Gathering

Ringo went ahead to look left and right, coast clear, the cat pulled its tiny black head back and turned to signal Luca and Alexander. They huddled together and cautiously stuck half of their faces out to use one eye to get an overview of the last hurdle separating them from the invading army. In a straight line thirty feet away, small due to the distance silhouettes passed and lights flashed constantly, so occupied by nearest to them events were the people and creatures traversing the stone floors of the castle that even Luca's wanton demolition and defeat of the blocking team didn't draw attention.

"Plan is this: we run in two rows, I lead left, Luca right. Don't do anything until we reach the corridor, then at first use non-verbal spells as fast as you can and duck as you reach the wall in front of us, latecomers start building two lines of defense as extensions of walls, cut their way to the dining hall. Got it?" Alexander pulled Luca back from their peeping and explained to the crowd of oddly dressed young wizards.

"Right.", "Go, go, go.", "We're on it." everyone kept their volume in check and replied while holding their wands ready. Luca wanted to say he would go alone again and attract attention before the team followed to stun whoever or whatever pounced on him but had no time as Alexander turned around and ran before him. Luca quickly gave chase, in the short span of time that running a mere thirty feet took, the boy listened intently for signs of their discovery, fortunately, somebody made all of the invaders' heads point away from the corridor, allowing the group to move undiscovered so close to their opponents. Alexander and Luca sprinted out of the corridor to see before them a werewolf unlike the thin, ugly kind they had so far encountered, sprinting on all fours right within the reach of their arms. Muscles bulging, protruding chest, and thick legs of the lycanthrope signified trouble far greater than the sickly version that was sent to attack kids, of course, on the premise that the beast turned to see them. With no further thought, Luca swung his sword downwards at the perfect moment and angle and cut the wolf's head off while Alexander sent a superfluous beam at the beast meant to stun it. Luca briefly wondered why he didn't seem to care much about killing ultimately humans, an instant reel of dreams and fantasies on how he executed vampires, dark wizards, and cultists alike surfaced in his subconscious - the boy knew that since being imprisoned and his change of mentality after watching the life of Mr. Weiss, killing anyone who deserved it would never be a burden on his mind, no matter how high the number climbs.

The duo stormed over the body, and Luca's enhanced sight allowed him to take in the situation in both the right and left pathways in an instant. On his right, only the back view of several creatures he recognized as sasquatches and werewolves remained as they kept rushing into thoroughly demolished giant doors of the dining hall, on his left, he saw two big groups of dark wizards blocking intersections, one closer blockade in the process of trying to pour their magic into the corridor filled with fire, the glow of which cast shadows of the dark wizard's bodies on the wall. A sasquatch standing on two legs and armed with a giant club was the nearest incoming enemy, Alexander took care of the ten-feet-tall creature looking like a Big Foot or a primitive man-monkey hybrid by swinging his war hammer to block the blow of the club and firing a red beam at the creature's side. Luca, as he witnessed both the strike and magic ineffective, regretted not telling his friend about the need to turn on the enchantments before using rune weapons, otherwise, imbued in the hammer part expulso would easily shatter the stick and make the creature step back.

"Roar!" the sasquatch bared its teeth and jumped to hit Alexander with a flying headbutt, several 'big' werewolves in irregular intervals on their way to the dining hall howled in a chorus as they saw Wampus students pouring into the corridor, and the dark wizards, no matter how busy, had to soon glance at what was happening on their sides. Luca decided that helping Alexander was a job for other Wampus students, he sent a red beam thick enough to hit four lined up invaders still busy constantly casting counter-curses onto the fire that steadily approached their barricade. All spells besides stupefy are ridiculously pointless, a sentence crossed Luca's mind as he watched his red beam depose several dark wizards at once and prepared another one quickly. The sasquatch's blow threw Alexander into a member of their team running after Luca, only to be immediately focused by a dozen beams of magic from the rest of the students. The beast fell down, blocking the floor with two giant bodies Wampus members had to cross in order to gain ground in the main corridor, Alexander stood up relatively unscathed despite coughing up some blood due to the beast's lack of momentum.

"Left side, walls!" the blonde triplet didn't have a clear way to point a wand at the enemies or floors as people were vaulting over the bodies, and he realized that the right side wasn't of concern, so he wanted the team to hurry up and secure themselves before forming a firing line. Luca didn't consider himself capable of controlling his range of transfiguration to construct any reliable wall or an obstacle, he turned and stuck his back to the corridor's wall after firing an intercepted by a dark wizard spell, he saw multiple dark wizards turn and start either blocking or counterattacking the sudden inflow of Wampus team. This turned out to be a detriment to their overall situation, raging fire finally broke through into the main corridor, scorching into ashes the limp four bodies Luca stunned and creating an insurmountable obstacle for wizards and creatures on the other side of the wall of flames.

Nine dark wizards and two werewolves dodged the flames in the direction of the team, they maintained cohesion and out of habit once again started pouring their magic to counteract attacks of the Wampus team, one of the werewolves was eliminated by Luca's unavoidable, wide red beam, second one hidden among the dark wizards. Luca observed his now left side once he concluded that his role in this skirmish was limited, the Wampus team could be trusted to slowly wear down their opponents, dining hall's ruined door where he wanted to rush into abounded with noise and colour, a steady stream of blood spread out from there. The situation on his right changed, jet of fire stopped, and the dark wizards got reinforcements, although now instead of fire, they were separated by an uninterrupted barrage of spells flying between the ten on one side and gathered on the other fifteen invaders. Luca's ears picked up marching steps of either Pukwudgie or Horned Serpent members that cut right in the middle of the dark wizards' group, now also aided by one or two people from the second barricade further in the direction of the castle's main entrance, the situation there also on the verge of collapse for the side of invaders.

"What a fucking scam, we shouldn't come for that empty promise of worthless dogs!", "Leader?!" Luca output his share of spells above a transfigured out of stone floor fence and objects thrown in front of it by adult Wampus students taught in senior years effective group combat strategies, the now seven dark wizards felt cornered as two of them fell.

"Don't make it so easy for those brats, attack!" a bulky dark wizard said in a grim voice, the group so far focused on blocking changed their uncertain and fearful faces and switched to casting their specialty black magics verbally, Luca didn't know what those were, he just cast the countercurse on leader's wand that interrupted whatever the man wanted to do, yet a spell slipped through the obstacles and shields of Wampus house to hit a guy straight in his arm.

"Aaa…!" a short scream sounded as the man's arm melted into a soup-meat mixture on the ground, the corrosion quickly went all the way up to his shoulder and neck, there was no saving for the first Wampus team casualty. Luca knew him a bit, one of his former quidditch teammates scheduled to graduate alongside the triplets. Right past what was left of the man's body, Luca saw Ringo lead the horde of cats in the direction of the dining hall, and he had to choose once again - would he follow them or instead take revenge on whoever cast that vicious curse?

Luca decided to finish what was in front of him and stepped on and over the waist-heigh transfigured fence that protected Wampus members in order to make the dark wizards focus him, the crystal-clear vision and reflexes enabled him to feel safe amidst the flying all-over magic, he nullified any attempt of gathering magic from the side of dark wizards' leader. Werewolf on the side of the invaders lurked in a completely prone position to wait for his chance, the monster rushed towards steadily approaching Luca, cleverly from under the wall too for Luca's body to block as many incoming spells as possible. The nearest group of dark wizards melted to number only five as the Wampus students turned the heat up, stimulated by their friend's accident, which enabled the farther group of invaders to fire spells that crisscrossed at ninety-degree angle with ones incoming either Horned Serpents or Pukwudgies preemptively cast onto the main corridor. The werewolf feigned a jump, his legs went from bent to straight with a growl, Luca waved his sword from top to bottom in an anticipated greeting for the supposedly flying onto him creature, this made the werewolf really jump forward, braving a direct hit in the stomach by a yellow spell fired by one of Wampus students. Luca didn't panic and with his other hand continued casting finite into the dark wizard's wand, his ring protected him in a flash of white. Sword back in position, Luca directly halved the creature, blood splashed backwards as the recoil force of the failed jump threw the werewolf back in the direction of the last two dark wizards.

"You…!!!" the powerless burly leader who managed to dodge every other but Luca's spell roared unwillingly and threw his wand away in frustration as he stood still and let himself take a hit to end his humiliation.

"Wampus on your left side!" Luca roared into the corridor to prevent a situation of being mistaken for an enemy with his black furry face while sidestepping spells from the group of wizards and creatures on the other side of the heavily bombarded piece of ground.

"Got it!" a female voice responded, Luca saw a wave of water cool down the previously heated stones and crack the surface layer of the castle's floors into an abstract mosaic, a tall woman in blue and yellow Snow White's costume leaned to lock eyes with Luca who nodded slightly to her and slipped into the corridor to see a dozen women in Snow White's dresses and heavy rouge makeup with their long skirts torn off to show knees at least, some even flashed their panties. Luca suppressed a feeling of discord the scene right next to a life-or-death fight caused and thought rapidly of the next step, to use the old trick again.

"Blast the walls!" Luca suggested a course of action that would enable the Pukwudgie team to join the fight from the side of the group of dark wizards instead of walking into the rainbow-coloured piece of crumbling, melting, and steaming area right at the noses of the prepared dark wizards' team. He didn't want to use his enhanced bombarda right at the side of the squeezed-together students of house Pukwudgie. The woman - Jessica, president of the house's Club, Stone Menders - ordered other women, also in Snow White's dress, to stand or squat further from the wall about to become history, Luca busy casting protego after protego on the corridor's exit, the dark wizards' barricade was at an angle that enabled with just three or four steps to have a line of sight onto him, the Snow Whites uniformly exploded the way into another bathroom.

Luca hurried to get forward and get in front of the Pukwudgies' line, he wanted his exploding charm to send pieces of rock into the group of dark wizards and creatures there, the lethality confirmed by the near-instant break of his barrier in a skirmish before. His plan succeeded, the sudden rain of debris bloodied all the dark wizards, yet the two sasquatches put one arm to protect their eyes and roared in a blind charge to Luca's position. He didn't have to take action, dozens of spells immediately hit the monsters - it seemed that the adults of Pukwudgie were just as reliable as those coming from Wampus, a notion later proved by the amazing feat of the stubborn house - their members resisted sudden hypnotic prompt by sheer willpower and warned their surrounding peers of something wrong with them before asking to be knocked out on their own volition, and a fortunate fluke that prior to the attack a group of Pukwudgie girls came up with an idea of collectively dressing as Snow White and 'kidnapping' first and second-year boys to form an army of funny-dressed dwarves to serve them for the night, which made the house free of werewolf infection as both front and end had adult wizards to escort the line going for a Halloween banquet.

Luca led the way into the dust and debris, Jessica on his right, she conjured a stream of fire to leave no chance for the dark wizards to gather their spirits. Luca felt a wave of magic fluctuations behind him, a multitude of flame lines arched elegantly above his head and crashed down to the corridor, he thought with some admiration that Mrs. Fieldstein did manage to drill at least a bit of magic control into her students. The ruthless blow made the already wounded dark wizards completely helpless, charred corpses all that was left of a dozen invaders, Luca's active mind again distracted to think that such tempo of eliminating invaders was simply faster than lightning. 

Back at the main corridor, he looked right at another curious sight - a man held two wands, one pressed onto an enlarged piece of parchment he lay on that levitated with great speed and dexterity under the ceiling, second wand stuck outside his impromptu flying carpet to mow down the last powerless werewolf he left intentionally, the grey dog despite its impressive muscles couldn't catch up with the man. Dean William Dietrich, as Luca identified him, didn't bother going to the banquet and spent his time in the office writing, his swift arrival rescued the Horned Serpent's students from collapse more thorough than Thunderbird's as the house with the greatest mortal casualties were them - it turned out that Melin Berbat was indeed sick in his head, the madman detonated a bomb smuggled inside his hollow prosthetic arm. The speculated reason for this - he held a grudge against his house for not aiding him unconditionally in the process of exonerating Luca of the assault on him, distorted hate gnawed at his mentality with every look of pity or disgust he got over the last school year, a knowledge that he will be remembered forever as a negative example and a fuse to a protest with far-reaching consequences, it didn't take an agent of the invaders a long time to persuade him to commit the desperate act of suicide bombing. Berbat took with him the lives of fifty Horned Serpent adult students right as the werewolves attacked, if not for the speedy arrival of Dean Dieterich, who heard shots from the outside and rushed from the direction of Horned Serpent's common room to save first-years, werewolves would add more than six hundred members to their ranks within ten minutes.

Luca saw no enemies in sight and without delay sprinted in the direction of the dining hall. He stopped at the point where Alexander commanded a reorganization with newly arrived dozen reinforcements led by one of his brothers while silent tears streamed down the triplet's face, body of two more Wampus victims lay there intact, suggesting a certain curse be the cause of their deaths. Luca bypassed them silently, the crowd of Pukwudgies right after his heels.

"Don't dawdle here, leave the left side for us and also form a line, hurry inside!" Jessica barked at the somewhat disorganized Wampus members and pushed them out of the way to make room for her people, no fancy strategy or a discussion needed in her and Luca's opinion alike, they wanted to put an end to this inexplicable invasion. Dean Dietrich shot out from behind on his parchment and flew to the highest point possible.

"Follow!" the man spat a word while spinning three hundred sixty degrees to face the crowd of Pukwudgies and Wampus students briefly and turned back to fly into the dining hall, Luca caught the middle-aged man's pale face and exposed gums as he clenched his mouth and barred teeth to breathe loudly enough for Luca to hear whistling noises despite the huge ruckus in front of them.