Blood! Blood!! Blood!!!
Harry jerked awake, frantically groping around on the nightstand for his cycling glasses. He was breathing raggedly, gasping for air like a fish out of water.
Having somehow calmed down, he huddled on the bed, hugging his knees with his hands and trying to even out his breathing. The last thing he needed was to start crying – that's it! Then in the morning, in addition to the usual humiliations, his uncle and cousin would probably happily gossip about his red eyes and swollen face.
The boy grimaced. When his fat cousin Dudley was bawling like a girl over a minor scratch he had gotten while teasing their neighbor Mrs. Figg's cats, no one called him a crybaby. Aunt Petunia was jumping around "poor Dudley" like a hen and blowing on the "mortal wound", and Uncle Vernon was loudly promising to call "the right place" and have the crazy cat lady jailed and her flea-ridden monsters put to sleep!
In the presence of his "dearest" relatives, it was better not to show weakness - none at all. He learned this almost as soon as he began to speak. As well as the fact that any manifestation of "strangeness" in the Dursleys' house was immediately and mercilessly punished!
And his aunt and uncle didn't care that Harry himself didn't know why such strange things were happening around him! For example, at the beginning of this school year, he suddenly somehow ended up on the roof of the school, although he had literally just been running away from Dudley and his friends on the ground? Or how did Aunt Petunia's vase, broken by his fat cousin - and for which Harry would have certainly been punished anyway - suddenly magically glue itself back together? And what's most offensive is that he was punished anyway - but not for destroying the vase, but for restoring it! At that moment, the boy thought that this was the height of injustice.
However, Harry had already managed to see more than once or twice that the world was an unfair thing. Especially when Dudley got away with killing him.
Exactly. Murder. Almost six months ago, in the middle of the summer holidays, Harry Potter was killed.
Harry shuddered at the thought. Everything that had happened last summer had been terrible, strange, and wrong! But to simply state that he was dead was borderline insane.
But the fact remained: six months ago, his cousin had crossed the line in his bullying. When Harry was standing on a stepladder, watering the flowers in the pots hanging on the wall, on instructions from his aunt, Dudley pushed the rickety ladder - and the boy fell backwards onto a low garden fence with all his might, breaking his ribs and spine.
Then, on the very edge of his consciousness, he heard for some time the screams, lamentations, and crying of his aunt - apparently, she was already imagining an explanation with the police and the collapse of her ideal reputation among the neighbors. And then the boy's consciousness faded, and he heard completely different voices.
- DO YOU WANT TO LIVE?
If he could, Harry would have shuddered. But here, in this strange place or state, he wasn't sure he even had a body that could shudder! Only the terrible voices that spoke to him, hanging in the Nothingness, shimmering with incredible and terrible colors.
LIFE… YOU DON'T WANT TO DIE, HOW? DON'T DIE!
WE WILL HELP, YES. SURVIVE. AND TAKE REVENGE! YOU WANT THIS, DON'T YOU, LITTLE MAGE? REVENGE!
WE WILL HELP YOU, YES. OH, YES! SURVIVE. TAKE REVENGE. BECOME STRONGER AND MORE POWERFUL. GET EVERYTHING YOU WANT, YOUNG MAGICIAN! JUST SAY "YES" TO US!..
"I want to live," he thought in panic. "I don't want to die!"
YES-A-A! - the voices howled enthusiastically.
WE WILL GIVE YOU LIFE. WE ARE KIND. OH YES! WE GIVE YOU LIFE, AND YOU WILL GIVE LIFE TO US. WHEN THE TIME COMES, YOU WILL FEED US. YOU WILL CALL US. ALL WILL BEND BEFORE THE POWER OF CHAOS!..
At that moment, Harry's consciousness completely faded.
He woke up a day later in his closet under the stairs. And immediately began to feel himself, looking for signs of injuries and... not finding them.
The first thought was - it was a dream! And the stairs, and Dudley, and the fall on the fence, and the creepy voices in the void. For some time, Harry tried to convince himself of this. But the Dursleys' frightened glances in his direction, his aunt's cautious questions about how he was feeling - all this made him doubt the unreality of what had happened. And at night...
That same night he began to have nightmares.
Well, nightmares. More like visions. Strange, very strange visions! The first of which was a picture of what happened while he was unconscious.
...Here is one of Mrs. Figg's cats, who was sitting nearby when Harry fell down the stairs, briskly jumped up from his place and rushed into his mistress's house. And then, some three minutes later, when the Dursleys were already huddled over the boy's broken body and began to realize the gravity of the situation, a loud bang was heard behind them.
In the middle of the lawn in their backyard stood a tall old man in a gaudy purple robe, a pointed hat and a long gray beard - in general, the strange old man was dressed like a classic fairy-tale wizard. But the image of a kind old man did not fit with the extremely angry and tense look of the gray-bearded man!
He flew up to the dying boy lying on the ground and said something sharply. At the same time, almost not listening to the Dursleys' excuses, he began to move some strange twig over Harry's body.
Harry himself watched the unfolding picture, as if floating in the air a little to the side. Now the old man lifts his head and pours some swill into his mouth from a test tube fished out of his sleeve. Now he shouts at Uncle Vernon, causing him to shudder, quickly pick up his nephew's light body and carry him into the house.
But the old man is left alone on the lawn. He waves his twig from side to side a couple of times, causing barely noticeable threads, like a web, to fall from its tip. And for some reason Harry is absolutely sure that thanks to these "webs" no one in the area will even think that something was happening in the Dursleys' yard – even if someone heard or saw something…
Well, that at least somehow explained his sudden "recovery." And it was, perhaps, the only clear and understandable vision from the whole series of dreams that he had seen in the past time!
Making sure his hands were no longer shaking, Harry pushed his glasses onto his nose and closed his eyes tiredly.
Last night there were these dreams again. Again.
Most often, these were voices. Very similar to those that were heard in his head while he lay, recovering from the fall from a height. But at the same time, different. And at the same time - not quite voices! He could not even explain to himself exactly what it was.
Most of all, it was like… desires. Well, yes. Strange, bright, burning desires! And the nature of these desires varied depending on what Harry had experienced the day before.
The voice that had roared in his head just five minutes ago demanded that he kill. No, not like that - it demanded that he KILL! As dirty, cruel, and terrifying as possible! So that blood would flow, so that bits of brains would splatter, and slimy intestines would spread across the floor! And at some point, despite his fear, Harry thought that he would not mind following the voice's advice.
Uncle Vernon's sister, Aunt Marge, had come to 4 Privet Drive for Easter a couple of days ago, and of course she had brought her disgusting bulldogs. The task of feeding, walking and grooming them had been entrusted, of course, to the "offspring of criminals and drug addicts" - that is, him, Harry.
Along the way, Marge also threw mud at the boy, tried in every way to humiliate him, constantly lamenting what a saint Petunia was, since she took such an ungrateful, vile boy into her home after the inevitable end of her wayward alcoholic sister.
Harry clenched his fists, ground his teeth, but tried to hold back. He knew that if he started arguing, it would only get worse.
Oddly enough, walking Marge's bulldogs turned out to be a bit of a relief during this difficult week. At least until the creatures tried to show their character. In any case, they did not allow themselves to loudly discuss the "like a bitch, like a puppies", "like a cherry, like a tree" and other hints that Harry was the same inferior, dirty loser his parents once were.
And on this day, after terrible nightmares filled with violence, he barely endured until the moment when he was sent to walk Evil and Drone, two of Marge's favorites. It was strange, of course, that this quarrelsome aunt trusted "her own blood" to Harry. He was a "juvenile delinquent, a liar and a future drug addict" - what would it cost him to do something with a couple of bulldogs during a walk?
Judging by the suspicious glances the Evil One was giving the boy holding the leash, he somehow sensed Harry's mood. He growled softly, as if to suggest that it was more likely that he and the Drone would do something to him than he would to the bulldogs.
The rest of the walk was quite calm. Harry was even able to finally calm down and think.
For six months now he had been torn between conflicting thoughts, ideas and desires. Several visions, similar to the one he had seen immediately after his brief death, strange and frightening images. Well, and a multitude of voices that whispered, muttered, moaned and growled as soon as he fell asleep!
He even began to pick out some of the voices from the crowd. One of them had been ramming his brain for the last few nights, insisting, ordering him to get up immediately and go dismember someone! Preferably the bastard Marge!
"Cut open her fat belly!" the voice screamed. "Let her admire her own entrails! Let her intestines lie on the floor, and let her own dogs lick up the blood and fat that flows across the parquet! Let her ugly head become your trophy!"
Harry stumbled, causing another disgruntled growl from the bulldogs. But he hardly noticed it. Because for the first time in six months the voice sounded not in a dream, but in reality.
While Sinister and Drone were doing their business under the fence of one of the Dursleys' neighbors, Harry leaned against that very fence and tried to calm down. His breathing was ragged again, the blood was pulsing in his temples, and his stomach was twisted in a spasm of horror.
Exactly! He watched something like that on TV when the Dursleys weren't looking. It's the same with maniacs who kill people: first they hear voices that tell them to kill, and then they go and kill!
So what, is he, Harry, a maniac?!
"Shh!" - the boy's head rang out again. "Of course you're not a maniac, Harry. Maniacs are so stupid to shed blood and even more stupid to get caught by the police. You're not going to get caught by the police, are you?"
The stunned boy automatically shook his head.
"Wonderful!" the purring voice rang out again. "Don't be afraid of us, Harry. We have come at your call and we will not harm you. On the contrary, we will help you!"
"Who are you?" Harry asked mentally, swallowing nervously.
"We?" the voice seemed to "smile". "Call us 'spirit-advisers'. We have been sent to help you. To keep you safe, Harry! And to help you take your rightful place in life, of course!"
"P-place?" Harry blinked, still unable to understand what the voice was talking about.
"Yes ," the voice simply answered. "With my help, you will become stronger, smarter, and more powerful! You will rise to heights you could never have dreamed of before! You will learn things that even the smartest, bravest of the living have never dreamed of! You will be able to..."
"Nonsense ," another voice rang out, as if suppressing the previous one. "Power, might, the heights… Listen to me, Harry," a soft and seemingly tired voice addressed the boy. "Think - what will it all cost if you die again? But this time finally, irrevocably! You have suffered enough without ending your life like this. As for life itself..." - here the voice paused for a moment. "Is this life? Your only relatives hate you. They mock you, they poison you! Punish you, starve you - simply because you exist. Your mother and father are dead. You have no friends! You are alone, Harry ," the voice sighed mournfully, and tears welled up in the boy's eyes. He had not experienced such a sharp and all-consuming pity for himself for a long time! "But it was like this before!" — a voice suddenly said, which could have belonged to his mother or, say, a loving grandfather. "I'm here to comfort you. With me, you'll never be alone..."
And Harry would have given in to this soft and understanding voice, but suddenly he realized that it seemed to be enveloping his mind with something sticky and viscous, dragging him... somewhere.
A surge of fear flared in my stomach, which quickly rose to my chest, where it exploded in a sudden fit of anger!
"Bastard! Get lost!" roared a third voice, the same one Harry had heard earlier that day. "Listen to me, boy ," the third one growled terribly. "You don't need pity! You don't need this drooling and snot! And you don't need this long-winded ranting either! Just go to the kitchen, get a steak knife and stab that fat bitch in the belly!"
Harry listened to this squabble in horror, sitting under the neighbor's fence, clutching his head and rocking back and forth. Marge's bulldogs, sitting nearby, whined piteously, pressed close to each other - they clearly sensed something coming from the boy. Something truly terrible!
"Or better yet, climb into Vernon's garden shed," the voice seemed to lick its lips. "Take an axe there! And chop off Marge's head!"
Harry couldn't stand it any longer, he jumped up and ran away, hoping that the headwind would cool his head and take away those terrible voices! The Evil One and the Drone also ran - only in the other direction, closer to their beloved mistress and further away from the scary little man who reeked of otherworldly horror.
Harry stopped in the city park, a small but rather popular place for recreation for the residents of Little Whinging. Even now, the passersby walking here and there looked strangely at the skinny boy, dressed in rags that were obviously too big for him and breathing heavily, as if from a long run.
"I'm not a maniac... I'm not a maniac... Not a maniac!.." the boy muttered under his breath, shaking his head and sniffling. Looking around and noticing the wary glances of people walking nearby, he blushed embarrassedly and hurried into the depths of the park - fortunately, even in such a small green area there were a couple of secluded alleys.
There he plopped down on a rusty bench - this corner of the park had clearly been forgotten long ago.
Harry often visited this place - hiding from Dudley and his friends when they were chasing him to beat him up. On the one hand, this bench was not visible from the central alleys, but the view of these alleys themselves was excellent! The perfect place to hide from anything!
At least that's how it used to be.
"Look, ice cream!" the voice in Harry's head sounded again. It was the fourth one, as the boy counted hopelessly.
This time the voice was not soft, caring, or angry. It rang like a silver bell, bright, mischievous, and, for some reason, Harry thought, the youngest of them all.
"And who are you? Also a maniacal spirit-adviser?" the boy thought, resigned to his fate.
"Ha-ha!" the voice laughed loudly. "Maniacal, you say! Although the other three give the same impression, don't you think?"
"That's true," the boy sighed. "And what are you going to suggest?"
"Well..." the voice even thought for a bit. "I have a lot to offer ," Harry's fourth interlocutor finally chuckled. "When was the last time you ate ice cream?"
"Two years ago," the boy answered almost without thinking. He remembered how he had gotten a strawberry ice cream cone that Dudley had bitten into – for some reason he didn't like it. And so Aunt Petunia gave the cone to Harry – and with such an expression on her face as if she was doing him an incredible favor!
Then it seemed to him that there was nothing tastier in the world than this pathetic bitten cone! Harry's mouth even filled with saliva from the memories of that moment, it was so vivid.
"There!" the voice exclaimed, as if that explained everything. "I can give you as much ice cream as you can eat! And cakes. And toys – the best ones! And a whole lot more! Listen to me – and I'll teach you how to have fun ," the voice enumerated enthusiastically.
Harry had calmed down a bit and could adequately perceive what the strange voices were telling him. Shaking his head, he stood up from the bench.
"I… I need to think," the boy shook his head and, staggering, wandered towards Yew Street.
But he didn't make it to house number 4 - he collapsed at the very beginning of the street. Harry simply lost consciousness from the impressions he had experienced...
Immaterium. Beyond time and space.
Four daemons, representing radically opposed forces, fought across the vastness of the Immaterium. Their battle was not on par with the epic confrontation of the Chaos Gods they served, but in this part of the Great Ether even that was an extraordinary event!
These daemons had only just begun to acquire a more or less stable form - before that they were simply four clots of formless energy. Disembodied and thrown to the outskirts of the warp, these entities had lost most of their strength. They were disoriented and weakened!
And they would have dissolved into the raging ocean of the Immaterium, lost their strength and their very personality - but chance decided everything.
A powerful burst of Chaos magic in one of the neighboring worlds shook them up, preventing them from withering and finally perishing. Reaching out with their last strength towards that world, the four demons sensed something that could save them!
The innocent soul of a baby, which his fool mother left unprotected by performing a bloody ritual dedicated to Chaos. The demons simultaneously rushed at such a tasty morsel, but were unable to devour it.
Why? Because each of them wanted this soul only for themselves, not wanting to share it with the others.
And so the battle began! In the light of the soul of a powerful psyker - and the infant was potentially a very powerful psyker - the daemons were even able to acquire some kind of stable form.
A monkey-like humanoid with iridescent skin covered in crystalline spikes deftly twirled a staff sparkling with magic, from the ends of which clots of magical fire were constantly falling. The humanoid's face was constantly changing, as if unable to take any permanent form.
This daemon's name was Tal-Tagazon, and before his banishment to this backwater, he had been one of the heralds of Tzeentch, the Lord of Change.
The second, a multi-armed red-skinned giant with a dog's head, completely covered in rusty sheets of iron, bloody spikes and fiery runes. In each of his hands he clutched a variety of close combat weapons: from a butcher's cleaver to a two-handed axe - with which he tried to get his opponents with a terrible roar.
The giant's name was Arak'cha, and he was once one of the most powerful bloodletters of Khorne, the Blood God.
The third demon resembled a rotten hybrid of a bird and a toad. Pale skin covered in ulcers and rotting wounds, exposed ribs, black feathers sticking out here and there, and peeling crow wings on its back - it seemed as if it were not a living creature, but a resurrected corpse. The skinny and long arms of the terrible creature clutched a huge rusty sword, emitting a putrid yellow light, and acrid poison dripped from its blade.
This was Kagrannar, a former subject of Grandfather Nurgle, the deity of decay, plague and despair.
The last of the four opponents was tall and slender, possessed of long golden hair, snow-white skin and… six eyes. And also a body that at the bottom turned into a long and scaly snake tail with rudimentary spiny fins and ridges. Muscular, painfully beautiful, this demon was armed with an elegantly curved sword and a spiked whip.
Spawn of Slaanesh, Tersamaris was once one of the guardians of the Second Circle of the Palace of Pleasure, and is now forced to fight to the death for the sake of a single soul!
There is no time in the Immaterium, so it was impossible to determine how long this confrontation had been going on. But it was already clear to all participants that there would be no winner: even if one of them was lucky enough to finish off the rest of the opponents, he would not have the strength to even stay afloat in the raging warp storms around him! Not to mention drinking the soul of the intended victim and thereby stabilizing himself.
Finally, the battle died down. Moreover, as all four of them realized, the boy's soul was somehow protected, and therefore, in order to devour it, they would have to sweat! This requires strength. And in order to preserve strength, they would have to engage in dialogue.
For a time, all four demons hung in space. Their images changed and "floated" - after all, the appearance that each of them chose was rather temporary, adopted for a short-term skirmish. And then the bright and iridescent Tal-Tagazon spoke:
- Well, I see that the forces are equal. Each of us is worthy of incarnation in this strange and - here he listened to something - closed world. But we can incarnate only through one single soul.
- This one! - Arak'cha growled in response, snapping his dog's mouth. - I want! To eat! To absorb! To become stronger!
"How primitive," Tersamaris curled his lips, slightly sticking out his forked tongue. "But Khornit is right - that's why we're here. But we already know that! What are you getting at?"
"The servants of the Conspirator always lead to only one thing - to leave the rest with nothing," the rotting Kagrannar sighed sadly, throwing his sword over his shoulder. "And if he started uttering well-known platitudes, it means he wants to turn them into something that is advantageous for him."
"Naturally," the Tzeentch daemon shrugged calmly. "It's foolish to do or say anything that doesn't benefit you, isn't it? But frankly, my suggestion for a way out of this situation may well suit you. Would you like to hear it?"
"One soul open to the warp," the Slaaneshi drawled lazily. "Just one. One is not divisible by four. One is not even divisible by two, for that matter!"
"One wins!" the Khornate growled. "Three lose! Arak'cha will not lose!"
"That is, if you stick to one single, banal possibility—that is, absorbing the soul of this little man," Tal-Tagazon grinned with his ghostly lips, "and ignore other paths."
His interlocutors became thoughtful, nervously glancing sideways at their opponents.
- In the dimension in which we heard the Call, - the Tzeentch smiled wickedly, closing his eyes, - there is a very large proportion of potential psykers. You sense them, don't you? Hear them? Their souls call to us! They beg for us to come and devour them. What is one soul, even an innocent infant with powerful psychic potential, compared to an entire virgin world!
"You cannot fool us," the servant of Nurgle shook his ugly head. "If you think I will back down from this boy after your chatter, then you are the most foolish slave of the Inconstant I have ever met."
"Oh, that would be very kind of you," Tal-Tagazon grinned again. "But unfortunately - or fortunately - nothing is ever simple. I am not talking about the banal absorption of the boy's soul," he leaned forward slightly, "but about a deal.
- A deal? - the snake-like Slaaneshi said in bewilderment after a short pause.
"A deal," the Tzeentchite nodded. "A contract. With a boy. It's simple," he explained, seeing the bewilderment of his vis-à-vis. "We cannot penetrate the closed world ourselves. The only way is for the boy's soul to be open to our influence! But we cannot simply devour it, which means…"
"Then we need to influence him differently. And then, with his help, gain access to this world," Tersamaris smiled thinly. "Clever."
"That's where we stand," the iridescent Tzeentchian daemon bowed smugly. "We will bide our time. We will gather strength. By that time, Harry Potter," he called their target by name, "will have grown up and become self-aware. He will be humiliated, he will suffer - and then we will come. And we will bring our Gifts!"
"Yes!" the dog-headed Khornate roared. "We will come! We will win! Arak'cha will win!"
"And by that time, perhaps, I will understand the reason why an open soul suddenly acquired an incomprehensible protection," Tal-Tagazon chuckled to himself.
The demons waited, they know how to do that - after all, they have all the time in the Universe at their disposal! And then, in early May 1990, they finally waited - the psychic power of a boy named Harry Potter had strengthened enough to withstand the voices of four entities that were thirsty for communication.
The ways of this world have changed, and Chaos has found a way into it...
More chapters on my P@treon: https://patreon.com/OOOTEN