Alice... Lumos

The dungeon corridors were abnormally silent that evening and not even Bloody Baron dared to disturb the peace in the underground levels of Hogwarts. Archibald sat behind the teacher's desk, in the middle of huge piles of books, in the dimly lit potions classroom. The pale boy had taken off his green striped tie and leaned on the table while staring at the wooden stick suspended in the air, spinning around it's own axis. After careful consideration he grabbed a chisel out of a little leathery box and started carving. He tried to utilise everything his father had taught him and it seemed to word. After acchieveing the desired shape he smoothened it with rough pieces of animal skin.

The young man waved his hand over the spinning stick after sanding it smooth- It fell onto the desk. The black piece of wood had taken the shape of a basic wand. Archibald  placed the tip of the coreless wand on top of a few strands of black hair and focused hard while grasping the handle firmly. The wand started emitting a warm light and absorbed the long strands of shiny black hair. The boy looked up and stared at the dark classroom- It must've been a few hours after midnight by now and he had to attend the transfiguration class at 8 o'clock. He ran his hand through his light-brown hair and sighed.

The corridors started echoing with faint footsteps that seemed to be approaching the potions classroom.  Archibald waved his hand over the table and put out the numerous candles he had lit. Complete darkness filled the spacious room. A luminous light creeped in the room from beneath the large door. After a second the heavy wooden door opened with an ominous creak. A slender figure sneaked into the classroom and closed the door. Archibald realised that it's just another student and lit the candles once again. The sneaky figure seemed surprised. It was a white-haired girl, who seemed overall rather pale. She was wearing a very loose green hoodie, a little cloth satchel and white slippers that were shaped like sheep (one of them yawned widely for second).

"Hello..." Said Archibald while staring at the girl with his silvery eyes.
"Hi... Nox." The light shining from the girl's wand went out. "Am I in trouble?"
"Umm... I don't think so. I am not going to rat you out if that's what you mean... I'm Archibald."
The girl seemed relieved and stormed to the cupboards filled with different ingredients. She opened some doors, took some vials and jars and put them in her bag.
The boy threw his feet on the desk and placed his arms behind his head.
"Are you looking for something? I mean... I know this classroom pretty well."
The white haired young lady flashed her red eyes at the young man.
"Ashwinder eggs. I need Ashwinder eggs."
Archibald had never been much of a bookworm, but he wasn't completely immune to book-knowledge.
"A love potion?" He asked, while flipping through the pages of a potions book. "The one with the rose thorns and moonstone, right?"
The girl blushed slightly. "I am making it to test my skills. Who do you think you are to accuse me of such vulgar actions?"
"I didn't accuse you of anything... " The boy had opened one of the drawers and taken out a tiny jar. " I wonder if I could trade these Ashwinder eggs for a name."
The girl walked up to the teacher's desk and grabbed the jar of eggs. She was about to turn around and leave when it occurred to her that there was at least 4 wands in the boy's leather covered toolbox and one laying on the table.
"Are all of these yours?" She managed a fake smile, that looked almost perfectly genuine.
Archibald closed the box. "Yes... It's just a thing I do. It's nothing really."
The girl sat onto one of the chairs and crossed her legs. "Do tell." She smiled again.
The young man picked up his tie and stuffed it into his pocket.
"Well, you must remember the time you got your wand, right. I'd say 11" vine wood, maybe?"
She was slightly amused, but didn't let it show. "Correct."
The boy continued: " I was never chosen by one. My father looked all over the world- Nothing seemed to work, so now I use wands that haven't accepted me and once they break I'm going to make new ones."
The white-haired girl was interested now. "I should've realised. You're Garrick Ollivander's son." She looked at the black wand that the boy was rolling between his fingers. "It's quite nice."
Archibald looked into her eyes. "Ebony, 12" Thestral hair core. I sometimes paint them... but they break anyway. Why bother?"
The young lady was certainly amused. Wands had never really interested her as she wasn't very skilled with them, but there was something about the way the young man talked that made her want to listen closely. There weren't many things that amused her- she liked to think that nothing was a real challenge to her as she had always been the top of the class in every subject, except the ones that required wand mastery. Suddenly the early transfiguration class popped into her mind and she jumped out of the chair and ran to the door. The quirky white-haired girl looked back at Archibald with a slight grin. "Alice... Lumos" She said right before stepping into the dark dungeon corridor and disappearing into the shadows. 

Clockwork

          The mystical figure, who moved with an exeptionally jagged and uncomfortable roughness in his joints, jumped over the rooftops with odd mechanical grace, large black brass-rimmed goggles blazing in the sun and a red silk scarf twisting in the wind behind him. The man increased his speed and some of the red tiles on the roofs of London cracked under his brass-buckled boots and shattered into pieces. People on the streets stopped to stare at the weird agile figure rapidly moving through the sunriddled sky. The running man in long leather jacket had reached the Thames faster than any steampowered locomotive could, but he didn't make any efforts to stop or slow down. All throughout the mechanical man started echoing sounds of small gears grinding and springs winding themselves up. At the very edge of the last roof he propelled himself high above the murky water. Time seemed to stop for a while as an old fisherman glanced heavenwards at the gentleman soaring over his boat. The mechanical man didn't worry about not reaching the other side, he knew exactly how far he was going to jump. A loud crash sounded over the whole city-block before the young-looking man swiftly escaped the cascade of shattering bricks from a riverside wall he had broken with his less than perfect landing. He stopped in the middle of an alleyway behind "The Devil's Tavern" and listened... he could hear nearly everything going around in the city and yet not the sound he was looking for. It had stopped. Why had it stopped?
         That voice, that ticking couldn't belong to any other timepiece- it had to be Griffin's. Although the timepiece sounded normal to everyone else the robotic human could hear a distinct difference in every clock. Griffin was a scientist, a genius and yet a psychopath. He was a thief, an arsonist and a murderer, who was easily trackable, but no matter how hard one would look, Griffin would remain unseen... The clockwork-man knew that the criminal was perfectly invisible, but not completely imperceptible. A few years ago the mechanical man had sensed Griffin's ghastly presense in a South England pub- he could hear a fainth breathing and heartbeat coming from an empty seat and on the table was a barely visible crystal pocketwatch that ticked in the most abnormal way... and later all became clear with the help of an anonymous law enforcer, who traded confidential information for gold.
        The man with brass-rimmed goggles had no other clues, thus giving up became his only option. He decided to take the streets this time around- humans had always amazed him as they made him wonder... What makes them tick? The evening had arrived almost inconspicuously and a slight dribble of rain made it seem even darker. The gear-gutted man slowly made his way through the town and that's when he heard it- The glass timepiece. In a split-second the ticking gentleman had disappeared from the streets. He made his way staright through the city over the roofs and under bridges and soon he stopped... There he was- The invisible man in a trenchcoat, face wrapped in gauze and eyes covered with dark glasses. Every streetlight he passed by seemed to flicker as if they were trying to hide the monstrous criminal in shadows. In a blink of an eye the mechanical man had silently pinned psycopath to the ground. He was trying to struggle out of his coat, but it was already too late. "Your time has run out, Griffin..." The man said with a metallic voice as Griffin shoved his hand in his coat. "Think again..." Chuckled the man covered in bandages and fired a shot. Hundreds of small gears and bolts spewed out of the humanoid machine and the ticking stopped... Griffin stood up and laughed. "You can't catch the wind, dear friend..." The hollow rattle of tiny metal pieces filled the empty street. Although one ticking had stopped, the other still remained. The figure in bandages faced away and took several long steps on the cobblestone road before realising, that he was walking of tiny shards of glass. His eyes widened as he grabbed for the pocketwatch- It was gone. The man turned to look back at the robotic corpse, but all he felt were two cold hands grasping his neck... A garish crackling split the night and the invisible man appeared once again: First the bones, then the nerves, muscles and bloodvessels and finally his pale-dead skin. 

And it all worked out like clockwork.

Purification Ritual

The cold winter-wind was dragging loose snow all over the gravel-road leading to a tall old building
in the edge of the village. Several horsemen had already arrived at the church and most were still on the road.
Every family within the seven villages around the church had received one of many obligatory invitations to another "Purification ritual". The people sent only the men although the note had mentioned that children are highly desirable.

Half of the ritual hall was already filled with whispering peasants staring down at the hole that descended
at least 5 feet into the floor and seemed like a weird gladiator pit. In the middle of the sand-covered lower-floor, in a circle of large rocks, there was a pillory standing on a pile of hay and logs. The farmers were nervous as they knew what the ritual was all about. One of them whispered to another in a deep scottish accent: "Last time they had less people watching... they stoned her to death after pouring hot silver down her throat..." The other man was short and was twisting his already torn up hat: "They're gonna purify Katherine tonight. I thought she was a healer, I even got help from her now and then. Who knew she was a bloody witch? They say she dressed in the skins of wolves at night and killed all old Rothner's sheep ... monstrous." The other man, knew that the woman had been taken by the church inquisition for questioning, but he looked baffled: "The whole herd? Well I guess she's getting what she deserves... Hold on, didn't she have a daughter? Yes, little Madeline... what's gonna happen to the poor girl?" The man put his hat in his pocket, while sighing and stared at his feet: "They'll kill her... and I guess it's for the best... spawn of the devil... to hell with them all."


The hall was almost completely filled with people and the ritual began. The monks on the other side of the inquisition-pit started chanting silently in latin as the high-priest walked to the altar covered in candles and lit three of them.
"Dear peasants..." He said with a dark grin. "...once again you have encountered a problem of the darkest kind and once again the church is happy to help you." The priest waved at a man with a black mask standing in a small iron doorway in the brightly lit executioner's pit in the middle of the church. The executioner entered the room under the floor as the air was deathly still and the only thing that cut the low mumbling of the monks was the sound of shackles creeping out from the metal doorway. Soon the fat man with a black mask returned while dragging a young woman behind him. He attached Katherine's swollen wrists into the pillory and locked the contraption tightly. 


The clergyman looked down at the woman and smiled: "It is rather unsettling to think that this woman, Katherine Barnes, has been a part of our community for years and all this time... a servant of the devil. Today we can all rejoice, for this woman's soul shall be cleansed. As some of you might know she used witchcraft to turn herself into a wolf so she could feast on your cattle. For the sake of the villagers the witch must be burned!"


Long disheveled hair covered the young woman's face, wet from tears, as she was silently weeping. Her clothes were ripped and covered in dirt. Katherine raised her head and looked at the farmers, who had gathered in the church. "Please... I am not a witch...I.." She tried to talk, but her mouth was too dry. She teared up again as she saw that on the edge of the pit stood Madeline, looking down at her mother with tears rolling down her cheeks. Katherine wanted to shout, but she was tired and powerless. The executioner set fire to the hay in the edges of the stack of logs in the middle of which stood the scared woman. The fire got closer and Katherine felt the hot flames dancing around her.


The heavy doors of the church flew open and from it entered a strong mistral that roughed up the villagers as it passed and ascended onto the flames. The candles on the altar and in the chandelier under the ceiling went out. Katherine stared at the frozen hay and logs around her and the thin layer of snow that covered the floor. The fat executioner quickly grabbed his axe and took a swing at the woman in the pillory. The axe fell on the ground- Between Katherine and the fat man in a black mask had appeared a figure in a hooded cloak, with eyes that burned bright and blue. The executioner fell on his knees, and stared into the hooded woman's eyes. His chest started emitting faint tendrils of light and the woman caught them in a small crystal vial.
"This woman has done nothing wrong, the ones eating your sheep and cows are right under your noses..."
Every candle in the large hall burst in blue flames and the high-priest shouted out in anger: "Prohibere eius!"
The demons in red cloaks leapt through the air and landed around the blue-eyed woman in a perfect circle. She looked around and clenched her hands into fists from which grew out two short glowing daggers.


The monks hissed at the mage and ran at her, but she was too fast. The daggers sliced swiftly through the throats of four monks, who spewed black blood that smelled like sulfur. In a blink the woman had burnt two others, but she seemed to have missed one, who stood his ground behind her. Through the ceiling fell a large sledgehammer that  crushed the demon, who had stayed unnoticed. The hammer was followed by a muscular man dressed in black leather and wearing a mask sewn together from pieces of burlap sacks, bearing an ominous smile embroidered into the material. He picked up his weapon from the demon's chest cavity and looked around.


"Heed our warning, villagers! The church is not what it seems... and the Guild of Assiah will not tolerate killing innocent people!"

Late night Lucifer

Gray walls constructed of large stone slabs, ominous red lights shining from the eyes of small gargoyle statues, sturdy iron chains dangling from the ceiling and a bored man leaning on his palm behind his mahogany desk. *click-click* *click-click* The little golden pen between the lean fingers of Lucifer had been playing the same rythm for hours. His suit was wrinkled and the tip of his red tie was still a bit wet from the coffee he had spilled all over the soul-transfer papers. The fallen angel grunted and slid his hands through his long black hair. "How the fuck am I supposed to fit all these sinful souls into hell... I'm going to have to release some of them... but there aren't enough purified souls..." He riffled through packs of papers and finally pulled a laptop out of the top drawer of the desk. The devil slid his fingers over the rough, reptilic cover of the computer, opened it swiftly and started typing with inhuman speed and demonic concentration. "It seems I could send some half-complete souls out to make room for the new damned ones... but they would be prone to douchebaggery..." Lucifer's red eyes were nailed to the screen, while he nibbled on the nail of his thumb. "Well fuck it! Let there be douchebags!" The devil hit the "send" button with determination and propelled out of his chair. The charming demonic overlord straightened his suit and walked out of his office with a slight dancey ease in his steps.