Pre-Chapter A/N:Hey everyone, back here with another chapter. Let's go! If you haven't already, I recommend turning on notifications for my stuff so you can see when new stuff drops right as it drops. More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio
The ship was… shockingly mundane. For something made by dwarves who were famously good enchanters and builders, it was underwhelming. But I supposed that must have been the point. It was a smuggler's ship more than anything else, and that meant it was supposed to fly under the radar.
It could do that either by being enchanted to the gills with notice-me-nots, concealments, and cloaks, but the downside was that so many enchantments would shine to any magic-sensitive creatures like a fire in the middle of the night.
So they went to the completely opposite end of the spectrum—it was basically a Muggle pirate ship. Well-made, but thoroughly ordinary.
But it got the job done and perhaps that was enough. We sailed with no disturbances. Nothing in the East China Sea seemed to want to take a bite of us and we weren't out looking for trouble either.
A better way to put it would be that I was bored. There was shockingly little to do on a ship. The sailors had the rigging, knot-tying, and sail-moving on lock and never asked nor wanted my help with any of that. We were trying to avoid notice as well so there was no magic allowed on board other than the bare minimum that was emitted by magic items when not in use.
Even carrying this much had received some pushback from Bogron's wife whose name I was yet to learn, but she and Nicholas had been able to come to a compromise after some spirited debate.
I knew enough to say the cause of the conflict with some certainty because it had begun in English, but the rest of the debate had concluded in the Dwarfish language and neither had looked too pleased at the end of it.
But in the end, we were free to carry all the magical items we wanted with the caveat that they were never going to be separate from our persons at any time to prevent magic seepage or our tools leaving some echoes of our presence here.
So with no ability to use magic, and nothing else to do, I spent my days on the deck, just watching the sea as our ship cut its way through it.
"How come the Muggles don't notice anything?" I asked the question on my mind as we passed another fishing ship.
"What do you think?" he asked, tossing the question back at me like he always did.
"Can't be magic, can it?" was my first shot in the dark.
"And why can it not be magic?" Nicholas wondered.
"Because that's the point of using such a low-tech ship, isn't it? To use as little magic as possible. If we were to use something like a notice-me-not, would that not defeat the purpose almost entirely?" I asked.
"Indeed it would. If we were to use magic. But then we could be protected by magic's effects without actually using it," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Things in Asia work differently than they do down in Europe. As you would be aware, the magical and mundane split much earlier here than they did back in Europe, so that means they have had juice longer to figure out continent-wide means of keeping the secret, so to speak."
"You're saying there is an enchantment that's spread all the way around Asia that prevents the Muggles from noticing us?"
"Exactly. The Muggles in Asia are for all intents and purposes little different from cattle in that they exist solely for the pleasure of the magical here. But they are kept as ignorant cattle at least. There is a fascinating enchantment known as the Veil in English that keeps the Mugs from noticing anything obviously magical. They come up with an explanation for it all on their own. No need to keep dozens of Obliviators on standby in case something goes wrong," he said.
"So if I were to take my wand out and cast Fiendfyre?" I asked, looking at the Muggle trawling ship not too far from us. Nicholas followed my gaze and scoffed.
"Maybe they'd see fireworks or something. But then you'd have announced us to every single creature in this sea, and I have no idea what they'd see when those creatures tear this ship to pieces looking for your magic," he said.
"So no pranking the Muggles then," I said with a smile.
"No. No pranking the Muggles. But if you do find yourself in need of something to do…" he said leadingly.
"Nope. Not even slightly interested," I said, pushing off the railing and heading somewhere else in the ship. I was bored, yes, but that didn't mean I was interested in playing along with Nicholas's whims. Getting involved with his own particular brand of madness was far from what I wanted to spend the time left before diving into enemy territory doing.
And what did I actually want to spend that time doing? My wand dropped down my holster into my grasp. I stared at the length of yew. I might have called it my wand, but there was still something between us that felt off. That felt wrong or missing. And it could only be coming from my end. Rather, it felt like it was coming from my end, and if there was one thing I had learned in my time under Nicholas's tutelage, it was that when it came to magic, feelings were everything. That was why even though I'd been smarter, more powerful, and better prepared than a lot of people, I was still struggling to push into the upper echelon of wizardry. Struggling to become the kind of wizard they didn't bother sending single Aurors after. The kind that men like Ojin, for Ojin was just a man at the end of the day, cowered before and did not dare to piss off.
But now? Well, there might have been something missing in how my bond with the wand felt, but I was the only one who could notice it, to put it mildly, and even then it was only in times like these. When we were in combat, whatever was stopping a full bond was stripped away.
It took only a few hours more for us to reach our destination. A point in the sea where there were no Muggles in sight. Not by a long shot.
"Japan is less willing to accept foreign Muggles within its territory," Nicholas said, even if I did not ask the question. I shrugged. What did I care about any of that right now? The major concern on my mind was getting in without getting stopped.
"Broom, Harry?" he asked, and I took his out of the enchanted bag before taking mine out.
"Good luck, my friends," Bogron said from his position at the edge of the deck. He had overruled Nicholas's reasoning for asking him to stay home and not join us in this. One of said reasons had been that dwarves did not belong on the sea. Bogron had rejected all reasoning only to join us in the ship and then end up locking himself beneath the deck for the better part of it. He'd been throwing up all through; I had no doubts about that.
A fact that amused Nicholas to no end.
"Oh, and be careful about the Onchō," Bogron added before he stumbled off the deck, still clearly not feeling well at one hundred percent.
"Sure thing. We're quite well prepared for them."
"Well prepared for the what now?" I asked.
"The Onchō," Nicholas continued.
"And for those of us in the back with no idea what that even is?"
"Did you bother cracking open a single book about Japan's geography before even deciding to tag along?" Nicholas asked with a smirk.
"Ha ha, you're so funny," I snarked with a roll of my eyes. We both knew I didn't decide to tag along. I'd been press-ganged into this more than anything else—sure, I was getting paid, but that was more of a consolation than anything else. And the question about books about magical Japan did not really exist. Well, good ones at least. The only books that had survived the purge had been the worst ones—filled with anti-Japan propaganda, and very little useful information. The European ministries had no interest in giving their people the kind of knowledge that would tempt them to trying to sneak in or do something even more stupid.
"Well, you could have just asked me about the dangers we would be likely to run across on our journey, and I would have let you know all about the Onchō," he said.
"You really do think you're funny, don't you?" I asked with a sigh. Because I had asked him that exact question. Twice!
"I do, but so does Bogron, so it's not only me," he said smugly. I pointed behind him at Bogron who was halfway down the stairs but still very clearly shaking his head to show that he did not agree whatsoever with that statement.
"Et tu, Bogron?" Nicholas sighed dramatically, placing a hand on his chest and feigning a swoon. I was tempted to send him overboard with a well-placed Banishing Charm. Instead, I let out a sigh of my own and placed my hand on the bridge of my nose, massaging the bit of cartilage there to ward off a headache. Somehow in all this talking, he still hadn't explained just what this Onchō Bogron had mentioned was. Or how we were allegedly well prepared for them.
Knowing Nicholas the way I did, I was willing to bet that we were very far from well-prepared as far as this particular creature was concerned. Immortality had given him a strange sense of humor, little appreciation for human lives, and a level of risk tolerance that most sane people could not compare with.
"Can we just talk about these creatures?" I asked.
"Why should we? You're going to see them in a matter of seconds and then nothing will prepare you for facing them more than seeing them in person," he said, placing the broom between his legs and preparing to shoot off.
"You have to be joking. What if—"
"Did I spend months of my time training a coward?" His voice cut through mine.
"There is a difference between caution and cowardice. Just as there is a difference between foolhardiness and bravery," I shot back not a second later.
"Then if you must know anything about them, I'd say watch out for the beaks, the wings as well, and the talons too, I suppose. Oh, and don't kill any," he said finally before shooting off. The acceleration of the new broom was such that he was almost too far for me to clearly make out in a matter of seconds. I scoffed before shooting right after him. The chance that he would ever stop doing things like this was so low that I probably would be better served not even hoping for reasonable behavior from his end.
I bent myself around the broom, keeping as small a profile as possible to navigate wind resistance better than most and reached Nicholas in a matter of seconds, before overtaking him. As I turned to look at him, I heard the sound of a bird's caw. I looked down to see a creature so large no one sane would call it a bird and how it was about to take a healthy portion of my lower body in its beak.
I shot off, bending around the creature and diving backwards. Bellying its size, it flipped as well, entering to a dive as it chased after its lunch—me.
"That is the Onchō!" Nicholas's voice rang out as he banked left, avoiding a similar creature on his own. 'No fucking shit, Sherlock,' I wanted to curse at him but then I got a much better look at the creature as it chased Nicholas through the air.
It was about a quarter of the size of a dragon. I'd never faced one, but I'd seen enough drawings and scale images to come to that conclusion. And a quarter of the size of a dragon meant it was about the size of Hagrid's hut. It was large enough that it would not have much trouble chewing up either one of us. And there were two of them. Scratch that, I mentally sighed as I heard another caw.
Three now. If more were going to come, then that would be much worse. I could see the reflection of the one chasing me as I dove downwards and I waited and waited until I was quite literally about to crash into the ocean before I swung myself back upwards in a perfect Wronski Feint. The bristles of my broom kissed the water as I did so. The Onchō, with how big it was, had no chance of avoiding the water and crashed right after me.
The spray from the water almost pushed me off course, but I just managed to maintain my bearings as I chased after Nicholas who had two on his tail. The goal was to make it within Japan's inner wards, because there the creatures would not be able to follow us. At least, that was the little I had been able to understand from the planning session. It was kind of hard to understand the plan when Nicholas did his best to be as unclear about things as possible.
A niggling feeling in the back of my head told me to bank right and those instincts that had made this body the best Quidditch player in Hogwarts at the age of eleven saved my life. I banked, and then there was a flash.
A concentrated beam of light passed through the space I'd just been flying through.
"Nicholas! They can shoot lightning from their beaks!" I shouted across the distance.
"Why do you think I asked you to be careful about said beaks?" he cackled back. I began to re-evaluate the value proposition here. Nicholas clearly wants to die. This was a suicide thing or whatever. He was tired of being alive. That was the only thing that could explain how he cackled as a beam of lightning barely missed him and struck the ocean, sending water flying all over. Was lightning even supposed to do that naturally?
If it wasn't then the creatures seemed to care little for breaking the laws of nature in total. The one I had sent into the water shot out of it with a single flap of its wings, and then impossibly enough, began to gain on my Firebolt. It wasn't possible—shouldn't have been possible with how fast I was going.
"They are creatures of wind and lightning. The children of Raijin and Fujin, and the servants of Susanoo himself," Nick's voice rang out as he barrel rolled away from a grasping set of talons. I caught up to him as we flew towards the islands.
"They won't be able to follow us once we get within the boundaries of the country proper. Just focus on outrunning them," Nicholas said like that was not one of the few parts of plan that I had managed to be informed about. And it just so happened to be one of the hardest bits of the whole thing. I felt a gust of wind near blow me off course. And I turned to get a good look of the chasing creatures only to find one of them charging up another beam of lightning.
I pointed my wand behind myself, willing the rune into existence and forming a Shield Spell with a runic base that took the brunt of the attack with no problems whatsoever. And then I turned and dove after Nicholas as he began to head towards one of the islands. At least we could see the islands themselves now. That was a good sign. It said that we were close—somewhat close. There was a snapping sound to my right as I barely managed to accelerate away from the gasping beak of one of the giant birds as it tried to sneak up on me from the side. I twisted around the next bird.
How many of them were even chasing us now? I didn't want to risk turning around to check. I pointed my wand at the water beneath us, animating a tsunami that parted around me and hit my assailants straight on. I did not expect that to be enough to put them down, and Nicholas for all his shortcomings did not even bother turning about. That proved to be the wise thing to do as the birds just kept fucking coming regardless of what happened. It seemed they wanted a taste of us whether we liked it or not.
A/N: And that's the chapter, I guess. Next three chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.