Still don't own it. J.K. Rowling still does own it. Props to Miranda Flairgold. Read and Review, greatly appreciated.
I had not planned on starting this chapter at this time, I had instead planned to wait a few days. Who knows, it might be a few days, this noisy new keyboard is pissing me off.
Felix had left Markus there near the cairn to meditate further. And he did. Markus was deep in thought by the time the sun began to crest the horizon, and did not even acknowledge that he was in the sun until it was high overhead. Markus knew that he would have to be strong in order to not disappoint Felix, and that he had to be strong to protect himself from all the coming dangers.
Markus had been having trouble lately, magical trouble. It was their fifth month into the six month stay in the out of time stream estate, and wand spells were getting harder and harder to cast. Markus had taken to the new vampiric magic like, well, a vampire to it's prey. Despite his quick learning in that area, and his quick bloodmagic he would still be behind the other NAAA vampire students, but ahead in the bloodmagic. The vastly overwhelming majority did not attempt any rituals until they had proper schooling, the danger of the first ritual seeming to be enough of a deterrent. Not so for Markus, he had started years ago, and kept up a rather steady pace, with some breaks in between.
But now his 'normal' magic was becoming harder and harder to use with his wand. He had managed and was making progress with simple wandless magic, such as slowly levitating objects, closing doors or drawers, or lighting small fires. After several long discussions with Felix it was decided that his Holly and Phoenix feather wand no longer accepted Markus as it's master. Markus had simply changed too much from the timid eleven year old boy that the wand had chosen to be it's master. It was probably the vampire bloodmagic finally completely settling and his system becoming totally undead, Felix had said that this process would take a few months, especially for the unique types of cells in his body, and the remote ones. Now Markus was 100% Vampire. His old wand no longer accepting him, and refusing to work for him was not particularly good news at all for Markus. He would have to find or create a new wand in two months, including his last month on the property.
Markus had been deep in the library for nearly a week straight when Felix approached him, inquiring of his progress in making the new wand. They had decided that a new, personalized wand would be the most beneficial and powerful for Markus. The only problem was that Markus was lacking the necessary components, knowledge, and skill to craft a wand that he would be happy with, and he would be for the foreseeable future.
He had, however settled for a sort of intermediary wand that would serve him well enough for the next few months or years, and would allow him to still practice and increase his wand magic skills and total magical reserves. Plus the magical artifact creating skills would be beneficial later, he was already planning on taking the related course at NAAA but Felix had recently informed Markus that every member of the Drakul bloodline had become a master swordsman, and also a master of some other branch or sub-branch of magic. Each one had forged their own unique, and powerful sword by the time they were a century old. This did not worry Markus, he had plenty of time.
"How comes the wand-making research, Markus?" Felix seemed genuinely curious; he had at least sufficient knowledge in wand-making. He had made his own, and doubtlessly countless backups that were each as strong as the one he used every day.
"I'm going to make a less personalized, more generic wand that will choose me as it's master because I created it. Nothing too fancy yet, I lack the time, skill, knowledge, and appropriate ingredients for such a highly personalized wand. I'm planning on using Ash for the wand itself and some of my hair bathed and washed in my blood as the core."
"That should all work fine, especially for a wand that will see heavy use over a short time period. The Ash will provide durability and power, while the core will make it magically up to such heavy use as it will surely see. I can not see it lasting longer than a year, so by then you should either have strong back up wands prepared, a new personalized wand prepared, or be ready to immediately start creating the new wand."
With that parting statement Felix went on his way. Markus did not know, nor really want to know what Felix had been doing during the week off from his normal routine, due to the necessity of having a functioning wand. He had not had his normal routine with Felix since his Holly and Phoenix Feather wand quit working altogether, and they had decided in a short conversation that as long as he kept up his own practice and meditation that he would not fall far behind, well farther behind than he already was compared to the other vampire students. As it was Markus would be relying slightly on the family name of Drakul to protect him from the bloodthirsty vampires, but his fighting skills were increasing every day, as were his repertoire of spells to pull from, and arsenal of bloodmagic and vampiric magic.
Markus had finished all of the research required for the creation of this basic wand, and was going to start the process the next night, when the sun was fully below the horizon. He planned to spend the rest of the day preparing the potions that would be necessary to bathe and wash the wand in once the binding of the core and wand had been completed. This was a vital step to ensuring the wand was not brittle to large amounts of magic being channeled through it, and Felix had left no room for debate on the subject of if his wand needed the full potion treatment. Markus agreed with Felix, it did need the full treatment if it was supposed to last any real length of time.