Chapter 92 : Entwined

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Hedwig fluttered down onto his shoulder as he looked around the tunnel.

"We must be miles under the school. Under the lake," said Harry as he looked at the wet, slimy ceiling of the tunnel, his voice echoing in the black tunnel. Hedwig chirped in uneasy agreement, looking around with peeled eyes for any movement in the darkness.

Harry lifted his hand, intending to light up a fire before he stopped himself.

If the Basilisk was nearby, attracting its attention with a fireball was going to be the last thing he wanted to do.

No.

Stealth was the way to go.

Dipping a hand into the inventory and pulling out the Invisibility Cloak, Harry wrapped it around himself and Hedwig.

Deciding to trust his senses, for now, he walked off into the tunnel, trying to avoid making any splashes in the puddles of water on the floor.

The next few moments Harry quietly moved, listening hard for any sound that could make it to him, be it cries of help from the abducted Ravenclaw girl or the crunching bones underneath a slithering basilisk. He found neither. But what he did find, was much more… disturbing.

As he turned a dark bend in the tunnel, he caught sight of something giant and curved. It wasn't moving.

However, before he could do anything, Hedwig suddenly gave a loud screech before vanishing from his shoulder with a burst of flames.

She reappeared a few feet away, whereupon with a screech of anger, she started scratching and tearing at the structure.

In a corner of his mind, Harry realized that Hedwig was making a lot of noise and that he should probably stop her, but that corner was mostly ignored as he took in the massive snakeskin of a vivid and poisonous green color, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor. The basilisk that had shed it must have been at least fifty feet in length.

A quick calculation in his head, and Harry knew that the basilisk that had been terrorizing the school wasn't a young one.

"Bugger," he muttered to himself, "That's big."

An older basilisk presented a whole host of problems that a younger one wouldn't have. Problems like the size, resistance to all forms of wand magic that he knew, resistance to the fire that was his own favored weapon, immense strength, swift-acting and powerful venom, nigh impenetrable skin and an instantly fatal gaze.

Bugger indeed.

Harry shook his head, shaking off the worry that had started to set in with the help of Gamer's Mind and opened up his skill window and started looking through his skills. He needed a plan if he was to come out of a confrontation with the Beast alive.

It took him a while of ruffling through skills and spells and an old science book that he had nicked from his old school's library, but he cobbled together a rough plan in a few minutes, which wasn't all that reliable but was definitely better than nothing. He was about to close the skill window when something caught his eye.

Dragon's Breath, Lv-1

A concentrated breath of fire mimicking the magical properties of Dragon fire. Capable of burning through almost anything, and can be used for metal work too.

1% level of control

Cost - 1000 MP

It was tempting to consider using this. A skill that had killed a Dementor…

'No… No. A 1000 MP cost and a 1% level of control… This skill needs to be leveled up a lot before I could use it reliably,' he thought. And if the control failed him in between the battle, then he would have no idea what would happen.

Would the fire puffer out, or would it just burn him down, or would it just suck all his magic out like a ward? It was all too blurry to fit in a plan about a situation as dangerous as this. Besides, he had Hedwig, and that was an advantage that was too good to ignore.

So he tore his eyes away from the screen, closed it, and called for Hedwig who had finally stopped pecking at the shed skin. "Hedwig! You're making a ruckus. We need to stay quiet," he scolded.

The bird gave an apologetic tweet before bursting into flames and reappearing on Harry's shoulder. After taking a few minutes to instruct her on what to do, he pulled the Cloak snug around them and stepped past the giant snakeskin.

The tunnel turned and turned again, and every nerve in Harry's body was tingling. He wanted the tunnel to end, yet dreaded what he'd find when it did.

And then, at last, as he crept around yet another bend, he saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds. Harry approached, casting an Observe.

Snake themed Door

The wall-door requires a Password from anyone who wishes to gain entry. This password is given to this door, which can give access to the Chamber.

Password - Any Parseltongue phrase

Suddenly a window popped up in the corner of his vision.

Parseltongue Skill Active!

" Open," he said in a faint low hiss to the snakes, who looked strangely alive with their flickering emerald eyes. And lo and behold, the serpents parted. The wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight, and Harry walked inside on tiptoes.

He was standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place.

A hundred questions filled his mind at the same time. Could the basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? And where was Lisa? Was she dead?

He quietly moved forward between the serpentine columns. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following him.

More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, he thought he saw one stir. He kept his eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of movement.

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