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Phantom 20
🕑 Added 2022-11-19 12:52:44 +0000 UTCDestruction greeted Lois Lane the first thing as she slowly walked towards the site of the incident, the smell of smoke and dust heavy in the air. However, as she rounded the corner and stumbled over a broken lamppost, the scent of copper invaded her nose. Blood, she realized with grimness and dread both. In the blurred, cut-up recordings they had viewed back in Daily Planet’s headquarters, only a small glimpse of the strange but apocalyptic fight had been visible—explosions and static interfering with every camera they had been able to tap into.
Now as she witnessed the fires and the charred vehicles and the giant holes in the buildings with her own eyes, Lois almost regretted coming here. Almost. It looked like a scene straight out of one of those city warfare or zombie apocalypse movies, except there was not a single living or dead soul in sight. This part of Las Vegas was completely wrecked, sand and dust floating upon the ground, with the heat from the raging fires making the atmosphere more suffocating by the second.
But as her foot slipped upon something and she almost lost her balance, Lois realized that things were much, much worse. She looked down at the puddle of blood she was kneeling in, and promptly vomited her lunch out as she saw the torn pieces of flesh and cloth in it. Her eyes teared up, and Lois heaved a few more times, clenching her eyes shut as she blindly crawled to the side.
“You don’t want to go there,” an unknown, female voice spoke up from behind her, and before the shriek in her throat could escape past her lips, or her eyes could even widen properly, she was carried up into the air. An arm was around her waist, and Lois instinctively clutched the woman that was carrying her, pressing her face into the warm, smooth cloth covering her shoulder, “Now let's find a nice, safe, and clean spot for you to sit in, shall we?”
She opened her eyes at that, finding herself about a hundred feet off the ground, and in the arms of none other than the new Superheroine that had popped up in the Imperium Invasion. Apollina, one who was speculated to have the same powers as the Phantom, and maybe a familial relationship as well. However, what caught her attention the next moment was the sight of a building crumbling right before her eyes, the five-story structure crashing down onto its side with the sound of rock and glass breaking and grinding against each other.
Her eyes remained fixed upon the billowing dust cloud that emerged from the crash, obscuring its surroundings from her view as the other structures in the vicinity shook from the impact. Her eyes followed a flying piece of rubble as an explosion happened within the destroyed building, and Lois’ eyes widened as her face drained of color. Just like the puddle she had slipped in, dozens of blood spots littered the road, and even from this high up, she could make out the gore that was spread all across the asphalt.
“Oh no no, don’t vomit again,” Lois dimly registered a panicked voice as bile once again rose in the back of her throat, her stomach revolting mightily at the…the massacre, the butchery that had happened upon the streets of Las Vegas. However, because she could heave her guts out at the horrifying sight, she suddenly felt all of her panic…dissipate into nothingness. Apollina’s hand patted her back soothingly as Lois felt them lower down, her eyes once again clenched shut to avoid any more grisly sights.
“You can relax now…the dead won’t be visible from here.”
She nodded mutely against the superheroine’s shoulder, a part of her unable to understand just how she had calmed down so quickly, but it was grateful all the same. She sat down against the wall slowly, her eyes opening to look at the smoke rising from several points in the city, holes the size of entire floors and rooms blasted into the buildings. “Wh-What happened here?” She asked, her voice weak and rough from the vomiting, as well as the terror the death and destruction around her had made her feel.
It was the Imperium invasion all over again, with the fires and the destruction and the death—and in a way, it was worse. At least the aliens didn’t leave behind blood and pieces of flesh left behind when they were firing their lasers or devouring humans directly. Las Vegas was utterly wrecked, or at least the parts that she could see were. “What happened here?” she repeated once again, turning towards Apollina, the woman standing quietly at the edge of the terrace, staring out at the city just like her, “We saw the clips from Lexbook and other cameras…Phantom resurfaced again today, didn’t he?”
“He did.”
“...and he was fighting someone,” Lois continued, closing her eyes as she recalled the flashes of light that had flown between the two flying metahumans, each one destroying and devastating the city around them. “Someone in a green robe.”
“It was Felix Faust…a very powerful, very ancient mage. You people know him by one of his titles actually, the Fourth Horsemen of Apocalypse, the Pale Rider,” came the answer, and Lois blinked dumbly at the words said by the superheroine. “However, Phantom defeated him in the end. You just missed the end of the fight by a few seconds actually—though I think it is a good thing…it was not a pleasant death by any means.”
As if on cue, a pillar of golden light beamed up into the sky from a few hundred feet to their right, a quiet hum resounding into the dead silent city as it seemed to punch a hole into the sky. A shockwave blasted out from the pillar, and Lois gasped as Apollina raised her hands to create a blue dome over them, the golden burst of energy passing harmlessly over the barrier.
Two Hours Ago
Harry apparated into the skies above the city of Las Vegas, his ears still ringing from how Donna had squealed and giggled when they had taken her to the mall. The girl had absolutely gone wild on the clothes and the food both—and a part of Harry cursed himself for retaining enough of his original personality that he didn’t find it good to imperius normal muggles. Now, the girls were back at the apartment with Diana, from where they would go to the Amazon’s place in New York, while he went to work on luring their mystery sorcerer in.
Raising his palms in front of him, he concentrated and wrote a series of Norse runes into the air, rotating in his place as golden letters flamed into existence behind his fingertips. Once the last rune of the circular sequence was done, he watched as the runes floated away from him, expanding in size the further they went.
Bringing his hands in front of his chest, he focused and drew upon the vast ocean of magic inside him, making the energy flow between his palms. The runes glowed as the first trickle of pure magical power collected between his palms, helping him condense and contain the energy without letting it run wild. A spark of crimson appeared first, strings of red flowing into it from his hands, feeding pure magic into it as Harry grunted, increasing the output even more.
The air wavered and rippled, as energy equivalent to that of a MOAB gathered between his palms, the power in that slowly growing ball rising sharply with each moment. Sweat beaded his forehead and every particle of his body came alive as his magic ran wild, tempered only by his extreme willpower. The ball grew to the size of a head, crimson lightning arcing out from the wavering surface and striking the tunes floating around him, its surface rippling and bubbling as he condensed it forcefully. His eyes glowed crimson and the air around him rippled, and Harry grunted as pain throbbed through every neuron in his brain. The sudden rise of temperature came in next as the energy inside the ball reached levels akin to that of a magical nuclear bomb, his body heating up to to temperatures he had never felt before as as the runes around him started sparking and flaring.
Screaming his throat hoarse as he felt the power in the torso-sized ball reach critical levels, Harry raised his palms and let a tiny part of his hold on the energy slip. The quiet hum that had permeated the air around him became a roar as the magical energy slipped through that tiny crack, forming a beam that shot up into the clear sky. Invisible to the muggles below, red lightning branched out from it along the way, which sparked away into nothingness.
His eyes shone like red suns as the beam of magic reached its apex amidst azure sky, from where a shockwave of crimson energy exploded out into the stratosphere. Slowly, the ball of magic depleted in size as he fed the energy into the continuously ongoing beacon above him, broadcasting enough power to be felt even on the other side of the globe by any competent sorcerer.
He could faintly hear the surprised shrieks of the muggles as the sun seemed to shine brighter than before, which meant the runes around him were doing their work perfectly. It was a modified ritual from the days when the Æsir and the Vanir had walked the Earth, created by the latter to lure Sköll—while its counterpart did the same for Hati—so that Ragnarök may finally begin. Panting as the power between his palms finally disappeared into the sky, he looked up at the final vestiges of the beam that screamed powerful magic like nothing else could.
Harry grinned maniacally as he felt a presence appear in the desert out before him, the sun warming his back as his energy was restored by his Kryptonian side. He zoomed in on the unknown mage, blinking as he saw nothing but dunes and sandy winds in the palace where he should have seen the sorcerer. ‘Smarter than most sorcerers back on my planet,’ he mused, shifting spectrums to infrared, the whole landscape in front of him shining with reds and oranges…but yet, his target remained undetected, ‘Uh huh, so you are smarter than most of the smarter ones too. What about if I do this?’
And yet, even X-ray vision didn’t show him the sorcerer, but he felt him moving slowly towards Las Vegas all the same. Thanking the cloak’s magic once more as he hid right in his target’s full view, Harry used his hearing next. His ears were immediately assaulted by thousands of voices speaking and shouting together throughout the City of Sin, and the roar of the desert sands blowing across the land around the city. He filtered through the noise of the muggles below him, straining his ears as he searched for the sound of sand striking against fabric, or cloth rustling in the wind.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t wait for the sorcerer to reveal himself—since barring Diana no one on this planet could even come close to defeating him. But he just wanted to do it quickly and get back home, and punching the head of the sorcerer with his literally otherworldly might sounded like a good idea to do that in a flash. As if agreeing with his thoughts, the sorcerer teleported the next instant, appearing right above him. However, before Harry could do anything, a massive burst of magic exploded out from the unknown mage, a visible shockwave of dark green expanding in every direction. Harry shivered as the magic passed over him, feeling the cloak’s magic…disrupt for a moment before it settled back. A very powerful revealing spell, he grimly thought, feeling the magic reach down to the city below him and the desert beyond.
This…this would need more caution than what he had previously thought, he realised, frowning a bit as he stayed still in his place, confident that amount of magic currently in the air around him would hide his levitation—once again cursing that for all his Kryptonian powers, flight wasn’t there. Something flickered against the clear blue sky above him, and he watched as the invisibility spell on the sorcerer above him dropped.
The only thing he could see from here was a dark purple robe, and a veil on the back of the sorcerer’s head along with a golden belt around their waist. Curious whether it was a wizard or a witch, Harry shifted his eyes to X ray vision, and almost dropped from his position as something scratched as the edges of his mind, painfully. Wards, he realised, blinking the spots away from his vision as he looked at the sorcerer warily. This was going to be more difficult than what he had imagine it to be. He didn’t have a Kryptonian’s speed in air, bereft of flight as he was, and if the level of preparedness and competence this sorcerer had displayed by now was any indication, then a surprise punch was also not going to work.
“Where is it?” an agitated murmur reached his ears, and Harry silently watched as runes flared up all around the mage, bright yellow light pouring out of them as what he recognised to be a revelation matrix spun in all directions, “First and Second time in the Pacific, and then here in this city. What kind of art-”
A bolt of emerald left his hand at that moment, the favourite spell of Riddle leaving a trail of green in its wake as it sped towards the unsuspecting sorcerer. However, much to his shock…the undefendable spell, the Silent Death, the Avada Kedavra was stopped in its tracks by a pale red shield that sprang up around the mage. His jaw dropped open, and his concentration over his levitation broke as Harry just gaped at the sight of the shield blurring away imto invisiblity. Regaining control over his fall amoment later, he tensed as the sorcerer turned around and looked down right at him, th eminute lapse in his magical control having no doubt alerted the mage to his presence.
“I know you are there, so just drop that invisibility spell and come out,” a voice so remiscent of Snape came from the man as he crossed his arms behind his back, and Harry grimaced at the comparison. A harsh green light pulsed in the man’s chest, and he shivered in spite of himself as the sheer malevolence that the mage began to emit, his voice gaming a sinister edge to it as it continued, “No point in delaying the inevitable child. Your spell was powerful, but you can’t hope to defeat me now that you have lost your chance. Don’t drag this out and make your end more agonising than it has to be.”
Deciding to use Fiendyre the next time something like this happened, Harry stopped his cloak’s magic and apparated in front of the sorcerer, his leg already moving to blast the man into nothing but bloody mist. However, despite his kick moving at speeds no human should be able to track, the same pale red shield manifested around the sorcerer and stopped him in his tracks. A shockwave blasted out from the point of impact, and Harry stared at his foot dumbly—shocked and bewildered out of his mind at the sight of his literal mountain crushing kick being stopped by a magical shield.
“Foolish.”
A blast of magic slammed into his chest, and Harry felt himself hurtle through the air at breakneck speeds, spinning and slamming through the buildings below. Even as he broke through the final wall and slammed into the road below, he was aware of the burn that had been left behind on his chest, the the protective runes on his suit having staved off the worst of it. The muggles around him screamed and shrieked as he finally came to a stop, resuming control over his flight. Moving up into the air, he grimaced at the sight of the fires that had started in the buildings he had gone through. It wasn’t that he particularly cared for collateral damage, but it still wasn’t a good thing, especially when his sister wanted to be a superheroine herself.
“And I still haven’t had that discussion with her,” he muttered as he rose up into the air, watching the unknown, powerful and dangerous sorcerer descend at the same time, “Fucking hell.”
‘Fiendfyre’ he whispered mentally, using an incantation for the first time in Circe knew how long as he funneled his power into it, the ritual done before having recharged his magical power within moments. A ball of crimson flames appeared before him, the heat within it so great that despite the cooling charms upon his suit, Harry began to sweat, and the asphalt below him began to slag and bubble instantly. The next moment, he roared and pushed the cursed fire with his hands, the most destructive magical flames in existence screaming and roaring as they took the form of a giant snake. A burning heat rose up around him, and the muggles screamed madly as they started to run and drive away, and alarms started to blare all over the city.
The python snapped its jaws menacingly as it covered hundreds of feet within a moment, growing to a skyscraper sized monster as it neared the still mage. He saw the flames from Hell envelope the sorcerer, the elemental snake closing sits jaws around him and swirling around to form a large sphere of magical flames—capable of burning through magic and material both.
‘That ought to take care of him,’ he panted, watching everything around him waver in the vapors and glow red from the heat. Sighing in relief as the Sunlight once again began to restore his energy, Harry glanced up at the swirling sphere of Fiendyre, slowly starting to dispel the flames…only for nothing to happen. ‘He fucking survived that?! He fucking surived and wrestled the control of Fiendfyre from me? Who the fuck is this mage?!’
“I underestimated you,” that silky voice drawled once gaain as the color of the flames shifted, turning from the raging crimsons and oranges to a pitch black as they condensed and swirled faster and faster. The changed Fiendfyre shrunk in size, and Harry watched with an open mouth as the completely unharmed sorcerer was reveal to his gaze, not even a scratch on him or his clothes. He floated there confidently, the fires shrinking down to float above his right palm as he looked down at them, “Interesting spell. I can feel it even now, trying to escape my grip and devour everything around it…quite amusing that even after seven thousand years, such a spell has escaped my knowledge. But then again? What is life but not the pursuit of knowledge and power…and I thank you child, for having given me something so valuable,” his amused dark eyes turned towards him, and the sorcerer brought his arm up, the blakk of black flames hiding the sun from his gaze as his voice turned cold and menacing, “Now die at the hands of Felix Faust!”
Comments
PP092
Last TIC was almost 5K
PP092
You make me blush everytime ♥️♥️😭😭 Thanks man! And same to you
Russell Taylor
Honestly couldn't care less about the delay, i've been so busy lately i didn't notice the delay. I just care that you are safe, happy, healthy, and mentally able to write. Take care of yourself, yeah?
PP092
Originally this chapter was supposed to start with a sweet family type scene... But I dropped that at 1.2 K words. That is why it was delayed
Russell Taylor
I liked that Kara saved Lois and that this chapter is kinda a flashback, feels kinda like Kara is telling Lois what happened
Russell Taylor
So it's just me "whew" i was a bit worried. Anyways, loved the chapter 😁 and i can't wait for more.
PP092
Chapters ain't getting shorter, some are 4 to 5, some are 3 to 4
PP092
I am in college now, so the first weeks been hectic, since I have to once again get in the habit of 8 hrs a day... And then I am walking regularly now (and it is def not cause of a girl) Anyways, this one was 3200 and the next scene would have taken quite long... So I cut it here
Russell Taylor
Is it just me or are the chapters shorter these days? If its just me then feel free to tell me i'm and idiot. As always your writing is a refreshing read that saves me after time reading weaker writers' stories. Thank you for your great work!
