Chapter Text

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Matt Cooper, Second Ingenium

1 day before arrival at Hogwarts

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Matt looked skeptically at the pit in front of him, and the pile of rust-colored fastballs stacked next to it. “This is going to make me a superhero?” They had taken a walk through another portal, one that the golem production line appeared to feed through. There was a whole cabal of Haley clones performing the enchants that actually awakened the things, though once they were up and running they looked a lot more robotic than magical, in Matt’s opinion. Lots of wires and whirring gears and beeping lights.

Philosophy Haley (who he’d kind of guessed at this point was just the bifurcated other half of the literal actual Haley despite his having met her earlier that day, it made his head hurt a bit) equivocated. “Well, maybe not mentally. But, this should activate the potential. The key for me was seeing how my other half responded when she stumbled through that storm into the Fallout universe. Before that we’d been assembling golems but we had no idea how to actually transfer the XP to you. But if I got you into a Pathfinder world, I realized that there was a decent chance you’d begin to obey its rules including those for level gain. So here we are- welcome to Golarion.” She considered. “Or, I guess, a Golarion.”

He shook his head, having trouble absorbing all of this. “So now what, you have me do some kind of mass murder to juice up?” Then it finally settled in for him. “The robots. You wanted something non-sentient for me to beat on.”

She smiled. “Bingo! These things are Robot Golems. They take about a month to craft, and you’ll need about 280 of them to hit max level, if my calculations are correct. But they’re extremely non-threatening outside of 30 feet, and very vulnerable to rust spells. That pit over there happens to be 40 feet deep, by the way, and those little balls on the side are Bags of Rust. You’re gonna need about 5 solid hits per golem, I’d say. Warm up that pitching arm, it’s going to be a long day.” Without further ado she motioned to the golem-casters and the first golem was shuffled into the “Arena” and turned loose.

Matt found this whole thing entirely sketchy, but he really didn’t have any moral compunction about throwing some powdery balls at a semi-animate robot in a hole, so he rolled along with it. The thing wasn’t particularly hard to hit, even- it did try to hit him with some kind of shock attack but as Haley had indicated, the range simply wasn’t great enough to reach him. He pelted it with the balls until it simply corroded away. He waited for a moment. “I don’t feel anythi-”

Before he could finish the sentence a rush of energy swept over him. It felt like the Quickening from the old Highlander movies- he felt stronger and faster, more healthy than he ever had in his life. “Holy shit.”

Philosophy Haley smiled mysteriously. “Do you feel it now, Mr. Cooper?”

He nodded, lost for words. “It’s like… infinite potential, coursing through me. It wants me to pick a path. I need to choose.” He looked at her questioningly. What do I become?

She grinned delightedly. “Well technically I shouldn’t tell you what to do, but this is a pretty on-rails adventure. I think you’ll find the caster classes to be most useful. And the divine casters the best of all. As a general societal reconstruction, having millions of people around who can fly and summon food while throwing full heals and resurrections will be substantially more useful than raging barbarians or people who are masterful at finding traps or whatever. But, ultimately it is your choice.”

He considered. “If I choose to be a- a Cleric, I guess that’s the thing I’m feeling, do I have to worship something?” He felt like he’d been pretty agnostic to-date, but he wasn’t sure he was up for signing on to some random god’s theology.

She nodded, then reconsidered. “Actually I think you can be an atheist, but you still have to pick a couple of domains to draw your spells from.”

He laughed. “A Cleric of Nobody. I heal you, through the power of my extremely firm commitment to being generally good, and doing alright by people!” Then a thought occurred to him. “What if I picked you as my deity? That would tie things up pretty neatly.”

She backed up a step and held up her hands, grimacing. “Whoa there, cowboy. I’m already skirting a couple of lines I’d rather not cross. I don’t want to see what happens if I start taking prayers in my name. Or what kind of attention we might draw.”

He followed- still angry about the way she was dodging the broader war outside. “You’re going to have to take responsibility at some point. You can’t just sit in here and churn out soldiers to go fight your wars for you. You want to see a change in the world? Lead it.”

She stopped backing away and stood her ground, growing angry as well. “I am leading it. Right now my other half is getting her depowered ass kicked up and down some wasteland Vault by a new type of zombie, if you must know. I’m also right here, trying to train the standard bearer for a whole new breed of humanity that might just save itself. How are you going to do that if I’m always interfering on your behalf?”

He shrugged. “How do the Pathfinder deities do it? You go fight the big battles and you leave us little guys to fight ours. But you give us that connection to call on, if we need you.”

She grimaced. “You sound like my husband. In the real world most people do not have a benevolent deity who can show up on their behalf. Even in the Pathfinder world that’s highly unusual. Do you get that? I fell ass-backwards into this power! I want to build a structure that doesn’t rely on me. That’s the whole point of this experience mill. Once we unlock levels for the general populace, you’ll need a lot less saving.”

Ah, he saw it now. “You built a whole engine to make heroes, but you don’t really believe in heroes, do you?”

She laughed like it was the most obvious question in the world. “I believe people can be good, that they can do their best for others in the heat of the moment, and the best people of all do their best for others throughout their whole lives. I call that heroism. I think heroes who kick in the door and save the day are a narrative trope. Small moments, magnified to become world-shaping, obscuring the real powers at play in our daily lives. Stories of great men that we tell ourselves so we feel alright with never quite doing the right thing.” She gestured at the pit. “This is a prototype. Hero engine is a misnomer- this is to reshape what society is capable of. Individually? To paraphrase- ‘No one dragon should have all that power.’ I never asked for this. I don’t want the world to depend on it.”

Yes, he got it. He’d seen this before. “Not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost but the urge to serve others, at whatever cost.” She started in recognition. “Captain likes to drop that one on us when we’re wavering,” he said, and she laughed. “Guess he got you too?” She nodded ruefully an he continued. “He’s not wrong.” He looked into the distance, reminiscing. “When I was just about to graduate from cadet training, join the RCMP, I thought about quitting. My grades were fine, I knew I could do the job- but the responsibility was weighing on me. The thought of spending the next 40 years of my life as a public servant, always answerable, always in the line of fire. It’s a scary thing. I told the others I was going out for a smoke and I hightailed it to the Saskatchewan airport. I found my sergeant there- he’d known the second I left the camp, of course.” He smiled, embarrassed now at the memory. “I told him I was scared, that I wasn’t that kind of hero. He told me there was no such thing. That you put one foot in front of the other, and steer your path towards what needs doing, and at the end of your life you look back and realize you gave yourself to something bigger than you could ever be. That real heroes dream of being honest cowards like everyone else. That they don’t ever think of themselves that way, but they show us what we should be, and we name them hero because we want to be what they are.”

He pointed at her. “You see a lifetime of sacrifice and you think if you make it, even if you’re lucky enough to make it, it will make the rest of us weak, dependent.” She nodded, but he could see that she was considering his words, that he could change that attitude. “ I say, the example you set is the only way the world knows how to be strong. The real kind of strength, the kind that doesn’t come from violence or superpowers.” He held out his hand, open. “One foot in front of the other, down the path towards what needs doing. I’ll walk it if you’ll walk it. Boss.”

She hesitated. Looked away, briefly, blinking back tears. Then she turned to him and smiled. Shaky, but real. She took his hand. “You might make a believer of me yet.” She turned back to the platform. “Get to levelling, Cleric of Haley.”

----

He did, and what felt like a couple of thousand fastballs later he was just hitting level twenty when she hurried up, speaking in a rush. “Just merged with other-me. You and I need to saddle up. Roy and the rest of the squad are coming in, but we’ve got to head to Hogwarts, my husband has something that can stop-”

He held up his hand to stop her. “Turns out your domains are Good, Legend, and Dragon, by the way. Guessing that Legend is story related. I’ll go with you but we need to try Resurrection on Charlie and Nina.

She stopped dead and facepalmed. “Of course. I’m sorry, I should have thought. Do you need anything for the spell?”

He nodded. “2 diamonds worth 10,000 GP each. Don’t suppose you-”

She reached into her ever-present sack and grabbed out two fist-sized lumps of sparkling carbon, passing them over. “Here.” Then she saw the slack-jawed look on his face. “What? Dragon, access to infinite simulacra who can all cast Wish for the price of easily-healed Strength damage- did you think we wouldn’t be sitting on small fortunes?”

He shook his head, trying to repress a smirk. “Still coming to terms with how quickly my life is changing. Alright, let’s see.” He assumed a heroic casting stance. These would be the first real spells he’d thrown as a Cleric, other than a few tests and a couple to aid his endurance as he threw his thousand rust-bombs. He searched for something appropriately mystic to say and smirked as it came to him. “Haley, I call on your radiance, lift up this spirit and grant it life anew! ” She rolled her eyes at the theatricality before jumping- she really was beginning to glow, and her radiance far outstripped his own.

The words were coming out of him faster- “Haley! In your name! Undo these unjust deaths, make right that which has gone wrong!” He met her eyes- both of them were alarmed by what was happening. The light between the two of them began to swirl and coalesce into a form. He shrugged, and went with the flow. “Haley, Lady of Collective Action! This soul has been deprived of her right to life! Will you let this stand?” A resounding gong reverberated on a layer deeper than the world, deeper than his bones. He could see her standing straighter as the sound reverberated through and from her. A rejection of the concept of death, of the economic injustice of it. “Then by your power and mine, we grant thee resurrection, Nina Lafuentes!” They both threw up their hands as the light swirled between them and burst-

And there, gasping and staring around wildly, was Nina. “What the everloving fuck-” she began before realizing she was totally nude and trying to cover every part of herself at once. Haley was already fishing for spare clothes in her bag, but Matt could tell she was beyond pleased. “It worked. It worked !”

He was a little nonplussed. “Were you that uncertain it would?”

She handed the robes off to Nina, who took them wordlessly- obviously recognizing Matt, if not his medieval fantasy getup, but unsure what to make of the situation she found herself in. Haley responded, “Well it didn’t any of the times I tried it. I wonder if you needed to be in a Pathfinder universe, or she needed to die outside our world, or- oh, we’re going to have to run so many tests and I don’t have time right now, we need to get going. Can you cast a second to get Charlie back, and then the clones can get these two up to speed while we head out?”

He nodded. “Sure thing... boss.” In his head, he was thinking- this deity thing might have been more real than I realized. But if it could get his friends back, the whole cleric gig might not be so bad after all.

----

Arizona

2 days into the siege of Hogwarts

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“I’m beginning to have second thoughts,” Matt muttered, standing outside the house of Carol White River, several hours east of Phoenix. “I thought the heat in Midland City was bad.” The sun came scorching down through the ponderosa pines, so hot he wasn’t entirely sure how this whole area wasn’t a desert already. Apparently most of Arizona was, but the thunderbird he was seeking was native to the White Mountain region, and kept it relatively damp. Relatively. “Should have never left Canada,” he opined.

“S’abit balmy for sure,” agreed Hagrid, his partner on this mission, as he mopped his giant brow. Matt honestly didn’t know how to talk to the enormous man- it was a bit like meeting a real life celebrity, he felt. But… taller. “Y’gotta respect it though. Beasties ain’t like to come out, if you spend yer time bellyachin’ about where they choose t’ live.”

“That’s right,” said Carol, coming out of her house. An american witch that Dumbledore had some acquaintance with, she was to be their field guide on this quest. “The Thunderbird is a cousin of the Phoenix. As one respects loyalty, so the other respects courage. A little heat should not daunt you, Mr. Cooper, if you seek to win the help of one today.” She was a wizened old thing- she could have been a hundred and fifty years old, for all he knew- but she moved like a spritely young teenager, stepping quickly over to them. “The Concept is sweeping inward from both coasts- it is lucky you caught me when you did. I’d planned to become a fox and hide in these woods, until it had passed.”

Matt had learned very quickly that such talk was not just weird gibberish, in the worlds he now walked. The whole truth of his situation hadn’t really sunk in for him until Haley had returned to her true form and allowed the rest of her clones to rig her with a harness fit for an English ship-of-the-line, carrying him into battle against a zombie horde like an ant on the back of a lion. Boss, indeed- like she ever needed acolytes. He’d felt like one of the Avengers, throwing out Merciful Mass Critical Wounds that knocked out twenty or more wizards at a time, as she very lightly flicked the ones who managed to dodge him into unconsciousness. He’d felt that way until the end of the battle, at least- then he’d witnessed the real scope of the casualties on both sides, and quickly exhausted his spells repairing as much damage and reversing as many possessions as he could. He was a one man field hospital, and he knew others would join them with the same powers very soon, but right now this felt like the stakes were higher than they’d ever been. At least against the Efreet we didn’t have to hamper ourselves. Now we can’t move for fear of harming innocents. But every moment we delay, more people are lost to that madness. He’d gladly left on the quest she’d given to him, happy to be doing something at last.

He nodded to Carol and Hagrid. “You’re right. Some heat is a small price to pay, if we’re successful here today. What do I need to do to meet one of these birds?”

“Oh, nothing much” said the old woman, far too nonchalantly. “Climb a mountain.” She smiled a bit, and he puzzled at that.

“Can’t we just fly?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Got to do it the hard way, the dangerous way. No brooms, no flyin’ magic. Nothin ‘cept what you need to breathe and resist the cold and maybe defend yourself should it come t’that. Birds’ll be at the top and they’ll watch you come up- you want to talk, respect their trial. Are you ready? I’ll take you to the trail head.” Well, at least it sounded like a proper quest. He agreed and without further ado she Aparated them away.

----

“That’s the mountain?” He looked up in disbelief. “That looks- how is that-” he looked at the other two who were smirking at him. “ There’s no mountain this tall in Arizona.” It towered- miles high. The treeline ended around what looked like the base and more than two-thirds of it was snowcapped. It was a classic silhouette, just a single sharp peak. “This could take days.”

Carol White River cackled. “Best get to walking, then! Dzeyh Hligai is no easy journey, you want to be well on your way before nightfall.” He didn’t recognize the words she spoke, but he assumed it was Apache.

Hagrid took mercy on him, as the two of them began up the trail. “It means White Mountain, it’s the one the others were named fer. They tucked it away from Muggles years ago- all the magical critters live up here. Don’ worry, I’m friends with practically all’a them!” He glanced nervously about. “Practically.”

Well that was the most obvious lead in ever. “Spill it,” Matt commanded.

“Them Mogollon Monsters are a right scary bunch, I hear. Never met one, meself. Big hairy blokes- I mean, big fer you lot. Very territorial, very strong. Not inclined towards visitors, hard to spot if they don’t want to be seen.”

Matt sighed. “You’re talking about Bigfoot, Hagrid. Though, I guess with the week I’m having, I shouldn’t rule them out. Look, she said no flying, right?” Hagrid nodded, glancing back- they were certainly far enough away that the woman was out of earshot. Matt nodded, and then threw a spell on both of them. Expeditious Retreat would double their speed, in 20 minute bursts. Hopefully he could keep that up until they were well and truly up the mountain.

Neither lacked for stamina- as a level 20 Cleric, Matt was feeling as strong as Hercules and about as inexhaustible, and Hagrid was his usual half-giant self. But around their tenth hour on the mountain, the air was beginning to grow thin, and Matt had long since run out of low level spells, between those used for speed and those sustaining Endure Elements and breathable air on the both of them. Hagrid had lectured him at length about every magical plant and animal on the mountain and he was beginning to feel like a real expert in the subject. They’d scaled some truly sketchy places where the trail gave way to rock and scree, and once had to turn sideways and edge alongside a cliff-face where the path was no more than a foot or two wide. Hagrid in particular had had trouble with that bit. They were well past the treeline and in the light of the setting sun, Matt felt he could see the whole of Arizona laid out below him. “I think it’s time for a break,” he said.

Hagrid agreed and whumped to the ground, so hard it bounced Matt off his feet slightly. “Too bloody righ’ it is, and here I didn’t think to pack a lunch.” Matt supposed he could provide on that front- might as well use this magic somewhere, right? Ten minutes later a magnificent Heroes’ Feast was laid out before them, and he said an only-semi-ironic prayer of thanks to Haley for her beneficence before they dug in. Afterwards they agreed to sleep until dawn- there was no sense returning to the trail if they couldn’t see, and Matt needed the time period to get his spells back in order- his literally god-given Ring of Sustenance hadn’t been worn long enough to reduce his need for sleep to only 2 hours yet. Muttering their good nights, they nodded off on the side of the rocky trail.

Matt was the only one to awake, when the first rays of dawn hit his eyes. “Alright, you great grizzly, up and at em” he said to Hagrid- but the giant’s sleeping roll was empty. Instead a great red splash of blood stained the trail, disappearing off upwards and into the distance. There was a note pinned to the mattress, he saw.

“He’ll be at the top, if you move fast enough. By sundown tonight. No magic means no magic. Or your friend takes the quick way back down. -The Mogollon” It was scratchy, delivered in a rambling scrawl on what felt like parchment. This reeks of a setup. But what choice did he have? He turned and carried on up the mountain.

The trail grew worse as the day went on. Frayed rope bridges over deep canyons. Whole sections that turned into cliff-face climbs, the trail swept away by rockfall. By the end he was well above the area where a human could breathe normally, and he felt even his newly-superhuman constitution being taxed as he took gulping lung fulls of frigid air. His body ached and his mind blanked for long periods of the climb. The sun peaked, and he didn’t stop. It began to dip towards the horizon, and he grit his teeth and pushed onwards. Finally, the trail ended entirely- but the mountain kept on going. The last section was sheer, iced cliff-face. He could see the birds circling in the air high above- they were enormous, with six wings each, and they apparently nested at the very peak. Hagrid was still not in evidence. “If he’s not up there, so help me-” Matt muttered, but shook his head. One step in front of the other, right. “Haley, if you’re listening- keep an eye out, okay? This looks hairy.” He placed a hand on the cliff and began his climb.

The shadow of the setting sun chased him upwards. He’d almost made it- huffing and straining, pulling himself upwards foot after foot, in a feat of sheer physicality that would have been totally beyond him just days before. But the cold shadow crept up his body, racing him to the top, beating him inch by inch. He was mere feet from the cliff’s edge when it passed him entirely, now moving visibly as the last inch of sun sank below the skyline. He mustered everything he had, and pushed, leaping upwards. His hand found the edge, fingers crossing before the shadow could. “That has to count,” he huffed, heaving himself up and over. His vision dimmed from strain and lack of oxygen.



But he could still hear the clapping. And then a bubble of air and heat enveloped him. “Oh yes, I’d say that counts very nicely, Mr. Cooper.” It was Carol, sitting with Hagrid at a small cave within the cliff. Around them the enormous thunderbirds nested, looking at him with a mixture of respect and amusement. “What?” she said, responding to his accusing glare. “I never said I wouldn’t be flying up here. As for Hagrid, well-” she nudged the big giant and he chuckled, “the birds look a lot more favorably on a climber if he shows he’s willing to take a risk for someone. They like approachable stakes, fate-of-the-world stuff doesn’t suit them.” She patted the ground beside her. “Come on in, Hero, and tell these silly chickadees what you need from them.”