Beyond the Tapestry - Chapter 3

So as you may have noticed, I'm really bad at working on what I'm supposed to be working on! November was supposed to be all about WWDtS, I had a vote for it and everything, but I've had...minimal success with that project 😭.

Still, I haven't done no writing and I do want to give you guys something! This is the project that has captured my limited writing attention this past month or so. Not sure its going to go anywhere yet, but I've really enjoyed working on it so far.

Beyond the Tapestry is sort of a non-quest revamp of Harvesting the Multiverse, a story I wrote a lot of at the start of this year. That story has developed a lot of cracks and ended up being terribly unbalanced, but I did really enjoy the initial concept and wanted to iterate on it. Its a Harry Potter/Magic: the Gathering/Multicross fic following an OC Black character (as in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black). The magic system is heavily revamped and based loosely on elements I've loved in other stories, and I've also changed a lot of the mechanics found it HtM to fix some of the problems that I ran into there.

Anyway, I think that's more than enough Author's Note. This is chapter 3/6 that will be coming out in 15 minute increments. Let me know what you think!

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“Representing the Four Rivers Academy of Granada, give it up for Hemericus Lam—” before he could finish, the announcer’s voice was all but drowned out by the cheers of the crowd to her left, where the majority of the Spanish speaking audience had been seated. The way the wards were set up meant she couldn’t hear what their announcer was saying, but she could definitely hear it when the crowd went wild. 

Dorea was glad to see that the crowd behind her was much more subdued in their applause. Lambert was rather popular back home, but his name had not yet spread much abroad. They were just clapping to be polite.

Lambert sauntered out onto the field, one hand behind his back and the other raised to wave to the audience. He was on the taller side, his features sharp and aristocratic. His long brown hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, the end of which was charmer—or possibly dyed—a shocking red that matched the color of his dueling robes.

He stopped when he reached the circle on blue earth at the middle of the ruddy red field and posed with both hands outstretched to the sides and his head tilted slightly back. The roar of the crowd intensified, several other sections joining the wild-sounding Spanish. 

In the front row, a very familiar young woman—Dorea couldn’t remember her name, but remembered knocking her out in one of the earlier rounds—leaned forward and shouted something in what she assumed was Spanish and definitely included her name. Lambert turned towards her and bowed flamboyantly, then blew her a kiss.

The crowd cheered louder.

Dorea wrinkled her nose at the spectacle. Hidden from view by the one-way barrier separating her from the dueling stage she bounced up and down with nervous energy, rising up on her toes then shifting her weight to her heels and then back onto her toes. The hem of her robe—blood free and humming against her skin with the maximum allowed protective enchantments—flapped around her ankles and her fingers tapped lightly against the cool length of her wand.

The barrier in front of her pulsed blue and the next time Dorea dropped down from her toes, she left both feet planted firmly on the ground. Her wand vanished back into its holster hidden under her sleeve and she glanced down to make sure her robe sat straight and none of the fasteners over her right hip had come loose.

It pulsed again and she took a deep breath. Moment of truth, huh. It was time to show Lambert what a real light wizard could do.

“And his opponent! Representing Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,” the barrier pulsed one last time and vanished, allowing her to stride out onto the field, “our very own Dorea Andromeda Black!”

Dorea basked in the adoration of the crowd, thousands of voices raised in unison washing over her like a spring rain. She could feel their attention like a physical thing, eyes pressing down on her shoulders like a heavy cloak. Her shoulders straightened imperceptibly and a tight knot of stress loosened in her belly. 

It was like coming home. This was what she lived for. Her magic rose within her, proud and fierce and just as enamored with the attention as she was. The air around her flickered, illuminating her for a moment in stark detail as though a ray of sunlight fell from the heavens to light her and only her. 

The crowd’s cheering redoubled in intensity, much louder then it had been for Lambert, and she had to fight to stop herself from preening. Preening was beneath a daughter of the House of Black, no matter how deserved it was. She was no sorceress yet, but the number of mages her age who could manifest a visible aura at all without casting any spells was absolutely tiny. 

She met Lambert in the central circle, blood pounding in her ears in time with the roar of voices. He’d lowered his arms when she’d stepped out onto the field and was standing with his legs shoulder width apart and his hands folded over his chest.

As inconvenient as it would have made actually dueling in them, Dorea suddenly wished her dueling boots were just a tiny bit taller. She stood at a perfectly respectable five-foot four-inches, above average for a British noblewoman, and her boots added another inch and a half to her height. Against most wizards, she’d barely have to tilt her head to stare them square in the eyes, but Lambert was not most wizards.

At just over six-and-a-half feet, he would tower over her father or any of her uncles and her own face was level with his chest. Dorea tilted her head back and looked up at him through narrowed eyes. 

This whole mess was his fault. Certainly she would have participated in the tournament regardless, but if he hadn’t spent the last year lambasting her and dragging her name through the mud back home, Uncle Sirius would not have been nearly as insistent about having her married off as soon as possible. 

“Dorea Black, how lovely to be paired against a beautiful flower such as yourself,” Lambert drawled in heavily accented english. “I hear your Lord Black has been shopping around for husbands for you. I’m afraid my offer is no longer on the table, but perhaps if you forfeit I could accept you as a…third mistress.”

“Lambert, I’d rather share my bed with a Lethifold than you. It’s a shame sterility curses are banned in international dueling; your family would owe me a thousand favors.”

Lambert’s slick smile turned slimy. “And it’s a shame I didn’t meet you in an earlier round. It’s an embarrassment to see a girl reach so far above her station.”

Dorea could only shake her head at the stupidity dripping from his tongue. There were plenty of misogynistic mages back home—like Charlus fucking Potter—but some of the families on the continent were much, much worse. There were places where women—even noble-born women—were not allowed to own wands and were even barred from learning all but the simplest forms of witchcraft. 

“I’d say it’s nothing personal, but it absolutely is. I’m going to enjoy this,” Dorea said evenly. Then she turned and marched briskly to her starting spot.

Dorea faced Lambert from across the field. At the referee’s signal, they both drew their wands. Even through the gloves that covered all but her fingertips, the length of wood in her hands felt as cold as an icicle, tingling chills creeping down her fingers and up her arm. Dorea exhaled and her breath misted like on a frigid winter day despite the warmth of the hall. 

 “Bow,” the referee commanded. Dorea dipped into a mocking curtsey every bit as shallow as Lambert’s bow—the minimum allowable without receiving a warning from the organizers. Dorea inhaled, drinking in the energy of the crowd. Her hand rose, palm up with her wand clasped between her thumb and first two fingers. Her other hand hovered at her side, fingers slightly curled.

Across from her Lambert took up his own stance, as traditional as it came. He stood facing her at a sharp angle, wand extended towards her like a rapier and his other hand raised behind his back for balance. 

The wards snapped into place, cutting off the stage from the crowd. The silence was deafening, the air as still as the grave. She could still feel their attention, hot and heavy on her shoulders but comfortable rather than stifling. It tempered the ice of her magic, sharpening it to a wicked point and leaving her mind as clear as a glacier-fed stream. 

A flare of light shot from the referee’s wand in an arc, rising to the ceiling before falling towards the exact center of the field. Dorea lips curled into a fierce grin, her dark eyes lightening to a warm and her pearly teeth glinting despite the soft, diffuse light illuminating the arena. 

The flare burst against the ground, the blue patch brightening to match the red around it, and both duelists moved. Dorea jabbed her wand forward, then twirled it in a tight five-quarters circle. A trio of bright spellglows shot from her wand—a silvery, delicate-looking needle, an orange sphere, and a brilliant red streak.

Lambert got off a single spell, a dark comet crackling with blue and green sparks, before he had to abort his next spell to defend himself. He dodged away from the needle, slapped the sphere out of the air with the tip of his wand, and caught the last spell on a translucent shield that flickered but held.

Dorea jabbed her wand towards the comet, hissing an incantation through her teeth, and a narrow jet of golden flames burned it out of the air, rapidly expanding into a less vibrant but much larger mass of fire that rolled towards Lambert like an avalanche. He raised the earth in front of it, and it broke against the transfigured barrier with a thunderous eruption that sent a wave of heat and fine particles of dirt in every direction. 

Dorea furiously pressed the attack, her wand a blur as she fired spell after spell towards her opponent. Wisps of mist trailed the tip of her wand and her body occasionally flickered with light as her nascent aura pressed against the world whenever she cast a particularly powerful bit of magic.

Lambert backpedaled, struggling to survive the onslaught. He frantically shielded, dodged, and raised or conjured physical barriers between them, barely able to keep up. Most of the spells flying at him were simple stunning, binding, and stripping spells, easily shielded against, but they were interspersed with shield breakers, blasting curses, and the occasional polarized light-aligned spell that would pass clean through a conventional shield charm.

Without time to focus on the complex conjurations and transfigured animals he was known for, Lambert was forced to fight back with more conventional dueling spells or else give Dorea full freedom to batter him down. Between shields he cast flurries of pale blue stripping spells, occasionally interspersed with the slightly vivider blue of a dark blasting curse. The downward slashes of his shields transitioned easily into the upward sweeps and flourishes of those spells.

Dorea barely seemed to notice. She wove nimbly between his spells, dodging some of them by as little as a handspan and turning each motion into an exaggerated somatic component for her next spell. Only the blasting curses drew her attention and she seemingly effortlessly slapped them from the air with her free hand or deflected them back towards him with perfectly timed jabs of her wand. 

Dorea’s grin was so wide it looked like it might split her face in half. Icy rivers of magic flowed through her body and down her arms and her heart was pounding like the beat of a war drum. She barely bothered with incantations, thousands of hours of practice allowing her to cast even spells other duelists her age struggled with without a sound, allowing her to save her air for when she really needed it and leaving her breathing smooth and even. 

They exchanged spells for more than a minute, an eternity in a duel where a single misstep could mean defeat. The air slowly filled with dust, dodged and deflected blasting curses tearing holes in the earth and kicking up clouds of soil, coloring the world a pale red and limiting visibility. Occasionally, a spell would even dissolve in mid air, its envelope disrupted by the haze.

Neither duelist could keep it up forever. Duels between professionals (or particularly terrible amateurs) could sometimes last for as long as fifteen minutes if the duelists were evenly matched, but no teenager could last so long without breaks. Eventually, one of them would tire or make a mistake.

Lambert dodged out of the way of a piercing spell—the same silvery needle Dorea had used to open the fight—and his foot slipped on the edge of one of the craters produced by his deflected blasting charms. He stumbled and recovered quickly, but not quickly enough to dodge the next spell.

It looked innocuous enough—shaped and colored like the basic stunning charm favored by hit wizards and security personnel throughout Europe. Lambert leaned forward and swiped his wand downwards, a clear, slightly domed barrier forming between him and the spell. He was already casting again when the spell impacted his shield, prepared to fire back with more of the stripping spells he could cast three or four of at a time with a single motion.

The ‘stunning’ spell hit his shield and Lambert’s eyes went wide. He threw himself backwards, his arms burning with interference from the aborted spells, as a volley of red and white knives scythed through the air behind his shield. 

He was mostly fast enough. A single blade cut straight through his dueling robes and left a long, shallow cut on his shoulder that oozed blood. A moment later he hit the ground on his back, the impact driving the air from his lungs and leaving him momentarily dazed.

Dorea leapt forward, spells pouring from her wand. Lambert rolled out of the way of an actual stunning spell, clumsily deflected a binding hex into the air with his wand (surprising both himself and Dorea who hadn’t know he’d started studying the skill), and then stiffened as a barely visible jet of grayish green impacted with his shoulder.

Lambert half-snarled and a wave of magic burst out of him, the wandless dispel shredding the magic holding the right half of his body in place. He couldn’t see anything, dust in his eyes blinding him to the world. He cast a shield charm and pointed his wand at his face to clear away the dust—

And a beam of golden light passed cleanly through the charm and hit him in the shoulder. Lambert cried out in pain, skin and muscles melting away like ice held over a flame. The wards pulsed and his entire body froze up, stasis spells protecting him from any additional damage. A house elf appeared beside him and both vanished with a pair of pops so close together they sounded like one long burst.

The golden beam faded a moment later, but not before leaving a foot-deep, perfectly cylindrical hole in the earth rimmed with blackened glass. Dorea surveyed the battlefield, her toothy grin vanishing behind a polite smile. She slowly lowered her wand, her eyes closed and her mouth slightly open as she took several deep breaths. 

The wards around the field dropped, and the roar or the crowd pounded down on Dorea from all sides. The British section was of course the loudest, but even Lambert’s Spanish supporters clapped politely and sections that hadn’t cheered at either of their entrances appreciated the spectacle and skillful displays of the duel.

She savored it for a moment, luxuriating in the eyes and the cheers and the cries. Her right arm tingled unpleasantly (though not nearly as badly as it had at the end of the previous duel) and she’d pulled something in her side to deflect a well aimed blasting curse, but otherwise she’d ended the match completely unharmed. A crushing victory, all things considered.

She opened her eyes, tilted her head back, and thrust her wand up into the air, golden sparks erupting high into the air and then drifting down around her like snowflakes. Darius was going to call her a dramatic attention whore, but he was right, and her showboating got exactly the result she’d hoped for.

She swept off the stage like a conquering queen, back straight as a ruler, head held high, and robes flapping around her ankles. The sense of attention vanished as she passed through the same barrier she’d entered through and was met with a white-robes healer, his sleeves shorter than her own and tight around his wrists and forearms. 

It was not the same healer as she’d been assigned yesterday, but he was somehow even more rude and dismissive than the other man. He didn’t even bother asking her if anything was wrong, immediately pointing his wand at her and firing off a bevy of analysis spells.

“Just the side?” he asked curtly, his english heavily twisted by what sounded like a German accent. 

This time, Dorea didn’t bother bringing up the over channeling. She’d mostly dealt with it herself yesterday and the fewer people who knew it had been a problem the better. This level of pain was easily manageable and would be gone by tomorrow’s duel. 

“I think so,” she told the healer.

“Good.” He shoved a potion vial from a pouch on his belt into her hands. “A sip now, and another every half hour till you finish it. Questions?”

She shook her head. He turned around and hurried away without another word. Dorea shook her head again. No manners at all. They’d really scraped the bottom of the barrel getting healers for this event.

Whatever. She took a sip like he’d said and the tight pain in her chest faded into a dull throb. The rest of the potion went into a pocket.

She looked around. Now, how did she get to the stands from here? There should be a break between semifinals so she had time, but she definitely wanted to see which of the remaining duelists would be her opponent in the finals tomorrow. It was either some no-name peasant who’d gotten lucky enough to be accepted into Durmstrang on scholarship or a Delacour, one of France’s oldest and most important families. Her money was on the Frenchman.