He disembarked from the plane, feeling a blast of cold winter air blast him, and smiled at the familiarity. He had never quite gotten used to the Afghan heat, and it was good to be back. A pair of guardians saluted him at the base of the steps, before turning and leading him back into the familiar compound.
For the first time, he allowed himself to appreciate the fortress, a large behemoth of concrete and steel lodged on the base of the mountain, even as various buildings snaked up the edge of it. The main compound was a hexagon, one he knew had a garden within the hollow center.
The main entrance was guarded by six guardians with rifles in arm, though he knew there were at least a dozen snipers dotting the roof of the structure as well. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the glint of one of the anti-aircraft batteries poking out.
As they wandered up the steps to the entrance proper, the six guards saluted as he walked past, entering the building where General White stood with arms open as though waiting for a hug. With a beaming smile, he declared, "The prodigal one returns."
"Good to be back, General," he answered, causing the man to chuckle. "I was begin to tire of the sun."
"And with a sense of humour intact as well," White laughed, before waving off the two guardians flanking Raven, causing them to quickly double time out of the way. "Marshal Sokolov sends his highest compliments, apparently your kill count is in the tens of thousands already. He wanted to cry when I withdrew you back here."
"Did he force the point?" Raven asked curiously. General White shook his head amusedly.
"Dear old Gorbachev was outraged by your deployment. Even with the nuclear material he refused to back down. The withdrawal is now being coordinated, but we've a unique opportunity," the general noted pleasedly. "Have you felt your magic stagnating?"
"Its growth has slowed, and grown more erratic," Raven responded uneasily, looking at White wearily. "There is a cause?"
"There was a...miscalculation in the ritual. You see, in the second stage, we believed that it was unnecessary to sacrifice forty nine virgins and infants. Notwithstanding the difficulty of finding so many magicals, it would have complicated the task much further. Right now, what is essentially happening is that your magic is growing faster than your body can sustain, causing excess magic to leak out. It's a wonder your body hasn't crippled itself, to be honest."
"I trust there is a solution?"
"The beginnings of one," White conceded grumpily, clearly not pleased himself. "Our researchers found an old ritual that could be modified to serve its purpose, but progress has been slow. Given your prodigious nature and your personal interest...well, it was decided that you would learn runes and armithacy. While you have a base knowledge from your readings, it will not be sufficient. As such, I have hired several of the world's leading experts to teach you all they know. Until this problem is resolved, you're to be taken out of commission."
"Sir?" Raven protested. "I am still perfectly capable of deploying on the field."
"I won't risk it," White rebuked harshly, before taking several calming breaths. Raven stilled, rarely having heard the man raise his voice before. "Believe me, I want you on the field nearly as much as you want to be, but your magic is growing erratic. Using it will just make the problem worse. You're a ticking magic bomb, I won't risk aggravating it."
"As you wish, General," he conceded reluctantly.
White offered a sympathetic smile, the first for the man. "Raven...anything you need, come to me."
-Break-
"No, no, no. This is why I hate self-learners," the old lady in front of him muttered. "Your organisation is all over the place. What the hell were you doing this for?"
"Combat wards needed to prevent them from being deciphered," Raven answered, causing the woman to still before shaking her head.
"So you skipped from the basics straight to the cutting edge. Unbelievable," she tutted. "Show me an example."
Raven took his blood quill, and quickly drew a trap ward, the symbols overlaying each other while large sections of useless runes were also drawn, designed to prevent tampering by anyone once completed. His tutor eyed the matrix wearily, tapping it with her wand and feeling the ward magic flare up. She shook her head, giving it a reluctant nod of approval.
"I see...well unfortunately, as you should know, rituals are far more complicated business than wards. You might get away with a minor sacrifice drawing like this, but no way you could hope to succeed in anything beyond a grade two ritual. I'll have to start with the basic principles, which you seem remarkably unaware of."
She sighed, and Raven began to understand just why others hated it when he did it, before brushing the thought aside and listen. Runes are grouped together into chains, which are grouped together into channels, are grouped together into branches, which are grouped into subworks, which are grouped into works. Beyond this...well it is theorised that works could be grouped together into overgroups and beyond that into an array, but it has never been attempted successfully. Malcolm was the last to try, hence the term Malcolm's law when referencing the exponential power jump from one level to the next. Five has been the absolute limit.
"What about net negative processes?" Raven proffered. His tutor merely scoffed, clearly annoyed with the question.
"Net negative has nothing to do with the activation power. Now, if you're done with your interruptions," she gave him a withering glare, "Runes are more a concept than anything. While in the West you would generally find that anglo-saxon runes have been standardised, in truth, there are many different types of runes. The Chinese have their own, as do the Africans and the Native Americans. In fact, it's a miracle that as much of the world uses anglo-saxon runes. Standardisation across all communities is impossible, and most runes from different denominations are incompatible due to different localised standardisations in structuring. Conversions to bridge this has been large unsuccessful, though a notable exception is Egyptian runes being partially incorporated into Anglo-Saxon ones. Questions?"
"Is there an inherently superior runic language?"
"There are advantages and disadvantages to all," she lectured, her stony visage softening for the first time. "Anglo-saxon runes are generally considered the easiest to learn due to their utilisation of a clear common base set of runes. Chinese is considered the most difficult to master given the literal millions of characters, but it is also notably more flexible and precise. Native American runes are noted for their brute strength, though lack the precision of even Anglo-Saxon runes. Egyptians ones, while likely being among the first, are generally too outdated to be easily used, and modern variations on their sets means that learning it is largely left to curse breakers in the region or for entertainment."
Raven nodded, jotting down notes as she spoke. "So what about combining them?"
"Combining?" she drawled. "You haven't even learnt the basics, and you want to go on combining?"
-Break-
"Pie! It is deeper on the top, not the bottom, you nitwit! If I wanted wang I would tell you!" his teacher sighed exasperatedly. Raven took a deep breath, forcing himself to be calm. His Chinese tutor had little patience, and he was forced to memorise the different strokes. It was aggravating, that a level of detail even he found tiring was expected, but he continued nonetheless. "Flick your wrist! Do not delay the motion!"
He did as instructed, causing his instructor to snort, "Better. I suppose you are not hopeless after all. You can practice that in your own time. We will now move on to the gou."
-Break-
"Memorise this book. Do not return to me until you have done so," the native american hissed at him, a serpent coiled on his shoulder. Raven eyed the tattered scraps of parchment drawn scribed on and smiled; he suspected they would get along perfectly fine.
-Break-
Raven poured over the books, scribbling notes with one hand while flipping the page with another. He was already on his eighteenth notebook, and the soft light emanating from the lightbulb suggested it would need to be replaced soon, minute flickers every fifteenth second or so.
Sighing, he looked up to see that he had finished well over half the library, limited as it was, and yet was no closer to making any meaningful progress. He had learnt so much about the different runic languages, yet none were able to come close to solving his problem.
Frankly, Raven wasn't sure there was a solution anymore. How could he even begin to construct a rune chain when he was uncertain what the goal was supposed to be. It was insufficient to say 'stabilise his magic', he needed specifics like 'channel magical output from this rune sub-work to that one,' and that was for a relatively flexible sequence.
Normally, with meticulous armithical calculations, perhaps a solution could be brute forced through experimentation. But there was a reason why rituals could not be rushed without dire consequences, and took years if not decades to create, and centuries to perfect. The doctors gave him another eight weeks before he exploded with the force of a nuclear blast of four tsar bombas. He suspected they were being optimistic.
Already, his magic was leaking out uncontrollably, pouring into the room until it was almost a thick, suffocating gas that forced all in the vicinity to depart after a short duration. He consistently had a glow around him from the excess magic being funneled outward.
Were he less trained, he might have given up altogether. He might have thrown a tantrum. But Raven was neither of those, and continued to work through the night, scribbling down more notes, determined to fight to the last.
-Break-
"So the Antvern matrix cannot connect to the stabilisation section of the Polyrit complex because the channels are incompatible?" Raven questioned, causing his tutor, an old witch by the name of Melaine, to nod, favouring him with a rare smile.
"So why not widen the channels of the Antvern. It's based on the principle of eighteen, surely by segregating the denominations into six groups of three rather than two groups of nine it could latch partially onto the endings," Raven postulated, causing the old woman to hum thoughtfully.
"Modifying the rune would be difficult, but not impossible. However, the strength of Antvern is predicated on three threes forming nine. To segregate it would destabilise it. The Polyrit would be pushed beyond its limit and fragment, causing a cascading failure," she lectured sagely.
"And what would happen in such a case?"
"I suppose…" she jotted down several hundred calculations, muttering to herself all the while. Raven knew better than to interrupt, and merely watched patiently. He was proud of the fact that he could now follow most of her work, if not all, in contrast to mere weeks ago. She let out a triumphant hum, setting down her pencil. "It would latch onto the nearest magical source."
"What is the power index?"
"I believe somewhere in the region of eight thousand cores," she answered gravely. "Only the most powerful ley lines would be sufficient to stabilise such a leach."
"And what would happen to the power drawn?"
"It would be stored in the third subwork, of course," Melaine giggled to herself, missing the thoughtful look that Raven held.
"And if there was no third subwork?" he asked with a tinge of hopefulness in his voice for the first time in days,
She looked at him strangely. Were this their first meeting, he suspected she would have scoffed and dismissed it. Seeing his pleading look, she stalled a sarcastic quip, instead jotting down a few calculations, muttering to herself, before sighing. "I suppose...it would seek an alternate conduit to channel power to. Most likely it would cycle back into the air, unless there was a storage or latch mechanism otherwise directed to-"
"Thank you," Raven hugged her, causing the woman to gape in surprise, watching as he quickly retreated from the room and back to his study. "How did I not think of that…"
-Break-
"Argh!" Raven sighed, slamming a fist onto his table. "I was so close!"
And truly, he was. Just three percent short of the stability target, but even a zero point one percent difference could mean the difference between triumph and disaster. He crumpled up the paper, turning it into ash that pooled on the floor. There was no point in keeping it, when fundamentally it had been optimised and still failed to meet the stability target.
"What am I missing?" he muttered to himself, the first lesson's words hauntingly echoing in his mind. None of the runic languages were sufficient, each having flaws that prevented them from being optimised.
Then he recalled it. Runic Conversions. Never done successfully as far as anyone knew. But not impossible. He sighed, it appears he had a new project.
-Break-
"Raven you haven't shown up to lessons for seve...what on earth is that?" White blurted out. Tiredly, Raven wiped away the discharge from his eyes and turned to salute the general.
"They have provided me with sufficient information. There is no established solution, so I am creating my own."
"That is very risky.""Better a risk than to die without trying," Raven retorted, causing the General to nod, eyeing the thousands of pieces of parchment arranged in a patchwork across the floor wearily. "Remember you offer? I think I'm going to have to call it in."
He passed the sheet of his calculations towards the general, whose eyes progressively got wider as he looked down. "That's...a lot of tungsten, you're asking for. Nearly six billion american dollars worth…"
"I happen to know that there are many stockpiles around the Union, General, including one of the largest at this facility," Raven shrugged, causing the General's eyebrows to shoot up. "I've done my research, I know that if you take half of the stockpile at Minsk and Magnitogorsk that you'll have enough."
"I...but how can you ask me to just...give you that much? It's insane!"
"I…" his thoughts drifted to the several gold bars he had taken, but he discarded the thought as quickly as it came. They would hardly be enough. "The tungsten would not be damaged by the ritual. Once I'm finished, I can return it perfectly intact."
"Damnit Raven if it were about that I would happily give you tungsten. What use is metal sitting around anyways? But that'll draw in too many unwanted questions." The General sighed, looking all his age. "I...the stockpile here is yours, Raven. As my best agent I will spare no expense, but I fear that for the others…""I'll gear up," Raven answered simply. The general nodded with a sigh.
-Break-
Raven pressed his hand against the vault door, causing it to slowly disintegrate. Chunks of burning red iron dropped like the drippings off a melting ice cream. The heat was intense, though Raven paid this little attention, continuing to melt until there was a hole large enough for him to fit through.
Stepping inside, he was greeted by the sight of six guards pointing their rifles at him frightenedly. Beneath his mask, he smiled, raising his hands and causing the six men to lift in the air by an invisible hand, their hands clawing at their necks as they choked to death while Raven walked past them.
'Ninety seconds' he internally mused, looking down to see row upon rows of large wooden crates. Floating down towards them, he pried open one of the top boxes, only to frown. It was clearly iron, rather than the tungsten prophesied by the packing label on the outside. With a sigh, he put a portkey on it anyways, repeating the motion and causing the crates to disappear one at a time, destined to return to the fortress.
"Stop!" several voices called out from behind, and he turned, quirking an eyebrow when he saw that six guardians were pointing their wands at him. With an amused snort, he blasted pure energy at them, forcing them to leap off the railing and down below to the storage level as the metal stairway was completely disintegrated. He heard a pained scream from below, and looked down to see that one of the guardians had broken their leg and was behind dragged on the arms by two others trying to extract their comrade to safety. With apathy, he flicked his hand, sending several crates tumbling down and crushing the three individuals with a sickening crunch. The crate broke from the force, spilling out yet more iron. Raven couldn't help a snort.
"R-r-run! Alert the garrison!" he heard a panicked voice call out, and leisurely floated over there, to see the other three guardians running down an aisle. Smirking, he began sending blasts of flame towards them, ignoring the scent of smoke from smouldering crates.
One of the guardians fell to the flames, causing another to turn back for a moment before he was tugged by their leader to continue on, ignoring the screaming pleas of their cooking comrade.
Raven continued down the aisle, tracking their movements and alternating between trying to crush them with falling crates and blasting them with torrents of flames. Only when they risked reaching an alarm button did Raven reluctantly cease his fun, hurtling bolts of electricity and engulfing them in energy as they desperately tried to hold onto their shields.
He quirked an eyebrow when they lasted a full three seconds before finally breaking from the strain, moments before they were vaporised by the energy. His magic sang happily, and Raven felt slight relief at the release this had brought.
-Break-
Raven sighed in relief as he gulped down another bottle of water along with Pentoxifylline pills. Checking over his work once more, he shrunk down the sheet of tungsten, painted across with his blood, and stored it delicately in a protective plastic casing.
"It's done then?" General White asked. Raven nodded, pointing to the six dead tutors in the corner. "They checked over the work. The parts they understood were all correct. Beyond that, everything checks out theoretically."
"Theoretically?" General White questioned dubiously. Raven shrugged.
"This would be considered cutting edge, an innovation on the art itself. The problem now is finding a target. If I did this in the West, I have no doubt local magical authorities would leap onto me in an instant."
"Actually, this was the easy part. I've your target: Horat.""What is Horat?"
"Not what, but rather where," General White corrected. "A magical enclave created by the ICW as a safe zone in the Southern part of Afghanistan, just outside Ghazni. Thousands of magicals reside there, with thousands more supervising the Soviet withdrawal and no doubt interfering. There will be no love lost from them."
"Perfect," Raven gave a sinister smile, one that chilled even the stoic General White.
-Break-
Assembling the plates in the perfect alignment, he completed the rings of blood that would serve as conduits between them and smiled. If this succeeded, it would be the single greatest magical feat in this century. He stood in the middle ring, with seven arrays each sporting seven overgroups, in turn sporting seven works, sporting seven subworks sporting seven branches.
Three of the arrays were responsible for latching onto any source of magic outside the ritual circle, that being the major ley line that ran through the region, as well as the thousands of unlucky witches and wizards that were going about their daily lives, unaware that these would be their last moments alive whether he succeeded or failed. If the latter happened...well, Chenobyl would look like a minor incident.
Three other relays were responsible for stabilising the array. Ideally, more would be used, but seven was a powerful armithic number with inherent properties, and frankly he barely had enough material as it was.
The final rune was the key to this, funneling the magic that was absorbed from the arrays into him. It was also the most difficult to do, requiring him to interweave runes from seven different runic languages. He found it oddly poetic.
Laying down inside the main circle, he flared up his magic, causing the runic array around him to hiss, glowing a blood red as it began to channel. He felt the magic around him begin to flare, and the runes truly hum now. Relaxing himself, his body suddenly seized up as foreign magic was pumped in again. So it had begun.
-Break-
There was mass panic around the city of Borat as many wizards and witches hunched over, feeling their magic flare erratically. Screams of panic ensued, as the stronger individuals tried to move around and aide their fallen brethren. Enforcers from the ICW moved about, trying to ensure calm while finding out what was happening. Then it happened again, a stronger flare than before, and the magic around crackled, as though alive. Several weaker magicals began to vomit, while others fell to the ground spasming.
-Break-
War Mage Patil was not pleased. Suddenly, most wizards around him had collapsed in a fit, and even he felt that his magic was...being leeched off, if anything could describe the strange sensation. Walking out of the headquarters, he was greeted by chaos. Several Veela had huddled together, chanting a prayer, while several of the building's security dragged their weaker members towards the hospital wing, despite their own obvious pain.
Several of his deputies rushed to his side, blurting out questions until he raised a hand.
"I have no idea what is happening, but I know that we are not equipped to handle this," he conceded, disgusted with himself. Suddenly, the alarms blared, moments before the wards thrummed angrily, and he felt the wards flare up, putting the entire city under automatic lockdown. He cursed under his breath. "We have no choice. Gather all those you can. I will destroy the wardstone, and we will evacuate. Do not protest! There is no time!"
With defeated sighs, the deputies moved to complete their tasks, rounding up those still able to move and barking for them to leave their wounded comrades. To put it simply, it was a race against time.
War mage Patil stormed down the basement, sparing a glance to the two guards who were beginning to show signs of decay. He felt his heart still, knowing that soul magic was likely at work. Ignoring them, he forced his magic out, unlocking the first vault door that impeded his way to the ward stone. For once, he cursed his own paranoia, wondering if it would get him killed.
Opening the second, then the third, he felt the tug on his magic grow stronger and stronger. Definitely a leech, though by what ritual, he could not begin to imagine. A deputy had rushed back to him delivering news that the same occurrence was happening across the entire city moments before he succumbed to the spasms, and Patil had tears in his eyes as he fired a killing curse at the man, sparing him any further pain before turning back to the locks.
By the fifth lock, he was crawling on his knees, to weak to even stand. All his energies were now focused on opening the lock and destroying the wardstone. He knew by now that most of the magicals they had worked so hard to protect were dead. But he didn't think about them now. His father's words echoed in his head. There is a time to mourn, and a time for action.
As the lock finally opened, he breathed out a cry of relief, forcing his magic out and lashing out at the stone he had worked to create, causing it to rupture and release an explosion of magic. He felt his portkey activate moments before the blast would have consumed him, and felt the tension escape his body as several panicked cries surrounded him. The ICW would know what happened.
-Break-
Raven woke up, flexing his body. It felt...harmonious, if there was a word to be used at all. Reaching inward, he felt his magic hum happily, and breathed a sigh of relief. It had worked! Gathering the now empty sheets of Tungsten, the blood having been used up in the ritual, he packed them in a magically enlarged bag and slung it over his shoulder, leaving the large but empty apartment he was in and walking down to the streets.
Bodies littered it, looking like unwrapped mummies. The bodies had been charred from the backlash of trying to fight against the magical drain. Where before the ritual the area was bristling with magic in the air, now there was only a feeling of hollow emptiness.
Knowing he shouldn't linger for long, he couldn't help but reach out with his senses, checking to see if there was anyone still alive within the vicinity. Reaching out, he was nearly blinded by the power his magic exhibited, and had to quickly retract lest he hurt his senses. More tentatively, he reached out, to see that there was not a single magical within a one hundred kilometer radius.
He fired several blasts of hellfire, surprised when they emerged a blazing black rather than the normal grey, and burned with a viciousness that surprised even him. With a smile, he disapparated from the deserted city.
-Break-
General White, waiting nervously in Kabul, was about to open another bottle of Vodka when he felt his magic lurch, and hunched over the table in pain. The several guardians posted around the room were not as lucky, letting out screams of agony as they spasmed on the floor.
After several minutes, the sensation passed, and White shakily stood up, helping up the shaking Guardians and sending them off to rest. Their protests quickly died when he agreed to return to the fortress, and all holding onto his emergency portkey, they disappeared from the room with a pop.
-Break-
"I was in my office going over the plans when there was a magical disturbance that caused all magicals in the area to feel excruciating pain. Many were disabled by the initial burst, and I was preparing an incident report when the second burst, much more sustained, took place. Even veteran officers of the ICW appeared largely incapacitated, along with some of my deputies. At that moment, I gave the order to evacuate, but an aerial attack caused the wards to enter lockdown mode.
As the incident intensified, I made the decision to destroy the wardstone to allow for an evacuation of all those able," he ground out as though the words were knives carving into him.
Albus Dumbledore, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, sighed tiredly as shouts of outrage raged, prominent among them 'coward'. By his side, War Mage Patil, still pale and shaken by the events, ducked his head in shame.
"Order! There will be order," Dumbledore projected his voice and aura, forcing a sense of calm to return to the chamber. Eyeing the man beside him sympathetically, he encouraged, "War mage, please continue. There will be no more interruptions."
"The magic...it was unlike anything I've felt before. It was as though my magic was being leeched."
Shouts erupted again, and the man ducked his head. Dumbledore sighed tiredly, banging his gavel again to little avail. "There will be a ten minute recess while I consult with the war council. War Mage Patil, the confederation is granting you a leave of absence in light of recent events."
His departure was largely unnoticed by the bickering delegates as he adjourned to a side chamber, where seven of the eight ICW War mages were assembled at the central table. In a larger, outer ring, several spaces were empty owing to existing deployments, but most of the thirty two deputies were present.
"Gentlemen, Ladies, I believe we are all aware of the...situation," Dumbledore sighed gravely. "Have me managed to make an accurate assessment to the extent of the damage?"
"We've reports as far as Egypt and Tibet of a flare of magic. Whatever this was…" war mage Ikarus muttered darkly. Several hushed murmurs of agreement were heard among the war mages.
"Have we determined the...casualties?"
"Initial estimates in the region of twenty six thousand dead and another eight thousand facing major trauma," war mage Ingen sighed, kneading his forehead with his fingers. Most of the others in the room looked little better.
"Regardless, it seems that that the disturbance has settled, and we need to investigate. The loss of an ICW sanctuary cannot go unanswered!" deputy Mitai exclaimed. Mutters of disagreement and agreement followed, until Dumbledore raised a hand for quiet.
"I believe...that the war mages present, led by myself personally, shall lead the investigation. Given the likely epicenter was the sanctuary city...I believe we will need to start there."
-Break-
The seven war mages and Dumbledore landed in the middle of the city gracefully, looking around to see that the sand had begun to bury parts of the roads and buildings. What attracted their attention, however, was a single charred black skeleton with arms extended out, reaching out for help.
"It seems...that...we now know what happened," Dumbledore muttered gravely, leading the solemn procession down the deserted streets. More of the same was seen, and Dumbledore very nearly cried when he saw the remains of several young children, a small ball in the middle of the several skeletons. "I...believe that it is best this incident be expunged."
None of the expected disagreement came. All knew the chaos that would undoubtedly erupt should the incident leak.
Author Note:
The longest chapter yet, and a hint of what could come when Harry learns magic at -redacted-. Hehe did you think I would leak such information? This was probably my favourite to write so far, as I've quite an interest in the idea of rituals and runes, though I've tried to avoid going too technical and ensuring you can follow along even if just skimming.
Do you think the lessons should have been longer and more in depth? Shorter and more generalised? Or did I find a good balance here? Also my first exploration at a different perspective. Like it or no? Make sure to leave your thought in the comments. It's how I know where I need to improve and so can deliver a better reading experience for you. I can cater towards love or hate, but not towards indifference. Leave a comment, even if it's just to say hi. Have an idea of where the story goes next? Want a question answered? I solemly swear I read all the comments. As always, follow, favourite and share. Until next time, toodles.