The alarm continued to blare.
Bella stood at the edge of the ship's rail, her right hand gripping her wand, looking lazy and relaxed—as though the lethal spells cast by the Aurors across from her were no more harmful than the sea breeze.
Those spells were dismantled by a magical force field roughly five meters from her.
Ignoring the Aurors' incredulous expressions, Bella twitched her index finger. A dark green beam crossed the sea, slipping precisely through the gap between the deputy captain's raised wand and body before striking him in the chest.
His mouth hung slightly open as he stiffened, then he toppled facedown onto the ground. His wand sprang from his slackened hand and rolled into a crack between the stones.
Two more Aurors appeared at the side of the pier at the same time, one to the left and one to the right, seemingly trying to form a pincer angle. Bella rotated her wrist halfway around, and two successive Killing Curses shot from her fingertips almost simultaneously, striking them both.
The one on the left fell first, followed by the one on the right. The sound of their bodies hitting the ground was hard to make out beneath the alarm, but the two additional motionless bodies on the stone pier were plainly visible.
"Damn it! The deputy captain's dead! What do we do?"
"Fight them! These Death Eaters are lunatics—they won't leave any prisoners alive!"
"Ahhhhh!"
The last two Auror squad members on the pier charged out in despair, only to be picked off by two Killing Curses in succession. Blood spilled from their mouths as they crashed through the dock railing and fell into the sea. After struggling twice, they sank beneath the water unwillingly.
The wake behind the ship spread outward, and Bella lowered her