JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

The Rider explained himself, however, describing his home in a different reality, one similar to our own, but utterly peaceful and advanced in both the healing and magical arts. To prove his assertions, he described the process by which his world's foremost witches and wizards had discovered the existence of other realities and learned how they were all bound together by one central core: the Nexus. Using their arts, they created a portal into the Nexus with hopes of reaching out to other dimensions. His purpose, he claimed, was to venture into less fortunate realities and share the wealth of their learning.'

       'The Nexus,' Zane whispered, nodding. 'This fits perfectly with everything we've heard about the Nexus Curtain and the World Between the Worlds.'

       Together, the four boys drifted toward the next tapestry. This one showed the bearded Rider standing at the head of a table, surrounded by seated witches and wizards. The Rider's posture implied that he was speaking, his arm raised in a gesture of conjuring. Over the table hovered a fanciful representation of a globe, covered with jungles, mountains, waterfalls, and placid oceans. The globe's continents were dotted with magnificent cities, its oceans streaked by sailing vessels with bright blue sails. The vision was contrived to seem as if it was spreading beams of light all around the room, but the listeners at the table seemed not to notice. Their faces were caricatures of wickedness: porcine and bloated, grinning and narrow-eyed, some with their heads bowed together in obvious conspiracy.

       'Ohhh,' Ralph said, nodding with realization. 'He's describing his dimension to everybody.'

       'Doesn't much look like they're listening though,' James added.

       Erebus frowned inside his frame. 'Indeed not. The Rider fell into the council of greedy witches and wizards, who were far less interested in the gifts of his enlightenment than they were the dark magic they believed could be gleaned from him and his unicorn. Until then, there had been no such beasts in our world, you see, and these crafty witches and wizards instinctively understood that this was a creature of fabulous power. Thus, they bided their time, pretending to listen, all the while plotting how to steal the man's magic and use it against him. In truth, their intention, horribly, was to learn the use of the Rider's portal and invade his reality, taking whatever they wished by force and domination.'

       'Some welcoming committee,' Wentworth said sourly.

       Zane asked, 'So were they able to do it?'

       'Fortunately for us, they were not,' Erebus replied. 'Had their scheme succeeded, our own reality would surely have descended into horrors, taking many more with it, perhaps even to destruction. The balance of the Destinies prevailed, however, halting their evil plans, but not without cost.'

       The group stood before the third tapestry now. On it, men in dark robes crowded around the unicorn, which was reared on its hind hooves, pawing at the air, its teeth bared in desperation. Around its neck and connected to the fists of its dark adversaries was a collection of restraining ropes. Worse, a crooked dagger was raised in the hand of one of the dark wizards, pointing toward the unicorn's dappled flank. In the foreground, the Rider seemed to be in a duel with several of the dark wizards, his face noble yet resigned, as he was hopelessly outnumbered by his foes.

       Erebus spoke, continuing his recitation of the Ballad. 'Once the horrid plan was placed into action, the Rider was imprisoned. His unicorn was experimented upon and forced to breed with common horses, all in an attempt to create more of its kind. This, of course, is the origin of the few unicorns that still roam the deepest woods of our day, less powerful than their noble ancestor, but still glorious. In the end, the Rider succeeded in mustering his powers for an escape. Being peaceful, he attempted to spare his captors' lives, but they viewed his mercy as weakness. In the end, they chased him and his unicorn down, subduing them both by sheer numbers. Unable to wrest the secret of the Nexus from him, they eventually killed him and hopelessly wounded his unicorn at the same time.'

       James shook his head. 'That's perfectly beastly,' he said in a low voice.

       'It gets worse,' Erebus admitted stoically.

       The gathering moved to the last tapestry. It glowed in the candlelight, somehow both more vibrant and more ghastly than the others. The scene showed a moonlit forest, dominated by a huddle of the dark-robed witches and wizards. They seemed to be bent over something, obscuring it.

       'What are they doing?' Ralph asked tentatively, frowning at the tall image. 'What's all that silvery stuff running all over the ground?'

       'Alas,' Erebus replied darkly, 'according to the Ballad, the evil witches and wizards realized that their plan had been foiled. They had murdered their only hope of conquering the other dimensions and mortally wounded the creature that might have granted them powers beyond their dreams. In a final, ghastly attempt to harness the magic of that hidden realm, they fell upon the wounded unicorn and consumed its blood, still warm from its failing heart. As they feasted upon it, piteously, the poor beast died.

       'Unmoved by the extremity of their crimes and grown cruelly powerful by their draught of the unicorn's blood, these witches and wizards turned into legends of horror for decades thereafter. They had become virtually unstoppable, you see, darkly magical and inhumanly strong. They were known to strike terror into the hearts of all they met since both their eyes and mouths glowed with a pale silvery light, forever tainted by the blood of their prey. To cover this, they fashioned masks of metal, even more terrible than their human faces, and wore them as signs of their fraternity. For nearly a century, these beasts in human form ruled with mayhem, torture, and murder, known universally by the name that they had chosen for themselves, a name that explained both the source of their powers and the depths of their depravity. 'Death Eaters', they called themselves; a word that became synonymous with dark ambition, inhumanity, and power at any cost.'

       'They were the original Death Eaters?' James asked faintly, staring up at the horrible image. 'But… Voldemort…?'

       'The devil cannot create,' Erebus said evenly. 'He can only pervert. The villain your age knew as Voldemort adopted the policies of these, his spiritual brethren. He took their name and claimed it for himself, but he did not invent it.'

       Shuddering, Wentworth asked, 'So, what ever became of those guys?'

       'Over the decades, heroes of stout heart and courage hunted them down,' Erebus answered, nodding gravely in his frame. 'Many knights died in the attempt, but one by one, the Death Eaters were dispatched, their heads cut from their shoulders and buried while their bodies were burned to dust. In the end, only one remained, a woman named Proserpine. She was finally cornered in her secret citadel, deep in a tractless forest. There, rather than facing her pursuers, she took her own life, leaving her own severed head smiling on the doorstep, its eyes still glowing with dead malevolence. Her body, the legends claim, was never found.'

       Ralph shivered. 'Hellooo, nightmares,' he squeaked.

       'What about the unicorn's body?' Wentworth asked, shaking his head. 'Didn't they try to preserve that somehow?'

       Erebus scoffed lightly. 'The Death Eaters cared not for preserving the corpse of their victim. According to legend, however, explorers did eventually find the poor creature's skeleton, complete with its magical horn. Rather than burying it or bringing it back, they decided to leave it as a memorial, hidden within a seamless blanket of unplottability, forever at rest. They did bring back one thing, though, as proof of their discovery: a single silver horseshoe, which they claimed was still attached to the beast's right front hoof, gleaming and uncorrupted. For centuries, that very horseshoe was a symbol of humility and regret, kept safe by a council of knights whose sole job was to watch for the appearance of any more delegates from the dimension beyond. If such a delegate were ever to appear, the horseshoe was to be returned to them in homage, a humble, insufficient apology for the crime that had been committed against their people.'

'Wow,' Zane said softly, somber for once. 'So are those knights still out there somewhere, guarding the horseshoe and watching for anyone from that other dimension?'

       'Alas, no,' Erebus sighed. 'My family was the last of those knights, and I was the last of my family, come to this new country in the hopes of finding a permanent hiding place for the relic. As a result, the horseshoe was granted to this college, an heirloom and a sacred trust. Unfortunately, by then, its significance had been all but lost. For many years, it was preserved in the museum atop the Tower of Art, well guarded but forgotten. Now, I suspect,