𝒜𝒻𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓂𝒶𝓉𝒽 | 𝒟.𝑀.

77 | ﴾ A Valuable Ally ﴿

Surrounded by the freshly formed corpses of brave Ministry officials, Draco trembled with near exactitude that he was about to be torched in a grim manner of brutal extinction. 

Ascelin decided to make the affair a drawn out comedy where otherwise she might've easily eradicated him in a split second. She started with the smallest possible weapon, bouncing a golf ball of colorful fire in her hand. Her bright lavender eyes drilled into Draco demonically as she giggled in Madeleine's tone in a highly disturbing interaction. "Fetch, peasant," she casually smirked, tossing a sphere of purple fire at him.

Draco tried to avoid and deflect the fire but it was animatedly aeronautic in nature, and no matter his efforts it conveniently flew directly into his right shoulder. His jacket lit on fire immediately and he found himself rolling on the floor and shaking off his outer layer in a complete panic before scrambling back onto his feet in a burnt white dress shirt. He had taken some minor burns, but was overall miraculously unscathed. 

He reached his left arm outwards to command large stone debris in her direction, which she dismissed almost passively with a flick of her fingers. Draco continued to drain his magical energy by forcing any and every dismantled object in his vicinity at her in a harried strategy to weaken her forcefields, but the Creator made his unique abilities look like child's play. 

They both paused, and Ascelin's eyes darkened with intent as she grew another rather large sphere of fire in her right hand. She reached her arm backwards and propelled it towards him, and Draco recalled Hermione's suggestion at the blink of an eye. He frantically pointed his palms at the central fountain to draw upon the unfrozen water below the icy surface, raising it in a protective arc before him just in time to douse the flaming ball she had shot at him. 

He could see the impatience brooding on her beautiful features as he somehow deflected her trial jabs. 

Ascelin elected to go from zero to one-hundred in that moment.

She dominantly intensified the battle, raising both of her arms and crossing them before herself, then ripping them outwards to her sides. As she did so her physical being multiplied in a demonstration of impossible ephemerality, dividing to the left and right. There was now at least twenty versions of her before him, and they all whorled around him to center him in a terrifying ring. Draco was suddenly surrounded centrifugally by visions of a possessed Madeleine, and he easily lost track of the real one as they rotated, hovering just barely above the ground. 

In the Medieval era when she had last broken free of the confines of her gateway, it must have been an extraordinary horror for the people at the time who were living in hodgepodge structures without electricity or much knowledge of science or cosmogenesis. Even then in the modern era it would still be confusing and mortifying.

There was a very particular reason that for centuries one could be anointed with the Order of Merlin. In the Elden days, Merlin was the first recorded wizard to save the world from a complete annihilation. He had found a way to detract Ascelin back into her gateway when her wings had favorably caught fire, effectively saving the entire planet from her unstable reign. Sadly, the source of the award had almost been lost entirely to the general and contemporary wizarding population as a form of vital history; yet history flirted with the possibility of repeating itself that evening. 

Merlin had descended not so ironically from the Creator of Light - Ascelin's former lover as it was - and it happened to be his very nature to embody justification and purity. Merlin had drawn influence with sophistication from his Creator, forcing her back into the Realm of Moons with what power he had to give as a chosen ascended magical. His actions resulted in the formation of the Order of Merlin, an organization which strived to protect muggles from evil entities such as Ascelin.