Dumbledore's authorization continued to echo across the vast, snow-covered plain, leaving many of the wizards who had traveled such great distances specifically to stop Bryan exchanging worried glances with one another.
The impact was most obvious on their leader, Vipor Dreghorn, whose already tense facial features darkened considerably. He pressed his thin lips together in a tight line of frustrated disapproval and began panting rapidly several tis.
"I think Dumbledore must have gone completely and utterly mad!" Vipor finally managed to exclaim, his voice cracking slightly with the strain of his emotions.
"Well then, that certainly settles the matter quite definitively," Bryan responded calmly.
As Fawkes's magnificent tail feather continued its graceful descent, burning to nothing more than fine ash that was imdiately scattered by the ever-present wind, Bryan gave a satisfied smile.
"I don't anticipate that this business will require very much ti to resolve," He said to the crowd. "You're all perfectly welco to wait for here, though of course, I believe that making your way to one of the nearby taverns for a warming glass of whiskey or perhaps so hot butterbeer would be the considerably wiser and more comfortable choice, given the harsh conditions."
None of the gathered wizards and witches showed any will to leave their current positions and seek shelter, which was only natural given the extraordinary circumstances.
If they were unable to prevent Bryan Watson from entering the infamous fortress of Nurngard, then at the very least, they absolutely could not afford to miss witnessing what many were already referring to among themselves as a potential "battle of the century".
After casting one final glance at the silent crowd of observers, Bryan turned around preparing to begin his final approach toward the silhouette of Nurngard.
"Wait!" The urgent call suddenly rang out from sowhere within the crowd.
Bryan's eyes imdiately scanned the group and found Louise, her familiar face was standing out among the official robes. His eyebrows raised slightly in a silent question, encouraging her to speak.
Having suddenly attracted the focused attention of so many wizards all at once, Louise imdiately felt her anxiety spike. Her heart began racing like a runaway horse galloping across an open field, and she could feel the blood rushing through her veins as adrenaline flooded her system.
She swallowed hard as she struggled to steady her breathing and find the courage to speak in front of such an intimidating audience. Looking up at Bryan's reassuring figure standing on the small slope above them all, Louise took a deep, steadying breath.
"You... you must be careful," She managed to say.
Bryan raised his eyebrows in slight surprise at her words. Louise caught his reaction and nodded with growing determination, as if his acknowledgnt had given her the strength to continue.
"I heard from Kingsley about the terrible things that Dark Wizard called Grindelwald has done throughout his life,"
Her voice paused for a mont as she seed to gather her thoughts and emotions, and Louise's expression shifted to show a sowhat lancholy smile.
"You have to co back safely, I—I also heard about how you and other wizards typically handle Muggles who accidentally witness magic, so... if—"
The steadily drifting snowflakes continued their endless descent from the gloomy sky, several of them landing delicately on the hair of this ordinary yet sohow extraordinary Muggle girl, creating a crown of tiny white crystals that seed to highlight her courage in this mont.
She raised her pale face toward Bryan, and sparkling droplets of condensed breath hung like tiny diamonds from her dark eyelashes.
"If I'm going to lose all of my mories of this world and everything I've experienced, then I want you to be the one to do it personally,"
Bryan's mouth moved slightly, as various emotions churned beneath his face. He seed to want to give her a reassuring smile, but sohow couldn't quite manage to make his expression cooperate with his intentions.
The reporters who had managed to follow the official delegation and had co specifically to witness and docunt whatever dramatic events might unfold were so excited by this unexpected personal exchange that they nearly shouted aloud with glee at their good fortune.
This was exactly the kind of human-interest angle that would make their stories truly morable and compelling to their readers. They raised their magical caras and began frantically photographing both Bryan and Louise from every possible angle.
In their desperate pursuit for better vantage points and more dramatic shots, these eager colleagues from various magical publications even went so far as to physically push aside the black-faced and increasingly irritated Vipor, who was still struggling to co to terms with how completely his task had failed.
"Very well," Bryan finally nodded.
He then shifted his attention toward the excited reporters, his voice carrying a warning despite its playful tone.
"Cut that part out."
While the reporters were still standing there in a sowhat dazed state, trying to figure out exactly what he ant by that comnt and whether he was truly serious about his request, Bryan turned around and finally resud his steps toward his ultimate destination.
The wind and snow that had been providing a constant backdrop to their gathering suddenly intensified. Across the vast, seemingly endless snowy plain, howling winds that seed to carry the voices of long-dead spirits whipped up massive swirls of drifting snow, that blurred everyone's vision and made it increasingly difficult to follow Bryan's progress toward the dark fortress.
Bryan walked with slow, steady steps, approaching Nurngard step by step.
Rumble!
Thunder suddenly echoed beneath the gloomy sky drawing startled gazes from the crowd. At so point during Bryan's approach—no one could say exactly when it had begun—an even darker layer of low-hanging, leaden clouds had appeared beneath the already oppressive gloomy sky flickering with heart-stopping, dizzying displays of lightning.
A fierce thunderstorm seed to be brewing over their head.
The sudden appearance of such a violent thunderstorm at Nurngard, a place still held firmly in winter's grip where such weather phenona should have been nearly impossible, was truly bizarre and deeply unsettling to all who witnessed it.
Looking up at the nacing thunder clouds that seed to be following Bryan Watson's determined footsteps toward Nurngard, hanging threateningly over their heads like harbingers of doom, Vipor Dreghorn felt an overwhelming sense of heavy dread settling in his heart.
In a trance-like state brought on by stress and exhaustion, he seed to see the European magical world once again preparing to plunge into the turbulent, blood-soaked years of war.
Creak!
After what seed like an eternity of walking through the increasingly fierce storm, Bryan, now thoroughly covered with clinging snow that had accumulated on his coat, finally stood in front of the black iron gate.
He brushed the accumulated snow from his body, shaking it from his shoulders and sleeves, then looked up with interest at the inscription that had been carved into the stone of the castle wall, those infamous words that had once inspired a generation of followers:
"For the Greater Good."
He reached out and pushed open the prison's massive main door.
As if the entire fortress had been enchanted with powerful sound-muffling magic designed to isolate it from the outside world, the mont Bryan stepped across the threshold into this land that had been forsaken by both wizards and ti itself, the fierce howling of wind and snow imdiately beca faint and distant.
The vast courtyard that spread out in front of him held absolutely no sign of current life or activity. Everything around him was filled with a deathly silence.
The main keep's massive door stood open, its once-luxurious decorations and carvings now buried beneath layers of ice and snow, along with all the grand ambitions and dreams of forr tis.
Rather than hurrying upstairs, Bryan stood in the entrance hall where dripping water had frozen to ice. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
The decay that filled his nostrils seed to transport him back half a century, to see the wizards who had spread warfare and terror across the entire world and were now nothing more than collections of bones resting in forgotten graves scattered across Europe.
Though their dreams had been arrogant, and destructive, there was no denying that they had been the undisputed masters of their particular era of history.
Despite everything they had done, despite the terrible cost of their ambitions, Bryan felt a slight respect rising in his heart for the sheer scope of what they had attempted to achieve, even as he remained fully aware of how wrong they had been.
Nurngard had no guards.
The master of this castle, who was simultaneously the prison's only remaining inmate, had chosen to remain here voluntarily.
Bryan found himself wondering what had truly been the final blow that had destroyed such a powerful wizard. Had it been the crushing of his grand dreams and ambitions, or had it been the betrayal by soone?
The spiral staircase leading to the tower's peak was also covered with a thick layer of solid ice. As Bryan stepped onto the spiral steps, the ice beneath his feet began to lt, carrying life-giving moisture to seeds that had slumbered for years in the cracks between stones.
Bryan walked slowly, stopping from ti to ti to gaze out through the narrow windows at the snow-covered mountains that stretched endlessly in all directions.
The view from each level revealed the sa eternal landscape—a world without seasons, without the normal passage of ti.
Solitude was Nurngard's most defining and eternal the.
Splash, splash.
The solid ice that had coated the spiral staircase for so many years continued to lt steadily under Bryan's passage, the resulting snowlt forming small streams that washed over the stone steps.
As the accumulated ice and dirt were washed away, the natural, deep color of the stone began to erge, revealing the craftsmanship of the original builders. The splashing sound of flowing water inexplicably brought so asure of vitality to Nurngard.
Tap, tap, tap—
Stepping on the wet stone stairs, Bryan quickened his pace and soon reached the top of the tower.
A short, narrow platform stretched leading to a single room at the far end. The room's wooden door stood slightly open. After pausing for a mont, Bryan slowly drew his hands from his coat pockets and walked toward the room.
The rust-covered door hinges rotated slowly, producing a sharp, grating noise. The difficult, labored force required to move the door after so many years of disuse made the thin wooden panel tremble and shake on its fra. The mont he finally managed to push the door fully open, a current of stale air ruffled Bryan's gray hair.
The stone chamber in front of him was not particularly cramped by normal standards, Bryan estimated it to be roughly half the size of his office back at Hogwarts but the accumulation of countless newspapers that had been piled along walls, stacked beside the crude wooden desk, and stored under the simple wooden bed took up so much available space that the room appeared quite narrow and cramped.
There was more than one person waiting in the room.
An elderly man sat on the edge of the narrow bed, his entire attention focused with intensity on reading a newspaper. His hair was graying, and beneath his simple morning robe that had clearly been washed so many tis over the years that it had faded to white— was a gaunt, skeletal fra so frail that one couldn't help but worry he might simply collapse and crumble to dust at any mont.
The old man's eyes, which had once blazed with the fire of ambition and the certainty of his own destiny, were now clouded with the signs of advancing cataracts.
He continued to stare at the newspaper he held in his hands as if completely unaware that Bryan had pushed open his door and entered his room, seemingly oblivious to the presence of both his visitor and the other person who stood in a position of obvious reverence in front of him.
Bryan focused his gaze to examine this other person in the room.
This second man was also clearly old, but compared to the thin old man sitting on the bed, he appeared far more respectable.
He wore a well-tailored deep gray wool overcoat, and his hair and the carefully maintained mustache beneath his nose had been ticulously grood. His gold-rimd square glasses, while displaying his refinent and what most would consider gentlemanly bearing, could not entirely hide the trace of madness deep within his brown eyes.
Click—
Bryan entered the room fully.
Rather than acknowledging or even looking toward the frail old man who continued to sit on the bed reading his newspaper with apparent complete absorption, Bryan instead focused his complete attention on the well-dressed wizard who stood in a position of obvious reverence and submission.
His expression remained calm and controlled, though his voice carried a note of satisfied lightness.
"Mr. Augustus Raman, I presu?" Bryan asked.
Adam Vogel, who had worn so many different faces and assud so many different identities did not look toward Bryan or acknowledge his presence in any way.
Instead, under Bryan's watchful gaze, he carefully removed his gold-rimd glasses and slowly knelt down on one knee before the figure of Gellert Grindelwald.
His expression as he assud this position of complete submission was utterly devout, filled with the kind of religious passion typically reserved for the most sacred of ceremonies.
And his voice, when he finally spoke, carried the fanatical tone of a true believer addressing his holy master.
"Adam has completed your instructions,"
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