Bohemian Rhapsody

moment five: the rock of ages (October 30, 1970).

Deep within the mountain the Portal stood, waiting. Around it, the torches dimmed once, and flared up again, the light and heat they exuded somehow being eaten before it could pass into the surrounding atmosphere. The inky black surface of the Portal pulsed, a man shape exuding itself from the hollow, form carved like night transforming itself into flesh, and reality.

Lord Voldemort drew himself up to his full height and looked about, taking the time to breathe deeply for the first time in ten years, and enjoy the physical sensation that life brought as it coursed through his body. Upon reflection, the sensation was not quite the same: but then, neither was he. He had been tempered in the dark flames for an eternity; honed like a sword for the battle ahead, the humanity burnt out from him.

Its absence radiated from his form like a glow, as if nature itself retreated at the vile intrusion of his corruption. Physically, he had not changed in ten years, and yet he had. The only obvious difference was his eyes - red glinting through green, like something caught in the depths. It was not so much what he looked like as how he appeared: pride rang out from his body, pride and a dreadful certainty of his own righteousness. He seemed wrong, and that wrongness would draw your attention to him; because despite any conscious belief, deep within that instinctive connection one shares with all mankind, with all life, you would see him, and know that he was not one of you. That at his core, whereas you had this subconscious thing prophets called `soul´: a bond, between all creatures, Voldemort would only have a pit, blacker than any night, and a ravaging hunger brought about by his own lost humanity.

There was no Tom Riddle. Not anymore. Perhaps there never had been, and this had always lurked deep within. To him, it seemed patently obvious: he had forsaken his fellow man, just as his fellow man had always forsaken him. He now attempted to bring down the God who had shown him nothing but pain, loss and rejection. The crucified God of the Muggles claimed to treat all things as their wont, but He taken Tom´s mother from him. Left him in that hellhole orphanage, nearly going insane when he discovered he could do magic, branding himself freak and outcast. It was, in his own mind, perfectly fair to bring such a god down in turn.

Striding down the platform, he closed his eyes, extending his mind with a word out into the rugged peaks. Nestled in a small valley a short way down was a minor Buddhist monastery, largely forgotten except by those who still believed in the dark places of the world, and monsters, and attempted to cage them in. He smiled predatorily, feeling their quiet unease. They could sense his darkness, but they couldn´t pinpoint it, due to the overwhelming influence of the portal. With any luck they wouldn´t even be able to guess where he was until he turned up at their front door.

Whistling jauntily, he exited, the sleet and snow making no impact on a man over whom death had no power; who was, in fact, no longer a man, as that implied mortality, and Voldemort had none left. He roamed in his mind over the mental images of the young monks, so innocent and steadfast in their purity. The dark powers had shown him much during his transformation, and part of that had been the weaknesses of the flesh. Tom Riddle had ignored such things, holding them to be below himself, cheap and tasteless. Voldemort had no such qualms: these fools maintained a corrupt fallen world in the name of good, it was merely fitting to show them the true face of what they defended - their own capacity for depravity.

Yes, he thought, smiling to himself, thinking of those deliciously innocent monks. He would kill them all, certainly. They did nothing to change the world, or its eventual demise, and therefore Voldemort saw no reason not to give them the fate they obviously wished for. They refused to struggle against death, and so death would be visited to them. But first...he would have some fun.