October challenge fic: The Jaws of Hell are Open to Receive Thee
Title The Jaws of Hell are Open to Receive Thee
Author a_t_rain
Rating G
Length 1446 words
Summary The year is 1540, and two law-enforcement wizards, known as Angels, go to the University of Wittenberg to arrest a notorious criminal.
Notes Written in response to a prompt from lareinenoire: Was John Faustus really swallowed by the Mouth of Hell, or was it merely an enforcement of the Statutes of Secrecy? Anything that sounds Elizabethan is Christopher Marlowe's, not mine.
The Jaws of Hell Are Open to Receive Thee
In the Renaissance, the operatives of the International Confederation of Wizards were known as “Angels” because of their wing-shaped insignia and the swiftness with which they moved to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. On one particular winter evening in 1540, they had come after one John Faustus, Doctor of Logic, Medicine, Law, Divinity, and Magic at the University of Wittenberg, Conjuror Laureate, and intimate friend of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Duke of Anholt.
“They say he’s a genius,” said Propertius Longbottom in a hushed voice. He was a young, fair-haired man, and this was his first mission for the Angels. He gazed at the spires of Wittenberg with awe.
“In his own mind, anyway,” replied his partner, Mordecai Moody. Mordecai had seen everything in his forty years as an Angel, and not much of it impressed him. “The man’s insane, and so are we for agreeing to arrest him.”
“But he ought to be arrested,” said Propertius, “if he doesn’t follow the Decretals.”
The Decretals of Magical Conduct anticipated certain provisions of the seventeenth-century Statute of Secrecy, but without the later code’s strictness. They did not forbid wizards from revealing their existence to Muggles, for it was an age when most of the population believed implicitly in magic and witchcraft, and the eminently respectable University of Wittenberg was prepared to encourage its study, though not without objections from the more religious-minded scholars. All that the Decretals mandated was discretion. Wizards were not to force magic upon Muggles who were hostile to it, nor to practice it in public without permission, nor to use it to assault, defraud, or confound Muggles except in cases of dire emergency. They were not, in short, to do anything that might give the witnesses an excuse to persecute either wizards or innocent Muggles. It was an easy law to live by, but Faustus had violated every single point of it.
Mordecai shook his head. “So he should, but I’d rather be up to my neck in ice water than be sent to do it. I’ve met him before. My old partner and I came here four-and-twenty years ago to warn him of what would happen if he didn’t change his ways, and we found him muttering about building a church to Beelzebub and offering him the lukewarm blood of new-born babes.”
Mordecai lowered his voice at these last words, and Propertius blanched. Mere rumors of this sort of thing had been known to set Muggles off on witch-hunts. “He didn’t actually do it, did he?”
“I don’t know, but I’d put nothing past him.”
“Is it true that he flew around the world in a chariot drawn by dragons?”
“That I don’t know, but I do know that he went to Rome under an Invisibility Cloak and boxed the Pope on the ear.”
Propertius laughed.
“It’s no laughing matter. Two cardinals were thrown into prison and tortured for his pranks. And then, at the Emperor’s court in Innsbruck, he set horns on the heads of three courtiers so that they could never show their faces in public again. They lived out their lives in an obscure old castle in the woods, seeing nobody, little better than prisoners. And then there was that poor horse-courser who got cheated out of his last penny.”
“I’ve never heard that story. What happened?”
“Well, apparently he Transfigured a piece of straw into a horse -”
“But - but that’s impossible,” said Propertius. “I’ve seen a bit of straw turned into a cricket - maybe even a praying mantis - but a horse?”
“Oh, the man’s clever, all right,” said Mordecai bitterly. “He’s easily the finest wizard alive. But he’s also petty, vain, vindictive, childish, and an incorrigible criminal. I don’t think ‘genius’ is the right word for him, but I don’t know what is.”
“How are we going to arrest him?” asked Propertius.
“We may as well start by playing ‘good Angel, bad Angel.’ I don’t have much hope, but it’ll make our lives a hell of a lot easier if he decides to come quietly.”
* * *
“Repent, Faustus,” said Propertius. “The International Confederation is merciful to those who sincerely regret their crimes and cease to violate the Decretals. It’s never too late.”
“Now, Faustus,” said Mordecai, “imagine yourself in the vast perpetual torture-house. Are you ready to make a deal with us, or do you want to sit in the ever-burning chair at your trial?”
“You’ll never take me alive!” cried Faustus. He whirled around and waved his wand at the window. “O lente lente currite noctis equi!”
There was a great clatter of horses’ hooves, a hundred horses or more, moving in slow motion but approaching closer and closer. A herd of Thestrals streamed into Faustus’ study as if the walls meant nothing to them. Propertius, who couldn’t see them, stood frozen as the hoofbeats bore down upon him. Mordecai, who could, pulled him out of the way and performed a hasty Sealing Charm around them. The Thestrals thundered past.
“Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me!” shouted Faustus.
A thunderous roar filled the room, and the ground shook. Mordecai and Propertius rushed to the window. The mountains were advancing: stones tumbled down their sides and filled the streets of Wittenberg with rubble. The University stables disappeared under a hulking mound of earth, and then the mountain obliterated a servant’s cottage...
“Evanesco!” said Propertius desperately.
“You can’t Vanish a mountain, you fool!” said Mordecai. “Fugete montes et exhumate casas!”
The mountains retreated, and the rumbling in the earth grew still.
Faustus pointed his wand at the floor. “Earth, gape!”
The floor of the study cracked open, and Mordecai stood on the edge of a black, yawning chasm that widened by the second. Propertius grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back from the brink. “Finite incantatem! Expelliarmus!”
“Not bad, kid,” muttered Mordecai through his teeth. “You’re learning.”
“Thank you,” said Propertius. He pointed both Faustus’ wand and his own at the doctor. “You’re unarmed and outnumbered, Faustus. You may as well come quietly.”
Faustus was waving his empty arms at the sky and raving. “You stars that reigned at my nativity, whose influence hath allotted death and hell, now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist into the entrails of yon laboring cloud, that when you vomit forth into the air, my limbs may issue from your smoky mouths, so that my soul may but ascend to heaven!”
The two Angels stood with their wands drawn, fearful that he might have mastered the arcane art of wandless magic, but the stars showed no signs of obeying. Propertius and Mordecai began to breathe again.
The clock was striking midnight when they seized a still-raving Faustus by the arms and dragged him to the fireplace.
“Should we do anything about...?” Propertius nodded toward the gaping hole in the floor.
“Leave it,” said Mordecai as he tossed in a handful of Floo Powder. “Let the Confederation send somebody else to clean up. I’ve had enough of this mission.”
* * *
In the morning, three scholars of the University called at Faustus’ chambers. “Come, gentlemen,” said one, “let us go visit Faustus. For such a dreadful night was never seen since first the world’s creation did begin; such fearful shrieks and cries were never heard. Pray heaven the Doctor have escaped the danger!”
They found his study locked from the inside, and no one answered when they knocked. At last they forced the door open and saw that the room was empty. There were signs of a violent struggle: a desk had been overturned, books trampled underfoot, and the carpet looked like it had been run over by a herd of horses - although, as the study was on the third floor of the building, this was clearly impossible unless the horses had wings. More alarming still was the great crack in the floor, a black abyss that extended as far down as the eye could see.
“It is the Mouth of Hell,” said a second scholar solemnly. He crossed himself.
“Faustus must be in Hell, then,” said the third, “for the doors and windows are locked, and there is no other way out, unless we suppose he flew up the chimney. I always told him that the devils he served would serve him thus one day, but he would never listen.”
The first scholar shook his head piously. “Such is the end of all who practice witchcraft. Let his fate be a warning to us all.”
Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Author a_t_rain
Rating G
Length 1446 words
Summary The year is 1540, and two law-enforcement wizards, known as Angels, go to the University of Wittenberg to arrest a notorious criminal.
Notes Written in response to a prompt from lareinenoire: Was John Faustus really swallowed by the Mouth of Hell, or was it merely an enforcement of the Statutes of Secrecy? Anything that sounds Elizabethan is Christopher Marlowe's, not mine.
The Jaws of Hell Are Open to Receive Thee
In the Renaissance, the operatives of the International Confederation of Wizards were known as “Angels” because of their wing-shaped insignia and the swiftness with which they moved to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. On one particular winter evening in 1540, they had come after one John Faustus, Doctor of Logic, Medicine, Law, Divinity, and Magic at the University of Wittenberg, Conjuror Laureate, and intimate friend of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Duke of Anholt.
“They say he’s a genius,” said Propertius Longbottom in a hushed voice. He was a young, fair-haired man, and this was his first mission for the Angels. He gazed at the spires of Wittenberg with awe.
“In his own mind, anyway,” replied his partner, Mordecai Moody. Mordecai had seen everything in his forty years as an Angel, and not much of it impressed him. “The man’s insane, and so are we for agreeing to arrest him.”
“But he ought to be arrested,” said Propertius, “if he doesn’t follow the Decretals.”
The Decretals of Magical Conduct anticipated certain provisions of the seventeenth-century Statute of Secrecy, but without the later code’s strictness. They did not forbid wizards from revealing their existence to Muggles, for it was an age when most of the population believed implicitly in magic and witchcraft, and the eminently respectable University of Wittenberg was prepared to encourage its study, though not without objections from the more religious-minded scholars. All that the Decretals mandated was discretion. Wizards were not to force magic upon Muggles who were hostile to it, nor to practice it in public without permission, nor to use it to assault, defraud, or confound Muggles except in cases of dire emergency. They were not, in short, to do anything that might give the witnesses an excuse to persecute either wizards or innocent Muggles. It was an easy law to live by, but Faustus had violated every single point of it.
Mordecai shook his head. “So he should, but I’d rather be up to my neck in ice water than be sent to do it. I’ve met him before. My old partner and I came here four-and-twenty years ago to warn him of what would happen if he didn’t change his ways, and we found him muttering about building a church to Beelzebub and offering him the lukewarm blood of new-born babes.”
Mordecai lowered his voice at these last words, and Propertius blanched. Mere rumors of this sort of thing had been known to set Muggles off on witch-hunts. “He didn’t actually do it, did he?”
“I don’t know, but I’d put nothing past him.”
“Is it true that he flew around the world in a chariot drawn by dragons?”
“That I don’t know, but I do know that he went to Rome under an Invisibility Cloak and boxed the Pope on the ear.”
Propertius laughed.
“It’s no laughing matter. Two cardinals were thrown into prison and tortured for his pranks. And then, at the Emperor’s court in Innsbruck, he set horns on the heads of three courtiers so that they could never show their faces in public again. They lived out their lives in an obscure old castle in the woods, seeing nobody, little better than prisoners. And then there was that poor horse-courser who got cheated out of his last penny.”
“I’ve never heard that story. What happened?”
“Well, apparently he Transfigured a piece of straw into a horse -”
“But - but that’s impossible,” said Propertius. “I’ve seen a bit of straw turned into a cricket - maybe even a praying mantis - but a horse?”
“Oh, the man’s clever, all right,” said Mordecai bitterly. “He’s easily the finest wizard alive. But he’s also petty, vain, vindictive, childish, and an incorrigible criminal. I don’t think ‘genius’ is the right word for him, but I don’t know what is.”
“How are we going to arrest him?” asked Propertius.
“We may as well start by playing ‘good Angel, bad Angel.’ I don’t have much hope, but it’ll make our lives a hell of a lot easier if he decides to come quietly.”
* * *
“Repent, Faustus,” said Propertius. “The International Confederation is merciful to those who sincerely regret their crimes and cease to violate the Decretals. It’s never too late.”
“Now, Faustus,” said Mordecai, “imagine yourself in the vast perpetual torture-house. Are you ready to make a deal with us, or do you want to sit in the ever-burning chair at your trial?”
“You’ll never take me alive!” cried Faustus. He whirled around and waved his wand at the window. “O lente lente currite noctis equi!”
There was a great clatter of horses’ hooves, a hundred horses or more, moving in slow motion but approaching closer and closer. A herd of Thestrals streamed into Faustus’ study as if the walls meant nothing to them. Propertius, who couldn’t see them, stood frozen as the hoofbeats bore down upon him. Mordecai, who could, pulled him out of the way and performed a hasty Sealing Charm around them. The Thestrals thundered past.
“Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me!” shouted Faustus.
A thunderous roar filled the room, and the ground shook. Mordecai and Propertius rushed to the window. The mountains were advancing: stones tumbled down their sides and filled the streets of Wittenberg with rubble. The University stables disappeared under a hulking mound of earth, and then the mountain obliterated a servant’s cottage...
“Evanesco!” said Propertius desperately.
“You can’t Vanish a mountain, you fool!” said Mordecai. “Fugete montes et exhumate casas!”
The mountains retreated, and the rumbling in the earth grew still.
Faustus pointed his wand at the floor. “Earth, gape!”
The floor of the study cracked open, and Mordecai stood on the edge of a black, yawning chasm that widened by the second. Propertius grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back from the brink. “Finite incantatem! Expelliarmus!”
“Not bad, kid,” muttered Mordecai through his teeth. “You’re learning.”
“Thank you,” said Propertius. He pointed both Faustus’ wand and his own at the doctor. “You’re unarmed and outnumbered, Faustus. You may as well come quietly.”
Faustus was waving his empty arms at the sky and raving. “You stars that reigned at my nativity, whose influence hath allotted death and hell, now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist into the entrails of yon laboring cloud, that when you vomit forth into the air, my limbs may issue from your smoky mouths, so that my soul may but ascend to heaven!”
The two Angels stood with their wands drawn, fearful that he might have mastered the arcane art of wandless magic, but the stars showed no signs of obeying. Propertius and Mordecai began to breathe again.
The clock was striking midnight when they seized a still-raving Faustus by the arms and dragged him to the fireplace.
“Should we do anything about...?” Propertius nodded toward the gaping hole in the floor.
“Leave it,” said Mordecai as he tossed in a handful of Floo Powder. “Let the Confederation send somebody else to clean up. I’ve had enough of this mission.”
* * *
In the morning, three scholars of the University called at Faustus’ chambers. “Come, gentlemen,” said one, “let us go visit Faustus. For such a dreadful night was never seen since first the world’s creation did begin; such fearful shrieks and cries were never heard. Pray heaven the Doctor have escaped the danger!”
They found his study locked from the inside, and no one answered when they knocked. At last they forced the door open and saw that the room was empty. There were signs of a violent struggle: a desk had been overturned, books trampled underfoot, and the carpet looked like it had been run over by a herd of horses - although, as the study was on the third floor of the building, this was clearly impossible unless the horses had wings. More alarming still was the great crack in the floor, a black abyss that extended as far down as the eye could see.
“It is the Mouth of Hell,” said a second scholar solemnly. He crossed himself.
“Faustus must be in Hell, then,” said the third, “for the doors and windows are locked, and there is no other way out, unless we suppose he flew up the chimney. I always told him that the devils he served would serve him thus one day, but he would never listen.”
The first scholar shook his head piously. “Such is the end of all who practice witchcraft. Let his fate be a warning to us all.”
Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.