Old Friends and Old Business

[Harry Dresden]

The interior of the castle was dark. Torches didn't provide that much light compared to a modern lightbulb. Harry lifted his pentacle necklace, lighting it with an effort of his will, and he continued through the halls, making every second right turn just so that he'd get somewhere. Eventually, the torchlit hallways gave way to a dark atrium with a balcony. Stairs flanked it on either side, providing access. However, as the wizard stepped onto the lush carpet and regarded a suit of armor that looked out of place, he heard a familiar voice.

"Wizard. I never thought to see thee again."

Harry turned towards the balcony as the room flared into brighter light, the torches burning unnaturally high and threatening to catch the tapestries on fire. "Leonid Kravos. Didn't I kill your ghost?" The man stood on the balcony, average male height of 5'9", thin, with a sunken face and murderous eyes. He gave a chill laugh, one that sounded as though he was having trouble remembering how to do it. It sounded like a Palpatine impression, which didn't give Kravos any points in Harry's book. "Ah, but I am in my flesh once more, Dresden."

Kravos started monologuing, but Harry wasn't listening at all. Instead, he walked to the stairs, hardening his will into a shield in front of him. He caught the blast of fire Kravos flung at him almost without moving. "What are you doing, Dresden?" Harry stopped at the top of the balcony, the flames from Kravos' dramatic torch spell starting to crackle on the wall hanging like he'd known they would. "Correcting your delusions. I am a Wizard. You are a two-bit thug of a sorcerer. From that fire blast, you're the same as you were when you died. Maybe a little stronger. Nowhere near as strong as your ghost was after he snuck up on me."[/color]

Harry planted his staff on the floor and snarled, [b]"Forzare." A sphere of force knocked Kravos forward onto the floor. "Impossible! We were evenly matched when I was alive!" Harry almost laughed, feeling the chill of Winter come over him. The flames shrank back a bit, seemingly cowed by the wave of cold that washed into the room. He didn't draw his blasting rod; he just walked over to Kravos and picked the shorter man up off the floor by his collar. "Let me give you a lesson, Leonid Kravos." The sorcerer shuddered as Harry Named him and meant it, infusing the words with an effort of will to get his attention. "I am not the same as I was when you killed yourself in that jail cell to make a ghost. I am more than I was. I am the Winter Knight, now. I held a Blackened Denarius for a time, and had the strength of will to put that temptation aside."

Harry reached down to the sorcerer's hand, ripping off the chain link bracelet that served as Kravos' focus. "You are still a two-bit sorcerer. I'm going to take you back to Minas Tirith, and you're going to be imprisoned." Kravos had the courage to laugh in the face of the Winter Knight. "Why not just kill me, wizard? There is no Nevernever here, nowhere for a ghost to come from." Harry didn't respond with words; he couldn't. The Winter in him wanted to kill the man so badly. No magic was necessary, no Laws needed to be broken. All he'd need to do was throw him and he'd break like so much glass.

Harry calmed himself with deep breaths, running through multiplication tables in his head; the logic was something the Winter Knight couldn't grasp with its animal instincts. He forced Kravos to the ground, the stunned sorcerer hardly resisting, and started to summon a pair of handcuffs, his right foot on the man's chest and staff pointed at his head. "I'm better than you. I don't need to kill you. Besides, it wouldn't stick."

Five minutes of mild struggling later, Leonid Kravos had a matching pair of silver bracelets and was being forcibly marched at blasting rod-point towards the city of Minas Tirith.