Chapter 362: Aurors Unleashed
The Patronus had no flesh of its own, so it could not tear the werewolf's body. It struck instead at what lay within, slamming straight into the evil spirit that rode the beast.
Ripped from its host, the spirit tried to flee, but the Patronus harried it without pause. With every pass of shining hooves and teeth, it grew thinner and dimmer.
The werewolf, stripped of the wraith that gave it strength, sagged as if its true nature had been forced back to the surface. All its borrowed might drained away.
The Aurors did not waste the opening. A volley of curses crashed into the beast and dropped it where it stood.
With its host dead, the spirit was rootless. It gave a shrill, tearing scream, then burst apart, shredded in a spray of grey tatters that faded into nothing.
The undead hosts raised by the dark sorcerers were weaker still.
Patronuses plunged into their ranks, battering the wraiths out of the corpses they had seized. Each time the silver forms drove a spirit from its shell, the body it had been animating slumped back into a simple corpse and lay still.
The Aurors did not linger over the walking dead. They turned instead to the hands behind them.
Cut off the head, and the body dies. They struck straight for the sorcerers who commanded the wraiths.
At a barked order from their captain, the hundred Aurors vanished with a crack and reappeared in a ring around the dark magi.
"Ossa Frango!"
"Thunderburst!"
"Rend Apart!"
Spell after spell shot inwards from every side.
The black sorcerers were not to be taken lightly. Each single one of them was more dangerous than any werewolf or vampire.
Their voices rose together in a harsh chant. Thick black mist boiled from their wands and hands, writhing with warped, screaming faces—human, Elven, Orcish, Dwarven.
The gaping mouths of those faces opened like pits and gulped the curses down, swallowing the magic whole.
Then they twisted into bitter smiles and flew as whirling streams of smoke towards the Aurors, hungry for revenge.
A few Aurors were a heartbeat slow. The black vapour crashed against them in a roaring wave.
Charms shattered in sparks across their robes and armour. Amulets cracked, rings burst, chains snapped.
The onslaught broke a dozen layers of protection at once, but the Aurors wore so many wards that the blast still did not reach flesh.
It was enough to sharpen their focus. No one held back after that. They threw themselves into the assault with everything they had.
The captain reached into his enchanted pouch and dragged out a heavy chest. With one smooth swing, he hurled it high.
It burst apart in mid‑air.
A thunderbird erupted from the splinters, Thorondor's feathers crackling with webbed streams of lightning. For a moment, it hung there like a god of storm.
Above, the clouds blackened and boiled.
Thorondor banked up into them and vanished. Thunder rumbled in the high dark. Light flickered behind the veil.
An instant later, a single vast bolt of lightning dropped from the sky, spearing down upon the circle of dark sorcerers.
They looked up just in time to see white light fill their world.
The stroke exploded as it struck, blowing them and the ground around them into a pit of glassed earth and smoking ash. For hundreds of paces in every direction, nothing remained but char.
The lightning did not stop there.
The vampires wheeling in the air became targets painted in fire. Lance after lance of thunder ripped through them. Each that was struck went to dust in a heartbeat. No healing power could knit together what the storm had unmade.
A cheer rose from the Aurors at the sight. For a moment, the battlefield rang with their exultation.
Then they moved again, pressing their advantage.
They drove hard at the commanders of Mordor's host.
The were‑wolves, vampires, and dark sorcerers were the spine of Sauron's army, its core strength and its courage.
Now the wolves and bats lay scattered and shrivelled, and the sorcerers were nothing but a scorch‑mark.
Panic rolled through the dark ranks. When the Aurors fell on them, the last of their discipline shattered. Formations broke. Orcs, Trolls, and Easterlings dropped weapons and ran.
The Elven warriors and the eastern rebels gave no quarter, driving the fugitives for league after league, determined to leave as few of Sauron's soldiers alive as possible.
The Aurors, though, turned to a new task.
They became a strike force and a rescue corps in one, tasked with finding and freeing the captives the Mordor hosts had taken.
Using Apparition, they slipped from front to front, ambushing officers, cutting down sorcerers and camp‑guards, and breaking open chains before the prisoners could be dragged back into the Black Land.
From the wild north of Mordor and the lands about Rhûn, to Khand in the West and Harad in the South, Auror cloaks flickered and vanished in and out of the smoke.
Everywhere they went, they left dead Orcs behind them, and long lines of freed Men.
Even with Thorondor's thunder at their call, and with Romestámo and Morinehtar always ready to lend aid, the Aurors danced close to death more than once. They crossed paths with the Nazgûl themselves.
One by one, their shields burned out. Wards failed. Amulets and alchemical charms were spent and shattered. In the end, only the last emergency Portkeys kept them from being wiped out.
The work was brutal, but the outcome was worth the cost.
After half a year of constant fighting, the Aurors were veterans. Their power had been tempered and hardened.
Under their hands, and those of the Elves and the Blue Wizards, the rebellion in the East became an army.
Together, they broke Mordor's thrust entirely and drove Sauron's forces back behind the Mountains of Shadow.
Tens of thousands of captives were saved from the marches and the pens.
All those who refused Sauron's rule, all free folk, gathered now around the shores of the Sea of Rhûn. There, a new strength was forming, one that could stand as a wall against the next assault from Mordor.
When the campaign was done at last, the Aurors and Elven warriors took their leave of the Blue Wizards and stepped back through fires and Portkeys to their own homes.
The victory lit hope across Middle-earth. The hundred Aurors in particular became the talk of every council fire.
So few wizards, and such power—especially against Orcs, Trolls, and the armies of the East. It was like watching giants trample ants.
Every realm turned its eyes towards Hogwarts.
Rohan, Gondor, and others all resolved to seek closer ties with the school.
Gondor and Rohan went further still, formally inviting the Ministry to extend its Floo Network into their lands, so that when Mordor struck again, help could come in moments instead of weeks.
While the Free Peoples rejoiced, Mordor went strangely still.
The raiding bands that had plagued Gondor's and Rohan's borders melted away. No more hosts marched out to gather slaves.
From the outside, it looked as if Sauron had been cowed.
After months of empty horizons, Gondor and Rohan finally allowed themselves to breathe.
The White Council did not.
If anything, their worry deepened.
Mordor's first sweep for captives had been blunted, and tens of thousands had been torn from its grasp, but more had vanished into the Black Land than had been saved.
By their reckoning, somewhere around a hundred thousand souls had been taken from Rhovanion, Rhûn, Khand, and Harad together.
No one on the Council could look at such a number and not think of sacrifices.
Had Sauron gathered enough to feed the array and offer them up to Morgoth?
All of them knew what the Dark Enemy of the World had been. Even stripped from Arda and chained in the Void, his shadow was long. If Sauron truly forged a link to him, a new doom would fall.
They burned to strike first.
Morinehtar urged that the Council lead an alliance of Elves, Men, and wizards straight into Mordor to free the captives and smash the sacrificial rite.
But in the end, they set the plan aside.
Mordor was Sauron's heart.
It lay under a shroud of darkness. The power of the land itself had turned against the light.
As Galadriel said, it was a pit from which there was no return. Sauron was bound to Orodruin. The Mountain of Fire was his well of strength.
Within the Black Land, his might would swell to near its ancient height.
The Council, for all their power, would find their strength ebbing there, their life‑force bled by the very air. Even united, they could not match him on that ground.
An assault on Mordor would not be a battle. It would be a sacrifice, and they would be the ones upon the altar.
Reluctantly, they chose patience. They would stand ready, and meet what came, but not throw themselves into the dark.
Deep within Mordor, on the great altar of black stone, blood still ran like a river.
The place had become a vision of hell on earth.