Chapter 373: A Thousand Heads and One

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20 April 1995, Mount Olympus, Greece

The world around him shook, the pressure disappearing for just a fraction of a second. However, it was more than enough for Harry to conjure a portal. Harry escaped with his allies through it, and the last thing he saw before the portal closing was the very palace of the Olympian was shattered into a giant explosion of light.

Harry's portal was his most unstable yet. Honestly, he hadn't been picky about the destination—he just wanted to get away from the Olympians. Exhaustion hit him hard as he stumbled forward, and then collapsed onto the ground. Unexpectedly, a giggle bubbled up from him, soon turning into hysterical laughter.

It had been sheer dumb luck that got them out—nothing more. Talking back to the five beings who controlled an entire realm had been foolish, but halfway through their conversation, Harry realized they had no intention of letting him go. His plan had been to make them talk, distract them, and escape. He wasn't sure what their endgame was, only that he needed to find a way back to the Labyrinth. But that wouldn't be easy, especially with the Olympians clearly able to exert control over it.

No, Harry had been banking on his portals taking them off-guard. It had been such a powerful form of magic for him, one that no one was able to really stop, and he foolishly assumed that it would be the same in this realm.

He had been so stupid. The Olympians were in control of the realm, they were extensions of it. Being able to stop warps in space and time had to have been as easy as breathing. It was a mistake that got them all killed, and Harry should have had a better plan. Maybe he could have made some kind of explosive to distract them or found something to threaten them with.

The only reason he was able to create the portal in the first place was because of the fact that something distracted them, something that was dire enough that they simply couldn't ignore, that they had to stop whatever they were doing that was stopping him from making a portal, and that was his ticket to escape.

The only reason they were still alive was by pure chance, and it wasn't something that Harry really experienced before. It had always been his efforts, maybe even a plan he pulled out of his ass at the last minute, but it was always him that saved his own hide. The sheer shock at the chance, at fate itself, saving him, the very thing the Olympians wanted to manipulate to their ends, was just hilarious. He didn't even know why. Maybe it was pure incredulity, maybe it was something else, but nonetheless, he couldn't stop laughing.

Daphne and Angelina exchanged worried glances as Harry struggled to regain his composure. The intense magic he had wielded left him visibly drained, his breaths coming in ragged gasps. Daphne knelt beside him, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"You okay, Harry?" she asked softly.

He managed a shaky nod, still chuckling lightly. "Yeah, just need a moment. That was too close."

They turned around and spoke up, "Where are we?"

For the first time since he escaped the palace, Harry finally took the time to look at his surroundings. If he had to guess, he would say that the realm around him was dying. Everything was wrong. There was a giant breach in the sky which folded into kaleidoscopic fractals, shimmering with impossible geometries that defied logic.

The very laws of space and time seemed to unravel before his eyes. Gravity warped unpredictably, causing objects and debris to float erratically or collapse abruptly. Time itself flickered, moments stretching into eternities and then snapping back without warning.

The ground beneath his feet rippled like liquid, responding erratically to unseen forces. Reality fractured around him, with rifts opening and closing, distorting the fabric of existence.

Daphne muttered, "Are we in some other realm?"

Harry hummed trying to figure out where he ended up in. He didn't make a portal to travel between realms. The energy requirements would have been insane, and the calculations alone would have taken him days to perform. It was supposed to be a portal to take him away from the palace, nothing more.

Now that he thought about it, things did look similar, even if it was distorted. There was something in the air, the magic of Olympus. Harry used his Arcane Hearing to analyse what was happening and what he heard made him audibly gasp, "I think we're still in Olympus."

"What?" they exclaimed at once.

Harry couldn't exactly blame them. Where a small paradise stood seconds prior, instead of an arid wasteland. There was this black breach in the sky, swallowing up the very realm itself. A few breaches, anomalies in space and time, were all over, sucking away the realm's very energy, destroying any form of life. The realm was collapsing on itself.

No wonder the Olympians were distracted. Something was destroying their realm, making it slowly be swallowed by the void between worlds, a place of pure chaos where time and space were meaningless. Harry could feel the Olympians trying to scavenge the remains of their home, trying to stop the inevitable. And yet, in the grand scheme of things, they were not all-powerful. The void was a far greater force, and they would be overwhelmed eventually.

Thankfully, that gave them enough time to get out of there, and Harry nodded, "I don't have any time to explain. We need to leave this place before it inevitably collapses."

"Where exactly are we going to run?" Angelina spoke up with an expression of fear and confusion, "There aren't exactly any other places we could go."

"The Labyrinth Entrance is an anomaly in space and time. As long as it wasn't swallowed by a breach, we should be able to use it properly."

With a flick of his hand, a portal appeared swallowing them all towards the Labyrinth Entrance. The idea was that he would take them just a few feet away from the entrance so that he could activate it, and escape this hellhole. Harry expected things to be relatively straightforward after that, only he found himself thrown out of the portal.

Damn it! The chaotic way space-time was behaving must have destabilized the portal. He really should have expected that, but it was, by far, the quickest way to get to the Entrance, and it was definitely worth the risk. Thankfully everyone was fine behind him.

Perseus groaned, clinching his head, "What happened?"

He left the explanation to Angelina while he used his Arcane Hearing to track down where the Labyrinth Entrance was. However, he was immediately warned by a giant head trying to eat him alive. He warped space between them, the head missing, and immediately retaliated with a pulse of gravity, sending it away.

He looked up to the sky only to freeze as he saw the monster above them. It was about as large as a small mountain, a dragon with hundreds of heads, each as large as the Hydra they fought before. A dozen heads went towards them, having noticed him injuring one of theirs. Harry capitulated by conjuring a giant ward, hoping to give him enough time to ensure their escape. He didn't know if he could defeat the creature quickly enough before the realm collapsed, or the Olympians noticing, at the very least.

However, as the heads touched the ward, it noticeably got weaker. It wasn't exactly his best work, but they were anchored with runes that were powered with ambient magic. It shouldn't have exactly run out in a place like Olympus.

So, it absorbed any form of structured magic. That was tricky, but Harry rarely needed to affect his targets directly. Perseus seemed to have gotten the memo as he conjured a small lake from thin air and used it to banish the giant creature. Harry followed by conjuring his strongest Ice Age spell. White mist appeared in front of them all, slowly growing to cover the entire creature. Harry created a small dome to protect his allies from the freezing mist, before stumbling slightly, collapsing from exertion. After all, he had just covered an entire mountain with a spell that would suck the heat out of anything.

It was that last thought that got Harry to push beyond his limit and finally try to find the Labyrinth Entrance so that they could escape this nightmare.

Thankfully, it wasn't that far away, just a couple of minutes away from them. The bad news was that it was just next to the body of the giant multi-headed dragon that was just frozen over. Well, at least the spell worked well enough.

Harry motioned to the others to follow him, "This way. We're almost out of here."

Thankfully, they seemed to notice the impatience in his tone, as well as his tiredness, so they just walked behind him. At least, they seemed to have done so until the white mist started to fade slightly, revealing the gigantic frozen creature before them.

However, as Daphne gasped, she wasn't really looking up, awed at the size of the creature, but at something that seemed to be near where the entrance was. The Dragon's body was curled around it like it was its nest. It was a tree. It was gigantic but still dwarfed by the dragon's body.

The tree was dead, totally drained of any life. Its wood had turned dark, almost like solid ash. The branches were all twisted and gnarled, stretching out like creepy skeletal fingers reaching for the dim light. At the base of the tree, there was a faint, eerie glow coming from a hollow. Inside, a golden energy pulsed softly. It was an apple, glowing with a strange light that stood out against all the surrounding decay.

Daphne recognized it for what it really was, "The Golden Apple."

She immediately ran towards it, the reason they had even come to this cursed realm, the very embodiment of her life's goal, of her desire to heal her sister and Harry didn't have it in him to stop her. He had thought that the Golden Apple was some sort of lie, some trick the Olympians used to lure them all to Olympus, to get their sacrificial lamb into preserving their existence once more.

He was glad to be wrong.

If the apple was real, then their suffering wasn't for nothing. Sure, he wasn't going to let Astoria use it without him examining the thing very thoroughly, but it was still a massive win for Daphne.

The moment Daphne grabbed the apple, it pulsed with golden light and the tree turned to dust. She was smiling, happy tears in her eyes, and it was one of the most beautiful sights Harry had ever laid his eyes on.

Of course, whatever that golden pulse of magic was, it seemed to somehow get the giant dragon to overwhelm Harry's spell, and a hundred jets of light came towards them, having gotten the attention of all the heads at once. Harry immediately warped space around them, getting them to miss, but it was still a pretty close call.

Harry noticed that the body of the monster slowly shrunk as it used its magic, and things finally clicked. The reason why they hadn't seen the monster before, was because it was closer. It absorbed the surrounding energy to increase its magic, storing it by getting physically bigger.

That sparked a small idea in him. He conjured a magic circle, propelled himself into the air, and then hurled himself at the monster. Activating his invisibility cloak, he phased entirely through the creature and carved a gigantic magic circle beneath it. Enhanced by his family crest designed to absorb magic, the circle began to take effect. When the monster attacked again, activated the circle, making the monster shrink far more effectively. It wasn't enough to stop the beast completely, but it sufficed for Harry to trigger the circle's second phase: using the absorbed magic to influence a nearly imperceptible breach he had noticed nearby. Hundreds of such breaches surrounded the realm, gradually causing its collapse, and he wasn't about to let them go to waste.

Gradually, the beast's magic was drained to enlarge the tear, which was attempting to pull the creature into the void. As the dragon was slowly drawn toward its demise, it desperately tried to escape the circle, but to no avail. It couldn't absorb the magic circle's power since it was fueled by itself. All the energy Harry used was just a spark to activate it; the rest depended entirely on the beast.

A common trait among magical creatures is their inability to use their own abilities against themselves. Two basilisks couldn't kill each other with their eyes, and two dragons couldn't burn themselves alive. Even their hides were often easily torn apart if bitten by stronger dragons. Harry had taken a gamble that this creature was the same, and it had paid off. It couldn't drain magic from something powered by its own magic. He was quite pleased with that one.

Still, considering how exhausted he felt, he didn't have time to celebrate. Instead, he stumbled toward the Labyrinth entrance and finally activated it. In a flash of white light, they were met with the familiar sight of the Labyrinth, which seemed just as affected by the space-time event destroying Olympus.

He prepared to manipulate the Labyrinth again to find a way home, only to notice that the bright light of the gate they had just passed through didn't fade. Instead, a bright hand of golden light emerged from it, appearing to grasp it open.

The four of them stood frozen as the gate remained open, revealing a gigantic, expressionless face—a familiar one at that. Five voices, one for each Olympian, spoke simultaneously, their voices echoing around the Labyrinth, "We are not done yet with you, Harry Potter!"

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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.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.