Young Celestial Wizard [Celestial Grimoire, Harry Potter]

"What happened here?" Harry asked, turning back to the Ferrier family. "What's everyone running from?"

Ray spun around from the window and looked at Harry as if he were a ghost who'd just asked why the graveyard was so quiet. "What happened? What happened? Where the hell have you been for the last forty-eight hours, kid? Under a rock?"

"Traveling," Harry said, the word feeling utterly inadequate. "I've been out of touch."

"There's nothing left to be in touch with," Robbie said dully. He didn't look away from the rain-streaked window. "The TV, the internet, the phones... it's all just static now. There's nothing left but them. The Tripods."

The name meant nothing to Harry, but the utter despair in the teenager's soul was a language all its own.

Ray sank back into the booth. "Yesterday... the sky just went wrong. This black, swirling storm with no rain, and lightning that kept drilling the same spot in the middle of town. Over, and over. Then this... this deep hum started. A sound that vibrated up through the soles of your feet, right into your teeth. And the ground just... it just tore open. And these machines, these Tripods, climbed out."

"Machines?" Harry repeated. "What kind of machines?"

"Alien machines," Rachel whispered. She was clinging to her brother's arm like a lifeline. "They were killing people. We saw them... they just turned them into dust."

Aliens? Like the little green men from Mars? So the muggle shows on the telly weren't lying about aliens existing,

It wasn't too hard to believe either, because why couldn't there be life on other planets? Harry himself could travel between universes. If someone like him could do that, why was it so hard to believe that beings from another planet within the same universe could travel to Earth?

When he thought about it that way, interplanetary travel seemed almost simple compared to what he could do with Elder Blood.

"These Tripods," Harry said slowly, testing the word. "They came from space?"

Ray shook his head. "That's the part that makes no sense. The lightning... it felt like it was delivering them. I saw a news van on the way here, a reporter that showed me footage of pods being shot into the earth by the lightning strikes. She speculated that these things built themselves underground and climbed out."

"Some people are saying they were already here," Robbie muttered, finally turning from the window. His eyes were red-rimmed. "That they were buried for millions of years, just… waiting."

Ray snorted. "No. That's a ghost story people tell themselves because it's less terrifying than the truth." He smiled grimly. "Think about it. We dig. For everything. Oil, coal, subway tunnels, foundations for skyscrapers. You're telling me in all of human history, nobody ever found one of these things? We have satellites that can read a license plate from space and seismic sensors that can detect a tremor on the other side of the planet. You think we'd miss machines the size of buildings buried just under the surface? No way."

He stabbed a finger towards the window, towards the utter chaos outside. "Whatever they are, the lightning brought them. It delivered them. That's the only thing that makes any sense."

"Can you describe them?" Harry asked. "What do they look like?"

Ray opened his mouth to answer, but Rachel suddenly pointed at Harry, her eyes wide with a strange, out-of-place wonder. "Dad, look at him. Really look at him."

Both father and son turned to look at Harry properly for the first time since he'd appeared.

"Jesus," Robbie muttered, squinting. "What's with your skin? It's... perfect. Are you wearing makeup?"

Harry blinked. "No."

"Then how do you look like that?" Rachel asked with the blunt honesty only small children possessed. "You're prettier than the movie stars in Mom's magazines."

Ray shook his head sharply. "Rachel, not now. We've got bigger problems than-" He cut himself off, clearly not wanting to finish that sentence. "Look, kid, whatever skincare routine you've got going on, good for you. But we need to focus on getting out of here alive."

"You're right," Harry said quickly. "Where were you trying to go?"

"The ferry," Ray said, visibly relieved to change the subject. "It's about an hour's walk from here. Everyone's heading that way, trying to get across the river. Away from... from them."

"I'll come with you," Harry decided. If things were really so dangerous, a little protection wouldn't go amiss.

Ray looked skeptical. "You and your lion?"

"She won't be a problem," Harry promised. He turned and lowered himself slightly to whisper in Chrysa's ear. "Follow us from a distance, but keep yourself hidden from sight. I don't want to cause more panic amongst muggles."

Chrysa's large golden eyes blinked once. She left toward the back of the diner and vanished through what looked like a service entrance.

The Ferriers stared at the empty space where the lion had been.

After a moment of stunned silence, Robbie whispered, "Did you just... have a conversation with a lion?"

"She's very intelligent," Harry said simply. "Shall we go?"

Ray, looking utterly dumbfounded, finally managed a nod. "Yeah. We should go. The longer we stay here, the worse it's going to get."

They left the diner and stepped into the rain. Harry's clothes were soaked in seconds, and he stepped to the side just as a woman shoved past Harry, clutching a baby to her chest while trying to balance a backpack that looked ready to burst.

"Watch it!" Ray snapped at her, but she didn't even look back.

Harry walked alongside the Ferriers, watching the desperate crowd. These Tripods shouldn't be too dangerous against him, right? Something that muggles couldn't fight probably wasn't too difficult to defeat for someone like him, but he was curious about one thing.

How could lightning transport these 'pods'?

Lightning was electrical discharge between clouds and ground, but it wasn't a transportation method. Maybe the pods themselves conducted the electricity in a way that let them ride down the bolt? The principle was what mattered.

If they could do it, could he?

"Move it, old man!" A younger man shoved an elderly person aside, trying to get to his shopping cart full of canned goods.

"That's my food!" the old man protested, grabbing at the cart's handle.

"Not anymore," the younger man snarled, yanking it away.

Robbie pulled Rachel closer to him. "Don't look."

"I'm scared," Rachel whispered.

"We're almost at the ferry," Robbie comforted his little sister.

Harry watched the young man yanking the shopping cart away from the elderly person. His hand twitched toward his wand, hidden in his sleeve. He didn't even need to speak the incantation after his dedicated practice with the Levitation Charm… just a small flick of his wrist and a focused Will was more than enough against a muggle.

The young man's foot caught on absolutely nothing. He went sprawling face-first onto the wet pavement, the shopping cart tipping over and spilling cans everywhere. The elderly man quickly grabbed a few cans and hurried away while the thief was still groaning on the ground.

"Did you see that?" Rachel asked, tugging on her father's sleeve. "He just fell!"

"Good," Ray muttered. "Karma's a bitch."

..

The ferry terminal was a pressure cooker of human misery. An hour of shoving through streets choked with abandoned cars had led them here, only to be met by a solid wall of bodies. The dull roar of thousands of desperate voices seemed to press in from all sides.

"They're only taking one car at a time!" a woman screamed at a uniformed officer who looked like he was seconds away from breaking.

"My kids are sick!" a man shouted, holding up a wheezing toddler. "We need to get on!"

The rain had stopped, but the air still felt heavy and wrong. Harry noticed how everyone kept glancing over their shoulders, as if expecting something terrible to appear at any moment.

"Alright, listen to me," Ray's voice was strained. He pulled Rachel in front of him, creating a tiny, fragile pocket in the human tide. "Just… just hold on to my coat. Both of you. Don't you dare let go."

Robbie just nodded.

Hundreds of seagulls letting out loud caws suddenly burst from the western treeline. Harry could feel their raw terror, they were scared from something that felt like a massive predator to them…

"Dad," Rachel's small voice was nearly lost in the noise. She was pointing. "The trees."

"What, honey? I can't hear you," Ray said, trying to push forward another inch.

"The trees," she insisted. "They're wrong."

Harry followed her gaze and his breath caught. Two kilometers out, the dense pine forest was being… erased. It wasn't fire or logging. A clean line was being carved through the terrain as something of massive scale moved through it, the trees simply vanishing from sight.

A man nearby saw it too. "Jesus Christ," he whispered. The whisper spread, a chain reaction of horror. The shouting faded. The arguments died. The roar of the crowd subsided into a vast, terrible silence as thousands of heads turned west.

Then came the sound.

BRRRWAAAAAAUUUUMMM.

Every person in the crowd flinched, a single, unified spasm of dread.

It rose above the treeline.

At first, all Harry could register was the scale. It was a walking tower, 50 meters of dark, slick metal on three long legs that didn't seem like they could support it. A dome-shaped head swiveled, and a trinity of lights blazed from its front… two smaller ones flanking a massive, blinding central beam that swept across the crowd. Dozens of metallic tentacles writhed beneath its body.

But it was the feeling that paralyzed him.

His danger sense, the instinct that had warned him of boggarts, dragons and the most powerful wizards in the world, was screaming. Harry had felt nothing - nothing - like the cold, absolute certainty of annihilation that spread from this single machine.

How? How could a non-magical thing feel more lethal than Albus Dumbledore, the strongest Grand Sorcerer in the world? Ray had said there were more of them. Countless more.

If this was the power of one…

A single, piercing scream was the starting gun for the apocalypse.

"RUN!" Ray bellowed. He became a human battering ram, shoving his children through the stampede. "TO THE FERRY! GO! GO!"

It wasn't just him. Thousands of people shoved, screamed, and trampled each other in their desperation to reach the ferry.

But Harry didn't move.

He stood there like a rock in a river, the panicking crowd parting around him as he stared up at the Tripod.

Were aliens truly this dangerous?

BRRRWAAAAAAUUUUMMM.

Another horn sounded from the left. Harry's head snapped around to see a second Tripod appearing from the left of the first. Its headlights swept across the fleeing masses, and people dove to the ground or tried to hide behind cars.

BRRRWAAAAAAUUUUMMM.

A third horn from the right. Another Tripod, this one stepping over a gas station like it was a child's toy.

Harry's expression turned grim. Three of them. And according to what Ray had said, there were many more out there. Hundreds? Thousands?

How many of these things had the aliens sent?

The crowd's panic reached new heights. People were climbing over each other, and the ferry operators were desperately trying to pull up the bridge before they were overwhelmed.

His fists were clenches tight as he continued to stare at the Tripods that were closing in on them. Should he attack? His firebending could melt hills, his lightning had even more power, and he had spears in his Treasury that could pierce through any physical material. But the danger...

What if these things could kill him instantly?

What if their weapons were something he couldn't defend against?

Harry didn't want to die. He'd barely lived nine years in this body, had so much left to learn and explore. He had worlds to create, people to protect, knowledge to learn, and power to gain. The thought of dying here, in some random universe to alien machines, made his chest tight with fear.

But then he remembered what the Ferriers had said. What others had whispered during their hour-long walk to the ferry. These Tripods shot rays of light that turned people to dust, leaving only their clothes behind.

If he ran now, how many would die? How many families would be torn apart while he saved himself?

Was he going to be a coward?

No. Never.

Heat began to shimmer around Harry's body as he drew upon his Chi that was being enhanced by his Virtue Power, the air itself starting to warp. Azure flames sparked from the sole of his feet.

Whatever these aliens were, whatever threat they posed, he would-

The central Tripod's massive searchlight swept across the crowd one more time, then stopped. The beam of light centered directly on Harry, who was the only person not running or hiding.

Time seemed to slow down. Harry could see the Tripod's dome-shaped head tilt slightly, as if curious about this lone figure standing still in the chaos. The smaller lights on either side of the main beam focused on him as well, bathing him in blinding white illumination. One of the mechanical tentacles beneath the Tripod's body shifted slightly, angling toward him.

The invisible ray hit him with the force of absolute annihilation before the visible light ever reached him.

His body didn't burn. It didn't explode. It simply ceased to exist, converting from solid matter into fine gray ash in less than a heartbeat. His clothes fluttered to the ground, empty and smoking slightly at the edges. The heat shimmer that had been building around him vanished as if it had never been.

Where Harry Potter had stood, there was now only a small pile of ash being scattered by the wind.

Or at least, that's what would have happened.

Harry's eyes snapped open as the vision from his Inner Eye faded.

Two seconds. He had two seconds before that future became his reality.

The initial shock, the cold dread of non-existence, lasted only a fraction of a second before it ignited into something else. Something hot and ugly and utterly furious. He would have died. Not in a fight, but erased by a machine like a stray mark on a page. All his power… it would have meant nothing. A puff of dust.

The sheer, colossal arrogance of it stole his breath.

His Sharingan blazed to life, the two tomoe spinning like bloody sickles as he tracked the Tripod's movements. The mechanical tentacle was shifting, angling toward him exactly as it had in his vision.

One second left.

Harry threw himself sideways with explosive force, azure flames blazing from his feet as he launched into a roll. The space where he'd been standing exploded in a flash of light, and when Harry glanced back, there was only a ripped-apart pavement where the ray had disintegrated tens of people.

Another ray of annihilation passed through empty air as he dodged before the weapon even fired.

Even with his Sharingan active, he couldn't react to the actual attack at all!

Harry dodged another ray, then another. The three Tripods kept firing.

He couldn't keep this up forever. Eventually his Inner Eye would get exhausted, and he didn't wish to find out at the worst possible moment. And what about the people around him? The crowd was still stampeding toward the ferry, and any missed shot was vaporizing dozens of innocents.

If I'd been careless, if I hadn't kept my Inner Eye active...

The thought made Harry's fury burn even hotter. He'd gotten comfortable with his power, confident that he could handle whatever these aliens threw at him. That confidence had nearly gotten him killed in the most anticlimactic way possible.

Harry glanced at the terrified crowd. People were screaming and trampling each other in their desperation to escape. These people had no power to resist.

When those death rays focused on the crowd, it would be a massacre...

With a small sigh, Harry made his decision.

His halo snapped into existence behind his head, shining like a miniature golden sun. His translucent angel wings tore through the air, each feather seeming to reflect the holy light. Azure flames immersed him in a pillar of blue fire as he shot into the sky.

At the same time, Harry released his full Presence.

Above him, the sky darkened as golden clouds of Virtue Power gathered. Within those clouds, a wrathful God of Fire and Light, more than a kilometer tall, stood on the head of a colossal dragon surrounded by dark fog. The divine figure's Sharingan eyes blazed with judgment as it bore down on the alien invaders.

All three Tripods faltered, their mechanical legs stuttering mid-step. The death rays that had been firing constantly suddenly stopped.

But only for a moment.

The Tripods' dome-shaped heads rotated toward Harry's location in unison. Their searchlights locked onto him, and all three fired at once.

Harry twisted through the air, azure flames trailing behind him as he dodged the beams of annihilation. His Sharingan tracked the attacks while his Inner Eye showed him where to move next.

Left, right, up, down… he soared through the sky like a burning comet.

These things definitely weren't human. Any muggle should have been on their knees begging for mercy after feeling his Presence.

But these aliens? They'd hesitated for maybe two seconds before attacking again.

Why weren't they more afraid? His Presence worked by projecting the weight of his amplified power onto others in a myriad of ways. In this case, it was a soul-based intimidation that bypassed physical defenses, but what if these aliens didn't have souls the same way humans did?

What if their consciousness was fundamentally different?

Or maybe they were just that confident in their technology.

He thrust his hand to the heavens, and a lance of chi lightning tore through the air. The storm clouds answered with a roar as real lightning wrapped around his body in brilliant white arcs.

All the while, he kept dodging.

Harry compressed all the stolen lightning in front of his right hand, the energy condensing until it was a solid, screaming hammer of pure power that he launched at lightning speed at the nearest Tripod.

BREAK!

But his Inner Eye had already shown him the sickening truth.

The hammer struck an invisible wall about three meters from the Tripod's hull and simply vanished. There was no explosion, no shower of sparks. It was gone.

Nothing. It did nothing.

"Fine." He spat out the word. "If you won't break..."

...then you'll melt.

Azure flames exploded out of all his meridians in a massive tidal wave of destruction that was large enough to dwarf all three Tripods. He poured every ounce of his fury into that inferno, even as he forcibly stabilized the flames in their azure state.

The Tripods had no time to dodge as the sea of fire consumed them.

And again. Nothing.

The flames died away, and the three Tripods stood exactly as they had before. The dark metal wasn't even warm.

Harry laughed. It was a cold, bitter sound that had nothing to do with humor.

"Useless," he muttered to himself, still hovering in the air. "Absolutely useless."

His lightning had vanished like it never existed. His flames hadn't even warmed the metal. These aliens had shields that could just... absorb all of his attacks? This had to be the absolute peak of what muggle technology could achieve.

Not that Harry was out of options. Not even close.

He still had many trump cards to play.

His Space Authority summoned nine Stone Citrinitas Spears from his Treasury, and Harry flicked his vine wand at them as he divided his Will among all nine spears at once. He wasn't even close to the limit of how far he could divide his Will, especially not after the recent offer.

The spears shot forward like arrows from invisible bows. Three toward each Tripod, aimed directly at the center of their dome-shaped heads.

Harry held his breath. If these failed too...

The spears hit the invisible shields.

And kept going.

There was no resistance at all. The shields that had absorbed his lightning and ignored his flames might as well have been air. The Stone Citrinitas Spears pierced straight through the dark metal heads with sharp cracking sounds.

The Tripods stood utterly still. Then the lights flickered and died.

The leftmost Tripod tilted sideways, its three legs losing coordination. It crashed into the ground with an earth-shaking impact that Harry felt even from up in the air. The middle one followed seconds later, its fall crushing several abandoned cars. The third managed two more steps before its legs gave out completely, sending it toppling backward into a parking lot.

It was utterly silent in the ferry terminal.

Harry looked down at the crowds below. Thousands of people had stopped running. They stared up at him with expressions he couldn't quite read from this height. Some had fallen to their knees. Others were pointing at the fallen Tripods with their mouths hanging open.

Then someone started cheering.

It spread through the crowd like wildfire. People were screaming, crying, hugging each other. Some were still kneeling, but now their hands were raised toward him like he was some kind of divine being.

The angel wings and golden halo behind his head probably wasn't helping matters. Nor was the kilometer-tall Presence in the sky that he finally dismissed.

"It's an angel! God sent us an angel!"

"Did you see that? He destroyed them! He actually destroyed them!"

"Please, save my daughter! She's sick! Please help us!"

"What are you? Are you one of them?"

The last voice made Harry's eye twitch. Really? He'd just saved their lives and someone thought he was with the aliens?

"Shut up!" Another man's voice rang out, followed by the sound of a fist hitting flesh. "The angel just saved us all and you're accusing him? You ungrateful piece of-"

More voices joined in, drowning out whatever else he was going to say. The crowd had become a sea of reaching hands and desperate faces.

This was exactly what he'd wanted, wasn't it? When he'd revealed his wings and halo, part of him had known this would happen. These people needed the hope of survival, needed something to believe in when their world was falling apart.

And their faith...

Harry closed his eyes for a moment and felt the energy pouring into his Heaven-Earth Soul. The quality was incredible. Most of it matched what he'd felt from the house-elf Dobby or the patients at St. Mungo's, but some of these people were producing faith of an even higher quality, so pure and intense that his World Power clouds were expanding at a rate he'd never experienced before.

The conversion was almost overwhelming. Where normally he might get a trickle of World Power from the faith of the Boy-Who-Lived or the Curse Healer, this was like standing under a waterfall.

"Please!" Someone shouted. "My wife is trapped in our car! The door won't open and-"

"He's not here to fix your problems!" Another voice interrupted. "He's here to fight those things!"

"How do you know what he's here for?"

"Look at him! He's got wings! He's obviously an angel sent by God to-"

"Angels don't wear clothes like that!"

Harry opened his eyes and looked down at the arguing crowd. They had a point about his clothes. He only had his inner robes he'd been wearing at Hogwarts.

The contrast with his divine appearance was probably confusing them even more.

From his height, Harry could see the ferry clearly. Ray Ferrier and his children were pressed against the railing, staring up at him with the same shocked expressions as everyone else. Rachel had her hands over her mouth, while Robbie looked like his brain had completely shut down. Ray just stood there, probably trying to process how the teenager with the pet lion had turned into... this.

Harry was about to go down and try to bring some order to the chaos when the water next to the ferry began to move. At first it was just a ripple. Then the ripple became a current. Then the current became a whirlpool.

The ferry, which had been trying to pull away from the dock, suddenly lurched sideways. People on board screamed as they were thrown against the railings. The whirlpool was growing larger by the second, and the ferry was being pulled toward its center.

Harry's danger sense exploded into full alarm. Whatever was causing that whirlpool was massive.

And it was coming up.