Landon was drained. His mind had been weakened from Aries' lipstick, his body exhausted from traveling back and forth to the Ministry and the attacks that left him shaking. His barriers were nearly down, the tight grip he kept on his mind and the walls that prevented anyone from slipping inside of it crumbling at Aries' onslaught, a feat that so very rarely was accomplished.
He had so often been on the other side of this exchange that he knew exactly what Aries was feeling right now, and exactly what she was seeing. The images flashed in front of his eyes and through his mind, and he knew that all that he saw she, too, gained. The eerie, dimly lit corridor leading to his office swam in front of his eyes as he watched his coworkers file pass, giving him smiles and nods of greeting; the interior of his messy apartment, tables filled with stacks of books and maps, the white on white of the hospital room he had awoken in years ago with no memories; a darkness, the one that filled his vision when the headaches started to pound their way to the edges of his skull, inky black and feeling like it housed so many lies and secrets. Something strange, then. Ministry employees, faces he could almost recognize, pointing wands at him. Standing tense and...scared? Flashes of bright white light, murmurs of words that made no sense to him, one ringing clear voice concluding – it worked.
Landon grit his teeth, focused much of his remaining strength to forcefully push Aries from his mind. He felt it when she was torn from it, and knew he again had privacy.
Fuck. He needed to get out of here. He was no match for her, not like this. She was incredibly strong, lightening fast with her spells and even skilled enough at Legilimens to get past his barriers. The best strategy sometimes is to run and live to fight another day, and that was what Landon intended. Again he struggled to lift himself from the floor, feeling the bruises and scrapes on his body already forming. Blood from a cut that the broken desk had inflicted started to drip past his eye, making him reach up a hand to wipe it away and smear across his face.
“Fucking crazy...” Landon managed to say through a mouthful of blood, needing no subject for Aries to know it was she who he was aiming his insult at.
He took a shaky breath in the second of relative calm to process his options. He couldn't get past Aries jut by running, that much she had already proved. His spells weren't as strong as hers, not when she was so intent and focused. He had to surprise her, make her have just an instant of hesitation and then he could act. He groaned, let his legs become as shaky as they wanted to be, and felt himself falling back to the ground. He fluttered his eyes, allowing them to close loosely and his head to fall to the side. He would play dead, so to speak. Pretend he had passed out from Aries' attacks, which would be entirely plausible. Landon hoped exposing this weakness would draw Aries over, let her attention wane for just enough time for him to hurl a spell at her and dash out the door without her interfering. If she chose to end it with a killing curse instead he was screwed, but something told Landon that Aries liked to play with her toys before destroying them.
Home 
