Still don't own it. J.K. Rowling still does own it. Props to Miranda Flairgold. Read and Review, greatly appreciated.
blahblahblah 40k words in my blahblahblah story blahblahblah if you ask nicely I might go ahead and stay up all night writing blahblahblah Read and Review y'all
Markus and Warren became fast friends, well as fast and as friendly as a vampire and a werewolf could get while traversing through the beginning of what promised to be a dangerous and perilous mountain path, with a goblin and four foot long magical snake as their only other companions.
As it turned out Warren had been part of a subpack that was part of the largest pack in the Southeastern United States. The werewolf hierarchy broke down into large packs that would dominate large regions, many keeping smaller subpacks that operated under the larger packs name and flag, so to speak. They were provided the protection that came along with the larger pack, and the resources when necessary, and they only had to pledge to fight and defend the other subpacks in the pack, and give resources when others needed them. It was not a too terrible system, and besides the incredibly bloody turf wars that came about every few years it was beneficial to most involved.
Markus and even Shadowknife had never known these things about the more intricate parts of pack life. Warren, who was usually more independent, a sort of lone wolf to get cliche with it, had been in the subpack of the Southeastern ruling pack because he was an orphan. With no parents and no support network at all Warren was forced to turn to the packs, for protection, a support network, and an opportunity to learn and train more. It turned out to be beneficial to him, he grew more powerful and more intelligent, but as time went on it became more and more obvious that the pack life was not for him.
He disliked sharing what was his, and he also disliked giving the best to the pack alpha first, and then getting his cut, even when he had rightfully earned, or hunted whatever was being given up. It infuriated Warren, and after a fight with his alpha he was declared unwelcome with the pack, and because it was a subpack, and part of the whole he was soon declared unwelcome from the whole pack. After that happened any pack that took him in would be seen less favorably by the largest pack, and no one would risk that. But that was totally fine with Warren, he had no need for a pack anyway.
He was his own wolfpack, his own alpha. No one could change that, in fact it was really the only way that Warren could see himself being part of a pack; if he was the sole leader and chief. It didn't sound too bad, Alpha Wolf Warren Beck. Hmmm. Maybe if all went well he would consider it. He had plenty of time to do so as well.
It had been noon on the fifth day when Warren woke up and they had all met each other, now it was sunset and they were just beginning to get to the first real climbing they had to do on the path. It was only about fifteen feet, but it was perfectly vertical. The rock would provide plenty of hand holds and footholds, but the darkness would complicate things somewhat.
All three species had heightened senses, luckily night vision was among them to varying degrees, with them all being somewhat equal, the vampires being creatures of the night had adapted to have good vision in the night, the werewolves had the vision of a predator stalking their prey through the night, and goblins had the vision of a race of beings living in tunnels for millennia, dark, deep tunnels far into the Earth.
They had all agreed to march on through the night, following the trail that they had found without too much difficulty. In all honesty it had been Cygnus who discovered the trail as he was hunting, and had come across a small family of magical birds, and promptly devoured the parents, and the eggs. Telling Markus about how particularly delicious they were, and where he had found the nest Markus realized he was describing a possible entrance or path through the mountain, and had immediately gone to check out exactly where Cygnus led him.
Sure enough it seemed that Cygnus had found one of the few dozen paths leading safely through the mountain. Markus had rewarded him with the promise of a luxurious feast of his new favorite, the small magical meerkat like creatures that were roaming throughout the desert surrounding the ring of mountains. Cygnus had seemed quite pleased with his promise, he coiled up and fell asleep on Markus's shoulder just as the moon began to rise.
The trio proceeding down the trail as they found it had just begun to get dark. Traveling at as slightly reduced pace they still made good time, Markus was keeping up with their progress through some basic cartography spells, they were basic, but complex to cast and understand. He was making sure that the narrow, winding trail was indeed taking them through the good sized mountain range, and not just up and down the length of them. So far it seemed they were on course, and if they kept on at their current pace they should exit the mountain range at around noon on their sixth day, spending only about twenty four hours total in the mountain range, traveling the entire time.
It would be a long night, but that was just fine with Markus, despite not truly resting the night before, nor the night before that, despite this he was ready for the night long walk. Warren had slept decently the last two nights, and was ready for the night long walk. Shadowknife was fine, he was ready for the night long walk as well. Warren had also been interested in the enchanted musket weapon that Shadowknife possessed. Markus had even admitted that he was still very interested in how the enchantments and runes on the weapon functioned exactly, and Shadowknife had decided that he would think about letting Markus examine it further. They had become slightly close friends over the past few days of travel, and had learned that while they both had some of the same interests they also had different interests and specialties.
The two found themselves also becoming friends, at least on the way to friendship. This was a very good thing, Markus needed allies, sure, but he also needed people he could trust to keep his secrets, and also trust them to be powerful enough to keep those secrets safe. Not everyone, actually not many people could be trusted that much, and it still remained to be seen just how much they could be trusted.
But Markus had a good feeling about both of them, and Felix had told him that his closest friend and ally had two vampires from his family that would be attending the Academy that term as well. Markus knew that he would have to see what those two were like, and if they could be trusted at all.
With his wand lit with a lumos spell Markus led the small group, with Shadowknife behind him, the goblins wand was holstered in the end of his gun, it still allowed him to channel certain spells through it, such as lumos. This was useful for providing light to see by, and still keeping Shadowknife's main weapon available for use, and actually pointing at whatever his wand was. Warren was in the rear, keeping a watch behind them and making sure they all stayed together.
As the group made their way up the fifteen foot vertical rock face they had little problems, it was difficult to climb and hold their wands and gun, but they managed. Over all it was a slow process, but they were being more cautious than strictly necessary. Which was probably a smart decision, considering it was nighttime, they were running into completely unknown territory, and the area had possible magical creatures or enemies that would know the terrain much better than they did.
So slowly, but surely the trio made their way through the mountain path. They made good progress, and sure enough by dawn the three travelers were thoroughly exhausted, but were nearly finished with the pathway through the mountain range. They had weaved and doubled back countless times, climbed sheer rock faces, jimmied their way across some pretty far pitfalls, but they were nearly done. Markus had kept up with the cartography spells, linking them to a good sized piece of parchment with preservation charms and runes on it, and had created a more detailed map of that specific trail, and where it was on the mountain range. With some complicated and complex bits of magic Markus had a project in mind that would potentially prove useful in the future.
They had decided that once the trail leveled off for a ways they would light a small magical fire, and stop to eat, and for Markus he would down a bottle of the blood he still had in his trunk. He would begin to run low soon, but he had enough to last until he reached the school, where animal blood would be available. He would also be able to go out hunting, traveling farther distances by shadow travel. It would give him many possibilities and opportunities, although he would have to limit the range because the massive distances he had traveled to reach the cave he started the journey off had thoroughly and utterly exhausted him, on a deeper level than simple magical exhaustion. He had not felt the full extent of how much magic had been drained from him because over the next week he had gone through simply so much blood. He was, for the first day immediately afterwards, constantly drinking blood from the bottles in his trunk, and it had made his supply very low.
The constant intake had been able to delay the full-body full-magical core exhaustion that was sure to set in, and it had not been helped by his lack of sleep over the past few nights, he knew that he would feel exactly how deep the exhaustion ran. It would no doubt take many days, possibly a full week to fully recover. Markus was not looking forward to this, but he could not afford to slip up now, he needed to be fully alert.
The past six days he had hidden his tiredness and exhaustion, delaying any rest, any chance that he might slip into a slight magical coma and be unable to be woken. He had stayed up meditating, also taking potions to keep him awake and mentally sharp. The blood helped keep him awake as well, he was pushing his chances and pushing the very limits of his brain and mind to stay awake and alert for so long.
The whole ordeal with being tracked and dealing with the werewolf tracking them had stressed him out even further. And now he was back to constantly sipping on a bottle of blood just to stay awake. He only had to last a little while longer before he could pass out. The longer he waited however the longer he would be out, and when he went out he would well and truly be out of it. No spell nor any stimulus would wake him up, his magic would need time to recover and it would take that time. His magical core had essentially been drained nearly completely dry, and he had been doing his best to keep his body from completely shutting down, especially as he slept.
The sleep was instrumental in keeping him going the past six days. Between the sleep, constant and later intermittent blood intake, potions, and the help of two special crystals he had been able to maintain consciousness. The crystals had been prepared before he even left Ayers Rock, and had been probably the best thing for helping in his scramble to remain conscious and magically able to see himself to safety.
However in the end it would be beneficial to him. A magical core was similar to muscles in the sense that when it was completely broken down and used up when it rebuilt itself it would be slightly stronger, more durable, and just overall more powerful. All magical beings had a magical core, even muggles. They just did not have enough magic in their tiny magical cores to cast the simplest of spells. Squibs had larger magical cores than muggles, but not near as large as witches and wizards. This magical core gave the being access to magic, such as bloodmagic, necromancy, death magic, dark magic, light magic, almost every sort of magic was available through this magical core, called the primary core by scholars and academics in the magical society.
While the primary core was present in all magical beings, and it was all that most magical beings had, most magical beings were regular, mortal witches and wizards, and it was all they needed. But many beings possessed a secondary core. Goblins had a secondary core that allowed them to cast and use goblin magic, the same with werewolves, elves, centaurs, dwarves, and also vampires.
This was where the vampire magic Markus was using came from. His secondary core, which was his core that allowed him to cast and use vampire magic. It had been drained nearly completely dry, he would not have been able to cast or utilize it at all if he had not been constantly drinking the bottled blood, most of which had a percentage of magical being blood mixed into it. This had kept his secondary core from shutting down and bringing his mind with it. It would have come back online eventually of course, so would his mind. It would have just taken time to recharge.
And again similar to muscles and primary cores secondary cores worked the same way. They were eventually strengthened from being worked to the point of exhaustion. But it would come back stronger, and because Markus had drained, torn apart, and ripped to shreds his secondary core. Over and over again his secondary core had been torn down, rebuilt ever so slightly, and torn down again. This meant that certainly his core would replenish itself stronger than it was before, significantly stronger. It had not had the chance to begin rebuilding, it was only sustained by the blood he had been ingesting as often as possible.
The blood that Markus was drinking constantly the blood was instantly being reverted and transformed into it's most basic state of bloodmagic. This bloodmagic flowed directly into his secondary core, refilling and then rebuilding it. However because of the high usage and refusal to rest it was struggling to keep up with even allowing his mind to be conscious. The blood that Markus was continually intaking was only sufficient to satisfy it for now, it was simply running off of everything it got. If the blood stopped Markus would stop, and slip into a magical coma until his primary and secondary core recharged and rebuilt themselves, this time larger and stronger than before.
It was imperative that Markus make it through the next forty eight hours without slipping into a magical coma. After they reached the school itself he did not care, but had had to at least make it to the gates.