A shower of gold galleons rained from the sky in a surreal, deadly storm. For several long moments everyone's ears rang with nothing but the crisp clatter of coins and golden artifacts striking the grounds, bouncing and rolling in all directions.
More than a dozen heavy wagons that had been transporting the seized wealth shattered with a thunderous, splintering crash that echoed between the buildings like artillery fire. The horses pulling them dissolved into literal sprays of blood and pulverized flesh before they could even utter a single miserable neigh of fear or pain!
Such a horrific, nightmarish spectacle stunned the Hit Wizards of the Ministry of Magic into shock.
These particular Hit Wizards had all joined the recently expanded department only after Amelia had increased its size in response to the growing crisis. They'd received merely brief training and had no real combat experience to speak of.
The bounty hunters from the dangerous underground world, however, had lived by the blade and the wand for years. Violence was their profession, their daily reality. After the first instant of shock, they sprang immediately into action.
One after another, the bounty hunters waved their wands blasting through shop doors and brick walls with explosive curses. They charged into the buildings lining the cobblestone street, seeking cover and defensible positions.
'The Knight Bus?! They used the bloody Knight Bus?!'
Thanatos had already taken cover behind the wooden bar of what had once been a pub. Crouched low, he peeked out cautiously with both eyes at the massive three-decker purple bus now drenched in blood rain, parked before Gringotts' damaged entrance.
His right eye twitched nonstop!
The sheer cunning of the Death Eaters was laid completely bare for all to see!
Without a doubt, for such a high-profile operation, the Ministry would have sealed off Diagon Alley in advance with every security measure they could devise. Apparition and the Floo Network, any form of instant magical transportation, would surely be completely blocked.
As for ground level approaches, the Ministry would have cleared the entire area beforehand of all civilians and established both physical and magical barriers at every entrance point.
But the Ministry certainly hadn't anticipated that the Death Eaters would make audacious use of the Knight Bus!
Thanatos clenched his teeth hard enough to make his jaw ache, and a flash of determination crossed his calculating eyes.
Staying here in this death trap was tantamount to suicide. That bastard Watson had devised such an aggressive, unprecedented method to force the escaped Death Eaters to turn themselves in publicly. The provocation had been so humiliating, that the Dark Lord himself might personally appear in Diagon Alley to make a statement!
But just as the powerful impulse to retreat surged through him, a searing, agonizing heat erupted from within his own body. The sensation was indescribable as if his very blood were boiling in his veins,.
His face changed drastically.
'Damn you, Fawley, just wait!' he thought viciously through gritted teeth, suppressing a scream. 'When this is over, you're a dead man!'
The binding power of the magical contract was astonishingly strong, far more potent than he'd anticipated!
BOOM!
Another massive explosion followed in quick sequence. In the fierce gale that scoured everything in its path, the shops nearest to Gringotts crumbled like rotted wood.
Thanatos suddenly raised his staff high, channeling his magical power through it. A shimmering barrier emerged around him, barely holding against the violent storm of debris and magical energy!
Amid the vicious black tempest that howled through the street, numerous egg-shell-like glowing magical shields lit up across the battlefield as other bounty hunters and the few competent Hit Wizards created their own desperate protections.
The infamous Knight Bus of the British Ministry of Magic—that purple eyesore that had transported countless wizards safely for decades shattered completely into pieces in that last explosion.
A door-sized irregular chunk of its frame, twisted and blackened, embedded itself deep into the gigantic marble pillar before Gringotts with such force that the entire column cracked!
ROAR!!!
A roar drenched with pure, mindless savagery yanked the minds of the bounty hunters who had been occupied cursing the Ministry and Fawley back to the battlefield.
Thanatos's gaze pierced through the golden-red curtain of rain, through the smoke and dust, and fixed upon the creatures that had suddenly appeared on the field. Behind his concealing mask, his face turned absolutely ashen.
The blood drained from his face as he recognized what he was seeing.
"Giants! Those are bloody giants!"
As the initial turbulence from the explosions died down slightly, someone among the defenders shrieked in terror and near psychological collapse:
"There aren't supposed to be any purebred giants left anywhere in Britain! Where did these monsters come from?!"
Thanatos's lips twitched with something between a grimace and a bitter smile. 'Did that even need asking?'
Giants had fought willingly under the Dark Lord's banner in the last war, serving as his shock troops and siege weapons. And after more than a decade of absence, the Dark Lord had clearly won their allegiance once more.
Everyone on the battlefield fell into varying degrees of panic because of the massive, colossal beings that had suddenly appeared among them.
But these rampaging giants weren't kind enough or patient enough to wait politely for the wizards to collect themselves and prepare proper defenses. These brutish, hideously ugly behemoths—each one standing around twenty-five feet tall, with skin like diseased leather and face that showed only violence moved with purpose!
The earth beneath them shook violently with each thunderous footstep.
Two giants clad in nothing but waistcloths roared at the sky, their expressions twisted with savage ferocity. Like unstoppable siege engines, they charged straight at Gringotts.
CLANG!
Amid the earth-shattering tremors, one particularly aggressive giant simply lifted its massive hand and ripped off Gringotts' first enormous brass door as though it were made of parchment.
The giant held the door like a shield. Then, roaring its victory, it charged directly into the marble entrance hall of Gringotts with ground-shaking steps.
The other giant wrapped its massive arms completely around one of the thick marble columns that supported the grand entrance porch.
ROAR!
In the hair-raising sound of the giant's triumphant roar, the massive pillar snapped clean off at its base. The resulting collapse raised clouds of choking dust and sent chunks of marble the size of carriages tumbling down!
The sheer absurdity of it left Thanatos feeling numb.
Just two adult giants, working for less than a minute, had nearly demolished half of Gringotts' entrance hall.
Watching this unfold with his own eyes, Thanatos stood beneath his shimmering magical barrier, his expression was completely wooden.
"Ah! AAHHH!"
Amid the rumbling that sounded like constant thunder, a faint, unremarkable scream reached Thanatos's ears through all the other noise.
He immediately looked over toward the source.
About a hundred feet away through the hazy ash and smoke, a human figure wreathed completely in magical flames let out a wretched, agonized shriek. His limbs thrashed desperately, frantically, trying to beat out the cursed fire that was consuming him.
But it was destined to be futile.
In less than ten seconds of horrific suffering, the bounty hunter who had attempted to flee the battlefield vanished utterly in the cursed flames!
Thanatos nearly cursed aloud in frustration and fear!
But such words were useless now!
These giants, he realized, had absolutely no interest in the seized gold scattered on the ground around them. They weren't here for theft or reclamation of wealth. They were here purely for destruction.
More than a dozen giants improvised weapons from their surroundings. Some picked up twisted wreckage from the destroyed Knight Bus, wielding rough metal fragments the size of dining tables.
Others hefted massive stones from the ground, chunks of cobblestone or broken building weighing hundreds of pounds. Still others swung broken marble columns like clubs.
Like a surging flood of destruction, they rolled through the street. Wherever they passed, buildings collapsed into rubble and the ground itself caved in under their weight, creating craters!
These bounty hunters and Ministry Hit Wizards were, of course, also prime targets for the giants' rage.
Three giants suddenly turned their attention to a cluster of defenders and shouted their challenge before charging directly toward them. The wizard in the lead was maintaining a decent magical shield.
It meant nothing to a giant.
The giant swatted the wizard away with one casual backhand slap from its palm. The man flew screaming through the air for what must have been two hundred feet, before crashing down through a distant rooftop and disappearing into a shop below. His fate was unknown.
"Damned beasts!"
Tafir roared. His unique bone-wand swung in a perfect circle above his head. Deep blue magical light gathered and concentrated at the tip, swirling in the crystal orb that was wrapped in fingers.
The spell shot forth like a lance, striking the face of the giant charging directly at him with perfect accuracy!
"ROAR!"
The concentrated deep blue light possessed terrible, irresistible corrosive power. The giant that took the blast head-on in its ugly face immediately let out an anguished, thunderous roar.
Amid the terrible howling of pain and rage, half of the giant's coarse, leathery face began to melt like a wax candle held too close to flame. The skin and muscle tissue liquefied, exposing blood-red muscle tissue and white bone beneath. The sagging, melted skin piled up in grotesque folds like a "mille-feuille" pastry, hanging in a bloody, obscene mess from its massive chin!
"It's still not dead?! How is it still standing?!"
The triumphant smile barely forming on Tafir's face beneath his golden-patterned mask twisted immediately into frustrated fury and rising fear.
That spell had cost him significant magical energy!
The wounded giant staggered back two steps, nearly losing its balance. But then it steadied itself, planting its feet firmly. Its rotten maw—now half-destroyed with jawbone visible through melted flesh opened extremely wide.
The roar it unleashed was so powerful it created visible ripples in the air!
With its left eye socket completely melted away and its eyeball dangling grotesquely outside against what remained of its cheek, the giant somehow locked onto Tafir's exact position with its remaining good eye. That eye was filled with deep hatred.
ROAR!
With another earth-shattering, vengeful roar that promised only death, the giant lunged forward. It intended, quite clearly, to swallow Tafir whole in its destroyed mouth!
Even Tafir, battle-hardened as he was from years of mercenary works and violent confrontations lost his focus for a critical second in the face of the terrifying giant bearing down on him.
The sheer visceral horror of its melted face, of its exposed anatomy, of its murderous intent—it was simply too much to process while maintaining combat effectiveness.
And on a battlefield where life and death hung by the thinnest thread, that single second of hesitation was absolutely fatal.
By the time Tafir came fully back to his senses, the shadow cast by the giant's outstretched hand already covered him completely, blotting out the dim sunlight!
'It's over.'
Despair flashed through Tafir's eyes behind his mask.
That powerful corrosive spell he'd just cast was his signature move, his most devastating attack, honed over years and responsible for dozens of kills. Yet it hadn't even managed to kill a single giant, had only wounded it!
At this moment, with the surging magic still churning within him from the previous spell, he knew with sick certainty that he couldn't deliver a proper finishing blow to this giant. He was defenseless and exhausted.
ROAR!
Suddenly, amid the constant bellowing and chaos on the battlefield, a different kind of roar emerged.
The giant reaching down for Tafir with its massive hand found its toppling body suddenly unable to move forward, as though it had hit an invisible wall. In its simple rage and confusion, it instinctively turned its ruined head to look behind itself—
Only to discover that behind it, at some point during the chaos, a massive dragon skeleton had appeared!
The skeleton was enormous, easily thirty feet from snout to tail, constructed of bones that gleamed white as snow. In the empty eye sockets of the dragon's skull burned two flames of purest black, like concentrated hellfire given form—to gaze upon them directly was to feel the pull of damnation itself!
The dragon skeleton raised up on its powerful hind legs. Its two front claws, each talon as long as a sword blade, gripped the giant's shoulders firmly, preventing it from bending forward to complete its attack on Tafir.
The strange thing before it left even the furious giant momentarily confused—it had never encountered such an "odd" opponent before.
"Die, you filthy beast!"
Thanatos's eyes gleamed with dark malice and satisfaction behind his mask as he suddenly raised his staff high above his head.
Under his control, the black flames burning in the dragon skeleton's eye sockets blazed suddenly brighter. One of its white claws released its grip on the giant's shoulder.
The freed claw pulled back for a fraction of a second, gathering momentum.
Then, like a streak of white lightning accompanied by a piercing shriek that tore through the air, the skeletal talon plunged forward and instantly buried itself deep into the giant's already bloody, ruined eye socket!
In the midst of the rumbling blues and shaking hearth, a strange moment of silence fell.
The giant's now-powerless massive body wavered uncertainly for a moment. Then it gradually toppled back like a felled tree, hitting the ground with an impact that created a small crater and raised a massive cloud of choking dust!
"Brilliantly done, Thanatos!"
Tafir, recovering from his near-death experience, spat forcefully onto the ground—partly from relief, partly to clear the dust from his mouth. His voice carried immense satisfaction and genuine respect.
"I owe you my life, you magnificent bastard!"
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