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At least Krum is warm. Sleeping with him at my back erased the need to complain about the cold of the cave, although my rest was still interrupted by the chattering of goblins. I hate goblins. It is so difficult to get along with them, and they are the worst gift givers in the world. Some people marry them though, which absolutely boggles the mind. I suppose that's one way to get rich quick.
“Look, I think we're about to be ambushed. We should probably locate a way out of here.” says Vasily Sergeyevich, totally harshing the vibe when we all gather around a conjured fire for a bit of early morning vodka and tea and reheated calamari.
“I don't know what gives you that idea.” Yuri Igorevich is not in a good mood and I can't tell if he's being serious or not. His *whispers* Mediterranean hair is (hilariously) suffering the effects of pond, cave, and a dire lack of Sleekeazy’s. First World Problem though. His heavy mop of scalp noodles adequately keeps him warm, but the same cannot be said of my poor Northern strands or the poor Northern strands of Olga and Anna.
“Let the goblins come. I will slaughter them all!” Nikolai Alexandrovich kicks at a loose rock, the Medvedev Twins nodding in agreement.
Yuri kicks the rock right back at the former tsar. “There's probably a million in this mine. How many are there of us-”
Mitya giggles. “Not many.”
“-And we don't possess nearly enough vodka to travel home. I'd rather not become a storytelling skeleton some other schmuck may uitilise to divine the tale of the failures of my comrades-”
"So stop yapping, Yura, and let's go.” Krum shoots to his feet, wand in hand, extremely keen to go spelunking for some reason. He doesn't even have his broom on him, so I don't know why he's so happy.
Regardless of his struggle to exist on the ground, we do in fact follow his advice, and rapidly get the hell out of there, tip toeing at great speed down a maze of pitch black stone corridors, our shadows dancing crazily in the one lumos light we dare cast. The fear, the cold, and the dark crack our leader's composure in nought point two seconds. Or, more likely, his frizzing hair is destroying his mental equilibrium because a very minor thing almost sparks an incident of friendly slaughter.
On the way down an aggressively steep switchback, Mitya accidentally sets a pebble rolling, the hard noise very loud in the suffocating quiet interspersed with bouts of evil chattering and rushing.
Swinging round like his school's damned ship, Yuri Igorevich bears down on him at great speed, grabbing hold of his collar. “Fool of an idiot! What did I tell you about making noise?!”
Nikolai Alexandrovich points his wand at Yuri. "Let him go right now!”
I point my wand at Nikolai. “Drop the wand!”
Krum points his wand at Nikolai as well, his face even more handsome when it's angry. Everyone else, not wanting to be left out, points their wands limp-wristedly at whoever is closest, the Twins pointing their wands at each other with extreme fury blazing in their eyes.
Finally, Yuri himself points his wand at our resident fire-starter.
Nikolai sighs. “This…is very triggering for me right now.”
Triggering, a word of weakness, and like any other predator, Yuri leaps at the scent of weakness, getting in the smaller man's face. “WHERE’S MY RESPECT, SUBORDINATE?! DID YOU LOSE IT SOMEWHERE IN SIBERIA?!”
But Nikolai gives as good as he gets, pivoting into imperial rage instantly. “WHERE’S YOUR RESPECT, YOU CAD?! YOU MONGREL PUP?! EXCUSE ME?!? WHERE'S MY RESPECT?!”
The corridors shake with the sound waves generated by their voices and the half-abrasive, half-sweet tones of the Russian language. The approaching goblins fall silent to listen to the drama. And then a much more terrible beast roars his outrage at being woken up whilst enduring a severe hangover.
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“Nice one, idiot. You woke the Balrog for real, for real.”
“I didn't do shit.”
“What was that?”
“I did not do shit.”
“I can't hear - ow!”
Having shoved over the pair of combatants so that fear of grime ruining their uniforms forced them to break off their screaming match, we find ourselves in what looks like a tomb, aesthetically lit with moonlight.
Crunch. Olga looks down at a sharp white carpet covering most of the floor. “Oh God. Bones.”
“Human or animal?”
“Human.”
“Ahhhh…shite.”
“I love it.” Totally unconcerned, Anna leaps onto the closest tomb, and begins to file her long black nails to be even sharper than they are already.
“Me too.” Rasps Yuri, putting his wand away briefly, before Nikolai Alexandrovich crosses his vision once again, at which point he pulls his wand back out. The shrieking of goblins and the the roar of a demon ratchets up.
I decide to say something. It's either me or Vasily’s turn to speak, after all. “We'll probably need to defend ourselves any second, but our two best duelists have injured their precious voices in that slap fight. I guess we'll just have to die.”
Said duelists turn around, sawing their hands across their throats.
“I think they're threatening you, kote.” Smiles Krum. He really is quite sweet beneath the dark chocolate veneer. Very unlike the man I've set my heart on. Krum, hard on the outside and marshmallow soft on the inside. Yuri, hard on the outside, and even harder within. Oh well, I have a good dentistry plan, and a lot of unused life insurance.
While I'm still considering whether or not to reply to Witch Weekly's Hottest Wizard four years running, the rickety double doors to the tomb burst open and break down, letting in a horde of evil short people. Not a fan, man.
“Confringo.” Yuri whispers, just as if he's speaking to a sickly baby. Gosh…babies. Don't get me started on babies.
Regardless, an explosion of fire takes out a large chunk of the forces of evil, throwing flash fried body parts all over the place, the stink of burning hair and flesh attempting to make me throw up, cry, and lose my mind, in some sort of order.
“CAN YOU NOT?!!” It's my turn to shout, but when has shouting every achieved anything? More fireballs land amongst the green menace, followed by the signature spells of each of my comrades, all of which are highly destructive. Lightning, fire, water, rock, air, hornets - they all dance about the battlefield. The only one not making things tremendously foul is Krum, because he's no auror, and has apparently learnt only half of every lesson he was taught at school. That's fine, my motherly instincts receive their time to shine as I move to protect his Adidas short-shorted ass.
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“All thine gobbos are dead, but doth thou spy yonder red glow? We be still in great and unusual peril.” This is me speaking, because I'm done with this nerd shit and want to go home. Thanks a lot Tolkien, but I'd like to get off this ride now.
My comrades glance at me, and then at the wall of red light rapidly advancing from the other end of the gigantic stone hall we find ourselves lost in.
“Bastard.” Yuri Igorevich whispers. But not at me, surprisingly. No, his eyes stare past me to fix on the light.
“Run!” Cries Mikhail Mikhailovich.
So we run, run run run, till we locate yet another series of stone corridors which lead along a precarious stone bridge which arcs across a hellish, possibly bottomless pit. In the distance stands an aperture leading to the surface, showing as a rectangular glow of white light.
Krum yanks me back from the edge. “Why couldn't those skeletons on the floor have left this way?!”
Good question, but not one we have time to answer as Yuri Igorevich destroys a portion of the bridge just as Nikolai Alexandrovich attempts to cross it.
The latter is also reduced to a scratchy whisper. “Murder. He's attempting to murder me.”
“Take it up with HR, bitch.” Yuri replies, lifting his wand.
A ramshackle scramble down the bridge follows, with our pissed off boss blowing parts of it up every couple seconds.
Olga and Anna sigh and shake their heads at the antics of men and their bruised egos. “This is sooo unnecessary.”
But my beloved’s brain damage proves to be a saving grace when a revenant, which appears very much like his dead father as he must look while he's busy burning in hell, leaps out of a crack in the floor of a lower section of hallway. Oh, also, the fiery corpse is several stories tall, much like Igor Karkaroff was in life.
“He's got a whip!!”
People begin screaming and running for real, including me, cause everyone knows Karkaroff was a pervert. Only one more obnoxiously narrow bridge stands between the world's best auror squad and freedom.
“No shoving!”
“Push me again and I'll kick your ass straight off this thing!”
“Mitya! Stop giggling!”
Yuri, who forgot all about his royal rival the instant the monster appeared, brings up the rear, suddenly quiet. Only once we are well across the void, does he stop and turn to face his personal demon.
“Yurets!” Screams Krum. I find myself wishing I could remember what is supposed to happen next. Something epic, no doubt.
“Don't you dare say the line!” Vasily yells.
But say the line is exactly what Yuri does, seeing as he lost his voice screaming at Nikolai. No one can hear it though, not even the fiend, who lifts its fiery whip, preparatory to disciplining its wayward child. And that's when my psychotic darling blows up the bridge under its hoofed feet, dropping it with a roar of rage into the pit. Down and down it falls, taking the red glow with it.
He's peering over the edge, still and quiet, when we run up for a celebratory hug, even Nikolai. Except he denies us this comfort, by leaping after the horror, evading our outstretched arms, disappearing into the black.
“NOOOOOO!!!!!!”
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Some time later we're outside and weeping into the cold embrace of yet another rock plateau, all of us lying face down on the hard stone, salty tears torturing the moss and lichen growing in the cracks, even Nikolai. I don't know how much time passes, but Krum eventually climbs to his feet and staggers off. I would put him on suicide watch, but he externalizes his grief by blowing up tree after tree after tree, the thunderous cracks and crashes providing some sort of mild relief.
Another billion years later we huddle together over a fire, while we wait for water to boil.
“He was a very angry young man. I lived in constant fear of something like this occurring.” says Mikhail.
Vasily snorts. “It wasn't anger that made him leap. It was irritation. With YOU, Kolya.”
Nikolai looks up from under his eyebrows. “Shows what you know. He liked me very much and I liked him the same way. The antagonism was how we expressed it. I'm sorry if you're too milquetoast for manly friendship, Vasily.”
“Grrr.” Growl the Twins, sadly.
“No. It wasn't irritation. He was very vain. He couldn't live with his hair looking like that. I can't say I understand it, but I can admire it.” says Mikhail, again.
“You guys are all beat to hell and gone. Scarred, burnt, and ugly. So of course you can't understand the woes of the beautiful!” Moans Anna, her waterproof magic mascara being demolished under the sheer force of her tears.
“True.” Snaps Olga, her gaze fierce as it studies our male compatriots.
I can say nothing, and Krum is still blowing up the forest, the booms audible in the distance.