"Gaia, stay focused. What exactly is that thing?" Allen asked, his voice low and tight. His mind was already racing, discarding the idea of a Basilisk. A Basilisk was a silent, clean killer; it didn't leave the air smelling like a chemical fire, and it certainly didn't exhale toxic miasma that could wipe out a forest's ecosystem in a single night.
Moreover, if a Basilisk were roaming the castle grounds with this much lethality, the hospital wing wouldn't be full of petrified students—it would be a morgue. Tina's theory was looking more like a terrifying reality. There was a second resident in the Chamber of Secrets, and this one had a particular appetite for anything that flew.
"The air is changing," Gaia warned, her wings twitching nervously.
Allen looked down. Below them, the forest was undergoing a grotesque transformation. The vibrant green undergrowth was turning a sickly yellowish-brown right before his eyes. The trees weren't just dying; they were rotting while still standing. Black, wispy lines of toxic gas coiled around the trunks like parasitic snakes, leaching the color from the bark.
The grass decayed into a grey mush, and the leaves became so brittle that the mere suggestion of a breeze shattered them into fine, black ash. A nauseating, rusty metallic smell—like old blood and scorched copper—began to rise, thick enough to coat the back of Allen's throat.
"It's here," Gaia hissed, her eyes fixed on a patch of darkness that seemed to be moving.
"There! On the path," Allen pointed. He saw several animal 'statues'—a fox, a badger, and a series of squirrels. They weren't carvings; they were flesh and bone turned to cold, grey stone. Each one was frozen in a pose of absolute agony, their lifelike expressions a testament to a swift and brutal end.
"You can see the architect of this wasteland for yourself," Gaia said, her voice trembling with a mix of fear and fury. "We should go. My magic can protect us from the fumes, but the beast itself is a harbinger of the end."
Allen looked down at the clearing and finally saw it. He had expected a dragon or a chimera, but the reality was far more unsettling. The creature was small—no larger than a common hen—but its presence felt as heavy as a mountain.
It was a nightmare stitched together from the scraps of a dozen different animals. It had the sinewy, scaled body of a lizard, but its head was that of a gnarled, ancient rooster. Its wings were leathery, like a bat's, but covered in a thin, oily layer of feathers that shimmered with a sickly iridescent hue. Perhaps most disturbing was the tail: it ended in a second, smaller head that hissed and snapped at the air independently of the main one.
The Cockatrice walked with a proud, jerky gait on four legs. Its front feet were yellow, tipped with the sharp talons of a bird of prey, while its hind legs were thick and webbed like a toad's. A small, crown-like comb sat atop its head, pulsing with a faint blue and yellow light.
"The Cockatrice," Gaia whispered.
The name clicked in Allen's memory. He recalled a dusty corner of the library, a tome titled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The breeding process was as dark as its appearance: an egg laid by a seven-year-old rooster and hatched by a toad in the heat of a dung heap. It was a creature of pure, unnatural malice, blamed for the plagues of Rome and Vienna. In 1474, the Muggles of Basel had burned a rooster alive just for laying the egg that could produce such a thing.
"Gaia, put me down," Allen said, his grip tightening on his wand. "If it stays here, the forest dies. And if it goes back to the castle, people will start dying for real."
"Allen, be reasonable!" Gaia protested, her wings flapping to keep them aloft. "Its gaze is death to the small, and its breath is poison to the great. One bite and you aren't just dead—you're a monument!"
"I'm not a bird, Gaia. I have a few tricks of my own." Allen reached into his pocket and pulled out the fragment of unicorn horn Gaia had given him previously. Using a small silver file, he scraped a fine powder into his palm and swallowed it dry. The effect was immediate—a cooling sensation that cleared the cobwebs from his mind and settled the nausea in his stomach. "That should buy me some time against the fumes."
Seeing his resolve, Gaia dived. She landed with a silent grace behind the Cockatrice, allowing Allen to slide off her back before taking to the sky again to watch for an opening.
"Stupefy!" Allen yelled, casting without hesitation.
The red bolt of light caught the Cockatrice squarely in its feathered chest. The creature didn't fall; instead, it spun around with a speed that defied its small size. It let out a piercing, high-pitched hiss that sounded like steam escaping a pressurized pipe—a sound that symbolized nothing but death.
Allen immediately squeezed his eyes shut. He knew the legends—the gaze of the Cockatrice was its most potent weapon.
"Petrificus Totalus!" he shouted, aiming by the sound of the creature's frantic hissing.
The spell hit the creature's webbed hind foot. The Cockatrice stumbled, its agile movements suddenly jerky and uneven. In a rage, it flapped its bat-like wings, lifting a few feet off the ground and launching itself at Allen's face.
Allen felt the foul wind of its wings before he saw it. He ducked and rolled, the creature's talons whistling just inches above his head. He could smell the rot on its breath now—a thick, cloying stench of decay.
He came up from the roll, his wand pointed toward the sound of the creature landing. He knew ordinary charms were bouncing off its magically resistant scales. He needed something that didn't care about scales. Something that bypassed the physical entirely.
"Avada Kedavra!"
A jet of brilliant, emerald-green light erupted from the tip of his wand. It was the first time Allen had ever truly channeled the intent to kill. He felt a cold, hollow sensation in his chest as the magic tore out of him. In the vacuum of the Forbidden Forest, there was no one to see, no one to judge. If he didn't end this now, he wouldn't live to see the sunrise.
The green light slammed into the Cockatrice. Allen opened his eyes, expecting to see a lifeless heap. Instead, he saw the creature reeling. Its rooster head was shaking violently, and dark, thick blood was beginning to leak from its nose and beak.
The spell had worked, but it hadn't been enough. Whether it was the creature's innate resistance to dark magic or Allen's own subconscious hesitation—the lack of "meaning it" that the Unforgivables required—the result was a wounded monster, not a dead one.
Before he could cast again, the Cockatrice's neck elongated with an impossible, elastic snap. It lunged, its beak sinking deep into the meat of Allen's hand.
Pain—searing, white-hot agony—shot up his arm. Even with the protection of the unicorn horn, the world began to spin. He felt the venom coursing through his veins, a cold fire that threatened to turn his blood to sludge. He looked down into the creature's toad-like eyes. For a second, he waited for the petrification to take hold, for his skin to turn to stone.
But the unicorn's blessing held. His vision blurred, but his limbs remained his own.
Gaia, seeing Allen stumble and the blood dripping from his hand, let out a shriek of pure, unadulterated grief. She didn't think; she acted. The Great Unicorn dived like a silver thunderbolt, her hooves hitting the ground with a force that cracked the parched earth.
She didn't use magic. She used raw, animalistic fury. Her hooves rained down on the Cockatrice's lower body, a rhythmic, bone-crushing assault.
The Cockatrice, its lower body already being reduced to a pulp under Gaia's weight, turned its head with a desperate, malicious resolve. It sank its fangs into Gaia's leg, refusing to let go even as its ribs were shattered.
"Gaia, get back!" Allen screamed, clutching his wounded hand. He tried to raise his wand, but the world was tilting, the grey trees dancing in a sickening waltz.
The clearing became a blur of silver and black—a dance of ancient life and unnatural death. Gaia didn't stop. She kicked until her hooves were stained dark, her eyes glowing with a protective light that outshone the dying forest. The Cockatrice was a mess of broken feathers and crushed scales, but it clung to her leg like a parasite, its venom pumping into the one creature that had tried to save him.