Up and Down

Vow and Perfidy

TW: Torture.

He thought he knew fear. Knew terror and dread. They were his old companions, though deeply unwelcome ones.

Standing over his parents' bodies in the flickering light.

Cradling Anne to his chest as she screamed in horrid pain.

Facing a mountain troll alone.

But seeing Anna taken away from them by a Dark wizard - a Gaunt - was enough to make his insides turn to ice.

"Anna!!"

He runs to where they were just now. But there is no way to follow someone who had Disapparated. They are gone.

Marvolo's laughter behind him makes him see red. His skin crackles with magic, fueled by violent rage and terror. With a furious roar, he charges at Marvolo Gaunt, the fire flaring outwards from him in waves, setting the detritus of the forest floor ablaze.

Ominis is attacking just as desperately, pale as a ghost, lips pressed into a tight thin line.

"Where has he taken her?!" He demands from his brother, to which Marvolo only cackles harder.

The stifling humidity of the day finally makes the sky break and open up, its heavy tears falling through the budding branches overhead. As if it weeps for them. Weeps because they cannot. Not right now. They can't break right now.

"Where?!"

An especially vicious Diffindo breaks right through Marvolo's shield and slices his ankle. The wizard screams in pain and tumbles to the ground. Ominis disarms and points his own wand at his prone brother.

"Answer me!"

Breathe, Sebastian tries to calm his racing thoughts and pounding heart. Think.

"She probably already smeared the bastard across a wall and will be here any second, Ominis..."

Despite being left without a wand, bleeding and beaten on the ground, Marvolo only laughs harder.

"Did she now... oh, why wouldn't you wait and find out..."

"What?..."

"I know you were just a snotty kid when you stopped showing your ugly face back home, Ominis, but surely you remember the artefacts Grandfather and Father had inherited from generations past?..."

Sebastian didn't think it was even possible for Ominis to get even paler, but he did.

"Orceus went to get a certain relic from Father... she isn't going to be back."

"What the hell is he talking about?" There is no stopping his stomach from sinking into the abyss. The Dark artefacts are many and terrible, as he had the misfortune to find out first-hand.

"Which one did he take," Ominis' voice is but a whisper, hissing through his barely open lips, "what is he doing to her?"

"Which one do you think?... Something to put her in her place. Right where she started. Right where she belongs."

Marvolo laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs, drops of rain falling on his bruised and burnt face. He laughs even when Ominis' fist collides with his nose with a sickening crunch. Blood sprays into the heavy air and darkness engulfs them as it douses the embers of fire lit around them from their battle.

Sebastian can barely believe what he is seeing. Wands forgotten, Ominis - elegant and composed, poised and reasonable, always preferring words to violence - beats his wounded older brother into the ground with his bare fists.