Harry Potter and the Berserker

Chapter 74 Greatest Deception

Disclaimer- Harry Potter is owned by J.K. Rowling and Berserk is owned by Kentaro Miura. I own nothing.

A/N: Very important note at the end of this chapter. Please read after the chapter itself.

A deafening quiet pounded the senses and that was how it began. Seconds passed - or maybe hours - and the chilling roars and growls of monsters who had borne witness to the great tragedy of their time. Howls of grief, of pain, of loss, and the deepest part that desperation could possibly reach. They all fell to deaf ears. The feel of vibrations from hooves upon stone, rippling outward to mimic how he had continued to leap out of the flow of the current by swimming upstream. All of that was shadowed by the ever-looming shift that pulled the great divide back to being as one while the feeling of being whole became shards of shattered glass.

But there was a tune that seemed to be shared by both that closing rift and the fractured yet whole feeling of being; both had to have an anchor. Two anchors, two chains. One to hold, the other to pull. The latter of which seemed so much stronger than the former. It didn't belong. It had no place with one being or the other, a perfect bridge of sorts that had come about through some additional means or another. If there was something to place the ship where that anchor had dropped from, it seemed a distant memory from a different world.

The former seemed so much closer, more personal, familiar even. By the deafness that had fallen around the standstill, that anchor seemed to be calling, begging not to be released. There was as much a need for urgency on that anchor's side, maybe even more so. An imperative need to keep it attached to the sinking ship that consisted of a single mortal body. And right now, that ever-encroaching sea seemed all-encompassing; a black nothing that would drown even the most experienced of sailors.

Soon, it would fill up every crevice, snuff out any trace of air and leave the mortal body to rise back to the surface, nothing more than a husk of soon to be rotting flesh. And what a fate that would be to wind up like that.

...S..."

The simplest of sounds rippled through the black sea, the water making it every kind of distorted as possible. If it as the beginning, or the end, it was impossible to tell. Maybe it was all just the nothing that was around, there just had to be something borne from it all.

...ut...!"

More?

Yes. There was more to it than just that. The sound seemed stronger now, but not by much. It was all just so... faint. Lost, almost to the awaiting cavern of this deep-sea where no light could ever have any hope of possibly shining. There was just so much... nothing. Just so much.

"...Gu...!"

Still, it persisted.

Why?

Why was this so important? What could possibly sway him in the vast unknown to look, to hear, to reach out, to move? There couldn't be. There couldn't.

There... couldn't be...

"...Guts...!"

Was that his name? It hardly seemed real.

And yet... it was. It was real and it was his own.

Guts. That's who he was.

He was Guts, and he was drowning.

His lone eye fought the weight of the ocean as it opened to see black littered with small, flashing lights that made him think that he was looking up at the night sky. His mouth opened with much less difficulty, but he was still unable to draw breath. It had nothing to do with being in an artificial ocean, his lungs still felt flooded, but with a crimson wine of pure human make.