Revenant

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I claim nothing.

Revenant

Chapter Nine: A Shadow below Clovewall. Take one evil cult, a heroine that’s been hit upon the head, a Lovecraftian monster, and a certain lack of respect towards standard ritual procedures. Mix well, and serve before the contents have a chance to settle.

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“Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah-nagl fhtaga!”

The voices oozed along Hermione’s nerves, reminding her of the dead things that one can finds at the bottom of a water barrel- dark, cold, and unrecognizable.

“Iá-Nephren-Ka! Nyarlathotep fhtagn! Iá! Iá!”

The voices echoed in a chorus upon the last words, and Hermione clenched her jaw shut as the sounds rolled across her, shivering along her bones and raising goose bumps upon her skin. The sound echoed eerily, and she cracked an eye open and to peek at her surroundings.

Below her, the dark flagstones fit together unevenly, deep cracks and gouges cutting deep into her arms where her cloak had fallen away and left her unprotected. Across from her, Draco sat in a miserable huddle, his cloak piled into a shadowy pool about him. Diffident torchlight flickered haphazardly, etching his face with sorrow and despair. With only a slight turn of her head, Hermione could see the dour form of Snape crouching patiently near her head, staring at her with eyes that on anyone else would seem wounded as he looked down at her.

Some small movement of hers must have alerted Draco because his head turned sharply, and he was staring at her, astonishment clear on his face. A faint red glow of sparks danced around him as he moved; a crimson afterimage of glyphs suspended in the air. Squinting from her sprawl upon the floor, Hermione watched as he flinched as the glyphs faded into his skin and cloak.

“What the-” Hermione began.

“Shhh.” He whispered desperately, his eyes floating back to stare at the centre of the chamber where they lay.

“Where are we? Are we in the church?” Hermione whispered back to him, her voice so soft she wasn’t sure that she’d even spoken aloud. She began to struggle into a sitting position, but at her movements sharp red glyphs flared into existence all along her body and bit into her skin and hair, soaking into her bloodstream and paralyzing her with their venom. She collapsed back to the floor, panting helplessly as the throbbing pain in her head became fiercer. Slowly testing the limits of her bonds, she was able to turn her head enough to follow Draco’s worried gaze.

The rough-cut chamber was dimly lit, the flickering l of of the torches absorbing quickly into the stones of the walls and floors and leaving the majority of the room in an oppressive darkness. The chamber was circular, trapping Hermione and the others against the gentle curve of the wall. Above, the ceiling vaulted into a dark and shadowy distance that made Hermione wonder if they were underground, and if so, how far below the surface.

In the centre of the room, surrounded by a group of heavily cloaked and cowled figures, stood a dark mass of stone. The effigy was heavily carved with runes running rampant along the sides, dipping here and there as the deep grooves cut beneath the carvings that drained to the floor.

The floor itself spiralled outwards in deep grooves and etchings, strange and esoteric symbols carved deeply into the flagstones. Hermione shifted uncomfortably, following the sight of the geometries to where she and the others lay, realizing that the deep cracks that had cut her were actually the sharp edges of the strange design. Suspicion darkened her thoughts as she noted how the blood would drain from the altar into the grooves upon the floor, forming who-knows-what kind of magical pattern. Her hair rose off the back of her neck as she slowly looked down to where she lay, but she was not consoled by the lack of liquid in the grooves. A nagging ghost of pessimism suspicioned that once upon a time those lines had been filled to overflowing. Unmollified, she lifted her attention back to the men who stood speaking softly near the altar.

They tall figures moved gracefully, their thick cloaks dipping and merging into the flickering light of the torches. They seemed almost too graceful in the way they moved, as if they touched the ground so lightly as to be made of smoke and dreams. Bright glints of silver and gold shone in a sharp contrast to their sombre fabrics, and Hermione was seized by an irrational fear as she watched them sway and speak… almost as if she were in the midst of some half-remembered nightmare that featured this very room and these very same men standing over her while she lay helpless.

Forcing her eyes shut, Hermione swallowed her fear and tried to calm her frantic mind. She turned her face away from the centre of the room, denying herself the sight of the strange altar and the men around it. She opened her eyes again, and found herself staring straight into the stricken eyes of Severus Snape, her terror mirrored in the reflection of his gaze. A surge of double vision slammed into her, fizzling through her a wave of dizziness that left her grateful that she was not standing. As the vertigo subsided, the fearsome sense of deja-vu rose up again within her. She looked away from Snape and concentrated her mind by staring into the shadows where she knew her right hand to be bound.

Numb but determined, she curled her hand into a fist and was rewarded with a flurry of crimson and red glyphs that danced around her hand. A cutting pain danced across her skin with each glyph, soaking into her and cleaving through her fear; calming her with her the simplicity of the sensation. ‘This I can work with.’

Movement was possible; inch by agonizing and warded inch. Sweating from the effort, she forced herself into a sittingitioition; into something more dignified, even if she was still defenceless while so bound. Her nerves jumped and twitched from the effort as the glyphs burned into her, but with several deep breaths, Hermione was able to concentrate passed the pain.

Draco stared at her with a look somewhere between horror and awe. “Granger!” he hissed between clenched teeth. “Granger! They’ll notice us for sure if you keep sparking the bindings like that!”

“Right. Because they’ve obviously forgotten about us -sitting out here in the open like we are…”

Draco’s lips twisted as moved to reply, but his words were cut off as one of the cowled strangers approached them.

“Ah, the Virgin is awake, and just in time it seems…”

“Virgin?” Draco asked, trying to smirk, but the crack in his voice betrayed his terror.

Hermione glared at him, but the stranger blocked her vision as he reached out to caress her cheek; so soft, so gentle, and so terribly intimate. Hermione pulled convulsively away from his touch, but the binding runes flared and held her firm, burning into her skin where she strained against them.

With a whispered command, the man tightened the runes about her, and she felt herself pulled forward and upward by the glyphs, until she was standing before the stranger. Even at her full height the man was tall, impossibly so. He moved aside, gracefully motioning her past him. She had a moment’s glimpse of Draco’s tear-stained and terrified face before she was whisked out towards the centre of the room. Behind her, there was a scrabbling sound as Snape pulled mindlessly at his bindings, struggling to follow her but pulled up short by the magics; a dog on a leash.

She was led to the edge of a circle that had been drawn in powder. Looking closely, Hermione saw that the darkly clad figures, moving so gracefully and elegantly into and out of the flickering light, were drawing upon the rough floor with handfuls of coloured sand, drizzling it from their clenched fists as they moved and spoke the strange words.

“Iá-R’lyeh! Iá-fhtagn! Iá! Iá!”

‘Definitely not Latin, certainly not Greek, almost -but not quite- Middle-Eastern,’ Hermione struggled to identify, if not the words, then at least the origin of the words. Something Indian perhaps? Or even something almost Asiatic?’ The sounds of the words danced upon Hermione’s ears, and she felt her mind numb beneath the reverberations of the sounds.

The man’s gloved hands slid along her back, a soft word stilling all of her movement. His hands lifted her hair away from the nape of her neck, collecting the tangled mass in one fist as he leaned closer to her, breathing heavily in her ear. “You are such a thing to behold girl.”

Hermione felt shivers crawl down her spine at the strange emphasis in his voice. He moved closer against her, and she could feel the heat that radiated from his body, the shape of his cloak hiding the strangeness of his form as it pushed against her in strange ways the closer he moved. “You can try girl -try and keep from crying- and it will only make you all that more beautiful.”

Her head pounding from where they had hit her earlier, she was ill prepared for the nausea that rose up in her gut as the irrational fear flooded her veins. The vertigo swam over her, and she saw herself, in do, a , a small figure grasped in the tangling grips of a dark and malignant thing that only walked with the shape of a man, though it’s grace was far more super than natural, and its origin far more magical than mundane.

“And when you learn my name girl…” The thing breathed into her hair, a scent of honey and rot caressing her face, “…oh, do call out my name girl.”

The words of the other figures rose and fell about them, and Hermione felt distanced and detached from herself, as if she were watching actors in a poorly lit play. Clearly, she could see the roiling cloak of the Thing as it held itself close to her, the limbs at odd angles to what was natural, and the shapes of the others flowing almost as if they too were disjointed and configured along some strange anatomy.

Hermione shook her head, sparks of glyphs flying from her and burrowing back into her skin as she fought to clear her double vision.

“Remember to call out my name girl,” the thing said, tightening its grip. “I adore it.”

Then the thing pushed her away; into the centre of the lines of sand, pushing her towards the stone altar. She felt a tangible shock overwhelm her as she passed those chalky lines, and the voices that rose and fell around her grew muted and distanced. Her skin became at once unbearably hot and then taut as the magical force slid along her skin, enveloping her. Struggling to resist her entryway into the circle, she curled her other hand into hard fists as she tried to defy the glyphs that sizzled along her skin, prodding her forward. Her double vision sharpened, and she could see herself clearly from behind as she was moved closer to the altar, red sparks flaring and dancing all about her like some strange and fiery halo as she struggled against their magical grip.

With a flourish, the last of the patterns were laid upon the flagstones and all of the dark creatures moved backwards to stand at the outer ce. Te. The creature standing close to her pushed her forward again, his hands braced to either side of her shoulders, not quite touching her, yet still commanding her.

“The things we invoke here girl, rest assured, they will find you as beautiful as we. Call out to them, and be assured girl, they shall adore it.”

The altar, so carved and sinister in this light, was directly before here now. She felt a surge of adrenaline rush through her body, and for a moment -a bare fraction of time- Hermione felt victory as the bindings slid along her, sparking and glittering uselessly into the darkness. She stood still and defiant, her body once again her own to command…

…and then the thing again whispered the arcane words in a low voice. For a brief moment she had stood firm, and then she was pulled forward as her body was once again in thrall to the bindings. She almost wept with frustration as she felt herself dragged forward, her feet flailing and dragging against the flagstones but finding no purchase against the magics that pulled at her.

“Can’t you see it now girl? These things, oh, how we all wait for you.”

Her vision was overlaid: half of her senses seeing the altar before her and feeling the rough touch of it as she was pushed down upon it, the other half of her senses watching numbly as the thing near her became less and less man-like as it coiled around her and tucked her against the stone, a mother’s loving goodnight to a tired and querulous child.

The binding glyphs sparked, sizzled, and grounded themselves out. All of Hermione’s muscles tensed at once as she prepared to launch herself from the altar, but the carvings seemed to have snagged onto her clothes, her hair, and even her very skin itself was caught fast by the stone’s grip. A startled cry was ripped from her mouth, and she felt rather than heard the creature’s low chuckle of amusement.

Gracefully the thing leaned over her, and began to anoint her with oil from its other hand. Even though it was carefully masked and cloaked -and while its movements were so human in appearance- Hermione knew that it wore that skin uncomfortably, and that whatever lay beneath that mask and cloak would have no kinship with anything human.

She blinked furiously as the oil ran from her forehead and stung her eyes, the double vision solidifying into strange images of her looking up, as well as more of a distant vision of her standing aside, watching herself look upwards.

“Remember to call out my name girl.” The thing whispered again as it touched at something out of sight from both of her visions, and she heard the quiet clink of metal upon clay. “Remember girl, and we shall adore you.”

Her eyes blurred with the sting of oil and she felt the cool touch of the metal at her eyelids. Her body was stilled from all movement, even the freedom to blink denied from her. With an unvoiced wail, she threw herself one last time against the bindings that held her fast, and felt something deep inside of her rip.

And something shifted inside.

She felt herself writhing against the bindings, but her flesh was too heavy, too alien. Her vision was blurred with oil but in the distance, she could still make out the image of herself, bound to the altar, a silent victim as the strange figures reverently moved backwards, to the safety that lay outside the sand circles.

Again the chanting became louder, “ Shub-Niggurath fhtagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Azathoth wgah-nagl fhtaga!” and she struggled desperately in her observer’s form, watching as a faint red haze began to glow around the bound image of herself.

Thrashing shadows coiled and slid inside the haze around the altar, and the shadows from the torches grew more pronounced as the light began to flicker and waver; almost as if the haze was sucking out all of the light that came into contact with it; devouring it and gaining substance with each flicker of light.

“Iá-Shub-Niggurath! Azathoth fhtagn! Iá! Iá!”

Hermione’s flesh was so heavy, so tired; it would be easy to just lay down again, to lie back into that body on the altar. But the thrashing sight of those shadows as they danced around her altar-bound body tormented her, driving her passed her fear and into fury. She threw herself again at the magic that held her tight, and felt again that ripping sensation deep with in her. Somewhere within herself, something important became tattered and began to whip as if a gale danced around inside her heart.

Suddenly she was free from all controls and bindings. She lunged towards the image of herself enthralled upon the altar only to rebound from the invisible wards that separated herself from the inner summoning circle. At her feet -“so tall, how did I get so tall?”- she could see where the sand dripped along the floor, creating an unbroken barrier between her borrowed body and the things that writhed within the circle.

“Iá-Azathoth! Iá-”

Startlement rippled along the darkly chanting figures, and she could see with blurry eyes that they were shuffling along the edges of the circle, seeking to both maintain the summoning circle as well as grab a hold of her newly freed form. Raising her head again, she gazed at the sight of herself in the circle with the altar as the red things began to crawl along her, coalescing into vague serpentine forms riddled with gaping mouths and waving tentacles that bumped against the edges of the warding circle. The things slithered across her silent and still form on the altar, and she felt an echo of her body’s disgust as the things began to flow along her skin.

With a feral growl of fear and anger, she dropped her gaze back to the sand at her feet, and with a grim determination, she nudged one foot forward, scuffing the sand slightly. A faint shrieking began to grow in her ears, a sound inhuman and demanding. Raising her gaze back to the stunned figures that crowded around the edges, she felt a gruesome smile stretch at her lips.

The line that held that strange and alien world at bay was now only a thin membrane of powdered chalks and incenses, given power only by the will and words of the artists. How easy to disrupt, how easy to destroy. A memory not her own slithered into her thoughts and she knew without a doubt that the sacrifice –herself!- was only something along the lines of a peace offering. To command such things to be drawn from their own worlds and into this world created such animosity between the thing so summoned and the summoners that a peace offering –the purer the better- was necessary. Given the choice, such creatures would rather destroy the things that would presume to command them, rather than some effigy left unwilling in their place.

The gruesome smile became a grimace of determination, as she slid her booted foot against the sand and magics, and felt the barrier give way as the powdered line broke.

A crash of wind and inhuman shrieking blew her observer’s form back away from the altar, and she felt herself fall to the ground bonelessly as the wind whipped passed her. The shrieking had became a deafening sound of movement as the spell casters were also thrown to the ground rattling and jingling; their bodies sliding gracelessly across the uneven floor.

Hermione felt something inside rip apart one final time, and her vision swam before her, wavering and twisting like heat waves seen from underwater. Her mind felt stretched thin and numbed with the sensations and then she felt herself plummeting downwards, falling further and faster than she’d ever thought. There wa unb unbearable sense of loss and of lightness, as if something important had been lost, left to tatter and string away on gale of wind that raged all around her…

Then the stiontion was gone, and she was pouring back into her own body; pushing herself away from the altar and scrambling to her feet as all about her the robed figures thrashed upon the ground. She staggered away from the altar, her vision painfully focused into a single perspective and she saw with some horror that the robed men –the things- were flailing at something clothed in red haze; something monstrous and half-seen that collided and struck at them relentlessly and without anmpasmpassion or mercy.

A shout from Draco pulled her focus back to getting free of the circle, and she all but tripped, leaping over the half solid forms of the hazy red things thaawleawled and darted like centipedes and thrashed like beheaded snakes. Draco crouched next to where Snape lay crumpled upon the floor, their cloaks whipping in the magical subterranean wind. With an answering shout, she darted towards the two men, grabbing on to them and pulling them to their feet. “We need to get out of here!”

Draco stared dazedly at her before pushing himself away. His hair was blowing wildly in the wind, and he turned again to stare at Snape, aghast. “Draco!” Hermione shouted again as she struggled to be heard over the gale. “We need to get out of here! The circle has been ruptured, and it’s only a matter of time before the thing looses interest in the one’s who drew it here… we need to get out now!”

Draco nodded dumbly at her as he staggered backwards. Hermione pulled Snape along, his body a heavy weight as he struggled and failed to stand. Thrashing red haze snapped at their legs, coiling and slowly gaining definition a beg began to wrap tighter and tighter about their legs, halting their movement. Biting off a curse, Hermione commanded “Accio wands!”

Out of the darkness two wands came twirling towards her waiting hand. Hermione deftly caught the wands and levered hers at the thing that slowly began to burrow into her legs, tugging at her skin with a form that became more and more solid as the moments passed. “Incenderius!” Hermione commanded, her exhausted voice barely caring over the rising gale.

The thing seemed to hiss as it writhed away from her and Snape, pulling back sharply towards the centre of the room where the altar sat hunched and malignant in the midst of the roiling red haze. Draco swore unintelligibly as he pulled her and Snape closer to the wall and away from the screaming chaos that surrounded them. He quickly snatched his wand from her and pointed it at the stone wall. “Indedunea Portulae!”

Along the raw and curving walls a network of zigzagging lines blazed across the stonework, revealing a series of ornate and heavily carved doorways. Draco pushed Hermione and Snape towards the nearest one, shouting the necessary arcane words to unlock and open the portals.

Hermione, clutching tightly to Snape, fell through the empty space where the door had been as Snape collapsed once again to the floor on the other side. Draco ran through the portal behind them, slowing to command the door shut with a strained and shaking voice. Ponderously, the doors slid shut and Hermione found herself suddenly free of an unnoticed pressure that had been pushing and clawing at her psyche, struggling to thread its way into her mind. The inhumane shrieking quieted, and she found herself alone in the dark tunnel with only Draco and Snape to concern her.

“Luminos.” She whispered quietly, shaking her head to clear any last remaining cobwebs of thought. A thin ray of light glittered across the darkness and she could see Draco, panting shallowly with fear as he gazed at Snape. There was a wild and almost feral look to the blonde man as he stepped forward to grasp Snape by the arm, helping raise the stunned figure of the Professor from the ground even as he pulled him away from Hermione’s weakening grip.

“We need to keep moving!” he told Snape, staring wildly into the other’s eyes.

Hermione reeled for a moment. Draco was clearly talking to the Professor, his eyes focused only on the silent form of the man before him. Unheeding, Severus Snape seemed to sag in his grip as his feet moved drunkenly upon the floor, neither gaining purchase nor failing completely. Half sagging, half collapsing, he struggled mindlessly in the hands of the younger man, his long and pale hands light upon Draco’s taut wrists.

Hermione watched a moment before pushing herself off the wall. “You’re right.” She said to Draco, even as she gripped Snape’s other shoulder, steadying the floundering Professor. Draco looked over Snape’s shoulder at her, incomprehension upon his face. A faint sneer pulled at his lips and then he was moving, dragging at the Professor and Hermione both. Hermione stretched her legs to her fullest length to keep up with him as he raced along the corridor, the heavy stumbling weight of the professor light in their combined grips.

The corridor was long and narrow, nothing more than an uneven crack that ran through the earth. Draco and Hermione scrapped themselves upon the sharp and unfinished rocks as they pulled Snape along between them. Grotesque and broken effigies leered out of from collapsed stonework, their horns and teeth catching upon the runner’s robes and skinning the unwary hands and knees. Faint light seeped along the floor, reflecting the spell-light back with a hazy blue that contrasted sharply in Hermione’s mind with the red haze that they had just left behind.

Looking ahead to see the bluish glow growing brighter, Hermione gasped between breaths, “Draco! Where are we going?”

Beside her, Draco ignored her words, pulling Snape along in a fierce grip that left the man stumbling over rock and masonry in order not to collapse upon the flooring. Sweat beaded upon Draco’s forehead, sparkling in the dim light and giving him a glittery appearance, as if he were dusted by a faint outline of fairy dust.

“Draco!” Hermione called out once again, her voice cracking the stress of the evening.

Before he could answer she found herself in an underground grotto, surrounded by columns of rock and fallen brickwork. Draco released Snape and sagged down, his hands braced upon his knees as he struggled to calm his breathing. Hermione wavered under the unexpected burden, and slowly let Snape fall to the ground; a controlled collapse. The narrow beam of spell light showed her that the grotto was dominated by an inky black lake that rippled among the fallen statuary and piles of melted looking rock. In the depths of the lake Hermione could see the shimmer and reflection of starlight, even though when she looked upwards there was only rough and heavy rock above their heads.

Looking back down at her feet, Snape’s eyes were clenched tightly shut, as if he were in pain. His brow smoothed and he opened his eyes, blearily, as if waking from a long and torturous sleep.

There was a moment of silence and then Snape’s eyes, fully aware and awake, focused on Hermione’s. She felt her heart swell with elation; finally there was something besides the mindless emptiness that had for so long haunted her! He met her eyes, and in that moment of recognition their visions crossed until it became difficult to say who stared at whom, and from which viewpoint. They stared at -and into- each other, seeing all the facets of each other’s lives lived out until that very moment, and then time itself became a fractured and wounded thing that shattered, leaving Hermione breathless.

Snalinclinched violently away from her, opened up his mouth, and began to scream.

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[AFF 7.24.4: I forgot to update it here because I kept having problems with my computer/aff stuff... I\'m really, really sorry about this to those of you that care. EEk. I\'m working on the next one, and will be better about actually *posting* it... On the other hand, this one contains a few more edits that the originally posted chapter didn\'t have... so that\'s good... rig
A
All the “Iá! Iá! Azathoth fhtagn!” type of stuff is stolen from the Cthulhu Mythos, and various works of HP Lovecraft. The title of this chapter is in homage to “Shadow over Innsmouth.”

The “you know we adore it” stuff is stolen (and paraphrased to fit) from the song “I don’t mind the pain” by Danzig (kind of a creepy song really, but it really inspired most of this chapter…)

I should also point out: I don’t speak Latin. Not even enough to fake it. I just sort of make up words that sound neat. If this offends you, you are more than welcome to research what the proper term is, and I’ll replace the word.

Thank you to LittleBird who kindly pointed out that I spelled “altar” wrong every single time I wrote it. And I wrote that word a lot. *sigh.]