Chapter Text
Superior good advice;
Blood red and arguments.
Heaven sent torment my stench;
Putrefy, putrefy.
Wise, so wise, you're not so wise;
Shadow, shadow, shadow, why?
The Poet makes himself a Seer by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses. All forms of love, suffering, and madness.
Arthur Rimbaud, "Letters Of The Seer"
Nurmengard Castle, January 1928
The tower room had been prepared without a single candle. Snow beat silently against leaded glass, and the only light came from simmering sigils carved deep into obsidian floor tiles. They pulsed with a low, hepatic rhythm, as though the stone itself were breathing.
At twenty-seven, Credence (or rather, Aurelius) had never been touched with tenderness in his life. Mary Lou's beatings had raised welts; "Graves'" false kindness had raised hope and then shattered it in the ruins of New York. At Circus Arcanus, he met an outcast maledictus who shared his pain, and together they had hunted for the truth of his birth. The half-elf servant had nearly given him answers before Grimmson's Avada silenced her forever. Despite Nagini's desperate protests, Credence had stepped through the searing firewall into Grindelwald's arms.
His master had already presented him with a wand and a phoenix; now, he circled Aurelius in the near-dark. The Dark wizard was fully dressed in a high-collar velvet coat while Aurelius stood shivering and half-naked before him.
"You tremble," Gellert observed. "Good. Fear is honesty. I despise those who come to the altar numb."
The Obscurial hugged himself. "What altar?"
A glint of teeth in the gloaming. "You, Aurelius, are the altar. I am merely the celebrant."
Gellert stopped close enough that their breath mingled. His pale blue eyes seemed lit from behind with the severe beauty of a fallen seraph. He stroked a gloved thumb across Aurelius' lower lip.
"Kneel."
Aurelius sank. The warm stone beneath his knees pulsed in time with his heart. Grindelwald's fingers found his hair and rested there, yet the weight of that hand felt like an anchor dropped into the center of his being.
"You have been told all your life that what you are is monstrous." The fingers tightened fractionally, tilting Aurelius' face up. "You were lied to. The Obscurus is not a curse; it is a potentia. Untamed lightning. Tonight, we give it a chalice." Grindelwald's free hand descended to the front of his trousers, working the fastenings with unhurried precision. "Look at me, not the floor. You will learn. This is the first lesson."
Aurelius' mouth went dry. He had only ever glimpsed other naked boys in the cold dormitory of the Second Salemers. He used to whip himself with his own belt for any impure thought.
What emerged into the shimmering glow was already half-risen and obscenely elegant, like the rest of him: thick, pale, proportioned with an artist's cruelty. The shaft curved upward with arrogant grace; the glans flushed a deep, almost bruised rose against the alabaster skin. Veins stood out like delicate runes beneath the surface, pulsing with latent magic. A single bead of slick had gathered at the slit, catching the sigil-light like a liquid pearl. The Obscurial gulped and stared wide-eyed at this imposing rod, at least half the length of the Elder Wand, perhaps even longer.
"The rites call it the Lower Wand." Gellert stroked himself once in a slow demonstration, and Aurelius' gaze tracked the motion helplessly. "The scepter that rules realms beyond the Elder Wand's reach. Every acolyte who serves the Greater Good receives its blessing. But you, Aurelius… you I shall anoint."
Aurelius let out a broken whimper as fresh tears tracked down his cheeks. "I don't… I've never—"
Gellert cupped his face with both gloved hands and brushed the shiny trails away. "You weep."
"I don't know why. I'm not… I'm not sad, I'm—"
"Overfull," Gellert supplied knowingly. "The body has no other language for what floods it when the soul is first laid bare. Do not dam it. These tears are a libation; the ritual drinks them." He bent and kissed the younger wizard, swallowing the next sob like consecrated wine.
The Dark wizard straightened and tapped the heavy, heated length against Aurelius' wet cheek, then dragged the slick head across trembling lips. "The untouched vessel holds the most magic. Open."
Aurelius let out another soft, overwhelmed sob, but obeyed. The taste was salt and electric tang, as if Gellert's essence carried a current. The older wizard made a short thrust, and the younger one gagged instantly, but Gellert's hand cradled the back of the Obscurial's skull with sudden, astonishing gentleness.
"Breathe through your nose. Let your jaw go slack. Excellent!"
The praise loosened something tight and lonely in Aurelius' chest. He tried to take Gellert deeper, flattening his tongue. Above him, the Dark wizard exhaled a short sigh of pleasure.
The shimmer thickened. Aurelius saw himself reflected in Gellert's pupils as stronger, radiant, the Obscurus no longer parasitic but symbiotic, a mantle of living shadow worn like a king's cloak. The vision stirred something behind his ribs.
"Good boy." Grindelwald's fingers tightened in his hair like a binding spell. Then he slammed his hips forward hard, driving to the hilt in one brutal thrust.
Aurelius' eyes flew wide in sheer shock. His throat muscles convulsed violently around the brutal invasion, clamping shut in choking protest as the swollen head breached his gullet. A strangled, wet gluck tore from him while hot tears exploded down his cheeks. His lungs screamed for air. His vision whited out at the edges. Every desperate swallow and gag only clenched tighter, milking the invading shaft against his will. Bile, tears, and saliva gushed, splattering the glowing sigils below.
I'm fucking dying! Can't freaking breathe—
And the Obscurus woke with a vengeance.
Its host's scleras turned corpse-white when the black mist exploded outward from between his shoulder blades like ink thrown into water. It emerged in a lash of pure annihilation that had unmade Salem Church and almost taken the entire city with it.
A hook of freezing nothingness punched through his lower abdomen like a spear of pure void, lifting him half an inch off the floor. The sigils flared white-hot in panic. The Obscurus shrieked without sound. A dozen razor-edged ribbons of shadow whipped around Grindelwald's thighs and hips, sinking hooks into his flesh. Where they touched, sensation fractured: half searing cold, half molten ecstasy. Black smoke erupted from Aurelius' mouth, coiling thickly around Grindelwald's shaft. The burning shadows glided along the older wizard's pulsing length in spirals.
"Yes!" Gellert's pupils contracted to pinpricks. "There you are!"
Blood welled at the corners of his eyes. He grinned like a madman, grabbed a tighter hold of Aurelius' black locks, and began to batter the Obscurial's throat in punishing strokes while the parasite retaliated.
A thick, oily ribbon jammed between Gellert's buttocks straight into his rim, as though the Deathstick itself had been rammed inside him, casting unending Cruciatus before slicing like Diffindo. White-hot lightning and freezing needles exploded through his nerves at once.
The thing wanted him dead.
It scraped and tore at his flesh from the inside, shadowy barbs raking along his cock and prostate while the main mass tried to crush his hips and spine. Every thrust Grindelwald forced down Aurelius' convulsing gullet was met with vicious violation in return. Pain and pleasure fused into a storm.
The Dark wizard's hips snapped forward violently, fucking Aurelius' spasming throat despite (or because of) the agony. The torment was exquisite. Shadow talons raked down his back, slicing through clothing and skin.
And yet the runes held.
The silver sigils blazed brighter, containing the worst of the Obscurus' lethal fury and forcing the destructive energy back into raw, excruciating sensation. The protective circle pulsed in time with Aurelius' heartbeat and Gellert's ragged breathing, turning attempted murder into the most intense feedback loop either had ever endured.
"This is exactly…" Blood ran down Gellert's cheeks in black rivulets, trickled from his nostrils and bitten lip, falling onto Aurelius' upturned face. "What I foresaw in you!"
The Obscurus screamed and lunged. It flooded into his veins like liquid lightning and ice, amplifying every scrape, every rip, every crushing squeeze until Grindelwald's manhood felt simultaneously flayed and worshipped by shadows. He could no longer tell where pain ended and orgasm began.
The younger wizard gagged violently, but the parasite fed on every broken sob and channeled it back as pure destructive ecstasy. Aurelius' hands clutched desperately at Gellert's thighs.
Grindelwald's control was finally shattered.
With a guttural shout that echoed through the tower, he buried himself to the hilt as climax tore through him like Fiendfyre. The Obscurus milked pulse after pulse of seed and magic from his body while simultaneously trying to crush and eviscerate him. The runes flared with blinding silver light, barely containing the explosion of dark power.
Only when the last violent spasm passed did the tendrils loosen. The Obscurus recoiled slightly, still writhing and hissing like a living storm around them both.
Aurelius gasped and coughed as Grindelwald withdrew from his mouth. The boy's face was wrecked: lips swollen, eyes red, streaks of shadow clinging like obscene war paint; a thread of saliva and shadow bridged them briefly.
Gellert breathed hard, covered in freezing lacerations and bleeding from a dozen places, but made no move to heal himself. Instead, he pulled the younger wizard to his feet and removed the remnants of clothing with a flick of the wrist, leaving Aurelius nude in the sigil-light. The Obscurus wept from his spine in tendrils that wavered like deep-sea fronds.
Gellert stroked a thumb across those swollen, ruined lips, licking a drop of his own blood from Aurelius' chin.
"Well done, my Obscurus Lord," he murmured. "You nearly killed me… and still I want more."
"You're insane." The young wizard looked up at him with shattered eyes and smiled.
Grindelwald laughed softly. "Am I? I am the only sane being in this castle! Because I understand now." He pressed a bloody kiss to Aurelius' forehead. "The Obscurus cannot be tamed. But it harbors the power that Death wields."
The Obscurus coiled tighter around its host and the wizard who had just survived its worst assault.
Outside, the wind howled like a prophecy. Inside, the Obscurial folded into his master's embrace as a host accepting a parasite's final upload.