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0824 The Battle
🕑 Added 2025-08-31 14:53:11 +0000 UTCDozens of tons of reinforced concrete crashed down like an apocalyptic avalanche onto the ground thirty feet below. The impact created explosions of pulverized stone and twisted metal, wafting enormous clouds of choking dust that spread in all directions.
The thunderous, muffled roar of destruction sent chills down the spines of those watching from afar.
Though a substantial section of the railway bridge had collapsed in spectacular fashion, most of the supporting stone piers remained intact.
The Nundu crouched on one of these stone pillars, its massive chest rising and falling in active rhythm. Its red and black mottled fur, each strand as thick as a human hair and as sharp as a needle, gleamed with sparkling points of light under the ethereal moonlight.
Clearly, the frenzied pursuit of Bryan, that impossible dance of death across impossible distances had taken a tremendous toll even on this creature.
Bryan stood at the very edge of the broken bridge and was gently rubbing his temples with his fingertips.
A nauseating sensation, similar to the worst motion sickness imaginable but magnified tenfold, churned in his stomach. Such high-frequency Apparition was far from effortless, even for someone of his abilities.
The magical energy still coursed through his nervous system like liquid lightning, creating apparition sensations of movement and displacement that would have driven any wizard to madness. His inner ear struggled to maintain balance after so many rapid changes in position.
But after a few deep breaths, having taken a deep gulp of the dust-filled night air and slowly exhaled through pursed lips, Bryan showed no outer sign of distress except for his slightly pale complexion.
He lifted his gaze to meet the Nundu's stare. The creature's fierce eyes glared back at him with intensity.
"Are you willing to calm down now?" Bryan's voice echoed across the devastated landscape with surprising gentleness.
Bryan genuinely hoped to get this Nundu to stop its rampage. But he was no magizoologist after all, lacking the specialized knowledge and training that might have provided him understanding into the complex psychology of such apex magical predators.
His gesture, offered with sincere hope for de-escalation, was interpreted entirely differently by the cunning Nundu—a creature whose understanding of human nature ran deeper than most humans understood themselves.
To those calculating eyes, Bryan's words were mockery and provocation!
The sharp spines covering the still-panting Nundu began to quiver, each trembling like harp strings plucked by invisible fingers. The ring of red flesh around its powerful neck visibly reddened at an alarming rate that it became the most conspicuous feature in the chaotic night.
The Nundu let out a shriek utterly incompatible with its massive, muscular body—a sound as high-pitched and earsplitting as a bird of prey caught in the coils of a giant serpent, as sharp as breaking glass and twice as painful to hear.
The cry echoed far through the already tumultuous night. Then, tensing every muscle in its body until it resembled a coiled spring, the beast with its fierce head bearing three or four points of resemblance to a cheetah faced Bryan.
In the next second, its mouth opened wide, revealing rows of teeth and something began brewing in the depths of its throat!
"Look out, Bryan!" Remus's voice cracked with terror.
Remus didn't fully understand how the situation had escalated to this critical point. Originally, Bryan had planned where Remus would engage the Nundu in controlled combat while they waited for MACUSA's security personnel to arrive and handle this emergency.
Instead, this Nundu had become utterly hooked on Bryan—a wizard who stood in front of it without even holding a wand, while he and Amelia, both armed wizards with their wands at the ready, were relegated to the role of helpless observers trying desperately to buy time in a situation that had spiraled completely beyond their control.
When Bryan had been entangled in that dance of death with the Nundu earlier, Remus had indeed wanted to help. But the speed of both man and beast had been simply too fast for his eyes to track properly, let alone for him to find any opening where he could intervene without risk of striking Bryan instead of the creature.
Yet Remus hadn't let his guard down for even a moment. The moment he sensed the subtle shift in the Nundu's posture that suggested it might launch some kind of ranged attack, he shouted his warning and took several large, desperate strides to reach Bryan's side—
The Nundu completed its buildup at precisely that moment. Its pitch-black pupils suddenly blazed with light, and a torrent of red, solid-looking smoke surged from its throat, rushing toward the two wizards standing side by side.
As a vicious beast whose speed and strength were exceptional even among the most dangerous magical creatures known to wizardkind, the fact that it bore the name "Nundu" spoke about the infectious, extraordinary toxicity contained within that crimson smoke column!
Remus swept his wand in a wide, desperate arc, conjuring fierce winds that scattered the advancing smoke column while the spinning tornado sucked up all the toxic fumes dispersing into the air, carrying them high into the sky.
Seeing this, Bryan frowned.
"That won't work, Remus," He said, his voice having a tone of urgency. "This poison smoke is highly toxic to any living creature. If it spreads into the air currents and drifts over the surrounding neighborhoods, Muggles in this entire area could suffer from violent vomiting and respiratory distress for days at best, or fall into deep comas that could last for half a month at worst."
"But this is all I can manage, Bryan!" Remus cried out desperately, his voice nearly lost amid the howling wind of his own creation.
Snap!
Bryan's lips twitched, and in the next second, after a crisp snap of his fingers, a point of golden flame appeared on his raised right index finger.
The small cluster of flame hovering at Bryan's fingertip flickered like a candle's flame—weak and wavering in the wind. Yet when the Nundu, still shooting its toxic column at the two men, saw this tiny flame, its obsidian pupils revealed panic and fear. Its instincts warned that this small flame possessed the power to destroy it!
But this didn't make the Nundu turn and flee. Instead, it further inflamed the creature's ferocity. The rolling toxic smoke struck with renewed weight and desperation against Remus's conjured hurricane, and the air itself took on a faint crimson tinge as it was corroded by the poison.
"Go," Bryan said simply.
He flicked the small flame from between his fingers. Remus's magical storm, despite its tremendous power and the howling winds that could have knocked a grown man from his feet, didn't affect the flame's trajectory in the slightest.
The moment the golden flame touched the leading edge of the toxic smoke column—
Bang!
The explosive sound was surprisingly soft, almost gentle.
Like a single drop of ice water falling into a cauldron of boiling oil, the golden flame instantly ignited the entire length of the Nundu's smoke stream.
Had the Nundu not been quick enough to snap its massive jaws shut and leap back with desperate haste, it would have had its whiskers singed completely off by the exploding column of flame. It wasn't particularly concerned about losing its facial hair, of course, but the sensation in that terrifying instant felt like a brush with death itself.
The golden flames quickly consumed the toxic smoke but didn't extinguish afterward.
Bryan gestured with his finger, and the columnlike fire tornado in mid-air suddenly expanded into a golden net of flames, swooping down to envelop the Nundu.
However, just before being surrounded by the fire net, the Nundu pushed off with its limbs and leaped to the other end of the broken bridge. Bryan directed the fire net to contract and lunged toward the Nundu on the opposite side, but the creature's swift zigzag movements allowed it to dodge once again.
Two consecutive failures made Bryan frown inwardly.
Without a wand in hand, controlling Fiendfyre wasn't quite as fluid and natural as usual—it lacked some finesse and grace.
During this struggle between wizard and beast, MACUSA Aurors had already found their way to the scene via the partially collapsed apartment building that marked the beginning of this night's chaos.
Through a combination of magical tracking, witness interviews, and testimony from the various wizards who had been observing from concealment, they had managed to piece together a rough understanding of what had occurred and how the situation had come to this point.
"Should we go help?" one Auror with inverted eyebrows asked, nudging his companion's ribs with his elbow.
"Are you joking?" His companion's face went paler than normal as he snapped back. "That's a Nundu we're looking at, not some overgrown house cat or garden-variety dark creature! Unless the entire security department mobilizes with full battle gear and specialized containment equipment, I absolutely refuse to face that beast in direct combat..."
He paused, swallowing hard as he watched another exchange between Bryan and the creature, before continuing with slightly more confidence.
"Besides, do you really think Bryan Watson isn't more than a match for one Nundu? The man just played tag with it for two minutes straight and made it look easy! Rushing in now would only cause him trouble and potentially interfere with whatever he's doing. What we should really be doing is establishing a proper containment barrier and starting damage control."
His expression grew even more grim as their situation became clear.
"I don't want to think about how many Muggles have already seen things they absolutely shouldn't have tonight. Between the collapsed building, the bridge destruction, and now this aerial light show, I suspect we'll be doing memory modifications and cover-up work until next June!"
The thought of months of tedious paperwork, witness interviews, and memory charms made both Aurors grimace in unison. Memory modification was precise, exhausting work that required tremendous concentration and left the caster mentally drained for days afterward.
Thinking about the enormous cleanup work that lay ahead of them, the inverted-eyebrow fellow began sighing deeply as well.
He was in complete agreement with his companion's assessment—isolating the scene from further Muggle observation had to be their absolute priority.
He was just about to Disapparate to a more distant location where he could begin erecting the necessary barrier charms and notice-me-not enchantments when his wandering gaze caught sight of distant lights approaching through the tunnel, leaving him completely and utterly dumbstruck.
Whoo, whoo, whoo!
Shrill, piercing train whistles cut through the black night like the screams of mechanical banshees. The whistles were accompanied by the rhythmic clang-clang-clang rumbling sounds of steel wheels on steel rails, and the earth began to vibrate in perfect rhythm.
A passenger-filled diesel train burst through the tunnel opening like a metal dragon emerging from its lair. The massive machine was racing toward them at 180 kilometers per hour, carrying dozens or perhaps hundreds of completely oblivious Muggle passengers who had no idea they were about to enter a war zone.
As the train's powerful headlight swept across the devastated bridge ahead, the engineer in the locomotive cab seemed to notice the obviously catastrophic trouble blocking his path. The man began frantically sounding the whistle in the desperate hope that whatever was causing the obstruction might somehow clear itself before impact.
Glancing at the rapidly approaching Muggle train, Remus broke out in a cold sweat. If this moving train, packed with innocent civilians, derailed at full speed because the bridge was no longer there to support it, the number of casualties would be absolutely unthinkable.
In that instant of horrible realization, the security department Aurors who had been watching from what they thought was a safe distance suddenly rushed forward as if their very lives depended on reaching the scene in time. Their previous caution vanished in the face of impending mass casualties.
Thanks to Bryan Watson's incredible efforts earlier in the evening, this night hadn't yet produced an unmanageable number of Muggle casualties. The deaths in that two-story apartment building that had collapsed could be easily explained away as a tragic but ordinary electrical short-circuit explosion.
But if an entire trainload of Muggles also died due to magical causes, if their deaths could be traced back to the supernatural battle raging above the railway line, this incident would create international shockwaves that would reverberate through both the magical and No-Maj governments!
One by one, the Aurors Disapparated directly to the scene with the pop of emergency apparition, appearing in a rough line along the damaged bridge with their wands already raised and began waving their wands in wide, sweeping arcs.
The bridge sections that had been blasted down by the Nundu's earlier rampage began to fly back up into the air as if time itself were reversing.
Chunks of reinforced concrete weighing several tons each rose from the ground below like balloons filled with helium, rapidly piecing themselves back together with the sound of grinding stone and the entire damaged section of bridge began self-repairing.
"Bryan!" Remus cried out in alarm.
"You get out of the way first," Bryan replied, his expression remaining perfectly calm despite the chaos erupting around them.
He first gave Remus this instruction, then took a step forward and the next second, he appeared beside Amelia.
Amelia, who had been severely shocked, lay paralyzed on the ground. She managed to prop herself up into a sitting position but couldn't stand. Without wasting words, Bryan grabbed her uninjured arm and pulled her to her feet.
The golden fire net that had been hovering overhead like a persistent curse, waiting for another opportunity to strike at the Nundu, suddenly vanished.
The Nundu paused in its preparations for another attack, momentarily confused by this unexpected development. It noticed the speeding train, registered the dozens of human scents carried on the wind from the passenger cars, but paid it no mind at all.
Instead, those yellow eyes narrowed to slits and once again locked onto Bryan Watson, who was now supporting the injured Amelia.
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