The five masked figures on the island had barely recovered from the first attack when three flaming beast came hurtling toward them.
The leader and one other Apparated instantly, their bodies twisting through space and vanishing.
The remaining three weren't fast enough. Fire swallowed them whole.
One tried to Apparate. His body had already begun to go translucent, but the Fiendfyre burned through space itself. The flames caught him mid-disappearance, half gone, half still there. The half that remained turned to ash in an instant. The other half never reformed. Apparition required a whole body. Severed pieces couldn't reassemble.
The other two thrashed inside the inferno.
Protego flared. One second... two... shattered.
Barrier charms launched, useless.
One of them dove downward, plunging through rock, boring into the earth beneath the island. The Fiendfyre followed, seeping through every crack in the stone. A charred scream rose from underground, then cut short.
The last one was consumed entirely. Nothing remained.
Fiendfyre spread across the island, devouring everything it could reach.
Buildings, Rock, Air, Magic itself.
The temperature climbed. The color brightened. The shapes grew wilder.
The entire island became an inferno.
Regulus held his wand and felt the thread still connecting him to the Fiendfyre, the most basic link between caster and spell.
What came through that link made him strain.
The fire was screaming, expanding and consuming.
Its message was simple: more, bigger, stronger.
The hunger to devour everything poured through the connection unchecked, slamming against his concentration with raw, mindless violence.
He held on.
Magic flowing out, will pressing down. He tried to rein the Fiendfyre in, keep it burning within a controllable range, make it obey.
It wouldn't.
The flame-beasts had broken free entirely, rampaging across the island, consuming each other, splitting into more. Those delicate little birds that had been almost charming moments ago had become synonyms for annihilation.
He held for a few more seconds, then let go.
He severed the magic output, keeping only the barest thread of awareness. He could still sense the Fiendfyre's state, but he'd stopped trying to control it.
The fire burned on, fierce and bright.
Regulus and Freya hovered in the air, watching.
Sunlight poured down. The sea gleamed blue. And across the water, the black island had disappeared beneath a mantle of orange-red flame.
Freya glanced at him.
He sat his broom with his wand hanging loosely at his side, watching the burning island.
His face showed nothing. No excitement, no tension, no fatigue.
She thought of those three birds he'd released. So small. So finely wrought. Almost cute.
And then what they'd become.
She thought of the invisible curse that had turned two masked figures to dust in an instant, and the three adorable birds that had drowned an island in fire.
She looked at the island again. The flames showed no sign of dying.
Regulus was thinking about the two who'd Apparated.
The leader had escaped. So had one other. No surprise there. Opponents at that level weren't easy to trap completely.
But it didn't concern him. Gone was gone.
They knew what had happened on this island. They knew what his magic looked like.
He glanced at Freya again. Blue flames still wreathing her body, quiet and controlled, a stark contrast to the orange holocaust raging in the distance. One serene, the other savage.
They'd know who she was now, too.
If they were smart, they'd keep their distance. If they weren't...
He let the thought go.
He stared at the Fiendfyre, and a strange unease settled over him.
From the first day he'd begun practicing, he'd known the danger. Orion had warned him. The notes in the family library had warned him. He remembered what had happened to Crabbe in the original story.
He'd believed his control was strong enough, that he could practice safely, deploy it in measured doses.
But unleashed for real, aimed at living enemies, allowed to consume freely, it had broken loose all the same.
All he could do was watch, cut the flow of magic, and wait for them to burn out.
The second form of the Decomposition Curse, on the other hand, had proved everything he'd hoped. This test confirmed it beyond doubt. It met expectations and then some.
But there was a problem.
The leader and that other masked figure had reacted with terrifying speed. From the moment the second form fired to the instant they raised Protego, less than two-tenths of a second had elapsed.
That narrow a window, that close a range, and they'd still managed a defense.
Sound was fast. Fifty meters in point-one-five seconds.
But for opponents at that caliber, point-one-five seconds was an eternity.
His mind turned. Sound could be outrun. What about Electromagnetic Waves?
Electromagnetic Waves traveled at three hundred thousand kilometers per second. Nearly nine hundred thousand times faster than sound.
Fifty meters would take less than two-millionths of a second. No wizard alive could react in that span.
Britain had its own Wizarding Wireless Network, headquartered in Hogsmeade, broadcasting from dawn to dusk, covering the whole country. Wizards grew up listening to it without a second thought.
Regulus wasn't certain whether the system ran on radio waves or pure magic, but if it could deliver a synchronized signal to every Wizarding Wireless in the nation, it had to share the propagation characteristics of electromagnetic transmission.
So could he modify the Decomposition Curse again?
Sound waves were waves. Electromagnetic Waves were waves.
If he swapped the transmission medium from sound to electromagnetic radiation, the curse would become something no one could dodge. Period.
He sank into thought.
Beside him, Freya noticed his gaze had gone distant. He seemed to be looking at the flames, and at the same time, at nothing.
She'd been lost in her own thoughts for a while.
All she'd done was follow his instruction and raise her defenses. Fire shield up, and that was it. Both attacks had been his.
The results had far exceeded anything she'd anticipated.
Even accounting for the advantage of not fighting on the enemy's turf, even out here on the open water, it shouldn't have been this easy.
The Abyssal Whispers specialized in maritime combat. Their speed increased over water, their spells hit harder. They were genuine sea-warfare experts.
Yet today, start to finish, seven masked figures hadn't gotten off a single attack.
The first Decomposition Curse turned two to ash.
The Fiendfyre killed three of the remaining five. Two escaped.
And those two survived only because they'd reacted fast enough to Apparate on instinct.
She had to admit it. This boy, on the strength of a single spell he'd invented himself, was formidable enough to warrant the word.
She glanced at the Fiendfyre still raging across the island and thought of something she'd witnessed the day before.
An orange-red bird perched on his shoulder, facing his silver-white Patronus. The Patronus had stretched a wing out to touch it, flinched as if burned, and pulled back. The little bird hadn't moved at all.
Someone who could tame Fiendfyre to that degree would master it completely in the end.
She didn't doubt that for a moment.
Freya eased her broom sideways, drifting closer to Regulus.
He was still somewhere inside his own head and didn't notice.
She nudged the tail of her broom against his.
His broom wobbled.
He blinked back to the present, straightened up, and looked at her.
Freya's face had found an expression at last. Brows slightly drawn, the corners of her mouth pulled down, something between a frown and a pout.
"You did my job for me."
Regulus stared at her, blank-faced. He was fairly certain she was picking a fight.
She'd said it herself, minutes ago. Payback. Full force. And now that the work was done, this?
His gaze made her shift.
She nudged her broom sideways, putting a little distance between them, as if trying to slip out of his line of sight.
Regulus caught the small movement, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
He'd noticed the pattern a while ago. When this witch felt righteous, her gaze was direct and unflinching. She looked when she wanted, spoke when she wanted.
But the moment she felt even slightly guilty, even a little off-balance, her eyes found somewhere else to be.
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