Life
Luca mindlessly imitated what the entire venue was doing and also gazed at the monument in the middle. Eventually, everyone's expectations were met, and it moved slowly. The wizard statues put one hand down to grasp wands attached to their hips as a sword would, their coloured lifelike, made of unknown material palms grasped with dexterity around the slim twigs, and pointed them right at their temples. Extracting white mist material out from inside their heads until it accumulated to a certain degree, the statues sharply waved their wands forward to a flash of a circle of runes hidden underneath the grass surrounding them, the substance enlarged and rapidly covered the space of Coliseum rolling in a tide twenty feet tall. Nobody seemed to be concerned, Luca let it hit his face calmly.
At first, nothing but white occupied his field of view, it rapidly changed as the mist swirled and self-corrected its colours, the boy was now inside a tiny room, dirt walls and floors, with an open window flanked by heavy wooden shutters. A small kid looking at most five years old in rags entered through a door made of planks with his head hung low and stood there waiting as a weathered woman of haggard complexion and thin body was about to finish waving a piece of fabric on a vertical wooden loom. A heap of straw beside a small red brick timber-fueled stove and a bucket of water were the only other objects inside.
"What's going on? Hello, hello?" Luca's waved his hand in front of the kid's face, getting no response, he thought to talk to the adult in the room and stepped to be closer to her. "Ma'am, sorry for intrusion…" the woman turned as she finished and walked right through the boy that forgot to step aside due to being absorbed in contemplating what situation he got himself into.
"Ist das alles? Geh zurück und arbeite!" Luca rapidly turned to see the kid open his clenched fist and hand over two small bronze coins to the woman, who slapped him on his cheek and shouted something in German as she chased the kid out with an added kick to the bottom.
"Hey!" Luca stepped to grab her angry for the struggling to get up kid, but his hand grasped nothing as the white mist returned and rearranged the surroundings. The small kid in the middle of a muddy street carried buckets of water to people's homes, a coin exchanged for the whole morning of labour, many when he begged for money took his water and turned a deaf ear. The mist came again to show the same kid doing laundry with a group of women, one of which gave him a piece of black bread clearly laced with sawdust as a reward. Third scene, in the middle of the night inside the room where the kid lay curled up motionless in the corner, what had to be assumed his mother sleeping soundly on the straw mattress, was broken into by two men holding clubs studded with nails reflecting what bit of moonlight got through the shut window.
"Wo ist das Geld?" they grabbed the woman fast and stuffed her mouth with a prepared shawl before she had a chance to cry, the same done to the kid. They searched the room and found a leather pouch inside the fireplace that contained the woman's savings, laughing, they left as the woman sobbed on the floor. Luca frowned and figured out he was not in control of whatever happened at all, and can only observe the life of this medieval peasant kid, when he tried to leave as the thieves entered, a greyish membrane stopped him.
Swirl of the mist later, the kid now taller, was hired to sweep chimneys in a noble estate. Luca had an overview of the area standing on top of a house covered in crude red tiles, stables and a park fenced off behind a high stone wall. Past it, a town consisting of three or four stories buildings covered in lime, glass windows, and neatly paved with slabs of stone streets made him realize the approximate year should be in the seventeenth or eighteenth century judging by the advancement of architecture, the kid living in slums made it feel poorer than it should be during that age. Carrying the specialized broom on a rope, the kid went up the ladder and came on all fours towards the chimney, mid-journey his hands and feet got entangled with rope, and he tumbled down screaming. Luca, even if part of him knew it to be pointless, lunged to try and catch him, falling on his belly with head sticking out the rooftop, only to see the kid bounce off the ground and stand upright with a bewildered face, patting his limbs to make sure he was alright. Out of thin air, a man wearing a wizarding robe, wand in his hand, appeared five meters from him, looking around until his sight caught the kid's one.
"Du bist ein Zauberer, Helmut." the man spoke indifferently, a spark of disgust in his eyes. He approached the kid aggressively and yanked his arm up with a wave of the other hand, scene ended to show next the kid now nine or ten years old wearing rough baggy linen clothes tied with a string, beaten in full force using a thick wooden ruler by a tutor teaching a class of three, one boy - him - and two girls, alphabet written in coal on a white wall. Quickly dispersing and recombining mist showed the same three entering a medium-sized castle timidly under guidance from the previous wizard, Luca followed as the grey film closing in on him was pushing the boy to do so. Passing the gates, he arrived at a dining hall during dinner, approximately a hundred wizards eating white bread and various meats. The guide said a couple of words to the crowd and went to the adult table, leaving the trio to fend for themselves. The kid Luca now knew named Helmut, took the initiative to sit at the nearest table, his two companions hesitantly followed, tugging on their coarse dresses as most of the hall exuded an aura of nobility, finely dressed in silk and velvet with their posture and manners impeccable.
"Schlammblut." a student of the castle spat and stood up to not sit next to Helmut, leaving the trio sitting on the edge of the hall under hostile gazes from their peers and older wizards alike, Helmut bearing the brunt of them as he dared to look freely around, the girls sat down motionless and fixed their eyes on the table. Luca watched with increasingly cold expression as the kid was given an unpolished wand with hair sticking out both of its ends, be the only one asked questions by the teacher, every wrong reply earning him a punishment of standing in the corner, prohibited from watching magic being taught behind his back, a mob undressing him and magically removing all hair from the body, to leave him bald as a newborn and laugh at that, and other forms of assault culminated in a trial, much like the one experienced by Luca in Ilvermorny.
"Ausgewiesen!" one of the girls brought to the school with Helmut stood bruised and with her clothes ripped, oozing blood trailing down her neck and legs as she pointed to the dumfounded now fourteen or fifteen years old hairless youth as her assailant, to the smirks from a group of wizards most frequently harassing Helmut. The youth screamed and shouted, but his wand was taken away, and the man that guided him inside snapped the twig in half as he pronounced the verdict. Luca powerlessly punched him, fist going right through the man's pelvis.
Incensed Luca breathed roughly as everything turned to mist, rebuilding in an image of streets at night, Helmut on his left holding a pair of knives in his hands squatting behind the corner of a building. Puzzled Luca turned his head around to see if there was anything to point a knife at, finally locking the target on a brightly lit tavern from where barely muted screams of pleasure accompanied the drunken singing out of tune voices. The door opened to two girls holding up the leading bully whose obese face Luca watched enough times already to remember for the rest of his life. Helmut tensed visibly, the trio didn't deviate in any unexpected directions and went straight to his position. Every laborious step weighing on the hearts of both the onlookers, Helmut jumped forward and pierced madly at the chest of the fat trainee wizard. Taking a thick wand and money both no-maj and in Galleons from the corpse, he ignored the runaway screaming girls and sprinted away.
Untold hardships later for Helmut, one second for Luca, he stood on a deck of a ship sailing to New World, looking twenty years old and gloomy, more than a hint of viciousness in his always shining stubbornly eyes, accompanied by a gang of men like himself led by a grey-haired warlock corrupted enough to grow horns he adorned with golden rings, as Luca looked around, the sacrificial altar right in the middle of the ship with a sailor already lying dead on it, Helmut called to throw him over the ship's side did so with no emotion on his face. The boy's mind whirled at an even higher speed than the mist as he processed the turn to the 'dark side' of the main character in this magical projection, awoken from his stupor to see a blazing fire engulfing a wooden house in a town reminiscent of old western movies, two crossing in the middle long streets lined on both sides with exclusively made out of wood buildings.
"No, please, the entire town will burn! It's all we have!" Helmut stood in the middle of a crowd of kneeling townfolk, begging him to stop shooting flames out of his wand, only to emit a burst of wanton laughter, a sense of superiority as it was now his turn to bully others made him continue until nothing remained of the house, fire extinguished as his control over it was superb.
"You there, this week's sacrifice was decided, what a lucky thing, isn't it?" he pointed to the woman that shouted at him, she paled in fright and attempted to crawl away, another short laugh later, she was bound to only have feet sticking out of the coils of conjured rope. None of the folk prostrating themselves in the dirt rose to defend her as Helmut levitated her out of the town. Luca forced to walk after him, reached a cave guarded by two bored out of their minds dark wizards drinking beer on one side of it, reclining on sloped rockery.
"Your turn this time, Weiss?" one of them asked leisurely, to a nod from Helmut. He went deep into the cave, the altar now adorned with a pyramid of fresh skulls, the only other cultist inside was the old man, now his skin glowed smoother than Helmut's, his hair regained its black colour, and his eyes went vertical due to abundance of victims brought here by hunting teams of his gang he had an extra share in due to gathering the group and his knowledge of summoning.
"What's your wish?" the leader asked slowly, in heavily accented English.
"Same as always, magical knowledge." Helmut threw the woman on the altar, rope disappeared with another wave of a wand, a grey beam of light fixed her there, helpless to have control of her body taken, she rolled her begging eyes, tears streaming down her face. Helmut long immune to such sights, took out a bone knife with one edge jagged at the front and serrated at the back, the mist prevented Luca from watching what happened later. Seeing the familiar opening of the cave again, Helmut came inside after dismounting from a carriage, motionless dirty beggars he kidnapped from a town closer to the coast stacked on it ten feet high, fastened by leather straps. Guards missing unusually, the man frowned and pulled out his wand. Inside, Helmut and Luca saw a gathering of all the members of the organization busy arranging toddlers and children on an occult shape delineated by a thick trail of powdered coal, the surface of a rocky cave leveled to perfection since the last picture when it was naturally uneven.
"What are you doing?!" agitated for some reason Helmut went to question the leader barking orders and pointing here and there. Luca's eyes stayed on the nearest child, in disbelief that he was allowed to watch this memory as he finally figured it out to be alongside the eighty thousand spectators.
"A grand sacrifice, our Lord will reward us all with everlasting youth!" the leader shouted in a frenzied manner, his skin now reddish, the horns grew in a curved spiral.
"We didn't do child sacrifices, aren't you already young?!" Helmut shouted, his eyes darting from one bound kid to another in gradually increasing panic, Luca could almost see the unsullied part of his soul substituting the younger self with them and questioning his lifelong choices.
"Lord will be happy, so happy! You there, her hands facing at that kid, yes, like that!" the leader close to the grand event didn't pay his underling any attention, Helmut's gaze going from a stubborn spark that accompanied him since childhood and kept him going whatever price required, transformed into a fire of resolve born out of guilt right in front of Luca's eyes. He pulled out the bone knife with his dominant hand, placing the wand at his left, and went casually behind the unsuspecting leader. Thrust and twist forward, the demonized man's heart turned into mush, beam of red light hit the dark wizard he knew to be second in strength among them.
"Was machst du?! Hör auf!" to the screams coming from his prey, Helmut rapidly disposed of the nearest former comrades by knife, and the further ones by wand. Half the clique lay down before he met with resistance, the ensuing hard battle ended as the last stunned by him previously cultist got his heart pierced. He panted covered in soot, one tight pierced by the bone dagger of the same shape as his, the cave with traces of fire everywhere but ten inches radius away from each child he managed to protect.
"Wonderful performance, enjoy being marked..." an annoyed whisper reverberated in an echo, after which the altar shattered as did the bones of victims slain on it, and the corpses of the cultists melted in a river of blood to merge with the bone knife clenched tightly in Mr. Weiss's hand. The mist changing the scene, Luca reeled from emotions the fight evoked, so many times he was sure Mr. Weiss was finished, just to see the cast in a last moment protego or a dodge by a hair's width. Invested in the following scenes of the man visiting campfires, settlements, and people smiling with hope in their eyes as they went to the promised colonies abundant in resources and free land, gradually Mr. Weiss in his travels saved more and more strangers he encountered while being non-stop approached by wave after wave of cultists, during an interrogation of one of them, it was revealed why they could locate and attack him unprovoked.
The knife, now having tasted the sweet corrupted blood, thirsted for more of it and guided its owner to the warlocks entering the range of its magical senses, which is why he stayed alive at all, endless hordes couldn't ambush him, but they didn't know about it and stupidly waited in bushes he burned from far away along with them. The drawback was the distance at which demons and humans with even a sliver of fiendish power could sense it in reverse increased tenfold, and the irresistible reward given for whoever slayed its wielder and sent the knife back into Hell, the souls and demonic energy accumulating silently inside of it. Mr. Weiss couldn't throw the dagger away, it always teleported right into his palm. Going like that, the hairless man grew to be around thirty years old as he got approached by a smiling wildly wizard that put his arms up to signify no threat.
"Hello, I'm Josiah Jackson, newly appointed Minister of the Magical Congress of the United States of America." he introduced himself.
"Helmut Weiss." a short impassive reply, there were wizards that tried to trick him with drugs and backstabs.
"I'm forming a team to protect this beautiful country, we need someone like you." Josiah spoke cutting to the chase.
"Who's in, what's the name of it?" Mr. Weiss was interested, temporary companions all left him under pressure, he was tired of being alone.
"Twelve Aurors, wizards like you with a higher purpose, to curb the infestation of evil…" mist changed the scene to a gathering in the woods, a mere hundred wizards that Ministry had so far employed to witness The Twelve crossing their wands, three women and nine men. Luca to his surprise spotted the firmament robe his teacher sported on the back of one of them, looking closer, the man's face did resemble the vice-headmaster's in his youth, the boy knew how his teacher looked back then from photos they watched as a trio with Abigail one Sunday. Their joined wands shot a beam of white light into the sky, the dark woods illuminated without a shadow in sight, as they spoke their vows one by one.
"I swear to protect the team from all danger as long as I or my descendants live.", "I swear to exterminate demons as long as I live.", "I swear to use my talent to investigate who is our enemy without fail as long as I or my descendants live.", "I swear to turn our foes into helpless sheep as long as I or my descendants live." the scene took some time, Luca jumped around it in an excited mood, even going as silly as to jump into the beam of light, wishing to also be there and contribute to the cause, he wondered what vow could he make. Mist whirled to take the boy into another place.
"Damned Scourers, combien il en reste?!" the Aurors stormed inside another cave, Luca concluded the preferred choice of accommodation for dark wizards and other scum. A quick count the boy did revealed a sad truth: only ten of them left, luckily the ancestor of his teacher the one speaking, Mr. Weiss beside him. Scars on his wrinkled face signified advanced age, Luca estimated past his fifties, the firmness of his eyes the only unaffected by passing time feature.
"Thousand. Watch out for sneak attacks, no talk!" he shouted a warning as the withered zombies or inferi as the Wizarding World called them, advanced through a wall of fire and ashes of their fellows, their numbers intended to use up Aurors' magic and concentration, the ambush carefully prepared, howls and grunts coming from outside, space prohibited in a large area by multiple dimensional mages hiding out of the perception of anyone on the team. Green beams came towards the entrenched behind a three-quarters-person high wall Ten, Luca could feel waves of magic clashing inside it to wrestle for control over the matter, serpents of fire and water attempted to drown the good guys out from above.
"It can't go on like this, we have to pick a side and charge." another bald man said calmly as he sat with crossed legs in the middle of the small fortification, hearing this, the boy had a bad premonition.
"Forward, maybe the Scourers have an escape route." Mr. Weiss long considered it, rest of the team squeezed a simple yes between their spell incantations, the man took a deep breath and shouted "Now!" to a wave of a wand from ancestor Fontaine, his robe completely losing its luster, the magic of others completely dispelled, the wall now open in the direction of inferi, four times as high and long in the direction of the entrance. The team went running, shielded by a sea of fire preceding them and growing in the way of incoming beams pillars of stone, Luca running alongside them. Suddenly, five green lasers emerged from the inferno and went in the direction of Mr. Weiss, two blocked by a pillar of stone, two aimed at the center of his gravity, impossible to dodge, and one destined to pass him by narrowly and hit the person behind him. In an instant decision, the man put out his hand to catch the fifth of them, a triple curse lit his whole body green, the mist in the blink of an eye went pitch black and scattered, Luca was yet again standing on the obsidian steps of the Coliseum.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" the boy had to discharge the high-strung feelings, he punched downward at the steps, holding himself back at the last moment, recalling Bryce's exaggerated pain, he settled on squatting there with head hung low and breathing rapidly.
"Who's memory you got?" Junfeng asked from above.
"Helmut Weiss." Luca stated in a shaky tone.
"Demonslayer, huh? Not bad, Weiss had an interesting story, shame he left no descendants." Junfeng posed for a connoisseur. "It's my first memory as a toddler actually, lying confused in a pram as I watched Cormac O'Brien's life going around me." he bragged, the venue gradually calming down, Luca stood up again after he sorted his thoughts.
"See, you should watch unprepared, that's the best way. I got Abraham Potter this year, the Mad Potioneer." Miranda chimed in from the side.
"Don't you think that watching this kind of encourages wizards to join a cult?" Luca hesitated but couldn't stop himself from voicing his doubts, the leader's return to youth could be a powerful incentive for wizards to seek out forbidden knowledge even if a price for it seemed inevitable fall.
"No, why?" Junfeng replied with a blank face, his confused eyes told Luca that he didn't lie.
"You wouldn't think so because it didn't encourage you… Forget it, as if I never asked." Luca realized it didn't make sense to argue, and put his attention on the field, where the creatures and humans mixed in between each other and went another circle on the ground like that, leaving through the golden gate opened again, to thunderous applause from the stands.