Chapter 398: The Terrifying Power of Sauron
That single Avada Kedavra, even at the height of his restored power, made Sauron feel it.
The dark force coiling around him surged in response, snapping outward like a hundred clawing tendrils, and in an instant, it had condensed into a shield of pure darkness. The Killing Curse struck it head-on. The collision detonated in a shockwave that tore the air itself apart, leaving a vast vacuum in its wake.
The dark army below was caught in the blast. Scores of them were hurled through the air like scattered leaves.
On Kael's side, the magical barrier absorbed the worst of it, and they were largely spared. But the barrier shuddered with it, rippling far more violently than before. Another dozen blasts like that, and even ten thousand wizards combined might not be enough to hold it together.
Kael himself was forced back several steps by the shockwave. Sauron, hanging in the sky above, did not move at all.
Those burning red eyes turned toward Kael, and what filled them was not anger. It was something closer to fascination, and to hunger.
"How interesting," Sauron said. "In only a few short decades, you have grown this much. That rate of increase, given a few centuries more, might truly have let you surpass me one day."
Then he attacked, without mercy and without restraint.
Vast dark power surged outward from him, carrying the weight of the world itself, and it came from every direction at once, a roaring flood intent on crushing Kael under it.
It never reached him.
A blazing, sacred light erupted in front of Kael. Galadriel stood radiant, the Ring of Water, Nenya, shining bright on her finger, its light expanding into a holy shield that held firm against the crashing tide of darkness without giving an inch.
Glorfindel blazed beside her with a light that rivalled the sun, twin swords cutting through the shadows around him, driving them back with each stroke.
Elrond drew his Elven blade and raised his hand, the Ring of Air, Vilya, flaring at his finger. He sent sweeping arcs of wind-force toward Sauron, each one parting the dark flood before it like a blade through water, splitting the torrent cleanly in two. Even the black clouds overhead cracked open wherever his strikes passed, as though the sky itself had been cleaved.
Gandalf chanted without pausing, his staff raised high, releasing waves of holy light that rolled outward from him in expanding rings, pushing Sauron's darkness back step by step.
And Kael summoned his Patronus.
It rose and kept rising, swelling far beyond its normal shape, until an enormous phoenix filled the sky above the battlefield, its wingspread vast enough to blot out the clouds, its silver-white radiance pouring down like moonlight into the dark. Where that light fell, the shadows recoiled.
At the same time, Kael himself moved. He lifted off the ground without a broom, without any tool at all, his body dissolving into a swirl of pale smoke that streaked through the sky with sharp, unpredictable speed. Even as he flew, he kept attacking, directing spells at Sauron with every pass.
This was the flight spell he had gained, the same magic Voldemort had created and taught to Snape, who had kept it closely guarded until Dumbledore drew it out and refined it. In Dumbledore's hands, the black smoke was gone, replaced by something cleaner, and Kael had mastered it thoroughly. Unlike Apparition, it let him cast freely in motion, and it bound him to no broomstick or winged creature.
Against the five of them bearing down on him together, Kael, Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, and Glorfindel, Sauron showed no concern at all. Dark power continued to pour from him without end, flooding outward in a ceaseless tide, becoming countless tendrils and writhing dark shapes that swept at all five of them from every angle.
Then his gaze dropped to the rings on Gandalf's, Elrond's, and Galadriel's hands, and something dark and covetous lit in his eyes.
"Your rings were forged from the craft I created," he said, cold amusement edging his voice. "Did you truly think you could use the power I made against me? How naive. But since you have brought them before me, they belong in my hands once more."
He spoke a string of harsh, ancient words, and the darkness around him shifted, finding a new target. It converged on the three bearers of the Elven Rings, drawn not toward the wielders but toward the rings themselves.
What happened next was worse. The Three Rings did not resist. They opened to the darkness the way a door opens to a key, and began to draw it in.
The colour drained from Gandalf's, Galadriel's, and Elrond's faces in the same instant. All three immediately ceased channelling power through their rings and turned it inward instead, using every shred of their own strength to suppress the rings, to seal them shut against the darkness trying to pour in.
The danger was plain. If Sauron's darkness reached the hearts of the Three Rings and tainted them, those rings would become like the others he had made. Their bearers would be corrupted, hollowed out, turned into Ringwraiths, and eventually into Sauron's puppets.
With the three of them suddenly forced to direct most of their power inward, the balance of the battle shifted at a stroke. The pressure on Kael and Glorfindel doubled.
Glorfindel grunted, a low, strained sound. Some of the colour left his face, and the light around him dimmed. He was still fighting, still driving back the dark, but for the first time, he was giving ground.
Sauron's eyes burned with triumph. He pushed harder, sending another wave of dark power crashing across the battlefield.
Darkness thick as ink poured across the plain, blotting out what was left of the sky and the land alike, and within it, shapeless, nameless things took form, horrifying, wordless shapes of malice that crashed toward Kael and the others and toward the wizarding army arrayed behind the barrier.
Down on the field, Kael's nearly ten thousand wizards were fighting their own battle. While their lord and his companions grappled with Sauron, the wizards had been throwing everything they had at the Witch-king of Angmar and the host he commanded. Hundreds of Aurors had closed in around the Witch-king together. The rest were holding the line against the Orcs, Trolls, and Barrow-wights, using the barrier as cover, striking from behind it and letting the barrier do its work on anything mindless enough to charge straight through.
It was working. The enemy numbers were thinning, and the wizards were gaining ground.
Then Sauron's full power came down.
The dark flood rolled across the battlefield like a wave crashing over a sandbar, and the barrier that ten thousand wizards had built together was suddenly nothing. Against that tide, it looked small and fragile, a little dam against a sea.
Before the watching eyes of every wizard present, it began to crack.
Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel were occupied entirely with containing their own rings. Glorfindel's light was fading fast under the relentless pressure. Kael's great phoenix Patronus was swallowed by the dark and extinguished, and Kael himself, cutting through the high air above and striking at Sauron from every angle, was suddenly surrounded, the darkness pressing in from all sides. His face flushed red with the effort of holding it back. The Ferro Fortia shield he had erected around himself was visibly shrinking, contracting under the weight of it.
He looked down and saw his people below, nearly ten thousand wizards on the edge of being overwhelmed at once.
He did not hesitate.
A low sound tore from his throat. The dark irises of his eyes went white. His body exploded outward in a churning mass of black mist.
Kael's Obscurus form rose into the sky, and it was not the form he had first awakened. It was vastly larger now, far more violent, alive in a way that bordered on feral. It tore free of the surrounding darkness without resistance and plunged downward like a breaking wave.
The moment it touched ground, it collapsed back into him, and he stood in human form again, one hand raised.
On his finger, a ring gleamed.
It was silver, set with a yellow gemstone that pulsed with light. The silver band shimmered with a cool radiance, but the stone itself blazed, its brilliance almost too bright to look at directly. That light swelled and expanded upward, becoming a vast dome of golden brilliance that spread across the sky above the entire battlefield and covered everyone beneath it.
The dark flood struck the dome.
It did not move.
Wave after wave of Sauron's power broke against it. It stood like bedrock.