But with another flick of his wand, Voldemort caused Harry to freeze up and fall to the ground.
Loki instead of attacking looked around the place with familiarity as the fog started to let up and stopped obscuring his vision.
'Hmm…Knockturn Alley…well not like I didn't guess this would be his destination for the night, but it feels good to be right.'
After taking a few more deep breaths, Voldemort turned around the area they were in, as if he were scanning it for something, and tapped his wand on something seemingly invisible to everyone else in the air.
To everyone's surprise, as if a string had been plucked, the space vibrated with a low *hum*.
Ripples spread out in front of everyone as the shack that was previously missing suddenly made itself visible, revealing to everyone exactly what Harry had crashed into.
'This!'
'How did I not notice that the shack was in front of us!?'
'How did my Beyonder powers fail to notice it?'
Loki panicked but he immediately connected the dots.
'Fidelius charm!?'
And all of a sudden as if a core part of his memory had been unlocked Loki's eyes widened ever so slightly, but it was missed by everyone else since they were all looking at the shack that Voldemort had just revealed.
'????????????'
'The Sequence 4 Parasite Beyonder Characteristic is with the demon inside the shack!?'
'This!'
'How did I forget about this!?'
'How do I even know this!?'
'I don't have any memories of trying to divine something like this!?'
'I don't even remember locking my memories about this!?'
'Why did I know this now?'
'Adam!?'
'No way!'
'But who else can force me to lose my memories and return them to me so precisely!?'
Loki's eyes quickly scanned the house in his spirit vision and he could see exactly what was going on inside.
A humanoid figure, that Loki identified as a demon, was sitting inside the house with hundreds if not a few thousand bodies all piled upon each other as if it were a nest of snakes.
The bodies did not slither or make any movements except the barely perceptible strained movement of their chest that signified that they were breathing.
But that wasn't what Loki was struggling with.
Loki's attention was mostly overwhelmed by the absolutely torturous screams leaving the Shack in the spirit world.
The spirit of each body that had been piled up continuously lost a piece of its soul, being torn apart from its vessel before being allowed to return to it for just enough time before it healed and was torn back out again.
The process was being conducted with mechanical precision in the most inefficient way possible. The demon was continuously stretching its hand towards the souls in its line of sight before flicking its wrist, much like Loki did, to steal the souls in sight.
Unlike Loki, who painlessly stripped apart a soul from his enemy's body, the demon employed the most cruel way it could do so, it only stole a part of their souls, not the whole thing in its entirety, before returning it mid-way through the process, riddling its victim's soul with a burden of tears and scars.
Everyone's soul was being torn apart and refixed continuously.
As such, everyone's soul in Loki's vision looked like a patchwork of messy and damaged fragments.
But even though Loki's attention was being overwhelmed by the screams of the 'generosity' in front of him, his eyes widened as he confirmed the information in his head.
'It's true!'
'The demon is of the Error Pathway!'
'I can't yet steal parts of a soul! Which means his abilities are stronger than mine! A higher sequence!'
'How did I know this!?'
'How did I make my whole plan around this fact!?'
'I was manipulated by 'Adam'?'
'But what reason would 'He' have to return these memories to me if 'He' was manipulating me in the first place!?'
'Now that I think about it, I told Laura to help me fight this demon earlier! Why didn't I ever question why I asked her about this!? Was it just a guess? A hunch? But then these false memories of me going ahead with the plan because I knew I had a Beyonder Characteristic of Sequence 4 Parasite…how!?'
Loki felt a shiver run up his spine.
For the first time since he'd come to this world, Loki felt like he'd been trapped in a play that he was absolutely unaware of.
Loki immediately took a deep breath.
'For now, the best I can do is follow my plan.'
'But along with simply disrupting you-know-who's ritual, I need to kill the demon and make sure I take its beyonder characteristic.'
'I can only figure out what's going on after I understand what led me to this.'
'Now I only need to put on a performance and buy time for Laura to show up. Everything after that should be pretty smooth if my plan is right.'
'....is it right though?'
'Can I even trust my memories....?'
Loki shook his head and pushed away the thought, for now.
Voldemort looked at the house, easily sensing the several bodies inside the house and the absolute torture that was going on, he then calmly flicked his wand and caused all its walls to fall off, causing a short tsunami of bodies to pour out of the house.
But Voldemort ignored the bodies for now and walked towards Bellatrix and Rodolphus who were still kneeling.
"You've done well to serve your master.", Voldemort said patiently as he extended his hands and petted both Bellatrix and Rodolphus' heads.
Voldemort was clearly touching their heads to apply some sort of protection to their souls, but to Loki, the scene seemed like a master petting his excited loyal dogs since he could almost picture them wagging their tails if they had one.
But that was where Loki decided to act.
'To advance I have to make everything go in a way no one expects the outcome!'
'I need to make them play in my hands…'
'...even though I'm not sure if I'm playing in someone else's hands anyway…'
'I have to steal the show.'
'Time to put on a show that no one here will ever forget.'
*CLICK* *FLASH* *CLICK*
*Clap* *Clap* *Clap* *Clap*
A sudden flash of light and clapping took everyone's attention as they all looked in the distance where out of the darkness a simple boy walked into view holding a camera.
The boy was dressed in Hogwarts robes. His robes had silver and green accents, indicating he was from Slytherin and his posture was confident and straight. His face was hidden behind a mask but it did not make his allure any less.
"How cute…a dark lord showing affection to his loyal dogs! I'm almost touched!"
Voldemort turned to look at the boy and so did Bellatrix and Rodolphus.
But before Voldemort could speak, Bellatrix immediately shouted-
"HOW DARE YOU INTERRUPT MY MASTER HERE!!!!"
The young boy looked at Bellatrix and then spoke with a frown as if he was looking at a disgusting bug, the design of the mask morphing to match his expressions.
"The adults are talking little girl. If you know what's good for you, I hope you go back to licking master's, the bald dickhead's, non-existent balls. Be the good mutt you are, or I won't care if I accidentally blow you up."
"Wh- Wha-bald!?"
Bellatrix was frozen, she suddenly felt a seething amount of hatred towards the boy who was casually insulting her, and above all her master.
That was when they all noticed that the boy's hands had some sort of a wig made up of silky hair. A terrible feeling gripped everyone's hearts as the boy who had just arrived simply motioned his eyebrows towards Voldemort while spinning around the wig.
Everyone turned to look at Voldemort as their eyes suddenly widened.
'Hmm? Why are they looking at me like that?'
'....wait a second…why is my head suddenly so cold?'
Voldemort quickly moved his hand to touch his head as his eyes widened.
"Hahahaha~ What a fool you are! Can't even keep your own head safe!?" The boy started to laugh as he bent over and held his knees.
"You truly are a failure! I should've known that all those who came after me were going to be failures indeed!"
"I mean could you imagine this!? The Dark Lord that the world fears is bald!? I mean I can just imagine the stories that will float around! Imagine the Headlines!!!"
"The Lord Of Baldness Takes Over The World!"
"Or, listen to this one!"
"The Dark Lord's Unconquerable Enemy! Baldness!"
"Could you imagine that!?" The boy started to laugh even harder which only pissed Voldemort off further, causing throbbing veins to show up on his forehead, which was now very large considering he was bald, so it was easily visible.
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