Pursuit

"We're almost there. It's right ahead."

The two jogged farther west than the western outskirts. There were fewer and fewer pedestrians and houses along the road, and the smog around them had thinned until it was barely noticeable. As time passed, the surroundings took on the appearance of moonlit fields beneath sparse stars.

"Tom, do you think Parseltongue can be learned?" Nal asked as he ran. He was deeply curious about this language he could not hear.

"I think it should be quite easy if it's just a few sentences," Tom said breathlessly. As he thought about it, Parseltongue differed from learning an ordinary foreign language. Normal language learning began with listening, then simple communication, and finally complex sentences, while Parseltongue was exactly the opposite. "But I think understanding it, or even communicating in it, might take some effort."

"Oh." Nelson lost interest. After all, it was a rare magical skill, and he had merely been curious.

"But I'll teach you. With your intelligence, I think you should be able to learn it." Tom stopped at the edge of a cliff cutting across their path, braced his hands on his knees, and leaned over to look down. "We're here."

Nelson stepped forward and peered into the ravine. At the bottom of the shallow "gorge" was a cracked riverbed. For some unknown reason, the river had changed course. The side closer to Nelson and Tom was steep, while the other was gentle. Directly below Nelson was a protruding concrete pipe, wide enough for one person to pass through.

"Is this it? Do we need to go inside?" He frowned as he examined the pipe. It seemed to be a sewage pipe connected to an abandoned factory in the distance. Not far away, a narrow path that looked as though something had scraped it out led from the bank to the entrance. Beneath the pipe lay a patch of black ground spreading outward in a radial pattern. This river, which appeared to have changed course long ago, should have fostered a thriving ecosystem in its fertile riverbed, yet it was now barren. It was easy to imagine that this desolate environment was closely related to the outlet. "She won't be lying in ambush down there, will she? The moment we go in, ten thousand snakes will devour our hearts and we'll die full of regret..."

"What are you talking about?" Tom rolled his eyes at him, then climbed down. "The other snakes will only listen to me, and she's already injured."

"That's not necessarily true." Nelson crouched as well, planted his hands on the ground, and leaped down to the mouth of the pipe. "Whoa. Damn."

He walked over to Tom and raised his head to inspect the concrete pipe. It looked to be two meters in diameter. Gravity had compacted the dust and dirt settled at the bottom into a flat path. The ground was dry, wide enough for the two of them to walk side by side. A faint moldy smell drifted out from within, making it easy to imagine the damp conditions inside. Not a trace of light could be seen in the pipe; instead, it swallowed even the light shining in from outside, like a gaping mouth.

"Waterproofing Charm." Nelson bent down and tapped his shoes with his Wand, then tightened his shoelaces. Tom copied his preparations.

Fully prepared, Nelson had just lifted his foot to enter the pipe when Tom stopped him.

"Lumos." Tom took the lead, raising his Wand as he entered the pipe. Nelson smiled and shook his head before following him.

Two uninvited guests carrying light sources had suddenly entered this dark underground world. From the moment he stepped into the pipe, Nelson's hearing changed. Back when he had lived aboveground among crowds, the ever-present whispers and the silent wind lingering around his ears had been ignored as white noise. But there was no wind underground, nor were there crowds. The water that had once flowed through this network of pipes had ceased with its abandonment. He had fallen into absolute silence. All he could hear were their footsteps on the ground, the echoes of those footsteps traveling into the distance and returning, and the echoes of those echoes... Their tense breathing and heartbeats were sounds buried at the very bottom of daily life, background noises so faint that people forgot they were even ignoring them.

"It's not as damp as I imagined," Tom said to Nal over his shoulder. The echo lingered for a long time, and he seemed a little nervous as well.

"It's probably been abandoned for a long time." Nelson wiped a thick layer of dust from the pipe wall with one finger. He had to use his Wand to conjure water and rinse it clean. "Ugh, I hope it's not poisonous."

"If it were poisonous, the snakes here would've died from it ages ago." Tom kept walking without looking back.

"I know it might just be psychological, but my finger really feels a little itchy." He wanted to find something to talk about to ease the terrifying atmosphere created by the absolute silence. "Besides, some poisons might be nothing to snakes, but deadly to humans..."

The two chatted idly as they followed the pipe wall forward. Before long, their voices abruptly stopped echoing through the tunnel. They stood still with their glowing Wands raised. At the end of the pipe, their view suddenly opened up, and noise abruptly filled their ears: scales scraping across gravel, wings beating the air, and rustling sounds everywhere. The sounds quickly became distinct and clear. It was an enormous cavity formed by an underground collapse, seemingly no smaller than Hogwarts' Great Hall.

Nelson could see flocks of Bats flying about in the distant air. Many glowing insects clung to the walls, filling the entire cavity with an orange-yellow light bright enough to see by. Underground creatures differed far too greatly from those aboveground. He tried to compare them with the creature guides he knew, only to pessimistically discover that they were far too different from ordinary animals. They might even all be magical creatures.

"They don't look that dangerous. Like little Goblins, flower fairies, that sort of thing." He tried to reassure himself.

Once they had adjusted to the light in the cavity, the two extinguished their Wands. Beneath their feet was a long, narrow passage resembling a covered bridge, leading to a flat platform in the center of the cavity. On the platform stood a thick stone pillar, around which a massive Giant Python, black from head to tail, was coiled. It raised its head and flicked its tongue as it stared at them, its green pupils reflecting a cold, sinister light.

Very quickly, the various creatures flying through the air scattered to the surroundings, keeping away from the "bridge." Nelson stretched out one foot and gave it a tentative stomp. Debris immediately showered down from it.

"This was probably left behind by the old pipes. There isn't even any foundation or rebar in it." Nelson turned to Tom. "If we walk across that, we might fall to our deaths."

"Humph!" Tom glared sideways at the Giant Python in the center of the cavity, which was staring back at him, then turned to Nelson. "Wait here first. If everything's fine, I'll call you over."

Without waiting for Nelson to speak, he lifted both hands at his sides. A thin black mist began to form beside the hand holding his Wand, gradually growing into a slender snake shape that slithered around Tom's arm. From time to time, it raised its head and made hissing motions at the Giant Python in the distance. Nelson noticed that fear, startlingly human in its intensity, flickered in the Black Python's green pupils. Tom smiled disdainfully, grabbed the snake-shaped black mist around his arm, and crushed it in his fist!

The black mist twisted and expanded continuously, soon covering Tom's lower body. A fierce wind swept through the tranquil underground cavern, lifting him into the air. Then he launched himself toward the Black Python, the rolling black mist behind him drawing a trail like a beautifully shaped tail flame.

"Flying really is cool," Nelson muttered, yearning for it. He watched Tom land lightly before the Black Python. The black mist peeled away from beneath Tom's feet and condensed behind him into a great serpent no less imposing than the one from that day, confronting the Black Python. Tom's lips moved slightly, as though he were saying something.

Soon, Tom raised his Wand at the Black Python with a fierce expression. Man and snake remained locked in a standoff for a moment. Just as the great serpent behind Nelson and Tom grew impatient, the Black Python slid down from the pillar it had been coiled around, lowered its head before Tom, and closed its huge eyes.

The black mist serpent behind Tom vanished with a bang. Nelson was not actually sure whether there had been a bang. He was not even sure there had been any sound at all. He simply felt that a scene of smoke dispersing like that ought to come with a sound effect like bang.

Tom rested a hand on the Giant Python's massive head, turned around with a smug grin, and waved his other arm at Nelson. "You can come over now! Do you need me to come get you?!"

"No!" Nelson shouted back. Their voices echoed through the cavity for a long time, and even the already perilous "covered bridge" trembled under the sound waves, becoming even more rickety. Nelson felt as though he had been challenged. He crouched down and planted his Wand into the bridge before him, which looked ready to collapse at any moment. Holding the Wand with both hands, he muttered an incantation. In order to return Tom's flashy magic with one of his own, he practically exhausted every ounce of strength he had.

The clumps of earth stuck to both sides of the "bridge" peeled away one after another, flipped over, and reattached themselves. As they returned to their original places, they became hard stone slabs. The bridge deck widened as the slabs thickened. Short, thick stone pillars emerged along both sides, and chains grew from their tops to link them together. Like dominoes, the entire bridge flipped inward and outward, beginning from the Wand Nelson had planted, transforming into a true, simple covered bridge.

Nelson pulled out his Wand, wiped away the dirt clinging to it, and stepped onto the brand-new bridge before him. By coincidence, the rate at which the covered bridge transformed matched his pace perfectly. It looked as though every step he took made the ruins beneath his feet feel ashamed of themselves and voluntarily renew themselves.

Tom watched his friend approach with an unconcerned expression, lowered the hand holding his Wand, and went forward to meet him. At that moment, he did not care whose way of getting there had been cooler. It was difficult to find any standard by which bridge-building and flying could be compared. He only felt regret—regret that there was no audience to cheer for the magic of two geniuses, and regret that there was no audience to spread word of this scene that seemed like a miracle.

"Her name is Nagini. She's a Maledictus afflicted by Dark Magic, and she just escaped from the United States back to London." Tom came forward and took Nelson's hand. "I've forgiven her. From today onward, she's my subordinate, and my friend."