to solve whatever riddle it was.
The plants were withering from the onslaught of lightning coming at them, and Harry decided to just say fuck it and found the trigger to activate the symbol. The wall seemed to melt away as if it was made of water, and Harry stepped in, summoning his fellow Hogwarts champions with him. They entered with a yelp and Harry deactivated the entrance, separating them fully from the Hydra.
They all breathed a sigh of relief when the assault stopped, and they all looked at Harry with a flabbergasted expression on their faces. Diggory was the one who spoke up, "How the fuck did you do that, Carmichael?"
"There was a runic puzzle. I used to do them with my parents when we were young, and I did specialize in Greek runes in my Ancient Runes class. It was pretty tricky, especially with the Hydra, but I assumed it was important. Thankfully, it worked out."
"Worked out?" Diggory snarled, "You took a gamble and we're lucky it worked out. It could have been nothing!"
To be entirely fair to the boy, Harry hadn't told him about sensing space disturbances around the rune and bypassed the puzzle entirely. It was pretty safe to assume that he had risked their hideout, even if they were probably going to be caught soon anyway, to take some chance.
Harry nodded, "Sure, but I don't think we had any other plan in place. I'm trying not to be insensitive, but did anyone else have any plans other than us waiting for our deaths?"
They all shuffled awkwardly. Daphne was the only one who knew what he was capable of and had faith that he protected her and would act as her safety net. The others did not have that privilege and slowly started to realize how close they were to dying.
Noticing their silence, he continued, "So, please, Diggory, I took a gamble because there was nothing else. I didn't think that all we had to do was climb a mountain. The Golden Apple is rumoured to grow in Hera's Garden, and a mountain can in no condition be called a garden, especially not something this rocky, so there had to be some kind of secret, and that the key was the puzzle."
"And you didn't think to say anything?" the older boy growled.
"The last time I waited to ask, you destroyed my plan by killing the Hydra's head. I wanted us to pretend to have died and hide inside the mountain with some transfiguration, but you ended up making it mad. With our lives on the line, I decided to be decisive."
Johnson could obviously see that Diggory was quickly getting angrier at being outshone and decided to intervene, "Come on, Cedric, the guy did well. We were dealing with a fucking Hydra. Who the fuck even puts a Hydra in a fucking tournament? And those birds? We could have easily been killed!"
Daphne quietly muttered in response, "I don't think anyone put them in there. I think it's what's normally in Mount Olympus. I don't think the Greeks are taking our safety into account with this. There's something really odd about that."
"They can't have been seriously trying to kill us, right?" the Gryffindor spoke up, looking scared.
"I don't think so," Harry commented, "I think they just didn't care enough to put safety measures, or more like can't put any. This is a quest, not a competition, not for them at least. Do you remember the old tales of Greek heroes? They weren't exactly given safety nets either. These challenges, they weren't made to be fair; heroes either succeeded or they didn't make it back."
Cedric's frustration simmered, but Johnson's intervention had softened the tension. "So, what are you saying, Carmichael? We're just supposed to hope for the best?"
"No," Harry replied, "we're supposed to be clever. Greek heroes didn't win because they were stronger or faster—they won because they outsmarted the gods, the monsters, and the challenges. Like I said, we need to stop thinking of this as a competition and more like a quest. It's not about winning a tournament; it's about proving ourselves against the mountain. That's what a quest for immortality is supposed to be like."
Cedric finally sighed, some of the anger draining from his face. "Fine. But next time, just tell us what you're planning before you throw us into the fire."
Harry gave a small, apologetic shrug. "If we make it through this, I'll be sure to ask for a group vote next time."
The older boy suddenly became serious, "Now, that's enough slacking off, we're in the mountain, presumably the next step. Hopefully, we're ahead of everyone else, but we can assume that the Greeks already knew that – it's their school after all – so we need to step up our pace and find a way through. What is this place, anyway?"
They were in a relatively narrow stone pathway that seemed to twist and turn. There weren't any sources of light, but they could see, nonetheless. As his first instinct, Harry used his Arcane Hearing to analyse the magic further and what he heard was nothing more than awe-inspiring. He could hear the magic shifting, spreading like some kind of spider's web, space and time morphing into knots and shifting every few seconds. The intricacy of it all inspired him.
Harry's breath caught as the realization hit him. The complexity of the magic, the way space bent and twisted—it wasn't just a passage or some enchanted tunnel. There was only one thing in all of mythology that could be this complex, this impossibly intricate.
"We're in the Labyrinth," he muttered, his voice tinged with both awe and apprehension. "The one built by Daedalus."
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AN: I know some of you wanted to see the Harry vs Hydra fight. I had the entire thing ready, and believe me, it was really fun, but with the golden apple being the goal, I decided that Harry revealing himself so early was going to mess up a few of my plans for the rest of the arc. Don't worry, there is a place for the actual fight later, so consider this to be a little teaser of what's to come. Anyway, I loved writing this chapter and I hope it came out like I wanted it to. So, as usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.
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