Darcie Malfoy - the budding Alchemist!
Dobby was standing a few feet away from them, shivering in fear, holding the two silver forks up.
The giant silver knight was shaking the entire corridor as it ran toward them, dragging the broken longsword on the walls. "Run, miss Darcie, miss Daphne!" Dobby screamed, his knees wobbling. "Dobby… will not let it get you!"
"Dobby!" Darcie screamed, rushing toward the house-elf and throwing her purse toward Daphne. "Daphne! Shrink!"
The knight in the silver, blood-stained armor was charging toward them like a mad beast.
Darcie grabbed Dobby's collar at the back of his neck, and send him rolling back.
Behind them, Daphne's blue eyes shone with a knowing glint. Shaking, she opened the purse and took out a vial of Shrinking Potion. The girls were just too close to not understand each other at one glance and with one word.
They couldn't use magic here, true enough. But Potions were different, containing magic within themselves.
Daphne threw the vial toward Darcie, who snatched it off midair, uncorked it, and sent it hurling toward the incoming monster.
Tink! Bang!
Hope was a fickle thing.
Darcie had never thought that with her relentless pursuit of knowledge, investing her everything in learning, and trying to go farther than any witch and wizard before her, there would come a time for her to know such hopelessness.
The Shrinking Potion had indeed splattered out of the exploding vial, but it couldn't as much as leave a drop on the knight.
A magical shield flashed in front of the silver-armored knight, preventing the potion from grazing it.
It could use Magic!
The sudden realization brought the girls' morale to the bottom, making them rooted to their place.
What else they could do now? What else they had?
When the magical shield vanished, the knight stepped forward, shaking the earth beneath its giant metallic boots.
Earth!
Darcie's eyes lit up. She spun her head back and looked at Daphne. "Earth!"
Daphne's lost eyes suddenly gained hope. "But you told me you haven't practiced it enough," she blurted, taking out four blank papers and a vial with light brown liquid in it. "What if you lose Control? Will it even work?"
Daphne rubbed her fingers on the blank papers, instantly differentiating between them using their thickness. They had just practiced too much with them in the last few months for it to become an Instinct. With one powerful jump, she put one of the four papers and the vial of light brown liquid in Darcie's hand.
"I won't lose Control," Darcie said, eying the giant some dozen feet away from her. "And it will work, Daphne."
'It must work,' Darcie hoped.
Then she emptied the vial down her throat.
Darcie had been learning alchemy for almost 5 months now. Yes, she hadn't learned more than the basics. Even then, it wasn't like she had learned nothing practical.
The light brown liquid she drank was no ordinary potion. It was an Earth Elixir, based on the Alchemy related to the Classical Element — Earth.
Darcie had already learned to brew such elixirs. They needed much time, for a lot of complex calculations, and astrological timing was involved in it.
In the last month, Darcie had succeeded in creating only one Earth Elixir. It contained pure earth elemental magic within it and was brewed using Cypress, Fumitory, Horehound, and Mugwort herbs; all of the earth elements.
The moment she drank the liquid, a brown sheen covered her entire body.
The blank paper in Darcie's hands wasn't blank anymore. A complex diagram, containing many magic circles, sigils, and runes, was drawn on it.
Darcie put the paper on the earth. And just as the knight took the last step, she slammed her palms on the paper.
Rumble!!!
The ground beneath Darcie's feet caved in, and a humongous earthen spike protruded out, thrusting itself toward the knight.
The magical shield returned, but the power behind the spike was enough to send the knight flying back.
Bang!
The brown sheen vanished. "Run!" Daphne shouted, holding Darcie's hand.
However, just as they turned around, they found their path blocked. A wall had appeared there, looking as ancient as the others.
'This?!' The girls and Dobby looked at each other. 'The walls could shift! Was that why they hadn't managed to get somewhere until now?'
"Miss Darcie!" Dobby suddenly screamed.
Grrrr!
The knight had stood up, the longsword in its hand pointing toward the roof. It let out a raging growl, and the bloodstains on the armor began glowing red.
The broken sword gave out a brilliant red glow along with the stains.
"No!" Daphne screamed.
Too late!
The knight hacked, firing a bolt of red lightning toward the girls using the broken longsword.
Darcie was ahead of Daphne and Dobby, putting her closest to the incoming spell. Her eyes reflected the redness, her heart pounded, and her throat went dry.
But as the spell was about to hit her, a blackness appeared in front of her.
Lilith, the Lethifold, surrounded the girls and Dobby, rippling furiously. The spell came and bombarded the Familiar before ricocheting off.
The knight hacked again, firing another bolt. It, too, landed on the Lethifold and got sent back.
The entire corridors quaked, rubble falling everywhere.
"Lilith…" Darcie mumbled, sensing the cloak becoming thinner with every repelling of the spell. She didn't know what the Lethifold ate, for there never came a time when she had to feed it. Even then, she knew that this visible thinning of the cloak's thickness was nothing good.
Still, this was Darcie Malfoy. Even in this hopeless situation, her mind just refused to infer details based on the clues she had seen.
"It doesn't have intelligence," Darcie said, speaking more to herself than to Daphne. "It is casting non-verbal spells. And it smells like a corpse. It is… not a living being. 13 circles… 13 guardians…"
"It's an Inferius!" Daphne gasped.
"Daphne! Fire!"
Even in the dark, Darcie found a paper and a vial in her hands the moment she asked of them. "Lilith, open up!"
The thin black cloak parted as Darcie gulped down the Fire Elixir; an elixir containing pure fire elemental essence using Asafoetida, Carnation, Dragon's Blood, and Hawthorn as the base ingredients.
A complex alchemical diagram appeared on the paper, shining with the same fiery sheen as Darcie's.
The silver-armored Knight raised its longsword again.
It was then Darcie drew a deep breath before blowing in the middle of the diagram.
Sizzle!
A pillar of fire, thick as an arm, blew out from the back of the paper, the entire alchemical diagram shining like the sun.
From the other side, a red bolt of lightning came to meet the wrath of the fiery pillar.
Boom!
An explosion shook the entire corridor, thick chunks of rocks falling here and there. Dust filled the corners of the corridor, and fire lingered on the walls, licking at the knight in the distance.
Grrr!
The Inferius hacked at the fire, moving away from it and growling toward the corridor's end.
Darcie, Daphne, and Dobby were lying on the ground, their eyes shut. All over their bodies were marks of dust and bruises left behind by the rubble. The Lethifold, now abnormally thin, stirred around Darcie as if taking a rest.
Rest?! Why rest? What was it waiting for? What was it hoping would happen?
Pop! Pop!! Pop!!!
The sound of bones popping took over the rumbling corridor.
Daphne and Dobby were out cold. Amazingly, there was no sign of Darcie near them anymore.
"Haa!" a long, white-haired demon drew a deep breath, cracking his neck and knuckles. "So… where were we?"