Dark Lord Publishing studios proudly presents, a continued Fight Club Challenge by director Zenzao, with executive producer Peace...
Cursebreaking Hamunaptra
Act II - Contract of Blood
Footsteps bounced back in double step, the echoes magnified by how closely pressed both wizard and hedgewitch were by the narrow walls underneath the bank. Even so Bill lead her on steadily, the path familiar by rote, and he turned his head over his left shoulder to say, "Remember to mind your gaze as much as your tongue, ma'am. My employers have been known to gouge, in both notions of the term, for little less than full respect."
Miss Carnahan met his single visible eye and tried to measure the honesty of that rather dreadful statement. She was disheartened to see his vision remain steady the entire time, even as they wound around a sudden bend in the hall.
"I must confess that I do not find the thought of being gouged delightful, Mr. Weasley. I might hope you were simply jesting..."
Bill broke her gaze and their forward march by turning completely to stare at a particularly solid looking span of bedrock, much the same as all the rest passed thus far. "I've learned quite a few subjects on goblins that Hogwarts never got around to openly saying, ma'am. The average surface level employee may sneer at a wizard's- or witch's- lack of kindness, and tolerate indignity to a very measured point, but those this far down hold their posts for a very good, very grim, set of reasons. Don't insult Igh'hre-" he made a sound like a choking cat partially submerged, one that she doubted she could ever imitate no matter how hard she practiced, "-or my head is going to roll before your own; one of my duties is to educate potential clients before a meeting."
"Goodness, why ever do you stay here then if your life is so easily put at risk?" Her expression reflected the spark of anxiety coiling up inside of her, waiting to go off with a bang.
I don't doubt we'll see something then, he thought, glancing from the corner of his eye.
He reached up, flicked his dragon fang earring, and gestured at the old, not-quite-faded scar running across his face. "You could say I've had some experience with danger." She had been avoiding staring, but the faint light in the cool tunnels illuminated the ravaged path of a pre-transformed werewolf's assault, the thin gap across his brow, the bridge of his nose, and now she could not help but look. He grimaced with remembrance. The more things change. The memory remained bittersweet twice over; firstly for the assault, and secondly for drawing Fleur into his life as his would-be wife. He pushed on before he could be drawn back to darker alleys in his head.
"But mostly, it's because of my younger brothers. Charlie's the dragon tamer; Ron's best friends and dueling partners with the Boy-Who-Lived-Again. Call me crazy, Miss Carnahan, but I'm not about to be outshone by those two berks!" His grimace stretched upward wildly, perhaps, she thought, even ferally, as he smiled, and he added, "Cursebreaking is my one true devotion. And just maybe, if you make a mess of this, I can stall long enough for Igh'hre-" again that ghastly sound, "-to calm down. Now mind your manners and let me lay the outline, please!"
She sniffed primly with a suspicion taking shape in her head and set her hands across her hips, a sour quirk to her mouth.
"Is this a... a game you're on about?"
Bill kept his awful grin in place. "They do say Cursebreaking takes a certain madness, ma'am." Then he drew a rugged, carved-stone key from one of those tiny pouches extracted from his desk so hypnotically and began to slash it above the surface of the wall. "What-" she got no more out but that before thin vertices of light, hitherto latticework, unfolded and gnawed a sunken hole into the wall.
"Remember," he warned, and ducked inside.
"Ooooh, I hate it when men act so childishly! Completely reckless!" Striding after him with barely a dip in her posture, resisting the urge to hug herself lest she come into contact with the unnatural opening around her, she emerged into a subterranean vault of dank glory gone to rot.
Dry lanterns burned red from an anchor in the far wall. The pallor they cast set the tone for what they illuminated, a small hoard of gems sitting atop of and occasionally buried inside of moldering stacks of paperwork everywhere, old charts yellowed with dust decades in the making, a desk of dark ivory that too resembled bone for her taste against the far wall.
Then her gaze panned down as her escort began to settle to the messy floor Indian style, and quiet shock rooted her to the spot. Oh Atem. Seated in the midst of such entropy was a blackened corpse. To her sudden horror she understood that he was speaking to the rotten body- and it was speaking back, in that same choking, almost wheezing, half-under water grumble. Then one sunken wrinkle twitched and withdrew upward enough to expose a shrunken black pupil. Brown teeth spread from the gash in its face making up the mouth and a bark of unpleasant language followed.
"The map."
When she did not enter, did not in fact respond, Bill reached back without looking and gestured, then grabbed for her reluctant wrist while all she could do was stare, and pulled her in. Then he drew her down to his side, almost in a heap, and helped her sit upright even as he rooted through her purse for the item in question.
That finally snapped her out of her daze and she focused down, rather than upon the… goblin… that looked as old as some of the recent mummies excavated. Her tongue remained glued to the roof of her mouth when she tried to say something. Unbeknownst to her, he had silently applied a langlock as his supporting hand retreated behind his back for a moment.
He laid the map out and spread it open. Igh'rhe crooned. He murred in return and once more they took to that unintelligible choking. She could do nothing more than watch. After a handful of minutes Bill offered his hand out, palm up, and the decrepit goblin spoke again, giving some sort of approval, for Bill then extended his reach over to a stack of papers between them and rooted around momentarily. At last he drew forth a dark, scaly feather, the nib of which terminated on a needle's wicked tip, and accepting the map itself as the contract for which they would sign, he turned the aged parchment over to scrawl in short, concise loops.
What am I getting myself into? She wondered, shivering. At first nothing happened. Then she would have gasped had she been free to, for lines of red bled, literally bled, to the surface where he had passed. Duplicate marks decorated the back of his hand. He did not flinch. Partway through he passed the awful thing to her. "Sign your name, please. I've set things out fairly for both parties."
Pleading doe-eyes looked up into his own. Read it, he mouthed. Her head turned down. She did. It was not easy, but she did. He had not lied- the terms were more than fair for her and the bank, and he had not included himself as anything other than a member of the bank, earning the salary he typically earned, as plainly stated- a salary that was not conveyed in numbers. Her shaking hand scrawled her name.
Then he took it back from her and passed the calcified feather to the ancient creature across from them, who in turn leaned forward to accept, and scrawl its own name. The blood that welled up on the back of the map appeared thin, yet so dark as to appear to be actual ink, and when it was through the eye closed and the mouth shut, and the goblin leaned back in rest.
In a matter of hours, the two of them were packed up and emerging from a fireplace on another continent, an area far more familiar to Miss Carnahan, despite her dismay. Two nights later saw them in the desert.
Midnight on an Egyptian sea, waves of white dust gliding beneath the cold breeze of a bright, cloudless night. Stars blazed a trail for the camel riders and their orcish company making a languid pace across those dunes, a chart sailors had been reading for three thousand years and more. Rays of spun silver bobbed across the puffing sand and the huffing mounts at labor.
"Tell me more about this Hogwarts you have hinted at so fervently, Mr. Weasley." The relationship between they two had been tentatively recovering from their meeting with his superior. She still could not pronounce the impossible name, and she had no desire to succeed.
Minutes trickled by tirelessly before he answered. "Wonder. If I could sum up my school years in a word, wonder." Bill leaned over the ragged edge of his carpeted rig, swaying moodily by ropes. "The professors knew how to teach not just the textbook lesson, but the principles behind it, that defined it. I haven't learned everything that I know from them, but rather because of them." He leaned back beneath the shuffling canopy and closed his eyes. "I'm the man I am today due to Hogwarts. And Professor Albus Dumbledore most of all." And he began to hum, a quiet tune of Gaelic origin, rolling his index fingers through the air, and faded gray motes of fire were conjured overhead, banshee fyre, or ghost wick.
Miss Carnahan trotted her camel closer. Her soft lips shaped into that always pleasing 'o' of surprise, he noted through half-lids, and Bill smiled around his hum to slow his conducting so the illusional kindling held just a little longer. When the song was done he sat upright and looked ahead to the moon glistening above another slope. "I'll always be in Hogwarts in one way or the other, to the day this job finally takes my life at the ripe old age of a hundred and fifty-six." He paused to laugh at himself, adding, "Might finally have earned a chocolate frog card by then, though you wouldn't know much about those, I suppose."
Her inquiring gaze grew sharper in suspicion, another trait he knew well. "I have not had the acquaintance of such a term, no," she confirmed.
Bill nodded. "Best to leave that alone until after we get back to London." He laid back and stared out into the quiet night.
"Must you do that once more? Tease a... a common facet of this society of sorcery and conjuring and goblins! As if I should know exactly what you mean!" She urged her camel to a hard trot, taking the lead away ere he could answer her.
And this is why Fleur could never be satisfied. I just can't help but drift like the wind through things of this nature.
Bill let her keep a safe distance ahead. It's better this way. She's almost a squib, and I live a dangerous life. Our world may very well be too much for her to handle. He hummed a Norwegian lullaby to distract him, of Yggdrasil's roots sheltering the last man and woman alive come the winters of Ragnarok. His dragon fang earring hummed along, however, and fed a much different tune into his head; the translated whisperings of treachery from the foreign goblins at his back.
...end of Act II.
A/N: Been a while, hasn't it? Well, I'm finally getting this going again! As we have seen, Bill has a talent for what I am calling rhythm magic, in addition to the other little surprises in store. We'll be seeing some things I hope are original. There have also been slight clues to the different, wider world beyond just Bill and Evie, that may tie into an Auror Potter premise elsewhere. I fully intend for the third act to close in at 3k words, if not 4k, otherwise I may have to extend the chapter count a little.
I've also finally settled the first section of Last Dragonrider's third chapter. We have two scenes remaining before I'll have the whole chapter ready to upload in a month or so. Thank you for your time.
