"Until now I was only capable of appearing in the astral realm but now that you have this realm I can appear here as well. Now you face Celebrimbor , Lord of Eregion and son of Feanor!" The elf said aggressively before charging Nick. Focusing his thoughts Nick tried to shift the mindscape but he found it resisting him which caused his eyes to go wide before Celebrimbor punched him in the face again , hard. What came after this was a one sided beatdown where Nick tried to resist but was totally overwhelmed by his stronger , faster and more experienced opponent.-
The pain of each and every hit felt as if he truly was getting struck but faded away moments later only to be instantly replaced with more pain. Celebrimbor had long calmed down but still refused to stop beating the shit out of Nick because he had a goal in mind and it hadn't been achieved yet. This had turned to beating even more brutal as the elf sought to inflict as much pain as possible in as short a window as possible. Broken limbs , ruptured organs , torn out eyes , any physical injury you could think of by a person had been committed onto Nick.-
After three hours of this torment Nick finally started to turn desperate to retaliate in some way , any way to make the pain stop. Celebrimbor seemed to notice this and with a content smile finally backed off. The next attack that Nick expected simply didn't come and instead he heard "Now that you know the fear of injury go do something about it while I explore this fascinating realm." followed by foot steps leaving. Nick was left sprawled out on the ground not injured but certainly exhausted from the beatdown he had just received.-
'So that just happened.' he thought unusually calmly for someone who had just received the beating of a lifetime without being able to retaliate at all. "Fine then , I'll put this fear of yours to use but don't expect this to be the end of this matter." He said but if Celebrimbor heard him the elf didn't show any reaction as he walked into the distance. Nick left his mindscape with the mother of all headaches waiting for him and a gushing nosebleed. "Are you ok?" Helena asked concerned as such a thing tended to bode ill.-
"Yeah , I'll be fine in a bit." Nick said as he took a bottle of wiggenweld out of Greed and downed it to stop the bleeding. He then transfigured the blood out of his robes before standing up and pointing his wand in front of him "PROTEGO!" he spoke while remembering the desperate feeling of wanting the pain to end. At the end of his wand a small and flickering light blue barrier appeared. Nick smiled at this as he finally didn't need to worry so much about the spell as all subsequent cast would be much easier and stronger.-
Helena was surprised to dee him cast the spell at all even if it wasn't a very impressive example of it. "Well done!" she praised honestly and Nick shook his head with a bitter expression. "I wouldn't have been able to do it without someone else's help so it seems I owe them a favor , what a pain." Nick said honestly. He wasn't so ungrateful or stupid enough to not figure out that Celebrimbor had basically antagonized and beaten his mental self in order to provide guidance. Truthfully speaking he hadn't actually done anything of worth to Nick as in his own mind Nick was immortal and healed nearly instantly from any damage so besides being temporarily unpleasant this whole experience was totally harmless.-
The old elf was probably being honest when he said that Nick was neglecting his craftmanship in favor of magic but Nick couldn't really be blamed as magic was so useful for literally everything. It was also in most cases way easier as it didn't require copious amounts of personal knowledge to work. Still the fact remained that unlike Dumbledore the old elf hadn't violated his privacy or safety with his actions.-
Nick spent the rest of the day after that familiarizing himself with the Protego spell so that it wasn't basically magical tissue paper. It was slow going due to how magically intensive the spell was as he ran out of magical energy pretty fast casting the spell. 'So the reason they only teach it in the fourth year is because any sooner and you probably won't have enough energy to use it.' Nick noted seriously. This at the very least told him that his current limit for spells he could learn was within that range and let him save time experimenting to find it out.
_____________________________________
my patrons can read at least twelve chapters ahead along with using the site as a way to directly contact myself rather than needing to hope i respond to your comments.
pa treon.com/pa treon_loskro