Mist of Shadows
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Travels in the Multiverse Part 8
🕑 Added 2020-09-21 19:52:49 +0000 UTC"Showtime," Amy said as she woke the werewolf up then stepped back just in case he managed to break the restraints that Myst had created out of some type of durable crystal.
Ralph groaned as he woke up with his neck and arms bound at an awkward angle. He pulled at his bindings as he glanced from the sorcerer with glowing purple eyes sitting in a folding chair to the teenager wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, immediately recognizing Amy from the pictures he'd seen on the boards despite the fact that she wasn't wearing her distinctive costume. "I'm going to enjoy killing you kitty."
"What makes you think you're going to escape?" Amy asked with amusement as she walked over to glance at Myst's notes, keeping part of her attention on the ragged looking man on the off chance that he managed to escape.
"Because unlike you I can…" Ralph trialed off as he tried to step sideways and realized he couldn't. "What did you do?!"
"I wanted to ask you a couple of questions," Myst replied as he worked on writing down the last bit of the Rite of the Sacred Tattoo that he'd lifted from the werewolf's mind.
"About what?" Ralph demanded.
Myst finished writing the last part of the ritual. "I'm curious if I can turn your knowledge of rituals into something useful."
Ralph sniffed the air then laughed. "You're not a werewolf or even a kinfolk, you could do the rituals perfectly and nothing would happen."
"In that case, you won't mind telling me about the ritual you use to create corrupted fetishes, right?" Myst asked as he skimmed the man's surface thoughts, curious if he'd find out more than what he'd already found by skimming through the man's memories while he'd been unconscious.
"Let me guess, you want to know how to reverse the corruption?" Ralph asked.
Myst flipped his notebook back a page and added notes on a couple of details that he'd missed the first time around. "That and your ritual doesn't require permission."
Ralph snorted. "Let's assume for a second that I'm willing to help, are you going to set me free?"
"That depends, what do you have to trade?" Myst asked with a grin, knowing that Ralph was already trying to come up with ways to screw him over. He skipped a couple of pages then started writing down notes on what note to do with the rituals.
"Rituals to cause madness and a ritual to bind a group of garou to a corrupt totem," Ralph offered.
"So, you don't know a rite to increase pregnancy during the spring?" Amy asked.
"I know many rites, some of them might even be of use to a cat," Ralph replied with a smirk, knowing that more than one Bastet had fallen because of secrets they shouldn't have learned.
"I don't suppose you know anyone that knows the Ritual of Sacred Rebirth?" Myst asked as he stared into the man's eyes, not really expecting him to know of the ritual, let alone know someone that knew it. Thus he was more than a little surprised when Ralph's mind flashed to a clip he'd seen of Bonesaw changing into a weretiger with patchwork fur and ripping several dozen formori apart alongside The Siberian in a Pentex laboratory.
Amy frowned, wondering where Myst had heard about that particularly nasty ritual.
Ralph took a breath, trying to get his breathing under control as he thought about getting turned into an abomination and forced to hunt down his family. "I know someone that has it, what will you give me if I tell you?" he asked, hoping he could trade the information for his freedom or at least a head start.
"Do you know where Bonesaw is?" Myst asked, lifting her general location from the man's mind as well as the reason she liked hunting Black Spirals. "Your friends should have known better than to try to hire Jack like a common criminal."
"Who are you?!" Ralph demanded as he realized he knew far too much about things he shouldn't.
"I'm just a man on vacation," Myst replied as he dropped his notebook in his pocket dimension then stood up. "I know you're an insane cultist but do you really like breathing toxic fumes?" he asked and quickly stopped looking through the man's mind when he saw an entire collection of scenes that he'd rather not look at too closely. "Never mind, you're in it for the thrill and because you're a demented lunatic."
"Says the person that has me locked up in a basement," Ralph replied with amusement. "Are you going to torture me until I give up my wicked ways?"
"No real point," Myst replied. "You're a masochist and I'm not a sadist. I'm going to have Amy knock you out then I'm going to use a ritual to drain your life to help my friends improve their magic."
"Help!" Ralph shouted as the door opened and Harry and Hermione walked into the room. "They're insane!"
"Let me guess, you're not an evil lunatic that worships a god of destruction?" Harry asked sarcastically.
"I can give you money and power if you free me," Ralph lied.
"Go to hell!" Hermione ordered, thinking of the Death Eaters that had killed her parents and everything that Amy had told her about the Black Spiral Dancers.
Amy stepped forward, touched her finger to the man's head and put him into a coma. "How did you keep him from shifting?"
"I just suppressed his abilities." Myst turned to look at Hermione and Harry. "Ready to boost your magic?"
"As ready as I'm going to get," Harry said, stomping on the voice in the back of his head that sounded like Mrs Weasley ranting about dark magic. 'Maybe you should have actually taught me to fight or argued against Albus sending me back to the Dursleys.'
'We'd have to kill him either way, we might as well get something out of it,' Hermione reminded herself as she nodded. "Did you learn anything useful?"
Myst shrugged. "I have notes for a ritual that might let me create glowing tattoos and a ritual that might help me figure out a way to create spirit bound trinkets, assuming that I can figure out how to convert them to something we can use."
"It's worth a try," Hermione said as she moved over to one of the points of the triangle.
"Anything else?" Harry asked as he stepped over to the other point of the triangle.
"I also got a lead on a ritual that might be able to cure Remus or at least upgrade his lycanthropy to something useful," Myst offered, not seeing a point in mentioning the ritual he'd lifted that tainted an area until he could figure out how to change the type of energy it 'tainted' everything with.
Hermione glanced at Amy. "That's assuming that Amy can't cure him."
"I can certainly take a look when we jump to your world, I need a wand." Amy pulled her pocket notebook out of her pocket and activated her Infer and True Sight crystals.
"It's on the list," Myst promised, looking forward to looking around Diagon Alley and doing some shopping of his own. "Ready?" he asked as he glanced between Hermione and Harry.
"Ready," Harry replied, taking some solace in the fact that their victim was a homicidal cultist that made the Death Eaters look sane.
"Ready," Hermione agreed, knowing he would die either way.
Myst pulled his wand out of his pocket dimension and started the ritual, looking forward to seeing if they picked up any gnosis or ability with gifts.
Amy studied the magic flowing into her new friends and took notes as the ritual continued, trying to learn enough that she could duplicate the ritual.
0o0o0
Myst had barely finished the ritual to absorb Ralph's magic when his danger sense screamed bloody murder and everything felt like it was being ripped apart as his precog slammed a vision into his mind with the force of an angry god, he barely realized he was jumping before he found himself on a familiar ricketty metal platform looking at a familiar and unexpected white haired demon with black eyes that was wearing a suit and tie.
Doc tilted his head slightly as he studied Myst. "Curious, you're not supposed to be here."
"Help!" Dawn shouted as she struggled against her chains.
Myst reflexively grabbed the demon's tongue with telekinesis as it shot at him almost too fast to see or at least it would have been without his upgraded reflexes. He ripped the demon's tongue out then yanked him into the air and towards him.
Dawn blinked when Doc vanished as the stranger grabbed him. "Where'd he go?"
Myst glanced down at where Buffy was busy pounding Glory's face with the troll hammer then turned to look at Dawn. "I stuffed him in a pocket dimension." He smiled as he looked at the dress Dawn was wearing. "Say what you will about Glory's sanity but she has decent taste in clothes."
"The sleeves are a bit poofy, can we get down before the tower collapses?" Dawn asked hopefully.
"Oh, right," Myst replied as he used telekinesis to snap the chains. "Do you want a lift or do you want to try the stairs?" he asked as he floated off the metal platform a couple of inches.
"Can you carry me?" Dawn asked, having already used the stairs once.
"Easily," Myst replied as he held out his hand, reading her mind to make sure he was actually where he thought he was and that she deserved saving. "No pixie dust required."
Dawn smiled when she grabbed his hand and they levitated off the metal grate as if she was standing on an invisible platform. "Are you sure this is safe?"
"Safer than the stairs," Myst replied with amusement as he floated them down towards the ground, enjoying the fact that he was making an entrance. 'I need to find a spell for conjuring theme music.'
Xander stared in disbelief as Dawn floated down to the ground with a stranger dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. "Willow, why can't you fly?"
Willow held Tara as she watched the glowing eyed stranger that was radiating magic, curious about the arcane runes floating over his head. "It takes too much energy."
"Dawn!" Buffy shouted as she ran back down the stairs of the cobbled together metal tower and pulled her sister into a hug.
"I need to breathe," Dawn reminded her sister, relieved to be off the tower.
"Overrated," Myst teased as he looked around the construction site, noticing the Sunnydale crew looked to have made it through the fight without any serious injuries. He sighed when he realized that Giles had already managed to kill Ben/Glory as she would have probably given someone a lot of magic. 'Don't get greedy, she'd have woken up and killed you in the middle of the ritual.'
Buffy let Dawn go and studied Myst. "Thank you for saving Dawn."
"It was," Myst slapped his interjection bracelet as his precog gave him a warning of a group of men with uniforms teleporting into the area and trying to grab Dawn.
Willow winced as she felt several flashes of magic in the area, "Watch out!" she shouted as something exploded next to Xander and Anya, covering them in blood.
Xander spat the blood out of his mouth then wiped his eyes. "What the fuck?!"
"Some idiot was going to grab Dawn," Myst turned to look towards the south as a group teleported outside of his interdiction field then sighed as another group teleported in at different points around the shield. "Shit! We're out of time."
"What do you mean?!" Buffy demanded as Spike started picking himself up from where he'd been knocked off the tower.
"There are groups that watch over the multiverse, we need to leave," Myst winced as five more groups popped in near the edge of his bracelet's field, one after another. "Now!" he shouted as he stepped forward and grabbed Dawn's arm as Xander, Willow and Tara ran over to save Dawn or maybe grab him.
Myst sighed in relief as Buffy accidentally or purposefully grabbed the glowing crystal on his bracelet and turned off the interdiction field. He teleported with the entire group, trying to ignore the disconcerting green haze covering everything as he pulled The Key through dimensions. He barely had enough time to realize he was in a semi familiar room with an unfamiliar naked red haired teenage girl being hit with a belt by a large whale of a teenager before Buffy's fist struck him in the jaw and everything went black.
"Buffy!" Dawn shouted as the man that had saved her crumpled to the ground.
Xander took one look at the screaming girl with welts on her ass that was being held face down on the end table by a fat man in his forties then cleared the distance and struck him in the temple with all of his considerable might, not even stopping to consider the situation.
Willow gestured and sent the blond whale of a young man holding the belt into the wall. "Where are we?" she asked.
The naked girl scrambled to her feet then lunged forward and kicked her fat cousin in the nuts as hard as she could several times before she took a breath and turned to look at the group. "Thanks for the assistance but I was trying to avoid using magic."
"What is going on?" Buffy asked as she stared at the slender and yet busty girl that was as tall as Xander, not sure what the hell was going on but fairly sure she should offer the girl clothes or something rather than stare at her breasts like Willow.
Ivy glanced at her uncle, hoping the slack look on his face meant he was dead rather than just unconscious. "My uncle thought it would be amusing to let him hit me fifteen times with a strap."
"Why...?" Willow trailed off as she noticed the lightning bolt shaped scar on the girl's forehead. "Where are we?"
"Birthday spankings and Surrey, England," Ivy replied as she walked over and grabbed her t-shirt from the back of the couch, figuring she'd need to get dressed if she wanted to make her way to London before the Ministry sent someone to snap her wand for underage magic. "But you should know that if Dumbledore sent you, why are you here?" she asked as she pulled the t-shirt on, wishing she had her wand.
"It's a shame Giles isn't here," Xander muttered, figuring he must have been too far away.
'Dumbledore?' Willow blushed slightly as she focused on the attractive girl's face rather than her breasts which the tight tie-dyed shirt did very little to hide. 'Pull it together, she's Dawn's age.' She glanced between Dawn and Tara, feeling slightly better that they were also having a hard time not staring at the half naked girl. "We're a bit lost, we got teleported. I'm Willow."
"Ivy," Ivy replied as she glanced between Tara and Anya then looked at Myst who was sitting up. "Wait, teleported?" she asked, realizing she'd used the 'wrong' word for apparition.
"Sorry about teleporting into your living room, we had a bunch of corrupt cops that were going to kill Dawn or lock her in a lab," Myst explained, trying to focus on Ivy's face while keeping part of his attention on Buffy in case she decided to punch him again. 'At least she wasn't trying to kill me.'
"Not that I'm not happy about your friends dealing with my relatives-" Ivy cut off as the windows iced over and a familiar feeling of despair washed over her. "Shit!"
"Kill Dawn?" Buffy spun to look at the door and dropped into a combat stance when she noticed the windows frosting over.
Tara shivered and started rocking as she was reminded once again of having her mind fractured with bits of dealing with her family tossed in for good measure.
Xander turned to look at the door, his mind flashing back to staking Jessie, looking less afraid and more like he wanted to kill something.
"Bunnies!" Anya screamed as she bolted for the hallway, trying to get away from the rabbits that were 'obviously' going to come through the windows and get her.
"What's going on?" Buffy asked as someone knocked on the door.
"Open up," a sickly sweet voice ordered from outside, "we're from the Ministry."
"What do you want?" Ivy demanded, knowing better than to open the door.
"You haven't registered for the Marriage Law, we're taking you to the ministry," the voice said as the door burst open revealing a short overweight woman in an eye-searing pink cardigan with her squat wand raised.
Myst focused on suppressing Umbridge's magic as he picked himself up. "Marriage Law?" he asked in disbelief as he rifled through her surface thoughts, more than a little horrified to find out that the Ministry had put in place a barbaric law that would give them the 'right' to marry unwed teenagers to a 'suitable' family if their family couldn't arrange a suitable match.
"Go to hell bitch!" Ivy snapped, wishing her uncle hadn't locked her wand up with her stuff so that she could curse the bitch.
"The last war left our population at an all time low, steps had to be taken so that the children could find proper matches," Umbridge said sweetly, her eyes filled with sadistic glee.
Myst snapped Macnair's wrists with his telekinesis then lunged forward and grabbed Umbridge as she turned to see why Macnair was screaming. He tossed her into his pocket dimension then grabbed the dementors with telekinesis and dragged them towards him, wanting to deal with them before Tara had a relapse.
Dawn sighed in relief as the wraith like demons vanished along with the other creepy looking man. "Are you just going to toss everyone that annoys you into your pocket dimension?"
"Just the sadistic assholes," Myst replied as he glanced around then picked up the wand Macnair dropped and shut the door.
Ivy shook her head. "You can't just kidnap people from the Ministry."
"Why not?" Myst asked as he turned to look at the half naked girl, doing his best to look her in the eyes.
"Because…" Ivy trailed off as she realized that the man's eyes were glowing purple. "How did you get your eyes to glow and can you teach me?" she asked hopefully, figuring it would be a fun party trick.
"No idea, the glow tends to get worse the more magic I've used recently," Myst replied as he turned to look at Dawn. "Sorry about grabbing your wrist, I wanted to make sure you weren't left behind."
"I'll forgive you if you tell me your name," Dawn offered, curious about the handsome stranger that had saved her from Doc.
"Myst," Myst replied with a grin, glad that Dawn wasn't taking it personal.
"You teleported the rest of us just fine," Xander pointed out, not sure how to feel about the stranger that had appeared out of thin air.
"Other than Giles," Willow added when she glanced around the room and realized he wasn't with them.
"And Spike," Buffy added, not sure how she felt about the vampire.
Myst turned to look at Willow. "Sorry, I can only grab people near me when I teleport or jump dimensions."
"Make with the xplainy, now," Buffy ordered. "Where are we and what was the woman talking about?"
"When did they decide to enact a marriage law?" Myst asked, not exactly sure what was going on himself beyond what he'd lifted from Umbridge's twisted mind.
Ivy scowled as she thought about Fudge. "A week after I told the Minister of Magic that Voldemort was back from the dead."
"Do you want a lift to a dimension that isn't as fucked up?" Myst asked, figuring Harry would love to meet his alternate or sister.
"How much and when do we leave?" Ivy asked instantly then sighed as she realized that her friends wouldn't forgive her if she just bailed without a word. "We can come back, right?"
"Nothing, you're a hero and yeah, we can come back," Myst assured her as he pulled his dimension jumping remote out of his pocket dimension. "Speaking of unfinished business, is Neville Longbottom a decent person?" he asked as he set a jump point, figuring it would come in handy.
"You know Neville?" Ivy asked in surprise.
"I've never met your version which is why I'm asking," Myst explained as he stuck the remote back in his pocket and went back to picking the lock on the cupboard under the stairs with his telekinesis.
"He's a decent friend," Ivy said. "If he wasn't already 'engaged' to my friend Puck so she didn't have to deal with the ministry bullshit, I would have asked him to fake an engagement."
'Puck?' Myst lifted Hermione's picture out of Ivy's mind then pulled his telepathic 'fingers' back as he brushed the connection to Voldemort in her mind. 'Yeah, we're going to need to break that.'
"What does Neville have to do with things?" Dawn asked as she glanced between Myst and Ivy.
Myst opened the door under the stairs and levitated Ivy's trunk over to the table. "Neville was also born as the seventh month dies which fits the prophecy that Trelawney gave about Voldemort's downfall which basically caused him to attack the Potters which caused his demise."
"Trelawney?" Ivy asked, thinking of Puck's less than stellar opinion of her one time divination teacher.
"I hate prophecies," Buffy grumbled.
"I'm not really a fan either and apparently she does actually have a small amount of talent," Myst said as he pulled his notebook out of his pocket dimension, opened it to a blank page and started scribbling down notes on the possible locations of Voldemort's horcruxes. "You destroyed Riddle's diary back in second year, right?" he asked, not sure how things lined up or if his information would be all that useful.
"I stabbed it with a Basilisk fang and picked up a house elf," Ivy replied.
"Picked up a house elf?" Dawn asked, thinking about Dobby from the second Harry Potter book.
"Who else was going to hire Dobby?" Ivy asked, putting emphasis on his name so that he'd show up as she doubted summoning him would get her in more trouble at this point.
Dobby popped in. "Mistress called?" he asked as he looked at the group of strangers, curious who the strangers were, then looked down at the unconscious Dursleys and smiled. "Mistress wants me to dispose of trash?" he asked hopefully.
Ivy considered her list of punishments she'd come up with over the years, mentally crossing out some of Sirius's suggestions as she didn't want them dead. "I'd like to say that the best revenge is living well but Sirius assures me the best revenge is actual revenge, strip them and drop them in a muggle hotel in Russia."
"Yes mistress!" Dobby said cheerfully as he snapped his fingers and vanished with the Dursleys, leaving their clothes to fall to the ground.
"You have to admit, he has a point," Buffy mused.
"You should have hired a male stripper and taken pictures," Anya suggested as she walked back into the room, glancing around to make sure there weren't any bunnies around.
Xander winced. "Anya."
Ivy scrunched up her nose at the disturbing visual then grinned as she realized Dobby would be able to arrange things and drop the pictures off at Vernon's work on the off chance they made it back in a timely fashion. "Colin owes me a favor for modeling some of his costumes, he'll let me borrow his camera."
Willow raised her eyebrows as her mind jumped to some weird places. "On second thought, if you leave them next to the crown jewels, Dumbledore will have a hell of a time getting them out."
"If he even can," Ivy mused, knowing that he'd lost his position with the Wizengamot.
"Shouldn't we leave before the Ministry sends someone else?" Xander asked, wanting to be gone before they got tossed in a cell or sent to Azkaban as it sounded really bad from Willow's descriptions.
"Probably," Ivy agreed as she opened her trunk and pulled out her robes, looking forward to getting away from the Dursleys and the wizarding world.
Buffy frowned as Ivy pulled the plain black robe on over her head. "We should probably hit an actual shop at some point."
Ivy shook her head. "As much as I'd love grabbing some amusing t-shirts that would cause the Dursleys to flip, I'd have to convert some galleons and the Ministry probably has people watching the bank considering Draco's gloating on the train."
"That's easy, I can just use a glamor to make you look like someone else," Willow offered, happy to help and looking forward to seeing Diagon Alley.
Tara looked down at her pajamas. "I don't have any money."
"Don't worry about it, my treat," Ivy offered as she slipped her wand into her pocket and grabbed her money pouch, figuring she had more than enough for a couple of outfits. "In that case, let's go."
"Shouldn't we talk about getting home?" Buffy asked.
"I can take you home if you want but you should probably wait a couple of days for things to calm down," Myst suggested, figuring the various groups would investigate and find nothing worth bothering with if Dawn wasn't there for them to get a good look at.
"We could use a vacation," Dawn said, looking forward to seeing Diagon Alley and maybe a couple of other worlds if she could talk Myst into it.
"Where are we going to stay?" Xander asked, not opposed to taking a couple of days to relax.
Myst glanced between Anya and Xander. "I suggest Hawaii or maybe one of the carribean islands."
"We could have a proper honeymoon," Anya said as she hugged Xander.
"Honeymoon?" Buffy asked as she turned to look at Xander.
"I asked her to marry me," Xander said as he hugged Anya.
"Congratulations?" Ivy offered then turned to look at Tara. "Can I get some names for the rest of you?"
"Tara McClay," Tara offered.
"Myst," Myst said absently as he tried to figure out the best way to deal with Voldemort's harder to reach horcruxes, while leaving most of the work to Neville or Albus.
