The Alchemy Laboratory
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The Nundu, upon seeing the enormous raven-shaped shadow that marked Sargeras's incarnation, did something wholly unexpected — it turned and fled.
Its massive form surged through the dunes with startling speed, so fast that it seemed to leave behind a blurred afterimage beneath the pale moonlight.
"Trying to run?" Sargeras narrowed his eyes. With a flick of his wand, he drew an intricate arc through the air. "Sandstorm Bind!"
In an instant, the ground trembled violently. Towering walls of sand, each several meters high, erupted from the earth and snapped shut like the jaws of a great beast, trapping the massive creature within.
Sargeras descended slowly through the air, his black robes fluttering in the wind, whispering and snapping beneath the moonlight. Even before he landed, another spell was already on his lips.
"Quicksand Trap!"
A wide circle of sand, nearly a yard across, suddenly liquefied, transforming into a massive, swirling vortex that spun with relentless force.
The Nundu thrashed wildly, howling in rage as it struggled within the quicksand. Its deafening roar broke through the night, and the air around it warped and twisted under the toxic breath pouring from its maw.
Sargeras hovered above it all, unmoved, suspended in midair like a shadow watching from the heavens. The tip of his wand glowed faintly, ancient runes igniting one after another with a cold, silvery light.
"Eternal Ice Coffin!"
A wave of bitter cold burst forth from him, radiating in all directions like a silent storm. Wherever it passed, the grains of sand froze instantly into solid ice.
Within mere seconds, the entire sea of quicksand had transformed into a glistening sheet of ice—a frozen glacier gleaming with a ghostly blue sheen under the moonlight. And through the translucent layers, one could still see the beast suspended mid-roar, its twisted form locked in that desperate moment, frozen in place but very much alive.
It was the first time Sargeras had used this ancient runic magic in actual combat, and the results far exceeded his expectations.
He lowered his wand and retrieved a crystal vial from his robes, then tossed it into the air. As it spun, it began to absorb the toxic mist that still lingered in the air, drawing in the poison like a greedy flame consuming dry leaves.
Just to be safe, he followed it up by tossing over a dozen backup containers into the sky. Only when the night air finally cleared — when the stars reappeared, twinkling once more over the desert — did he begin to gather the vials, slowly and methodically, and tuck them away before turning toward the village in the distance.
All around him, there was nothing but silence. An eerie, suffocating silence. The only sound was the faint crunch of his boots pressing into the sand, soft and steady beneath his steps. Not a single other noise broke the stillness.
Under the pale moonlight, the rows of neat little homes looked strangely out of place—too quiet, too still. There were no screams, no cries for help, not even the chirping of insects or the rustling of night birds. Everything had vanished, leaving only silence in its wake.
He pushed open the door of the nearest house.
Inside, a family of five lay quietly in their beds. Their faces looked calm, almost peaceful, as though still deep in some gentle dream.
Sargeras removed the Bubble-Head Charm, letting the desert wind wash across his taut face. It was hot, dry, and carried with it a faint, lingering stench of decay… subtle, but unmistakable.
The number of casualties from this incident would likely set a grim new record for the past decade. But as for who would be held responsible — was it the Ministry of Magic? The local authorities? Or perhaps the ever-greedy goblins of Gringotts?
Sargeras didn't know the answer. But one thing he understood all too well — those innocent villagers lying peacefully in their beds would never wake up again.
Sargeras made his way straight back to the wooden hut.
The moment he pushed the door open, a pungent stench rushed out to greet him, a bitter mixture of antidotes and the scorched reek of burned flesh and blood. The Undetectable Extension Charm had transformed what was once a modest little shack into a makeshift field hospital, its narrow interior now stretched to accommodate rows upon rows of beds, each one occupied by an unconscious patient.
He moved down a cramped corridor, the sound of his boots against the floor swallowed up by the constant, overlapping groans of the wounded. Members of the Bronze Feather flitted between beds, the tips of their wands constantly flickering with the luminescence glow of healing spells.
The injured came from all walks of life, their identities tangled and complicated: a few were goblins from Gringotts, along with human wizards employed by them; there were graduates from Uagadou, clad in starry moon-patterned robes; and even official members of the Sahel Sorcerer Alliance, instantly recognizable by the desert cloaks they always wore.
"More than thirty didn't make it," came Hummingbird's voice from behind. She was floating a large crate of freshly brewed antidotes through the air with a Levitation Charm. "The poison mist spread way faster than we expected. A lot of them didn't even have time to—"
"I know," Sargeras cut in quietly.
Without wasting another word, he moved to join the rescue efforts. As a wizard who had once "furthered his studies" in the library of Uagadou, Sargeras wasn't just a skilled combat wizard — he had a healer's training too. To him, this rescue wasn't just a responsibility; it was a duty he accepted without hesitation.
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By the time the final patient's condition had stabilized, Sargeras immediately gathered all the members.
"Let them stay here," he said, sweeping his gaze across the room. "We'll talk somewhere else."
His eyes landed on Robin, who caught the signal immediately. "The nearest safehouse is in Egypt."
"Then Egypt it is," Sargeras nodded slightly, then added, "This safehouse will be permanently abandoned. I'll erase every trace of its existence."
As he spoke, he snapped his fingers.
Nine badges lit up simultaneously, and in the blink of an eye, every one of them vanished.
Far away, out on a lifeless desert plain, a lonely stone hut stood silent under the sky, built from weathered bricks and surrounded by nothing but wind and dust.
Suddenly, figures from the Bronze Feather shimmered into view, reappearing inside the stone shelter. The sudden burst of activity stirred up layers of thick dust that had long settled undisturbed. With a flick of Sargeras's wand, the sand in the air gathered and reshaped itself into wide tables and chairs.
"What about the Nundu? Who's handling it?" he asked, placing a crystal vial onto the table. Inside, the magical beast had been miniaturized to fit within the bottle, and it was still twisting and writhing about uneasily, clearly not enjoying its new home.
"I'll take care of it," said Thunderbird, raising her hand with a small nod. "I've got a bit of a connection with Newt Scamander."
Sargeras gave a small nod. "I've already cast a Confundus Charm on all the survivors. They'll remember being rescued by a standard task force from the International Confederation of Wizards. The Memory-Weaving Spell is complete, too… any recollection of us has been replaced with unfamiliar faces."
His voice remained calm, almost clinical. "Even if someone starts poking around in the future, the trail won't lead back to us."
But just in case Gringotts tried to shift the blame or bury the truth, he continued assigning orders to the members, one after another.
"Robin, once we're done here, disguise the wooden cabin to look like a standard curse-handling station."
"Swift, erase as much as you can from the safety protocols and the goblin-language warnings at the ruin's entrance. But make sure to leave behind enough signs to point the blame squarely at Gringotts."
"Snowy Owl, set up African Confusion Bugs around the ruins and the wooden cabin. I want false magical fluctuations all over the place. And don't forget to retrieve them once you're done."
"Stork, I want rumors spreading from dawn. Make sure every outlet knows this was a catastrophe caused by Gringotts's greed over ruin exploitation. And make sure Swift doesn't end up as one of the scapegoats."
Candlelight flickered across his eyes, catching the chill in his gaze as he spoke quietly. "We're not just walking away clean… we're going to make Gringotts pay for their greed."
"Let's move." Sargeras rose to his feet. "I still need to head into the ruins and see if there are any more… 'surprises' waiting inside."
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Once more, he returned to the base of Mount Koussi. Pushing through a patch of twisted brambles, he soon found the violently torn-open entrance — jagged rocks formed the uneven edges of a gaping hole, their surfaces still etched with broken remnants of protective spells. Deeper in, faint claw marks began to appear along the passageway.
From the looks of it, both sides had made a dash for this place — but the ending had clearly gone very wrong.
He raised his wand, and the glow of Lumos Charm lit up the dark passage ahead.
The walls on either side were covered in claw marks, some shallow, others gouged deep into the stone. The deeper he went, the more intense and disturbing the scratches became, a chaotic frenzy etched into every surface.
At last, the passage opened into a room — a long-abandoned alchemy laboratory, thick with dust.
Right at the center stood a massive, shattered glass chamber. It caught the eye immediately, like a centerpiece destroyed in a storm. Sargeras crouched beside it, letting his fingers drift across one of the broken shards, where faded protective runes still clung faintly to the surface.
"Destroyed about three months ago," he murmured, narrowing his eyes. "Looks like that Nundu was locked in here for a very long time."
The top of the chamber had once been connected to a complex system of brass piping. Strange green crystals still clung to the outer walls of the tubing, the last remnants of whatever had once been processed within.
With a tap of his wand, Sargeras activated a lingering magical imprint. A flickering, broken image played out before his eyes — snapshots of a thick green mist being carefully extracted, refined, and channeled through the network of pipes until it poured into a silver cauldron placed in the corner of the room.
His attention shifted…
On the far side of the laboratory, another rune-engraved glass chamber caught his eye.
Inside it floated a mass of swirling, gray-black energy, twisting and sluggish, but still faintly pulsing. It was the fragmented remains of a dead Obscurial, and even now, its ghostly form still writhed slowly in suspension.
Sargeras didn't step closer. This kind of unstable energy could dissipate completely with even the slightest disturbance.
On a stone platform nearby, a red crystal shimmered faintly under the glow of Lumos, casting a strange and almost sinister light. With a flick of his wand, Sargeras lifted it into the air using a Levitation Charm. A powerful magical fluctuation surged visibly within the crystal, flickering beneath its surface like molten light.
"This is… a Philosopher's Stone?" he murmured to himself, somewhat incredulously.
The edge of the platform was cluttered with crumpled parchment scrolls, all covered in dust.
He swept a Cleaning Charm across them, revealing wild, almost manic handwriting scrawled across the pages:
"Plague Magic: On the Magical Enhancement of Transmissible Vectors"
"Magical Siphon: A New Interpretation of the Essence of Life"
"Several Advanced Applications of Flesh Alchemy"
"Research Notes on the Fragmentary Pages of the Book of Abraham"
In the far corner, several bird-beaked masks lay still and silent, mottled with mold.
Sargeras's pupils narrowed slightly. He knew these masks all too well. In the fourteenth century, they were worn by plague doctors during the Black Death. In the eighteenth century, by those who spread pestilence deliberately. They had walked among the living, hiding behind those same grotesque visages.
"Looks like this was the laboratory of a deranged alchemist," Sargeras muttered to himself, piecing the clues together. "Forbidden experiments based on the Book of Abraham… turning the Nundu into a living toxin generator… and trying to merge Obscurial remnants with dark arts to create some kind of—"
His gaze drifted toward a suspicious pile of bone ash in the corner.
"—Elixir of Life?"
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