Chapter 295 - 297: Change
The evening light was weak to begin with. What little the sinking sun provided was smothered by the heavy snow piled on the pine branches. Fortunately, the flame at the tip of the Chimaera's tail meant they did not have to divide their attention to keep Lumos going as they walked.
For the moment, though, the party had come to a halt. The Chimaera stood at their head, tail swaying, letting out low, rumbling growls as if describing something.
"You mean this is where you saw the Great Lake before?" Evans frowned slightly at the unremarkable stand of pines in front of them. "But now the lake is gone?"
The Chimaera dipped its great head and the fire on its tail flared for an instant.
"That is odd," Dumbledore murmured, rubbing his chin as he studied the trees. "Some kind of mobile magic circle, perhaps?"
"No. That sort of circle should be impossible," Nicolas Flamel said with a shake of his head. "You could construct something like that temporarily and sustain it through constant mental focus, but according to the creatures' accounts, this array has been in place for over a thousand years. Anything that lasted that long could not possibly be designed to move around at will."
"Not unless we are talking about a formation large enough to cover the entire region," he went on. "But in that case, the magical drain would be unimaginable."
"Even a fully intact Philosopher's Stone could not power such an array for a thousand years."
"Quite true," Dumbledore agreed. "But that only makes it harder to explain why, having reached the location where our witness was altered, we can't see this 'Great Lake' at all."
Nicolas's brow furrowed. He had no answer to that.
This was beyond what his knowledge could comfortably cover. No matter how he turned it over in his mind, he found no satisfying explanation.
It could hardly be that a single wizard had lived for over a thousand years, devoting their existence to maintaining the circle.
No individual's magic could sustain something so complex for that long. And the thought of spending a millennium doing nothing but feeding power into a spell made him shudder. That would be less a life than a punishment.
"Hmph. Not finding it is almost a relief. At least this way, we genuinely look like we're on a team‑building trip," Severus Snape said with his usual bite. His tongue might be sharp, but his wand was already raised to either side, the motion precise, as he cast a revealing charm. Invisible ripples shimmered out from the tip, only to fade without effect.
He had not expected much. If a simple spell like that had worked, Dumbledore would already have uncovered the truth.
Evans, head bent, stared at the ground beneath his boots, his thoughts a tangle.
They had been circling this area for some time, and still there was no sign of an entrance, no glamour, no hidden circle they could detect. Forget a "Great Lake"—they had not even managed to find a trickle of running water.
The only things remotely connected to water were the drifts of snow weighing down the pine boughs. Beyond that, there was not the faintest trace of any lake at all.
Even so, he was not particularly discouraged. According to the original plan, they were going to spend more than a week in the Forbidden Forest. Only one day had passed. Leaving time for the journey home, they still had a full five days to search this stretch of woodland.
And they were not exactly understaffed. Their group included the greatest white wizard of the age and the most renowned alchemist since the Middle Ages. If there truly was some kind of formation here, even if they could not find it at once, five days ought to be long enough to uncover at least a clue.
Unlike Evans, the girl at his side seemed entirely untroubled by the failure so far. For her, every trip into the unknown was a journey worth savouring. The destination mattered less than the scenery along the way.
Even so, this was potentially an extremely dangerous region. She did not allow herself to relax completely, but joined the others in weighing possibilities and trying to understand what was happening.
As the Spring Nymph, Sothia might be able to look at the problem from angles no ordinary witch or wizard would consider.
With all of them fallen silent and thinking hard, the forest grew eerily quiet. Even the winter wind seemed to thin and fade under the weight of that hush, leaving only stillness.
After a long time, a spark of inspiration flickered through Sothia's mind.
"What if… only magical creatures can see the Great Lake?" she said slowly. "If we look at the information we have, there have been all sorts of magical creatures in the Forest for at least a thousand years. In all that time, there must have been plenty of wizards here too, right?"
"Just from what we've gathered, there were at least a dozen adventurers who claimed to have explored, even crossed, the entire Forbidden Forest."
"And yet none of them found anything. That tells us something, doesn't it?"
Her eyes lit up, her voice gaining speed.
"It could be that wizards simply cannot perceive this 'Great Lake' at all. That would explain why a lake every creature seems to know about has never appeared in any written record."
By the time she finished, though, Sothia realised something felt wrong.
Even before she spoke, the others had not said a word for some time.
That might have been because they were all thinking about why they could not find the lake. But she had just laid out a whole chain of reasoning, and still no one had reacted. That was strange.
"Why is everyone so quiet all of a sudden? Say something, at lea—"
Muttering under her breath, she turned—and her words died away.
The trees around her were not the same as before.
The snow‑laden pines had vanished. In their place stood a dense, faintly sinister broadleaf forest. The snow had gone from the branches; beads of dew clung there instead, the sort that should only appear in the early morning.
At the same time, she realised the earth beneath her boots had grown soft. The biting winter wind had faded entirely, replaced by a dry, melancholy breeze that felt like late autumn.
The blood‑red light of sunset had melted away. Pale morning sun filtered down through the leaves, dappling the dark soil with a thin wash of gold.
"Evans? Professor Dumbledore?"
Her voice sounded small in the quiet.
She looked at the ground beside her. There were no footprints. No scuffed earth, no broken twigs. No sign at all that anyone had walked there with her.
The young man who had been pacing at her shoulder was gone. So were the figures who had been a short distance ahead.
She was alone.
Had she passed through some kind of barrier without noticing? Triggered a hidden magical trap?
Turning these questions over in her mind, Sothia slowly looked back—and her eyes widened.
A vast lake stretched out before her, its surface reaching to the horizon.