Under the eerie moonlight, the man identified earlier as Mr. Kinnock, the Labour Party leader, was indeed twisting his rather substantial buttocks with surprising enthusiasm, thoroughly enjoying himself amidst the unnervingly gleeful townsfolk.
The bodyguards surrounding him, who had initially looked like serious, elite professionals, were also flailing their arms and legs, dancing with a wild, uncoordinated abandon that belied their sharp suits.
'To be perfectly honest, these people are truly terrible dancers,' Aiden complained internally to the system, a flicker of aesthetic displeasure crossing his mind despite the unsettling atmosphere.
"Ding, patience, Host. There will be more... compelling performances to watch very soon."
Oliver and Aiden moved through the throngs, urgently searching for Oliver's father. However, the square was packed with so many swaying, cloaked figures that distinguishing any single individual was nearly impossible.
The moon climbed high, casting a pale, spectral glow. Eerie will-o'-the-wisps began to dance over the distant graves in the cemetery, painting a terrifyingly beautiful yet profoundly disturbing scene. Miraculously, though, no shadows stretched from these ghostly lights; it was as if the light itself consumed all darkness around it.
Beyond the confines of the cemetery, where the dense cluster of houses gave way to open, rolling land, one could just barely glimpse the dark silhouettes of distant mountaintops. Above the unseen harbour, stars glinted coldly in the night sky. Yet, the town of Kingsport itself remained swallowed by an unnatural, oppressive darkness, untouched by the moon or starlight.
In the winding, narrow alleys, only the terribly swaying lanterns, hung haphazardly on unseen posts, flickered with a sickly, inconsistent light, their movements seeming to chase and mock the procession of dancers.
The residents in the square did not cease their unnerving dance. They formed long, serpentine lines, moving in a manner that was both chaotic and disturbingly orderly, silently flowing like a river of bodies towards the ancient, brooding church.
Aiden and Oliver hung back, allowing the bulk of the crowd to enter first, their figures slipping into the deeply shadowed doorway of the church.
Oliver, his fear palpable, nervously tugged at Aiden's sleeve. Aiden, however, ever cautious, decided it was best for them to enter last, just in case of any immediate traps or unwelcome surprises.
Finally, the last of the townsfolk had shuffled inside. Taking a steadying breath, the two boys stepped over the worn threshold and into the church.
The interior of the church was not as crowded as Aiden had initially imagined. The crowd passed silently through the main aisle, flanked by rows of white, high-backed pews, and walked with an unnerving single-mindedness towards a large, open trapdoor situated directly in front of the pulpit. One by one, the residents bent over and disappeared down into the darkness below.
Arriving at the edge of the trapdoor, Aiden felt that strange sense of déjà vu wash over him again, stronger this time.
'This feeling… this sensation of being coerced, swept along by a powerful collective will… is it a form of prophecy? Has someone, or something, made a prophecy specifically about me?' Aiden's mind raced as he noticed the profound strangeness affecting his own perceptions. 'It feels like I'm being guided, or perhaps herded.'
'It seems,' he concluded with a grim internal acceptance, 'that I can't avoid whatever lies below.'
So, with a reassuring nod to a visibly trembling Oliver, Aiden led the way, descending into the trapdoor.
Below the trapdoor, a flight of rough-hewn, white stone stairs spiraled downwards. This place seemed to connect to the deepest basement or crypts of the ancient church. The air grew colder, and a damp, suffocating miasma rose to meet them. It was clearly a charnel house, a place of old death and decay.
The winding queue of residents ahead of them looked terrifying in the gloom, a grotesque serpent of bodies wriggling inexorably towards the depths of the charnel house. It was a horrifying parody of an assembly line, the townspeople like offerings being sent into the waiting maw of some unseen, subterranean demon, transported via a conveyor belt of grim fate.
Aiden and Oliver followed closely behind the last of the crowd. A pungent, almost unbearable stench emanated from the depths of the passage ahead. Aiden, unable to stand it any longer, quickly cast the Bubble-Head Charm on himself and then on a grateful Oliver, encasing their heads in shimmering spheres of fresh, breathable air.
When Oliver and Aiden finally reached the bottommost floor, the full, horrifying vista of the charnel house was revealed before them.
A biting wind howled through the vast, empty subterranean canyon, creating a piercing, drum-like resonance that echoed off the unseen walls, as if an infernal orchestra was tuning up for some dreadful, unholy symphony.
The vast riverbank before them was carpeted with grotesque, pulsating fungi of myriad shapes and sizes. Columns of flame erupted intermittently from fissures in the rock, burning with a morbid, sickly green light that cast dancing, distorted shadows.
A wide, greasy, black river oozed from some unknown and terrifying abyss far beyond their sight, its sluggish, oily current flowing inexorably towards dark, unseen cracks and rifts in the earth that surely led down to the abyssal depths of an Eternal, lightless Ocean.
Oliver's resistance to such unnatural horrors was relatively poor. He was breathing heavily, his eyes wide with terror, even within the protection of the Bubble-Head Charm.
He could sense it all in the oppressive, chilling darkness: giant, umbrella-shaped fungi standing like sentient, malevolent sentinels; columns of flame, tinged with a leprous, diseased quality, spewing forth noxious fumes; viscous, unwholesome water flowing in sluggish rivulets; and the crowd of cloaked figures, now forming a silent, reverent semicircle around the largest of the flame columns.
In the center of this unholy congregation stood a bizarre, crudely constructed altar. A great bonfire burned fiercely in the middle of the altar, its flames leaping high. Strange, unsettling totem poles stood sentinel around the altar, their surfaces engraved with complex, disturbing runes that Aiden could not immediately decipher, though they pulsed with a dark, ancient power.
A single person, draped in a heavy black robe, stood upon the altar, their face obscured by a deep hood, chanting in an unknown, guttural language.
The surrounding residents, their faces blank and emotionless, worshipped the morbid green flame columns. They lined up with a chilling, automaton-like precision, picked up obsidian sacrificial knives from a stone slab, cut open their own arms without flinching, and dripped their blood into the black, oily water of the river.
The blood that trickled from their arms was not red. Instead, it was a viscous, sticky colloid that shimmered with a faint, unhealthy green light, like the ichor of something afflicted with chlorosis or some other foul, unnatural disease.
"Under the deep night, when the stars are hidden away in the endless, silent void," the priest standing in the middle of the altar suddenly spoke, his voice amplified unnaturally, now in a language Aiden could understand, though it was harsh, grating, and horribly distorted. "We gather here, with awe and terror in our hearts, reciting the sacred sacrificial texts, to awaken the ancient god who sleeps eternally at the bottom of the very abyss — ■■!"
"We are here, with our blood and our souls, with our songs and our prayers, to offer ourselves as sacrifices to you, from this moment until the end of all eternity!"
Immediately afterwards, one of the residents, seemingly chosen at random, walked automaton-like onto the altar. The black-robed priest, with swift, practiced motions, used a large, curved sacrificial knife to cut open the resident's chest. He then reached in, plucked out the still-beating heart, and callously threw it into the roaring flames of the bonfire.
The flames surged violently upwards, their green light momentarily igniting the oppressive darkness that clung to the high, unseen ceiling of the cavern. The darkness itself seemed to come alive, to writhe and slowly flow downwards like a sentient, viscous fluid.
No, Aiden realized with a jolt of pure terror, that wasn't mere darkness. It was an unknown, black, protoplasmic colloid, and his own spirituality, his very essence, was screaming in primal fear at its approach. He quickly slammed his eyes shut, simultaneously reaching out to cover Oliver's eyes, shielding him from the sight.
The black, viscous colloid slowly flowed down from above, enveloping the black-robed priest on the altar. A sickening, horrifying sound of writhing flesh, snapping bones, and tearing ligaments emanated from within the shifting, amorphous mass...
"Hahahaha! It's a success! It is truly a success! As expected, it is possible to offer sacrifices to the great and mighty ■■!"
The black-robed figure, now somehow changed, let out a wild, triumphant laugh. And the voice, beneath the distortion, was unmistakably that of Oliver's father—Clint Graves.
Oliver heard his father's voice and, with a cry of disbelief and horror, broke free from Aiden's protective grasp, running heedlessly towards the altar.
The surrounding residents, still kneeling on the cold stone ground in silent worship, turned a blind eye to the sudden appearance of this extra person. Oliver, unimpeded, successfully scrambled onto the altar.
"Father! What are you doing? You… you just killed someone!" Oliver's eyes were wide with terror and confusion. He couldn't understand why his kind, loving father had become this monstrous figure. He wanted to get closer, to reach out, but he was also deeply, instinctively timid in the face of such madness.
"Oh~, Oliver, my dear boy! You've come just in time!" Clint Graves's voice was now utterly crazed, dripping with a malevolent, evil glee. "Come now, child! Offer your insignificant life to Him! Our entire family will be reborn in the glorious, eternal embrace of the great ■■! And then, my son, we will together find and devour the pustule that is your mother's current reincarnation!"
Clint Graves raised the bloodstained sacrificial knife high and, with a predatory grin, waved it menacingly at Oliver.
Oliver, despite his terror, had, after all, undergone rigorous training at the Mind's Edge Duelling Club. Instinct took over. He ducked his head, then executed a surprisingly agile backward roll, got to his feet, and, in one fluid motion, drew his wand, pointing it shakily but resolutely at the transformed figure of his father.
Seeing the two confronting each other, Aiden also drew his own wand, preparing to step forward and provide crucial assistance.
But just as he was about to move, a spell shot towards him from behind. Aiden's highly attuned instincts screamed a warning, and he reacted instantly, his mind lashing out with a powerful Hypnotic suggestion.
Under Aiden's potent hypnotic influence, the unseen attacker's hand, the one that had just fired the spell, inexplicably jerked upwards. The curse, whatever it was, went wide, flying harmlessly past Aiden's side and impacting one of the kneeling residents. The unfortunate cultist lost all strength and fell directly to the ground, lifeless.
The heavy robe that had covered the resident seemed to lose its unseen support, deflating like a pricked bladder. From within the empty folds of the cloth, pale, writhing worms, fat and glistening, began to crawl outwards into the green-tinged firelight.
"Hahahaha! Those familiar, heterochromatic eyes! It's you! The little thing that slipped away from my grasp all those years ago!"
Another figure, also cloaked in a black robe, slowly walked down the stone stairs from the trapdoor entrance. He didn't seem to care in the slightest that his spell had missed its intended target. Indeed, how could a Dark Wizard, already teetering on the brink of utter madness, notice such a minor miscalculation in his own spellcasting?
The black robe lent him an air of sinister mystery, but unlike Clint Graves, this individual was wearing a mask, intricately carved with strange, unsettling patterns. The identity of this newcomer was obvious: he was a Death Eater.
"It's you," Aiden breathed, his voice low and dangerous. "How could you possibly be here?"
Aiden's mind flashed back to that terrible night twelve years ago. The memory of the figure standing in the center of the street, laughing wildly amidst chaos and destruction, gradually, chillingly, overlapped with the masked person standing before him now.
"Hmph! Of course, it's to reach a mutually beneficial cooperation with a group of stinky, useful Mudbloods," the Death Eater sneered, his voice raspy. "If it weren't for the fact that Lord Voldemort required their… unique assistance…"
This Death Eater appeared much thinner than Aiden remembered, gaunt almost, and his voice lacked the sharp, arrogant edge it once possessed. He seemed worn down, yet still fueled by a desperate, fanatical rage.
"It seems your master hasn't been faring too well since being defeated and rather embarrassingly overthrown by a mere infant," Aiden observed, his heterochromatic vertical pupils fixed on the Death Eater, his tone as calm and deep as a secluded, shadowed pool.
"How dare you…! How dare you blaspheme the Dark Lord so brazenly!"
This Death Eater began trembling all over, his body shaking with uncontrollable fury. He screamed, a raw, animalistic sound, and fired another spell directly at Aiden.
However, before Aiden, a mind that had lost its reason to such incandescent anger was like a poorly built sandcastle, ready to collapse with the gentlest psychic wave.
Aiden retreated slightly, easily sidestepping the hastily cast spell.
"The Killing Curse. Besides abusing that particular spell with such reckless abandon, do you and your esteemed master possess any other notable talents?" Aiden taunted, his voice deceptively calm.
"Then I'll let you taste the full power of this spell, you insolent brat!"
The Death Eater raised his wand again, his hand shaking, and began to gather his dark energies, his lips forming the first syllable, "Avada—"
"Chaos."
Aiden's eyes snapped open, his own unique ability activating with silent, devastating force. The turbulent, hateful emotions roiling within the Death Eater were instantly, catastrophically detonated. The man shrieked, a high, thin sound that was cut short as he foamed at the mouth, his eyes rolling back, and collapsed, convulsing violently on the damp stone floor.
"Alas," Aiden sighed, a hint of weariness in his voice as he slowly walked towards the fallen Death Eater. "Why don't you fanatics ever learn your lesson? Do you truly believe there is no price to pay for the reckless and indiscriminate abuse of the Killing Curse?"
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