CHAPTER SIX: THE BATTLE

The world exploded into chaos. Noelle surged forward, her monstrous body swallowing the light with every crashing step.  Instinct had scream

The world exploded into chaos.

Noelle surged forward, her monstrous body swallowing the light with every crashing step. Instinct had screamed at him before when he first met her—don’t let her touch you—but now, it was overwhelming in its intensity. 

And it was also right. 

He’d seen what happened to the others, to those men in armor caught just a little too slow, a little too close. Flesh dissolving into her, and faces—real, human faces—rising for a heartbeat inside the shifting mass of her body, mouths open in silent horror, before they vanished beneath the surface.

An armored figure stumbled close, and Noelle’s pseudopod lashed out with the speed of a striking snake.

“Protego!”

The shield erupted from his outstretched hand, not through a wand, but raw and instinctive again, shaped by sheer will. The translucent shimmer caught the blow just in time, forcing the appendage to recoil. The figure scrambled away, his visor catching the gleam of Harry’s magic.

Across the battlefield, the blue-armored figure moved with a fluidity that seemed impossible for someone encased in so much metal, like a man in his own skin, and not a walking tank. Armsmaster, that’s what the others called him. Harry didn’t know who he was exactly, but the way the armored soldiers positioned themselves around him made it clear: he was in charge. 

His weapon—a halberd crackling with electric energy—snapped into motion, the hum of it audible even over the din of collapsing rubble.

Noelle roared.

The sound vibrated in Harry’s bones, not like a voice but like pressure, like a building coming down. She lunged again, impossibly fast, her limbs thrashing in every direction.

There wasn’t time for a plan, not really. But Harry caught Armsmaster’s glance, the barest flick of a visor toward her flank.

He understood.

He sprinted left, skidding over shattered concrete. “Lumos!” he shouted, pouring as much magic he could get away with, and light burst from his palm like a flare, dazzling-bright in the dust-choked dark.

Noelle flinched, just for a second, and Armsmaster struck. His halberd carved deep into her side, burning through the mass with a hiss of scorched meat and crackling energy.

For one breathless moment, it worked.

Then the wound closed, as if her body simply took the damage in, knitting itself back together as if nothing had happened.

Noelle shrieked in rage, and a tendril snapped toward Harry.

He dove, rolling across the rubble, barely keeping his footing. Behind him, one of the armored figures wasn’t fast enough. Harry turned in time to see the man’s scream cut off as Noelle’s flesh enveloped him, armor and all. His body melted into her, his form becoming part of the mass, his face briefly visible—eyes wide with terror—before it was gone.

Harry staggered to his feet, heart pounding in his ears.

“Fall back!” Armsmaster’s voice barked over some kind of comms system. “Foam teams now!”

Figures with bulky tanks stepped forward, unleashing streams of white foam. It hissed as it hardened on contact, but Noelle was faster. She batted the streams aside with sheer brute force, the pavement cracking beneath her.

She’s learning, Harry thought. She’s not just acting out of instincts, but she’s adapting.

Harry gritted his teeth. 

He could try to end it here. There were curses—dark, destructive ones—that could tear her apart, even wandless. He knew them. He’d used them. But he didn’t know what she was. He didn't know how much of the girl Dinah had warned him about was still buried under the flesh and madness. And more importantly, he didn't know what might happen if her volatile body died the wrong way. Would it unleash something worse?

And deep down, even now, the idea of killing someone who wasn’t truly in control of themselves… it stuck in his throat like ash.

So he chose something else. Something decidedly riskier. Something that might save her.

“You’ve got a—thing about saving people, Harry.”

Confundo!”

The beam of magic hit her squarely in the face, the one part of her that still resembled a person. Eyes, normal human eyes, blinked wide in confusion. And for the first time since she started the rampage, Noelle hesitated. Her limbs stuttered as if her hunger had paused.

That was all they needed.

Armsmaster leaped, driving his halberd deep into her chest. A sound tore free of Noelle, not a roar this time, but something higher, fractured and ragged.

She reeled.

And Harry saw his opening. He ran toward her, toward that too-human face, hand outstretched. He didn’t know what he meant to do—reach her, touch her, or stop her—he just knew he had to try.

But she was faster.

A tendril caught him mid-step. Before he could react, before he could even scream, pain enveloped him.

This was a pain he had never experienced before, worse than any curse. Dissolution. His skin, his muscles, and his self unraveled as he was drawn into her. His vision blurred with light and shadow, faces he didn’t know, and voices that weren’t his. He tried to scream—in pain? Fear? Anger?—but his throat was gone. He tried to fight, but his arms and legs were gone.

The last thing he thought he saw, through rapidly disintegrating eyes, was Armsmaster reaching for him just as Harry’s hand vanished into the abyss of Noelle’s flesh.

Then, nothing.

. . . . .

Inside Noelle, something shifted.

The mass that had once only taken… stopped. The hunger, the constant and unbearable urge, hesitated. The faces within her stilled.

She should have been ravenous. She should have done her best to consume more capes. But, for the first time since she became this thing, Noelle felt full.