AN: 2 weeks before it would have been a full year since an update, I present you with a holiday gift. You may need to read the last chapter to recall what has happened so far. Quick review: Potter had a battle with Senior Council members and barely made through it. Dresden just found out that Ancient Mai set up Potter to be killed by a dragon in case Senior Council failed to off him.

Much love to Tinn Tam for being a patient beta.

Drip Drop Redux

Charity CarpenterPanic Room – Carpenter Household – Chicago

“Father in Heaven, preserve us…”

I hoped my prayers were louder than the sounds of battle. ‘Noise’ is not a strong enough word for what we heard. Michael had built our panic room himself. It was shielded by Angelic blessings and prayers. Yet every passing second the gray walls of our sanctuary shuddered, as if a large monster crashed past them. Sometimes from far away terrible screeching sounds came. I heard howls of creatures that couldn’t have been normal or good by any imagination. Their very voices were foul, their cries unholy. God! I was so terrified, and I prayed harder and harder. I hoped my babies couldn’t hear the screams or the way the world shook outside.

“Don’t worry, mama, Mr. Harry will kick their ass,” Molly told me with a pretend bored look. She made me forget my fear in favor of being exasperated with her. Her face was still stained with tears and the blood of the wizard who had abducted her. As I looked at her, my heart skipped a beat and I hugged her close to myself. She had been threatened by a man much more powerful than me and if it hadn’t been for Harry… I couldn’t bear to even think of it again.

“Say a prayer for him, Molly,” I said to my eldest child with my lips buried in her hair. I could smell the blood on her; thankfully none of it was hers. “And don’t use profanities.”

The sounds of strange and horrifying mechanical howls stopped for a while before I realized they had. The silence made me more apprehensive – I hoped it was over. I wondered if Harry had any hope. I had given up the world of magic a long time ago, but I remembered that purple stoles marked wizards of the greatest power in our world. The one Harry had attacked to save my Molly wore one. If that man was still alive, or if there were more like him waiting for Harry, he wouldn’t come away unscathed. That is, if he survived at all. I begged the Father’s forgiveness quietly for saying cruel words to Harry before. I could have said what I wanted to more kindly. I made him feel hated. That wasn’t my intention. Yet, he came to save my daughter. I couldn’t imagine a life without Molly. Tears pricked in my eyes but I held them back. A mother has to be strong for her children. She has to be a rock; and I was that rock.

“No! No more! Please, NO MORE!”

My eyes snapped to the side wall where it felt as though the voice tore through and straight into my body. It was Harry’s screaming. He sounded terrified and, my God, tortured. They were torturing him. My children started crying. Nothing had scared them like his defeated cry. O Father, protect the one who saved my child.I shushed my children, trying to sooth their fear away with prayer, song, and touch. My mind was on the Phoenix Chosen, however. We were safe, but he was outside fighting the vile wizards alone. I tried to remind myself I had felt his magic and it had almost overwhelmed me, so I had nothing to be concerned about. I kept telling myself he was a Phoenix-graced dragon hunter. But in the end I only thought of the too thin, wild-eyed boy I had picked from the hospital. I couldn’t think the boy whose face was so set with patiently accepted pain could match the Whit Council wretches of the White Council. They were evil men and women with too much power. Harry was… I didn’t know. I didn’t think I had ever really decided what he was. But in that moment I worried for him desperately, and when I didn’t hear anything of him after that tortured wail – I despaired.

I stood on my knees to knock on the hidden door, wanting to attract the attention of the wizards Harry had left behind to protect us. I hoped they could see what was happening. But I had just stretched my closed fist out to rap on the door when a woman’s scream rent the strained quiet. My sons and daughters turned with frightened faces to me.

“Don’t worry, sweethearts, it’s going to be over soon. We’re safe,” I couldn’t keep a tremble out of my voice, and cleared my throat to hide it. But who was screaming?

I heard panicked voices outside the room. Someone ran downstairs, there were shouts. Were the young wizards Harry left guarding us getting ready to defend my home? They were only apprentices and I didn’t trust that they were fully loyal to Harry. In the face of the might of the White Council much greater powers than children in brown robes were forced to bow or die. I prayed Michael would return home soon and that Harry was still alive.

“Mrs. Carpenter,” the girl, Marjory, called.

“Yes, Marjory? Is it safe to come out?” I asked, satisfied that my voice betrayed nothing but calm.

“Umm, yes?” she answered.

“… Child, is it safe or not? Asking me will help neither of us.” I just about said ‘you ditz’ in place of ‘child’ like I wanted to.

“The fight’s over. Auror Madeye is hurt. Amber is bringing him in. Ramirez is standing guard on the stairs. Wait,” she said. I heard the other girl shouting in the background. “Do you have a first aid kit?”

I prayed for patience and understanding, shutting my eyes in exasperation. I wondered not for the first time what Harry had been thinking bringing these young wizardlings to protect us. ‘Heart’, he had said, was more important than experience. It was difficult to agree with him when I could hear the girl’s fear.

“I am coming out,” I said, standing to open the door. “Stay here. Don’t come out until I come for you.”

“But what if something happens to you?” Molly demanded.

“Nothing will happen to me.” I sincerely hoped that was true.

“You don’t know that!” she whined.

“Then your father will come for you. Take care of your brothers and sisters, Molly.” I opened the door and shut it before she could say something again. I took a breath and steeled myself for what was to come.

Marjory was standing outside the closet hiding our panic room. She was pale and it emphasized the awkward thinness of youth she had just grown into. Her eyes were very round and wide - she was frightened. Reflexively my hand went out and squeezed her arm to comfort her. She nodded to me and swallowed. The motion made her neck look even thinner. My God, Harry really had brought children with him.

“Is she coming?!” Amber’s voice came from below.

“Yes, she is!” I shouted back, leaving Marjory to follow in my wake. I ran down the stairs like I never let my children do. The front door was open and a trail of blood went from it into the kitchen. The metallic smell of it struck me and I panicked. How much blood was there that I could smell it so easily? I glanced outside the open door for only a moment and my heart skipped a beat. The road was destroyed, as if some giant rake had torn it up and thrown it around. The smell of gas and dust almost overwhelmed me but I turned to go to Harry instead. It had to be his blood I could smell and I was terrified to see how much of it he had lost.

The blonde girl Harry had left in charge was kneeling by him and spoke to him in a soft voice. For a moment I froze in the doorway, seeing him sitting against the stove with his legs splayed out at odd angles. I felt something hard in my throat, and only just stopped myself from cursing in dismay.

Amber had taken his shirt off to show his discolored body. Long patches of purple and maroon internal bleeding swelled on his arms and chest. I couldn’t see his back or his legs but I guessed I would see more of the same wounds there too. Dark red liquid pooled in his right eye and flowed out of it on his face and front sickeningly. It took me a moment before I even saw that his ears were bleeding. It looked like something out of the horror movie my children had become so fond of – too gratuitous to be real. I stifled a nervous laugh at the thought. The truth was he looked like my worst nightmare for Michael.

“What happened to his eye?” I asked; I felt as if my voice came from a faraway place. I wasn’t dealing well with what I was seeing. But I needed to control my own shock for Harry’s sake. Amber was too young to manage such an emergency.

“I don’t know. It won’t stop bleeding. It happened when he was fighting The Soothsayer. He won’t respond.” Amber shot me a worried look over her shoulder before continuing to wipe his blood with her soaked sleeve. I knelt by them both and gently pulled back her arm from his eye.

“It’s alright, honey, I am here. Where are those boys who were with you?” Giving her comfort helped me push away my own panic.

She sniffed and her hand trembled. “They are outside. Ramirez is guarding the house. Dakota is taking care of Martha Liberty.”

“Alright, that’s fine. You’re doing just fine. Go get a drink of water for yourself and bring me one for him.” I gave her a slight push to get her on her feet.

Harry spoke suddenly and startled both of us. “I saw reality. I saw everything, haha, everything! It was nothing. There isn’t a great beyond waiting for us after we die. It’s all strange and it doesn’t care. Do you know I’m seventy years old?”

“Harry?” For a moment I felt the instinctive need to argue that there was something after we died, but Harry needed something other than a lesson about Heaven and Hell. “You’re not seventy years old. How are you feeling?” It was a stupid question, but I felt better for asking it as calmly as I could.

“Charity…” Harry said, and smiled to me. His eye bled and the other stayed shut. “Have you ever woken up and not known where you were?”

“Yes, Harry. But then you just open your eyes,” I said in a conversational tone. I didn’t want him to go into shock. I told myself that if I stayed calm, he would stay calm. “What happened to you?”

“But you don’t open your eyes because you know it’s silly you can’t remember where you went to bed. So you try your hardest to remember without opening your eyes,” he went on as if he hadn’t heard me. I took his hand in mine, expecting his magic to leap to my skin, but it didn’t. The fear that had gone away returned full force. Harry was not weak magically, by any measure. I should have felt his strength. It made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I had to call Michael for help! His hand was so hot I had to let go.

“Auror Madeye. It’s Amber, can you tell us what The Soothsayer did? Maybe we can heal you,” Amber asked in a soft, careful voice.

I gave her an encouraging smile but I didn’t feel much confident myself. There was something very wrong with Harry. He was acting stranger than usual. Much stranger.

I helped Amber feed Harry the water she had brought. She looked much more in control than when I had come down.

“I think he’s delirious.” I put a hand on his forehead to find it so hot I had to pull it back before it burned.

“Except this time, Charity. It doesn’t matter if I open my eyes,” Harry said and his voice doubled, becoming deeper and so very dark that Amber and I recoiled from him. “I saw everything, every atom and star, and it doesn’t matter. The Truth doesn’t care.”

“Harry, listen to me. You have to focus. Are you cursed?” I asked frantically. The fever alone would kill him. “Get cold water and wash rags,” I ordered Amber, pointing to a cupboard. “Harry? Harry?” His face had gone slack.

His eye bled as if it was an open tap. He was dying and I didn’t know what I could do but pray. The phone started ringing. It sounded terribly loud. I ran to it hoping it was Michael.

“Michael?” I said picking it up.

Instead Karrin Murphy’s voice came over the line rapid fire. “No, Charity, it’s Karrin. I am in your neighborhood. It looks like a war zone. Are you okay? We can’t get through. Your street is blocked by a multiple car accident.”

“I am fine. Harry isn’t. He has massive internal bleeding and he’s running a dangerously high fever. There’s a lot of blood loss. We need an ambulance here. . Karrin was a grown woman, not someone under my care. I didn’t have to be extra strong for her, so I let her hear what I was feeling in my tone. Harry needed her help.

“I’m coming, hold a sec,” she said, and I could hear her giving orders. “Charity, what happened?” she asked in a whisper. She didn’t want anyone else to hear her.

I sighed inside. Could I trust her? Harry and Dresden did, but that was not an endorsement. I prayed that I was choosing right and told her, “I don’t know how much you know, Karrin. The organization that Dresden is a part of came for Harry. They kidnapped my daughter to get to him. He fought them…They were some of the most powerful magic users in the world.” I paused, not knowing if I should say what I did next, “I think he is dying. Hurry.” I waited for her to say something, but when she didn’t I prompted her, “Karrin?”

“Watch over him. I am coming.” She hung up. The steel in her voice gave me hope.

“And Good smiles an Evil leer, and that is the Truth. It’s a joke, Charity, and no one is laughing. Reality couldlaugh, but we’re not even bacterium to it. Funny…” Harry said from where he was still sitting against the stove. Amber shot me a desperate look.

“Harry, have faith,” I said, almost automatically. It is something I would say to a friend in the Women’s Bible study on Wednesday nights. It felt empty saying it then. Harry looked beyond any comfort I could give him, and I always had trouble understanding unbelievers. I took a wash cloth from Amber and soaked it into the bowl of cold water she had brought. Laying the rag on his forehead I simply prayed.

I heard a scuffle and looked up hopefully only to find the boy Ramirez come into the house. He looked worried and out of his depth. “He’s still alive?” he asked in surprise. Amber said something uncharitable and very unladylike back to him. In my heart I agreed with her.

“Sorry. It’s just that he took The Soothsayer’s ‘ring of truth’ attack. No one survives that,” he said with a shrug.

“What does it do?” Amber asked.

He scratched his head and leaned against the kitchen counter. “It’s supposed to show its victim all reality. Show him,” he gestured widely, “everything, all the truth of the world and about himself. It kills anyone who sees it. It’s like Jack Nicholson says, ‘you can’t handle the truth.’”

“Not funny, Ramirez!” Amber snapped.

“Stop bitching at me. We just betrayed the White Council. The only guy who could protect us is half-dead. What do you want me to do?” he shot back.

I raised my voice. “I would like both of you to keep your heads. Stay calm. Fighting each other will not save you. I have called for help.” Then a thought struck me. “Do either of you know how to contact Mr. Dresden?”

They shook their heads. I was disturbed by what Ramirez had said. I didn’t know someone could be cursed with the truth, and that it would kill them. It was frightening. And if I trusted Harry’s ramblings… It was enough to shake anyone’s faith.

“Dresden can’t help me. No one can help anyone. It doesn’t matter,” Harry suddenly spoke. I sighed in relief hearing his own voice instead of the dark double voice from before.

“You’ve been cursed. He might know a way to cure you. You will die if you don’t get help!” I ended up yelling at him a little.

“Death,” he said wonderingly. And then his hand in mine slackened. His head lolled to the side. I realized later that I started screaming at him to wake up. Amber was not far behind me. I felt for his heartbeat but couldn’t find one. I didn’t know if it was because I had panicked or if there really wasn’t one.

The next thing I knew a pair of hands pulled me away from Harry with vicious strength. I looked up to see Karrin Murphy with two paramedics. She was the one to push me aside. One paramedic was applying mouth to mouth while the other was taking out a portable defibrillator.

The next few minutes went in a blur in which I regained some sense and caught up Murphy on what was happening. It was difficult to see his weak and scarred body flop every time they shocked his heart. I tried to think straight by pretending I was far away. It helped to focus on the things I could do, which weren’t many.

“I don’t understand, he was in a fight with them just the day before, and he looked like nothing had touched him. Even if he was drenched in his own blood,” Karrin said to me, standing ramrod straight, keeping all expression off her face.

“We’ve got him!” one of the paramedics shouted. Karrin and I crowded in around the apprentices. There was a white glow around Harry.

“Take care of that eye. He’s lost too much already,” the other paramedic warned. Neither of them noticed the glow on him, they were too focused on his injuries. The brown robes had noticed and even Karrin shot me a look.

The black-uniformed paramedic leaned forward with a penlight and shined it into Harry’s uninjured eye, then moved to the other one. I watched with morbid curiosity to see what was left of it. He pulled back the lid and shone the light in. I couldn’t see his eye from my angle.

Without warning the paramedic jerked back. He scuttled away kicking at the floor with his heels. His face was in wild terror and he shrieked. It was so primal it startled all of us.

“Jimmy, what the fuck?” his partner shouted, jumping to him. But Jimmy beat at his arms, all the while screaming. His mouth began to foam and I backed away. Something made me look at Harry. His wounded eye was shut, but he was staring with the other one at Jimmy. His face looked alien and inhuman. The white glow was seeping out of his skin. It made a sickening contrast to the marks of internal bleeding and scars on him.

“Shit! Don’t look at his eyes!” Marjory exclaimed. Jimmy stood and ran from the kitchen. His partner looked on in shock.

“Go after him!” Karrin ordered. The paramedic didn’t need telling twice and was off after his partner.

“His eyes hold death and madness. This is what it must’ve meant. Damn!” Marjory swore. “I looked right at him. It could’ve happened to me.”

My heart was beating loudly in my chest. I thanked my foresight to leave the kids in the panic room. They were still in danger, even from Harry who had saved Molly.

“Pity,” Harry said, and this time his voice changed again to something else. We all looked at him with apprehension. He stood with difficulty. The white light on his skin seemed to solidify until it was a second skin.

“Harry?” Karrin ventured.

“You are the woman who he mistook for his mother,” Harry said in a stranger’s voice.

Karrin’s eyes narrowed. The three apprentices grabbed their staves and readied themselves.

“Who are you?” I demanded, and was surprised to hear the venom in my own voice. I hadn’t realized I had become angry.

“We are the Cardinal Light, lady. We are no threat to you or yours. Do not be concerned. We are simply ensuring the boy survives. He has gained knowledge that we cannot afford to lose.” Harry bowed to me, glowing white and alien.

“You are possessing him,” I accused, feeling enraged. This was why I hated magic. It corrupted and victimized innocents. “Leave him!”

Harry looked at me with that alien whiteness that made his green eyes shine like jewels. I lost my breath, terrified by what stood before me

“Lady, we are not possessing him. He is the Cardinal Light. He and we are one. But a cosmic power was used against him and both his body and mind have given way to it. We must find a way to heal him. The knowledge he has gained cannot be lost!” Harry said in the multiple voice of whatever possessed him. I didn’t trust it.

Karrin stepped next to me with her gun at her side. “Can’t you heal him?” she asked.

A sad expression came over Harry, making him look hundreds of years old. “There are many powers in the worlds, my lady. We are one cosmic power but not all. Your protector, this boy, fell victim to The Soothsayer’s invocation of a cosmic spell. Luckily the angel he protects saved enough of his body and mind that the curse is now limited to his right eye, but even she could not save all of him. If it were not for your healers he would have died. As is, his mind is giving way. We need to find a wizard of your world who can help him.”

I was stunned; Harry was protecting an angel? Just who was this insane boy who’d come in our lives?

“Dresden,” Karrin said. “He’s the only wizard I know who isn’t Harry’s enemy.”

Harry scratched his chin as if he expected a long beard to be there. “Yes, perhaps that young boy will know the cure to The Soothsayer’s magic.” He waved his wand making a scroll appear; with a blast, an owl shot out of the end of the wand as well. “Take this message to Harry Dresden. Be swift!”

With the teenaged wizards and Karrin, I watched in surprise as the owl took the floating scroll in the air and flew off. I wasn’t pleased with how things were turning out.

“Fine, now let Harry go. You’ve sent Dresden a message. I want to see Harry,” I demanded. I couldn’t accept the words of something that could possess a human.

“We cannot let him go. He is unable to cope with seeing the truth of reality and his place in it. My lady, this iscosmic knowledge, he will be driven to madness! Step out of our way!” the multiple voices shouted at me.

He shone so brightly, it was awful. When I could open my eyes I saw us all on our knees in front of him. “Let-him-go,” I whispered. My throat ached as if I had been shouting for days. I prayed for strength to overcome the fear of the being possessing Harry. From somewhere I got the strength to grab Harry’s leg as he passed us by. He stumbled and I pulled his leg from under him, making him crash on the bloodstained floor.

I floundered a little as I tried to pin him, but then he lashed out and kicked me in the chest. With the wind knocked out of me I fell back. I hadn’t noticed that Karrin was trying to help me on Harry’s other side. I saw her now pining him down with what looked like a complicated jujitsu hold.

“Can you exorcise it?” I asked Amber and Ramirez who were looking on in shock. I despaired inside; even if they were wizards, they were inexperienced children. They shook their heads and looked to me to tell them what to do next. I didn’t have a clue myself.

“My lady, it is highly inappropriate for us to be entangled like this,” the being possessing Harry said in a fastidious way.

Karrin smiled insincerely and said, “All you have to do is get out of Harry. Are my breasts bothering you?” She pressed a little closer to Harry’s body.

“Karrin!” I gasped, shocked despite myself. Karrin lifted an eyebrow at me and I realized I was being foolish.

“It is not beyond us to release ourselves from you, my lady. But for the sake of Harry’s oath to you, we would ask you to let us go of your own accord,” he said, lying very still, caught between Karrin’s legs and arms.

“An oath.” Ramirez suddenly grinned and leaned over them. “What oath? Is it an oath of protection?”

An uncomfortable look passed over Harry’s face.

“Ha! He can’t hurt you, officer,” Amber said, now also grinning.

“Lieutenant,” Karrin corrected. As we were all feeling triumphant, something seemed to go very wrong. The being possessing Harry’s body began writhing as if in pain. He didn’t make a sound but he looked desperate. Karrin held on as if it was no effort while the teen wizards cheered her on. They didn’t notice my disquiet. They didn’t see the black tendrils leaving Karrin’s cross. The tendrils were peeling away the pale whiteness covering Harry – I didn’t know if it was a good thing or something worse than what possessed him. I just prayed.

Before anyone else noticed her cross, the glowing presence of the possessing spirit disappeared. Harry looked like himself again; wounded but human. Karrin slackened her hold on him – I suppose she noticed he wasn’t fighting her anymore. She looked up questionigly at me and the wizards.

I pointed to her cross which was hanging from her neck. Black frost had formed between the cross and Harry’s chest like a spider web. It broke when Karrin wrapped her hand around it. Just then Harry drew a sharp breath, startling me. He clapped his eyes open – I nearly forgot about what looking at his eyes had done to the paramedic. Amber remembered and shouted at us to look away.

We were all looking away from him but heard him struggle to his feet with a groan of pain. I saw a roll of gauze in the paramedics’ case and grabbed it.

“Harry, can you please close your eyes?” I asked, hoping he was back to normal.

“Yes,” he said, sounding lost in thought.

With ice in my veins I turned to him. I sighed in relief – he had closed his eyes. I was afraid he wouldn’t take me seriously. Quickly I wrapped the gauze around his head to cover his right eye. For a daring moment I wanted to see what had happened to it. What could be so awful that it had driven a paramedic mad? But I buried my curiosity and made sure the bandage was firmly on.

“Hey, Harry. How’re you feeling?” Karrin asked, when I motioned them to look around.

He was looking towards the wall, but not at it, when he answered, “Better than I usually do after dying. How are you, Karrin?”

Karrin exchanged a worried glance with me. Harry was still acting very strange.

“I’m fine. Is whoever was in you gone?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you. They couldn’t stand a breath from the Outside.” He hesitated for a second, looking as if he was going to say something. “It’s quiet in the Outside. The Truth is too loud. I couldn’t think before you put the cross on me.”

“Are you alright, Auror Madeye?” Amber asked in a highly dubious tone. Both Karrin and I gave her a quelling glare.

The smile on his face was too ironic for my comfort. We waited uncomfortably for him to answer. He never looked at us, just leaned against the counter, and I am ashamed to say I betrayed my worry by fidgeting. Ramirez cleared his throat but Harry didn’t take the hint. I wanted to check on my children but as long as Harry was unbalanced I didn’t want to bring them out of the panic room. At least the other wizard girl had stayed up with them.

“You should lie down,” I said.

“No!” He said abruptly and pushed off the counter. “I won’t let the cycle repeat. And something is about to happen which will reverse time again. I have to stop it. If I have to feel another wrinkle in Truth under my skin I will be sick.” His face twisted in disgust. “Even if nothing matters anymore after what I’ve seen. I can’t be pushed back in time, not again. I have to change what will happen if I stay here. There’s a fight I have to win.”

“I don’t understand-” Amber said, but Ramirez pressed her arm to stop her when Harry finally faced her. She dropped her eyes from his intense gaze.

“Best if you don’t understand… There is nothing to understand in the end. I am going.” He started for the door.

Karrin stepped in his way before I could. “Wait! Where the hell do you think you’re going? You just about died, you’re still injured.”

Suddenly he was holding her face in his hands. He dipped his head and gently kissed the corner of Karrin’s lips. From where I stood I could see her utter shock. She didn’t kiss him back.

“Goodbye,” he said. His tone made my heart ache – it sounded as though it was his last goodbye.

I was moving before I knew I was. My hand grabbed for him. Even now, looking back on it, I knew I would be too late… and I was. He disappeared.

(----)

Harry Dresden.

I had always thought pivotal moments were to be contemplated under overcast skies and a fine drizzle. Instead I stood in front of Ancient Mai’s restaurant, tasting my sweat and cursing the humidity. I’d left my apartment trying to figure out how to report Mai’s actions without making it look like I was accusing a member of the Senior Council of running an unsanctioned private war. Well, any way you cut it, I just don’t speak slickalese well enough to slip my way out of that discussion unscathed.

So I found myself in front of the restaurant of the lady in question, thinking it best to take the old dragon by the horns and make a deal with her for my silence.

“You comin’ in? Or you gonna stand there scarin’ the customers all day?” the doorman called out from behind his newspaper. He didn’t fool me one bit with his doorman jacket and shiny shoes – he was a wizard hoping to ingratiate himself enough to Mai to get a recommendation for the Warden corps.

“Yeah… yeah,” I said in a daze, and walked past him through the glass doors, automatically taking a left into the secluded office area. Boy, I was not looking forward to being alone with Mai again.

It hadn’t been too long since I had trashed the waiting area leading to the inner offices, but it had all changed. There seemed to be a new partition, and I, being my polite self, barreled through the new doors in my way. The hall turned right when I expected it to go left, and I followed this new floor plan to a door with such high polish I thought it might be magical.

At this door I paused, somehow knowing that the room behind it wouldn’t be empty. I knocked and entered in one motion. For a moment I was taken aback – there was sunlight streaming in from the glassroof of the attic.How the hell did I end up on the top of the building?

The sunlight was bathing a middle-aged woman staring at the sky. It was as if I had interrupted a religious ceremony. The silence of the room and the stillness of the woman pressed on me, berating me for blundering in and disturbing the holy peace.

Mai turned her serene face to me; golden light made the white of age striping her dark hair shine so it looked as if she had streaks of light mingling in her hair. With Mai I was never certain how much her appearance was magic and how much was just the natural charm of a stunning woman. She was wrapped in a purple-patterned dress of some kind today. The fabric flowed and rippled luxuriously but I couldn’t tell if it was a gown or a robe. Her maroon eyes nearly captured me but I looked away to take in the surprising hominess of the musty tome-laden shelves and aged couches adorning the room. When I looked back at her, her face was once again upturned to the sun streaming in from the steeple roof’s windows.

No matter what Mai in her young form had done to me, I could not bring myself to intrude on this Mai more than I already had. I stayed silent and waited for her to speak, all the time trying to figure out how I had climbed to the top floor without having taken a ramp or stairs. Then it came to me: Ebenezer had mentioned a long time ago Mai’s skill in manipulating space. She was particularly feared for her rumored skill to move large spaces of the mortal world to the Netherworld. If true, it meant she could transport you and the ground you stood on for a date with Hades without that pesky prerequisite of killing you first.

I really hoped that Mai was restricting her deadly magic to interior design.

“I’ve never known anything more vulnerable than a decent man,” Mai said, somehow not breaking the sanctity of the silence enveloping her.

I thought of something to say to that but couldn’t come up with anything. She continued by herself, “My father was such a man; as it happens, your father was a man like that as well. Both of them armor-less against…” She trailed off, the tension around her eyes giving away her pain.

I didn’t know that Mai had known my father. My father was a very kind and decent man; I agreed with her that far. But what else Mai was referring to I had no idea.

“As far as I know,” I began. “My father wasn’t-” I had to pause to look for another word than ‘raped,’ “- taken advantage of by Uuvax.”

“No,” Mai agreed. “It was not Uuvax who took advantage of your father’s decency.”

Suddenly my heart began to race. What the Hell was she implying? “What are you-”

Mai interrupted me. “I see arranging for 2-plus-2 to visit the bar you go to for information paid off. You know my secret.”

I cocked a brow. This wasn’t good. I didn’t like knowing the info I had on Mai was given to me on her terms. “I’d think you wouldn’t want me to know something like this.”

Mai shrugged lightly, finally turning away from the sun to lounge on a couch. Out of the sun, the hair gone white stood out sharply against her black tresses. There were lines around her eyes which somehow only made her look more graceful and stately. I realized with a shock what moved me so much about her older appearance: it had none of her aggressive sexuality or her assured superiority. She looked more powerful than her younger self, yet more scarred as well. She looked the part of a wizardess of her station.

She smiled amusedly, somehow keeping out of her lips the uncharitable twist that I was so familiar with. Hell, it was almost indulgent. I brought my guard up; ever since I had stepped into the restaurant I had been off-balance. First the new floor plan, then suddenly appearing on the top floor when I didn’t think I had left ground level, then the magical quiet, and finally references to my father.

“Mai,” I bit out. “Why the Hell did you set me up to find out about you and Uuvax?”

She sighed. “Can you not see, Dresden? You finding out my family affairs was just an unfortunate price for what I really wanted.”

I was beginning to really worry and she just went on sitting with a patient smile. “2-plus-2 died last night… Uuvax might think I killed her retainer,” I worked through it out loud. With a hard da dum of my heart I got it. “Did you just sic your dragon mother on me?”

Mai looked to the heavens for fortitude or whatever women look for up there. “No, I didn’t sic my mother onyou. To Uuvax it will seem that an ally or retainer of The Outsider, the so-called second coming of the phoenix-graced dragon hunters, killed her servant.”

“Hell’s Bells,” I breathed, shocked. “To Uuvax it’s a declaration of war.”

Mai nodded with a pleased smile. “Never tickle a sleeping dragon.”

I shook my head in disbelief and ran from the room. I had to find Harry. I had to save innocents who were going to be bystanders to a death match between an Outsider and an honest-to-goodness dragon.

(----)

Harry Potter

It’s quiet. I don’t remember the last time it was this quiet. The Soothsayer’s spell showed me everything... I know now the Gatekeeper is right, I have been fighting him for fifty years. And knowing that now, I am here where something has to change. It is the moment where either Rashid throws me back to the Outside and in the past again or I finally break free of the cycle. Dresden is the key; if he dies again, time will have to repeat itself. If he’d never gotten involved with me, I wouldn’t be stuck in the twines of his destiny. Sending him an owl to stay away didn’t help.

He’s standing with the rest of the White Council waiting for whatever is going to happen, to happen. Soon after I apparated to the dock, the Whit Council arrived. First it was the gray cloaked ones I had fought before, but then others showed up who took the gray cloaks’ place. About ten with muggle weapons and staves in their hands broke in two groups to cover the east and west entrances to the pier. By the time Dresden showed up, he couldn’t do more than yell from behind the rest of the Whit Council, and they shut him up soon too. I didn’t want him there, and I didn’t want to listen to what he had to say.

They haven’t made a move to kill me. Anyone who has eyes to see can tell I’m mostly dead. Fighting their Senior Council wasn’t smart. I don’t know what is coming next, but they are pretty smug about it. Dresden looks like he wants to tell me something but they aren’t letting him through.

He should have stayed away. I can sense fate’s threads thickening around him. The one eye The Soothsayer took from me shows me the Truth now. I see what is happening behind reality. Too bad it took a paramedic going insane from looking in my eye for me to realize others would see the Truth Soothsayer cursed me with in my eye. Lucky Charity was around to bandage the eye closed. I’ve charmed the bandage to be an eye patch with Gryffindor’s lion on it. Hey, if I am going to die or be thrown to the Outside, I’d rather be accessorized for the moment.

So now we’re all waiting on the docks where I first appeared in Dresden’s world. He is held back by his White Council, Karrin is far away in Charity’s home. I am here alone at the end of a long pier, waiting for that fate-changing thing to happen, whatever it is.

If I ever meet The Soothsayer again I will have to curse him for making me sane again. It is so hard to care now, so quiet without my friends. Even little Roqa is hiding deep in my soul, traumatized by what he put both of us through. It is lucky I had her though; she took much of the damage The Soothsayer’s curse would have done to my body and made it so only my right eye was sacrificed.

But does it even matter? I thought I was important because I was the ‘Chosen One.’ The Truth doesn’t see it that way. Hell, it doesn’t even really see me. But I’ll be damned if I stay stuck in this battle with The Gatekeeper. Now that I won’t forget what has happened, I will go truly mad if I am sent to the Outside again.

So I’ll rely on my curse of prescience and wait for whatever is about to happen here. Apparently the White Council knows what is happening; they have been slowly getting further and further while still keeping their eyes on me.

It’s awfully quiet. I hate it.

Roqa?

Wahhhhh!

Oh, shut it, you pansy. A little mind job and you fall apart.

She isn’t going to be any help. Must be hard realizing she doesn’t matter even though she’s an angel; fallen or not. Well, she’s still my baby hellion, and I like her.

Wow… it’s not every day you see someone walking on water. I guess she must be what I am waiting for. I can’t help smiling. Maybe it was my little prescience that gave me the urge to sit on a pier and dangle my feet in the water.

“Oh! Drip Drop, it’s time to play,” I singsong, knowing my friends are near; they are everywhere.

I suppose I should be feeling horny right now. She is naked and gorgeous. But the agony I am in has killed my libido. What a shame. What a crying shame. She’s Chinese, I think; her black hair is straight and falling below her hips. She’s starting to rise in the air as she’s getting closer to me. I can see her bright warm eyes now, magical in some way, I wonder if they have a power besides shininess. The air around her is hazy, the way things look around a very hot fire. She stops ten feet in the air and with a motion of her hand sends the boats docked between us flying out to the lake. Now there is about a pool’s length of water and ten feet of air between her and me. Her breasts look firm and they have pale nipples… not very attractive, maybe they get pink if you pinch them. Her hips curve out enough to be sexy, any less and she might as well be a boy. She looks old, maybe Charity’s age, but she is breathtakingly beautiful. And I think she’s a dragon; if the dragon-wing-shaped shadows stretching out miles in either direction are a clue. She really is hot; the heat is beating on my face and drying my already dry skin.

“Hail Phoenix-Graced, Green-eyed Demon of the Outer Gates.” Her voice sends tremors in the ground and kicks up waves. She doesn’t understand what she is stirring beneath her.

“Hail Dragon, I am not a demon,” I said.

“And neither are you worthy of holding the mantle of a Phoenix Knight. You are as dim as the memory of your kind. Bow your head and I may spare you,” she says and reaches out with her hand, stretching out her long nails like a claw.

I bring up my wand but something intangible grabs me by the throat. I point my wand at her and see my curse, a black thunderbolt, sizzle towards her. It disappears in a shower of sparks before it reaches her. Darkness is crawling at the edge of my vision; her magic is crushing my throat and any air I have is gone. I can’t handle her in my condition. I have to trust my friends, my faithful friends.

I gasp out calling to them and hoarsely curse her, “Drip, Drop, you pale-breasted bitch!”

They rise out of the lake, having brought their clans with them. Two serpents in the shape of the basilisk I killed in my second year whip their huge maws at her. She looks disdainful and suddenly glows.

Drip Drop, no! The spell she has on me falls away but at the same time one of basilisk is flash boiled. I still feel them in the water and in the air, they are around me. The cloud of steam keeps going for her and envelops her just as the other basilisk swallows her.

I hear her delicious scream. Her nipples are pretty red now, after superheated Drip crashed into her. Drop is spinning his body making her tumble inside him. Drip is rising out of the lake again, its eyes a murky grey and teeth of water looking sharp as steel. Suddenly he strikes through his brother’s body at the dragon-woman and loses the basilisk shape. Now he’s a massive torrent of water forcing itself in her mouth. He’s ramming himself down her throat and drowning her.

“Drop? What the fuck are you doing?” I shout as the basilisk that had trapped her disappears back in the lake, letting his brother tear into her mouth and push her back in the sky.

I feel as if someone is spelling me with a cheering charm. “Drop, is that you?”

He erupts out of the water again, this time right under the dragon lady where she is standing on air, trying to fight off Drip’s basilisk body entering her mouth. What is Drop doing?

Oh… oh… no wonder that horny bastard was feeling so cheerful. He’s shot up between her legs, plowing through like an avalanche.

“Guys, this is a little wrong,” I call out, but I am drowned by the noise of crashing waves of Drip Drop’s joy.

Before I can halfheartedly try again, light explodes. I throw up my hands and feel water wash over me as huge waves overwhelm the pier I’m sitting on. I hear a very deep growl, as if something is being ripped out of the very earth’s rocky throat. My skin breaks out in goose bumps. The dragon woman is standing five feet from me on water. Her long hair is strewn on her naked body, stuck to her slick skin. Half her face and one breast is hidden by it, but the one exposed eye is enough to nearly stop my heart. Up close her beauty is overwhelming; it’s like a force of magic in its own right. Her face is more angular than I thought it would be, but the eye, that hideous black and orange eye destroys any attraction I could have for her. With each pulse of my heart the iris throbs with light.

“I am Uuvax, you dare rape me?” she whispers: her words open up cuts on my skin. My hands and arms suddenly are washed in blood.

My moan is strangled when even greater pain hits me just for making noise. Now I’m about to lose all sanity. She’s still wet and slick, water drops meander down from her head, sliding to the hollow of her neck and ringing her breasts all the way to her navel and below. It is as if they are painting her perfection as they walk over her. I grin, even if it splits the sides of my lips where her voice has cut me up. I taste my own blood in my mouth and say, “Drip, Drop, lover.”

She opens her mouth as if she is going to bite me, but then freezes, her eyes widen. Her body twists unnaturally around her waist and her head is thrown back, leaving her breasts splayed to the skies. I see droplets freeze on them into sharp shards of ice. They prick her magically flawless flesh and slide under her skin. Blood blooms all over her, coloring her in red stripes as it trails down her body.

“Where did you think they went? Drip Drop are everywhere! And after you double-timed them they are inside you. This is why you don’t fuck with them!” I laugh at my own joke, tasting the burning pain on my own skin from dozens of cuts. My laugh is harsh and demented. But what can I say? A woman is suspended with her sex thrust out in front of me while my friends tear her up inside and outside. I have never seen anything this insane, but I have seen more depraved things.

She is trembling. No, now she’s shaking as if in a fit. What in Merlin’s name… She’s flown into the sky like a bullet. I can hardly see her. I look to the water, yes, I can still see shadows of dragon wings stretching out and flapping like mad, so she’s somewhere up there.

There is a great boom! The sky is burning; a great lake of fire is spreading fast from where Uuvax was a second ago.

“I think I’m fucked,” I tell myself calmly.

In a blink she’s in front of me. I gasp and fall back, pulling my legs out of the water. My body aches from my injuries, but I have to get away from the deadly creature. Her wings are visible now. Each spans so far and wide that I can’t see the sky or where they end. She is still bare breasted, the wounds have healed but there is dried blood on her, almost like an adornment. At her waist and below she is wrapped in blue flames spreading out like a gown’s trail behind her. Her hair is back behind her shoulders and groomed. I am bloody terrified. No wonder Hagrid thought our dragons were cute.

“Did you really think constructs of your imagination could harm me, mortal?” she asks with forced calmness.

I bare my teeth at her in a smile that probably looks a little wild. “You just got spit-roasted by my friends,” I point out.

“Cur!” she growls, again making me feel as though the very ground underneath me is ready to tear out my bones. “You would be decimated at the sight of my true self.” She begins to glow and I can’t help but laugh. Maybe it’s the fear. Maybe it’s how wrong she is.

“I have seen Everything, I have seen Truth, and I am still alive. I am beyond you, lizard!” I shout at her, as the light from her spreads to the sky, taking over everything in my vision. Her heat slaps at me as she grows and grows, warping land, water, and air around her.

I try to catch my breath but her presence is beating down on me. I am smothered in heat and light. I’m screaming. God! I didn’t think I could feel more pain after fighting The Soothsayer’s curse. She’s inside my mind, she’s inside my body. I don’t know where I am! I try to stand up but I can’t feel myself. There is only heat and light. If she’s showing me her true face I can’t see it because I’ve been blinded.

I reach for my face, or at least where I remember my face should be, searching with my fingers for the patch covering my eye. I have to take it off. It might be my only hope. Maybe the eye cursed with seeing Reality will let me see her as well.

I can tell right away when the patch is removed. Somehow my fumbling and numb fingers found it. The world becomes black with pinpricks of light. I am somewhere far above my physical body. Soon my sight starts hurtling towards the earth. I see the planet and the undulating destinies and realities shimmering inside it. I know what they are but I can’t understand how I know. It hurts terribly to understand what I see.

Suddenly I am on the pier and a magnificent creature is before me. With its wings stretching to the clouds, its seemingly jeweled tail plunging deep into the lake, it is staring down at my body, speaking words I know no living mortal has heard before. Her body is still of a woman; she hasn’t fully transformed. She doesn’t need to. I am dying below her, mere feet from her incredible power. She is killing me by simply existing. Wizards of the White Council are cowering far from us; I see their true selves, their pasts and futures, their natures, their pathetic insignificance. I look away from them to the Dragon and her beauty. She is a being of sheer magical energy, trapped in a physical shell. But all that beauty and all that magnificence matters little, because she, like all, matters nothing to the Truth.

So I can see her, and I can watch her killing me, but can I do anything but know that something nearly as small as me is going to kill me? Does it matter?

No, in the end it doesn’t really matter. Not to Reality, not to Everything, not to the Truth the Soothsayer cursed me to see.

But I still want to live. I can hear the screams coming from my body. Pathetic. I don’t want to be pathetic. I don’t want to be killed by the dragon, even if she is enchanting enough that even in Truth she is a bauble that adorns Reality.

I have to close my eye. The Truth can’t save me. I need my patch back. I can’t live with the Soothsayer’s curse showing me everything. I try to force my eye closed, but it is too hard, I have no sense of my physical body. I am somewhere outside looking at myself dying.

I’m not afraid. If I was afraid I could force myself to shut my eyes. Just wanting to isn’t enough, I need to do it. But how?

“Roqariel Anane! Wake up!” I shout, suddenly seeing her trembling, curled under my body. With my cursed eye I can see her outside of my mind as well.

“My host?” she asks. “Please let me out, I can help.”

Ah, I see the shackles on her hands and feet, and the chains keeping her wings tied close to her.

“Roqa, I release you, force my eyes shut,” I say. The shackles and chains crumble around her and for a moment I see her Truth, but too soon she shuts my eyes and my consciousness returns inside my body. I can’t be sure what I saw.

Agonizing pain hits me a breath later and I lose sense of what I was thinking before. I want to live! I want to survive! I cast Protego but it doesn’t even materialize. The dragon’s magic’s presence doesn’t even allow mine to come into being.

I can’t control how hard I am screaming, even though I can feel Roqariel healing me with all her might. She can’t heal me faster than the Dragon’s magic vaporizing the flesh off my bones, scratching at my consciousness.

There is something new, I can hear my voice changing, and with it the Dragon’s magic beating against me becoming dull. It’s as if a blanket has been thrown between us. My screams are becoming a cadence… no, a song. A song? What is this?

In the midst of pain I am suddenly stunned; this is Fawkes’s song. Bloody Hell! I am trilling at a bloody Dragon. I thought it was supposed to be accidental magic, not fucking embarrassing magic, that came out at times of stress.

But it’s working. She’s backing off, her light has dimmed. I can actually see her now. She’s kneeling on the pier with her hands over her ears. She is screaming too, causing fissures to erupt around us, great plumes of superheated water are bursting out of the lake. I’m not fighting it anymore and belt out Fawkes’s song, dignity be damned!

Crawling toward her I reach behind her shoulders where the great wings are connecting to her slender back. My fingers sink into the hot leather as if it is butter and I begin to pull. With a hard tug, bone and blood spurt out of her back as the wing starts coming free. I guess phoenix strength and phoenix song are what my grace is as a Dragon Killer. Her sharp nails slide into my ribs like so many knives, I feel blood collect in my mouth and unholy pain pulverizes my brain of all thought.

Kill her, my guardian. Rip her wings! I will heal you. I am burning from being near Uuvax, from the many wounds and injuries, and now from Hellfire searing my veins. I can’t tell where one kind of fire ends and the other begins. My jaw is hurting from singing Fawkes’s song, but with each note it seems to break Uuvax down. She is folded over, her head nearly touching the ground. The only thing holding her up is her hand buried wrist-deep in my heart.

The unrelenting agony freezes for a heartbeat. It must be a working from Roqariel’s power in Heaven! It doesn’t burn like Hellfire . And with that I have the clarity to pull apart my hands, clawing deeply in Uuvax’s wings. I snap them off completely from the rest of her skeleton. Gore and ichors are spilling from her back, uglying the piece of art her body is. She arches up suddenly, petrified by what I’ve done to her. My song stops and she falls into my arms with a look of wonder in her dead eyes.

I push her away and slide her hand out of my chest, hardly noting the pain amongst everything else. My mind is weakening; I have to get Roqariel under control before she takes advantage of this. But before darkness can take me I see men in robes approaching from all sides.

Just great. The White Council. True to form, coming for me when something has already killed me a dozen times over.

(----)

Next chapter is getting final touches. Hopefully it will be up in a week’s time, barring my beta having a family life and wanting to spend time with them for the holidays.

This chapter was brought to you by the blood, sweat, efforts, and many calls of ‘lol, you have to do it’ from Syaoran, Shezza, Jon, Vash. They are as responsible for this as I am. Thanks, brothers.