Realizing something was wrong after being hit, Ian had not even had time to call for help when Graves, behind him, grabbed a leech that had lunged onto the side of his own neck and flung it aside. Blood streamed from his neck, but he paid it no attention at all. Instead, he cupped one hand in front of his open mouth, and a huge blaze rose from between his lips, turning under the control of his palm into a giant serpent.
Under Graves's control, as if he were playing the Snake Game recently popular among young wizards, the fire serpent rescued Mr. Ashford from the Imperius Curse and caught the leeches lunging at them. The more it devoured, the larger the flames grew, and its heat also bought Ian a moment to breathe, giving him time to smash the leeches on his face and body. The blood that welled out and the swollen wounds left him looking rather battered.
Still shaken, he looked at the leeches writhing constantly over the test subjects around them. Many of those people had already been sucked dry into corpses with shriveled skin, their wrinkled flesh like rotten vegetables drained of water. Their empty eye sockets spoke of despair, and leeches even crawled out of some of their mouths, swaying as they searched for their next target.
Compared to Ian, whose hair stood on end, Graves was extremely composed and reminded him aloud, "Use fire to deal with them, or corrode them with strong acid magic. Don't be frightened by their appearance. This kind of Dark Magic isn't hard to solve."
That tactic was undoubtedly correct. Before long, after the leeches had been killed to a certain extent, they stopped attacking and instead gathered together again, reforming into Marcus's shape. Only now, he looked