Ch. 153

"Not so noble now, are we?" Voldemort commented in amusement, seemingly unbothered by the fact that Harry now held the Rod of Dominion.

"No," Harry conceded. "That was something you taught me… selfishness. And you know what? Thanks. You showed me who my true friends were. That was probably the only good thing you've ever brought to my life."

The dark wizard crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Go ahead, then. Strike me down. Satisfy your need for revenge. Let me see all the hate you have for me." He bared his teeth in a feral snarl. "Show me how much you hate me for killing your parents. Show me how much you hate me for causing your godfather's death! Show me how much you despise me for your lost childhood!"

Harry gripped the Rod tightly in his hands, his knuckles white. He carefully recited the words to the final warlock spell he'd learned. "Awaken, lord of the four treasures, sealed since the origin of time. Let my strength be the sword of the oppressed… Spiritual Lancer !"

The staff in his hands elongated and widened until he held a two-sided spear, each blade four feet long, tapering from the tip to twelve inches wide, separated by a short shaft that he was holding on to. With a cry full of all the anger he felt, Harry lunged forward, impaling Voldemort on the weapon, piercing straight through the dark wizard's torso. The bladed tip emerged from the other side, but Voldemort still stood. The non-existing ground underneath them erupted into a brilliant blue sphere and three ethereal spears slammed upwards, impaling Voldemort's body. Harry took a deep, shuddering breath before he looked up, confused and surprised to see the dark wizard still standing.

"Well, it appears you have what it takes, after all," he said in amusement. "It is just too bad that you are there alone." With that, Voldemort's figure faded, as did the golden cage, leaving Harry in perfect darkness.

....

Harry looked around the darkness all around him. He felt like he was floating, despite the fact that he was standing on an invisible floor. Out beyond the shimmering golden cage, he could see nothing. The blackness was as infinite as it was perfect, and there would be no way he could orient himself on anything. He glanced down at the staff in his hands that now seemed to be pulsing with energy, then at the empty space around him. He knew he was alone here, and he could almost feel the invisible pressure from the forces of nature as they tried to seal the tear in space he was in. A pocket dimension, Hermione would most likely call it, a hole in the fabric of space-time where there should be none, a place where time had no meaning, because it existed outside of reality.

He briefly wondered if Voldemort had planned on leaving him there forever, then realized that the dark wizard would either return, or retrieve Harry, because he wanted the Rod of Dominion. That realization gave Harry some measure of ease, because as long as he held on to the Rod, Voldemort would return. But he couldn't wait for his archenemy forever - his wife and unborn child needed him. Suppressing the anger he felt at Voldemort, Harry calmed himself and tried to approach the situation logically.

Voldemort had used a spell to transport him there, so there had to be a way to get back. Harry jabbed the staff in his hands at the glowing cage around him, staring intently as tendrils of golden light wrapped around the smooth wood. He could almost feel a connection to the weapon as the lightning reached his hands where he held on to the Rod of Dominion. Reaching deep within himself, the young wizard tapped his connection to the warlock rune, turning the gift that allowed him to manipulate the fabric of reality onto himself. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he forced the area of space around himself to warp to shift him back, but with a tortured groan, the attempt failed and he fell backwards, the connection between the staff and Voldemort's spell lost.

Sitting up, Harry nearly slumped back down when his body was wracked with a violent series of coughs that left his hands bloody. "Damn," he muttered, looking down at the blood from his lungs that now covered the front of his robes and hands. He had a good idea what had caused the sudden attack; channeling too much magical power through a human body was much like a surge of electricity going through it. Regular wizards didn't have much of a problem with it, but sorcerers and warlocks were capable of using much more powerful spells - spells that most archmages were hard-pressed to match.

Count Hiscophney and Bella had both warned him that excessive use of his magical powers would eventually harm his body, but in his duel with Voldemort, Harry hadn't really cared. Killing the dark lord was more important than worrying about damage to his body, and, though Bella found it hard to agree with that statement, she knew that he was right. Harry had believed he had been fine until now, and just the fact that the magical backlash from whatever spell Voldemort had cast on him to shift him out of reality had hurt him this much was an indication of just how truly powerful the dark wizard had become.

Harry slowly rose to his feet, careful to keep his hands away from the edges of the cage this time. "Damn," he repeated, "we throw enough power at each other to rip a hole in space-time, and we're fine. Then he sticks me in a cage and it knocks me over flat." That statement may have been a bit exaggerated, because Harry knew that the spells he and Voldemort had hurled at each other had had at least some effect on his body; not all of the aches and pains he felt were from being electrocuted, or slammed into a marble wall.

How the hell can he use so much power and not even bat an eye? Harry wondered silently. How can he throw around so much energy and not be affected?

The answer came to him a moment later. Voldemort had no physical body anymore. Because he had transcended the bonds of his mortal form and effectively become an immortal astral projection of his spirit, bound to no object or living organism, he could toss around as much energy as he wanted, because he was energy. Harry's heart sank. That meant the only way of destroying Voldemort would mean either entrapping him in a dimensional space much like the one Harry was in, or somehow binding Voldemort's "soul" to an object so that it could be destroyed. In order to kill Voldemort, he would have to be made human again.

The realization chilled Harry to the bone, because as he looked around himself, watching the interplaying patterns of runes and colored lines float about him, he realized just how much knowledge and experience Voldemort must have accumulated to be able to craft such a complex and powerful spell. It wasn't something he could duplicate, not in any reasonable amount of time. But that meant somehow tying Voldemort's spiritual essence to something… and Harry wasn't particularly sure of how to accomplish that one, either.

The Rod… you control reality. When you rip into space, the hole remains. When you tear apart this dimension, it will not heal. You can create your own universe, or destroy this one, because with the Rod, nature will not interfere. That is the true power of the Rod. Voldemort's words echoed in Harry's mind as his eyes went to the staff in his hands.