Chapter 206. The Ravine. Part 2. The Bottom.
USSR. Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Hotel Chaika.
In one of the hotel's better rooms, on a small balcony leaning against the railing with a glass of wine and wearing a bathrobe, Arnold, the Black Star's leader, stood watching the activity outside. His expression held nothing but exhaustion.
Though people had helped him "wrap up" his affairs in China, he hadn't quit. He had immediately shifted his attention to this country, where the organization already had two active divisions, one in Khabarovsk Krai and one in the Kazakh SSR. Their people in the power structure there held the highest posts and were gradually embedding themselves deeper, dispatching their own members under the guise of transfers and exchanges to other regions. In one of those regions, a member of the Diamond division had already secured the post of deputy director of the Yakut ASSR.
Arnold had come to this autonomous republic simply to oversee things personally and map out the next stages of expansion into other regions. The ultimate objective behind all of it was nothing less than seizing control of the USSR's wizarding world outright.
He finished his wine, watched the wizards outside for another few seconds, then went back in. At that exact moment, the mirror on the bedside table lit up red.
"For heaven's sake. Couldn't this have waited until morning?" Arnold muttered in irritation. A mask appeared in his hand, identical to the one Severus had taken from him earlier. He put it on. The reflection in the mirror rippled, and after a few seconds it was replaced by the face of a man somewhat older than Arnold himself. Short silver hair. A small beard. What drew attention first, and produced an immediate, instinctive sense of unease, were the eyes: white irises with no pupils, grey sclera. Along with that, a long scar running from brow to chin. "Sandro?"
Sandro simply smiled.
"Easy, Leader. I'm calling on fairly important business. It concerns the order you gave this morning to locate someone."
"Hm? You know him?" Arnold raised an eyebrow behind his mask with genuine interest, addressing the commander of the Diamond division, the organization's second-most powerful member.
"I'd like to clarify what you need him for, if you don't mind." Unlike most Black Star members, Sandro carried considerably more influence and strength, which gave him a degree of latitude, though within reason. He understood, as did Arnold, that losing a combat asset of his caliber would be a significant blow to the whole organization. Beyond that, a substantial portion of the Diamond division would follow him if it came to that, which meant Arnold had no choice but to factor him in. It was mildly irritating, but in this particular situation, Arnold simply had no other option.
"He managed to deeply offend someone." Arnold pulled a chair over and dropped into it, topped up his wine, and found himself remembering that pair of cold, nearly glacial eyes. He shuddered involuntarily. "Someone I would be the very last person in the world to cross, even at the cost of losing you." His own skin mattered more, even if rebuilding the division would take the better part of a decade.
That answer made Sandro's thick brows draw sharply together into a hard line. If anyone from his own division had seen that, they would have reached for their heart. Among his own people he was known as the Emotionless Reaper. No one in the organization had ever seen so much as a flicker of change on his face, a mask of indifference he maintained without exception. Even his own apprentice had managed to earn only an almost imperceptible nod of approval after defeating the Gold division's leader.
"He's that powerful?"
"My magic had no effect on him whatsoever." That simple statement visibly shook Sandro. Arnold continued. "And to leave in one piece, I had to sign a magical contract and give an oath to fulfill three of his requests. You already know the first." He raised the glass. It passed cleanly through the mask, and he took a sip, leaned back, and closed his eyes.
"What if the two of us faced him together?"
"If you want to provoke whoever stands behind him, you're welcome to try. Though I'd genuinely prefer not to lose you. Finding a replacement of your caliber would not be easy." He took another sip, leaned on the armrest, tilted his head slightly, and asked, "You're defending him rather strongly. Which tells me..."
"He joined our community quite recently as an official member, and he has a remarkable talent in Necromancy. You know how difficult it is to make progress in our discipline. He's thirty-five years old and has already reached the same level I reached at ninety." Sandro drew a hand slowly across his face with a weary exhale, then began stroking his chin. "I would hate to lose such a young talent. And the others would not understand. We'd risk losing the support of the Necromancer's Community entirely."
"I see. That would indeed be a heavy loss."
"And how could he have offended this person at all? For the past ten years, he hasn't even left the community. He's spent nearly all of that time in the library with his books."
"I have no idea."
"Perhaps..." Sandro's expression shifted. "Perhaps this person deliberately wants to weaken our organization and then take it over?" The logic of the unknown man's actions made it a reasonable enough conclusion, but Arnold simply shook his head.
"If he wanted that, he would have done it already. He has the means." What specific means he chose not to say. Sandro did not press the point. The brief pause made it clear enough that Arnold had no intention of elaborating.
"Allow me some time to think." Sandro exhaled slowly with a grim expression. He received only a faint nod in reply, and a few seconds later his own reflection returned to the mirror.
"Why did I ever decide to get involved with that little bastard?" Arnold tossed the mask onto the table, drained his glass in one go, and stepped back out onto the balcony, hoping the fresh air might help him find some way out of the situation.
Zhangjiajie District. Hunan Province. Tianzi Mountains.
Severus and Nagini had been falling for five minutes already, and the ground showed no sign of arriving. Nagini had finished telling Severus exactly how insane he was roughly two minutes ago, and spent the following two gradually calming down. She was hardly a stranger to his reckless moments at this point.
Severus was mildly surprised by the situation. By his rough estimate, they had already dropped at least eleven and a half kilometers, and yet there were no side effects at all. No pressure on the body, no other symptoms of rapid descent deep underground. There was even breathable air.
He had also been studying the walls as they fell, occasionally snatching various crystals that jutted from the rock face, as well as herbs growing directly from the stone. Some of them he couldn't name at all, despite having worked through every book in the Hogwarts library, everything he had found in Diagon Alley, and several volumes acquired in Knockturn Alley's Brazilian counterpart. He still hadn't touched the scrolls purchased in China. The answers might be in those.
They fell for another minute before Severus finally noticed something: a yellow point of light in the darkness below. The lower they dropped, the larger it grew.
"Severus..."
"I see it. We must be close." He smiled with a nod. There was something pleasant about freefall, though the monotonous scenery had grown dull some time ago, and for someone who could already fly, it was hardly astonishing.
"Please. Never do that again. If I had hair right now, I would absolutely have several grey strands to show for this." Nagini grumbled with a note of displeasure and coiled herself more firmly around him.
Severus didn't answer, keeping his focus on the yellow point below, until suddenly something caught his eye. He snapped his arm upward and conjured a barrier that closed completely around them, but even it began to dissolve before his eyes, fading slowly in real time.
"Now I understand why no one ever survived." The lightness had left his voice entirely. He could no longer feel any magic in the air. Something was draining his own, drop by drop.
"The magic. It's gone." Nagini sensed it immediately. Animals were far more sensitive to it than people, and she especially so.
"I noticed." He answered with a crooked smile, passed his palm through the air, and a slow current formed around them, which, like the barrier before it, began to dissolve and scatter into red particles that sank into the walls.
In those brief ten seconds they covered another three hundred meters and more, and finally reached the bottom of the ravine. It greeted them with an unpleasant crunch and total darkness.
Any other wizard in their position, if they had survived the fall at all, would have been completely blind. But Severus had prepared for exactly this. During the descent he had taken a Night Vision Potion, and he could see the darkness clearly. What it revealed was not easy to call attractive.
What he had stepped on were bones. Perfectly clean human bones, stretching in every direction as far as he could see. Where the ravine had been perhaps fifteen meters wide at the top, down here it was nearly twice that, roughly thirty meters across, widening in places to forty, narrowing in others to ten. Bones covered everything, human and animal alike.
Beyond the bones, the ground was scattered with objects worn ragged by time: clothing, bags, ropes, potions, though nearly every vial had been shattered. Artifacts, useless without magic. And among them, the source of the faint light: an ordinary Muggle torch covered in runes, which had landed on one of the bags and was still working entirely on its Muggle battery inside. Whichever wizard had dropped it down here had never thought to remove it.
None of that held Severus's attention for long. What drew his eye were the colorless, dim crystals embedded in the walls, no taller than a meter each, radiating the barest trace of magic.
"I don't like this place." Nagini studied the almost polished-looking bones with unease, her gaze moving steadily around them.
"I agree. But I think I've just found something that could be very useful for strengthening my core in the future." He crossed to one of the crystals, touched it, and began absorbing the magic it held. It flowed into him without the slightest resistance. If the entire length of this ravine is lined with them, I'll have more than enough, not just for the fusion of soul, body, and core, but for further growth well beyond that. With these, I might reach the middle of Archmage rank within a few decades. And for my project, they're a perfect source of power. He swept his gaze along the walls with quiet intensity, then pressed his palm to a bare section of stone and began releasing magic slowly to measure the rate of absorption.
Nagini watched with idle curiosity. After a few seconds, one of the largest crystals, surrounded by smaller ones, simply tore free from the wall on its own. Severus caught them smoothly and dropped them into the spatial artifact.
"The only problem is that I won't be able to take everything with me." He frowned faintly, then his gaze stopped on a bag belonging to some very unfortunate wizard lying nearby. A smile came to his face on its own. "Well, there's another compartment sorted."
Nagini watched all of this, sighed tiredly, rested her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes, well aware that this was going to take a while.
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