Chapter 8
"Professor Stiali?" Rahkesh called, knocking. A moment later the oak door opened.
"I was wondering when you'd come by. Decided to drop the class?" Professor Stiali asked, his pale blue eyes showing only amusement and no upset over Rahkesh's decision. It was Saturday afternoon and Rahkesh hadn't been hiding the fact that the week before was his last shot at thread magic.
"Yes, sorry but it just doesn't seem to be working." Rahkesh said, knowing that he didn't have to explain any further. Two months into the year and he had still not managed even the most basic thread magic. He did everything he was supposed to. It wasn't that, the magic just wouldn't work.
The premise of thread magic was that people tended to be good at magic when they were using something to concentrate on while doing magic, besides the magic itself. You used something small to complete a task with something much bigger. Tie the correct knots and it will happen. A bit like wand magic, these movements, this word, and it will happen.
Those who specialized in thread magic had no need to duel. They just pulled out a piece of thread and tied a few knots in it, imagining the knots, as they tightened, tying the person's limbs together. By tying a noose and slowly tightening it, while willing the noose to exist in reality around an enemy's neck, they could kill a person from rooms away. Most people never got past simple stuff; using thread magic to break wards wasn't too hard apparently. You just pulled the knots around the wards, and then burned the thread, destroying the wards themselves. Killing people from a distance was the kind of stuff only a true master of thread magic could do, and most of them had so much difficulty with it that they didn't bother.
The easy thread magic was like wand magic. The advanced thread magic was much more like bloodmagic and wandless magic. It was largely personal and couldn't be learned from a book. But even at that stage it was akin to wand magic in that the correct knots would achieve something. Timing and the space between knots became individualized.
The reason why Rahkesh had been intent upon learning thread magic was that thread magic was one of the most powerful forms of magic used to create short-term wards. A set of wards around, say, a building, could not be overpowered. You had to destroy the threads holding the ward up. These could be hidden, sometimes inside the building itself, making a forced entry nearly impossible. The only way to overcome it would be to get someone else just as powerful in thread magic to outdo the wards. These wards didn't last long, only a few months at the most, the threads decayed, or couldn't stand that much magic for so long. There was no way to get around the short-term side of thread magic, but short term it was quicker and just as powerful as bloodmagic.
Rahkesh could not figure out why he couldn't do it, but when using the threads he couldn't find his magic. He couldn't locate the power he had learned to find for use in bloodmagic, or wand magic. It seemed to him that the threads ruined his usual connection to his magic. Professor Stiali was as much at a loss as he was, having never seen anything like it.
But Tristan Namach just smiled and nodded when Rahkesh mentioned it. When questioned all he would say was that it was expected. Rahkesh, angry that he wouldn't explain further, had demanded to know why he had expected it. Professor Namach replied that the threads Rahkesh should learn to use were not the type of threads professor Stiali knew how to use.
Unfortunately he also claimed that he didn't know what threads those would be either. Rahkesh remembered that conversation, a week earlier when he had been putting in a last ditch effort to get somewhere with his thread magic.
"There was a vampire I once knew, a true ancient, who did thread magic without visible threads." Namach explained. They were in his rooms again; Rahkesh had just brought him his latest version of the second stage stamina runes. "I think you should try to find other threads rather than the bits of string Stiali, and everyone else, uses." Rahkesh was pacing across the sitting room and back again. Frustrated and angry. There was no reason for him to be failing so completely at thread magic. Namach had several books written by that one oddball vampire, but they hadn't given any insight into his unusual ability. Whatever that ability actually was.
"Not threads of the type used in invisibility cloaks?" He asked when he finally paused. Namach dismissed that idea at once.
"No. Those aren't actually invisible you know, only when woven into the cloaks. No he used something else." Rahkesh sighed and shook his head, what else was there? "The only definite thing about that old vampire was that he could do thread magic without visible thread, and that he was one of the early users of necromancy." Professor Namach continued thoughtfully. Rahkesh raised an eyebrow. Threads weren't used in any part of necromancy he knew of. "You must understand I didn't know that vampire very well. He was an ancient, and I do mean ancient as in over two and half thousand years old, when I was only in my second century. He was one of the earliest of our kind, I think. You know he was the one to think of using necromancy to question the dead during murder trials."
"Really." Rahkesh said, using necromancy like that had fallen out of favor after a few badly trained necromancers had actually summoned the corpses into the trial room and somehow they had eaten someone. And there had been a few necromancers who used their knowledge to raise armies. Witches and wizards were incapable of realizing that some…all magic, was neither good nor bad, it depended upon how you used it. They wanted everything to be black and white. Good or evil. It was like parseltounge, it wasn't evil, it was just an ability. Why did people have to be so stupid? Well, they weren't. Outside of Europe parseltounge wasn't evil and necromancers were still called into murder trials whenever possible.
"No one who might have been close to him is still alive then?"
"No. They all died with the destruction of Atlantis. That was before my time. When I met him he was quite a loner, rarely spoke. He gave a few lectures on early necromancy shortly after I started to rebuild the whole field of death magic use, and I never saw him again." Namach paused and thought for a moment, "everyone always says that I invented necromancy, well I did, but before that there was death magic in use, it was just very different. He is dead, I know that. Died while stopping a plague that could have wiped out every human in the world." Namach said sadly with apparent genuine regret.
"Well thank you for trying." Rahkesh said, handing the books back. Namach just nodded.
"You'll figure it out. Just give it time; you mortals tend to be very impatient. " He said smiling. Rahkesh just nodded, thinking that he might not have time. Power he had, understanding of magic he had, time was in short supply. But if thread magic was out then he'd have to develop other skills.
"Yes, perhaps after I start working on necromancy." He agreed. Turning to leave he nearly tripped over Eli, the lizard had been standing right behind him. The frill unfolded halfway and the long whip-like tail began to lash like a cats. It glared at him as Rahkesh carefully walked around it. The creature was continuously bad tempered with everyone but its owner, and often as not him as well.
"In the meantime this latest version of your stamina runes looks good. Keep working on revising it and you should be ready soon, remember the vertebrae, you might want to try the set of runes for your back again. Make sure that this is right." Namach said, handing the diagrams back. Rahkesh nodded, boldly patted the annoyed lizard on the head, and left.
Namach hadn't been able to help, but the conversation had led Rahkesh to hope that in a few years he might be able to try thread magic again. Perhaps he would discover whatever that old vampire had used during his necromancy training.
Other than those extremely un-helpful books there were no clues as to Rahkesh's disability (Rahkesh's term for it). Rahkesh had spent his second month at Akren pouring over every book on thread magic the library had, and many on odd blood magic runes, and turning up nothing. He'd used the same potions he'd used in the room of requirement to help him stay awake and concentrate all night for weeks, but it hadn't done any good. Professor Stiali had probably been waiting for Rahkesh to finally give up.
"That's fine Rahkesh. What are you taking instead?"
"Wandless magic. I've been practicing on my own for a while so I'm not far behind the class, actually I'm a bit ahead of them on the practical stuff." In reality the tests Professor Havari Yetran had given him showed Rahkesh to be many months ahead in the actual use of wandless magic, and a few weeks behind on the theory side. She had thought that Rahkesh would be a very good influence on the class, many of whom were starting to get a little put off by the fact that no one had managed any wandless magic yet. Apparently the reason people didn't do wandless magic was because results took time, and many people weren't capable of it at all.
Interestingly the reason why people generally failed at wandless magic was the same reason Namach had given for most people failing at bloodmagic. They were too used to wands and incantations, and they all thought that that was the only way to do magic. Everyone wanted a definite way, with no obscurity. Do this and this happens.
They also expected the magic to just happen, like it did for most with thread magic, rather than bringing it up from within themselves and giving it purpose. With wandless and blood magic you let the magic do its task with more instinctive, less forceful guidance. But at the same time you had to have immense willpower, this confused most people. To Rahkesh it made perfect sense. You gave it the purpose, and you gave it the will to accomplish that purpose, the actual the direction you gave to the magic on how to accomplish that purpose was minimal. Again, most people didn't understand it at all.
Everyone tried to do wandless magic the exact same way, when wandless magic, almost as much as bloodmagic, depended upon the individual. No book or teacher could teach you everything. Each person had to figure it out for themselves. Hermione would have thrown a fit at the idea of books being useless. But it was the truth; no instructor could describe how you should work with your magic. Some people needed hand gestures, some didn't. Yetran had told him that her grandmother could only do wandless magic when using no hand movements, and incantations in Hebrew. Despite not being Jewish. It was all about how you focused and worked with your magic to cause things to happen.
What Rahkesh had learned about doing most spells, to think about exactly what was happening, air moving to replace the movement of an object, cells changing shape from plant to animals cells, those things helped with wandless magic too. There were so many variables, most of which couldn't even be accurately described. But Rahkesh had found something that worked for him, a little. He hadn't tried a great variety of things, but summoning charms came easily. While in the Room of Requirement he had discovered that he had better luck doing the summoning charm wandlessly than he did silently. Though it still worked best with a wand and incantation. Professor Yetran had said that roughly a third of the students would drop the class eventually. Most made it through a year or two, beyond that level they couldn't do anything more. And Akren students were chosen because they were above average.
While wandless magic and bloodmagic could be easily compared to each other, thread magic was more like wand magic, more definite, make these knots and somehow (the part Rahkesh didn't get) it will work. It will work better for some than for others, some people might want to adjust the distances between the knots on a thread (which was synonymous to the personalized minor changes in wand movements that most people used), but it will work. For everyone but Rahkesh. The Goblins could do more thread magic than him, and they usually preferred stones and metals!
But he was very capable with bloodmagic, and with a little guidance his wandless magic also showed a great deal of promise.
"You're that good at wandless magic?" Professor Stiali asked.
"Yes, I really like it. And I'm not getting anywhere with thread magic, maybe I just don't have the imagination for it. Anyhow I decided to play to my strengths." Rahkesh said.
"Well good luck then. Try thread magic again in a few years." Professor Stiali advised, "perhaps after you've gotten into the practical side of necromancy. Namach told me," he explained, seeing Rahkesh's startled look. "We were discussing your unusual distribution of strengths."
"Okay." Rahkesh said, knowing that within a few years he'd probably be too far into other forms of magic to find the time. Maybe later, after Voldemort was dead. He started back to his own rooms. The students of the martial arts and weapons class had been out all day playing a game of violent hide and seek against older students. And he still had essays to write. And then he needed to reinforce the wards on his room to keep the vampires out.
The vampires at Akren had the option of drinking the animal blood provided by the school. Most of them did, some of the time. Vampires did not like animal blood all the time, they got tired of the taste. And at the same time the lack of human blood could slowly weaken them, particularly impacted was their ability to withstand sunlight. This was obviously a major problem after a few weeks of only animal blood.
Apart from the animal blood the vampire students could hunt in any of the larger nearby cities. The local vampire residents had strict rules, violently enforced, keeping the Akren students from preying upon the small towns. But in the cities there were plenty of prey and the local City Masters kept their vampire population lower than normal specifically so that the Akren students could go there without being an extra burden. Rahkesh hadn't understood why the City Masters would do this until Daray had explained that they just wanted to be able to get to know the young vampires at Akren, looking for possible recruits for their private armies or just for networking.
Those cities however, had few magical humans, and so the Akren vampires rarely had magical human blood unless they found a willing witch or wizard, or bought blood. Even if they had had plenty of magical blood Rahkesh was pretty sure they would still have gone for their fellow students, the lack of access just gave them extra reason. And so every student kept their rooms warded, and an unwarded room was basically an invitation, and Rahkesh had been noticing some minor attacks on his wards. Vampires testing them to determine what they were and how strong. Rahkesh knew almost nothing about protecting his living space. He had used spells often used to for pranking. He needed better wards.
And not just to keep out vampires after his blood. Daray and Silas had taken to appearing suddenly in his rooms as a joke and Rahkesh wanted to know how on earth the vampires were getting in. His wards were never broken, the locks hadn't been picked, there were no false walls or trapped doors, but still they appeared silently. The reason they did it of course was because it drove Rahkesh crazy trying to figure out how they managed it. He'd even tried putting truth potions in their blood with the evening meal, to no success since they both realized it was there and left before he could ask them anything. The day before he'd finally caught Silas in an electrically charged net he'd set up, and Silas hadn't tried to sneak in since - being found at dawn hanging in a fishing net from a balcony had to be embarrassing, but he hadn't figured out how Daray got in. Even antiportkey wards turned up nothing. At this rate his rooms were going to be the most strongly warded place in Akren. Ally of course found the whole thing hilariously funny. She wasn't rooming next door to the vampires after all, and that small distance seemed to stop Daray from getting into her rooms, though Silas had tried, and succeeded, up until she'd hexed him and his ears had wound up sprouting daffodils. That had somehow deterred him.
When not going after other student's blood it was still some sort of great game for the students of Akren, especially the vampires, to sneak into the other students rooms. Occasionally students did it to prank each other but mostly just to test their wits against someone else. Rahkesh personally thought that since they didn't sleep as much as any of the other students the vampires had too much free time and went a little stir crazy. It was a good thing Akren didn't accept squibs; it was tough enough for a wizard of Rahkesh's power to keep the "bloodsucking fiends" from leaving frog eggs in his bathtub. Anyone without much magic would have had an awful time of it.
And speaking of squibs, Voldemort had been killing off squibs at an alarming rate. Rahkesh didn't understand why they didn't just leave and go elsewhere. But he had noticed that European wizards tended to act like magic didn't exist beyond the boundaries of Europe. Except perhaps for some of the Ministry members.
The violence had been quickly escalating, with the death eaters trying to outdo each other in how horrific their crimes were. The Prophet didn't report all the details but it didn't take much of an imagination to figure them out. No one went anywhere alone, but from what the papers said that might be safer as the death eaters had taken to visiting places where groups might meet like just outside certain shops or entrances to Diagon Alley.
The students of Akren kept up to date but there wasn't a lot of talk about it. Rahkesh wished he could discuss what was going on with someone, but he wasn't ready to reveal his identity yet. The assassins might guess at where he was, but he didn't have to help them. And unless they were former students they weren't going to be a real worry once he was out of school anyway. Akren Mountain School was a declared neutral zone in all wars. Many former students were paid assassins, but they couldn't kill on school grounds. The magical backlash would kill them. For this Rahkesh was very grateful. He hadn't learned how to disguise his magical signature yet, and he worried about people finding out who he was that way.
Rahkesh had been reading the Daily Prophet, Akren had all magical, and almost a hundred non-magical, newspapers delivered to the school library every day. This made it easy for Rahkesh to avoid attention. He read several wizarding newspapers every day and one of them happened to be the Daily Prophet. Another was from Australia, and one from Brazil (Silas had told him that Brazil had an amazingly large concentration of magical people, compared to similar sized areas.). He could keep up on what was going on without anyone realizing where he actually came from. Rahkesh had thought it out beforehand and had managed to mangle and at least semi-disguise his accent in the Room of Requirement. He didn't know how well it had worked but no one had asked too many questions about where he came from. Though students usually didn't ask questions about other student's origins as rule.
Hogwarts had reopened on it's later than usual date without any problems, under the direction of Headmistress Minerva McGonagal. And by all accounts was running smoothly. Some students had been withdrawn, a lot of them actually. And many parents of new students, especially muggleborns, were sending their children overseas for schooling rather than risk Hogwarts. Hogwarts long-standing reputation as one of the safest places to be was completely gone. American and Canadian schools seemed to be taking in the bulk of these students. Voldemort had an obsession with Europe, the UK particularly, and didn't seem to care if a lot of fairly talented people slipped out of the country.
Rahkesh wondered if anyone he knew had changed schools, but he had no way to find out. Akren did have a short winter break, one week of which overlapped with Hogwarts winter break and Rahkesh planned to try to find out what was happening to his old friends then.
Apart from his last note he had not communicated with any of them. And he was surprised, very surprised, to find that he did not miss them. He wasn't sure if he should feel guilty about that, but he really did prefer his new friends. Silas and his panther cub, Ally with her quick thinking and sarcastic sense of humor, Daray being at once a good friend and ferocious ally while also somehow always being the typical vampire in every respect. He didn't miss Hermione being a know-it-all, Ron being temperamental and rather slow, didn't miss the complications of his short relationship with Ginny at all, didn't miss the bickering.
His new friends were all realists, and maybe that was the difference. They had no illusions about how life was supposed to be, they took events as they happened and reacted. He trusted them, after only a few months, easily as much as he had ever trusted Ron and Hermione.
And truly these three were much more like him than his old friends had been. It wouldn't be him on the front lines; he could count on these friends to be at least his equals in everything he tried. He had never had an occasion where he didn't want to be around them because of their being temperamental, rude, or annoying. He felt bad about it, but he didn't really miss his old friends. Except perhaps for Neville. Neville might have done well Akren. Away from all the family history at Hogwarts he might have thrived amongst the students of Akren. Except Neville might have had trouble with the whole violence thing, and the casual attitude towards killing and death, and the bullying of weaker students. Perhaps Neville would not have done so well.
In fact the only people he did miss, apart from Dumbledore, were Remus, Tonks, Kingsley, and Mad Eye Moody. Despite what had happened in his fourth year Rahkesh trusted that old auror even more than he had ever trusted Dumbledore. He could not be sure why, but Moody was one of the few people he really trusted.
He did wonder though, about what was going on that wasn't making the Prophet. Rahkesh hadn't heard what the distribution of students seeking an education elsewhere was among the houses, but he was sure that most of them were in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Slytherins would stay, they were purebloods and purebloods were much more oblivious to the existence of the rest of the world than others. And it was safe for them.
Had Voldemort marked any others, like he had with Malfoy, at an unprecedented young age? Rahkesh had no way of knowing or finding out. But it didn't interest him as much as he thought it should. He was preoccupied with Akren, and with finding the elusive Horcruxes. There had been no progress there, to the point that Rahkesh had slowly focused on his schooling and left the Horcruxes to themselves for a bit. He didn't even know how to destroy them if he could find them, so what was the point in finding them?
After several months away from his friends and Hogwarts a new question was starting to form. Did he want to go home? Or had home become somewhere else? He had to kill Voldemort, he would do that, but did he really want to hang around his old home any longer than was absolutely necessary? The answer was starting to sound like no.
Rahkesh sat down at his desk and began the work he would have to make up for his wandless magic class. Two months into the year it wasn't anything he didn't already know yet, but it was a lot of work.
His friends had been supportive of his decision to switch classes, they all seemed to think he would do better at it if he came back to thread magic later. And of course Daray and Silas agreed with everything Tristan Namach said.
But he wasn't looking forward to hearing what some of the anti-mortal vampires had to say.
XXX
"How's it goin'?" A lazy, drowsy voice asked. Rahkesh froze at the sound of another voice, his quill hovering over the inkwell. Someone had managed to get into the room without him noticing. He turned and looked, already knowing what he'd find.
Daray was sprawled out, looking like some giant lazy cat, on the huge puffy green couch that ran along the wall, looking very pleased with himself.
He was the only person Rahkesh knew who could get into and all the way across the study part of his room without being noticed. Anyone else was likely to get cursed a few steps into the room if they tried it. Even Rianae been caught once. No professors had tried, but Rahkesh was pretty sure that any of them wouldn't have much trouble getting past him. No one else had managed it in a few weeks. But Daray always turned up on the couch when Rahkesh was sure no one had entered the room. Always on the couch, in the same position, like he owned it. Rahkesh had hit him once to make sure it wasn't an illusion.
He'd then tried setting up more lights so that there were fewer shadows in the room to sneak about in. But all that had changed was that Daray had stopped always wearing black when he turned up on the couch. Proving that he had been using the shadows to hide like only a vampire could, but had figured out some new way in.
Not only that, but if it wasn't Daray on the couch, then it was that vampire bat of his. The little beast was draped over the top of the couch now, on its stomach, a most un-bat-like position. The dratted beast and its owner seemed to be on the same wavelength regarding Rahkesh's couch. It used to be that either the bat or the vampire would show up, until Rahkesh had insisted on seeing them in the same room and had used a magical signature sensor to make sure the bat wasn't in fact Daray's twin in disguise.
Daray had laughed himself silly at that. Rahkesh thought it was a reasonable suspicion. They acted alike and Daray often wore black leather of a sort that looked a lot like his pets skin. The bat even grinned like Daray; Rahkesh hadn't known bats could grin. Now they both turned up, whenever Rahkesh wasn't paying attention. How they knew exactly when he would be concentration on his homework or practicing wandless magic he had no idea, but they always knew.
Rahkesh leveled a scowl at his smug friend. Knowing it wouldn't do any good but annoyed all the same, one of these days he was going to catch the vampire.
"You know, someday I'm going to put trip wires in front of that couch. And wouldn't that just be a laugh, if you broke your nose trying to sneak past me." He said. Daray did not look the least bit concerned.
"Trip wires are called trip wires for a reason. They don't make you fall over, just trip." Daray said, not even bothering to open his eyes at the threat.
"All right then, electric trip wires. A couple thousand volts, just enough to make you jump and drop dead." Rahkesh said, signing his name on the essay. Now Daray's eyes opened and narrowed, he looked at Rahkesh for a moment as if wondering at his sanity.
"First it was Silas in an electric net, then the shocks you installed in the door, then the tasers - I know they're hidden in this room somewhere, and now electric trip wires. British wizards do not have a death penalty. So way are you so into electrocuting people?"
"It's fun." Rahkesh said, not really knowing the answer. "Why are you here anyway? Didn't you have a duel with what's his name – Saul?" Daray rolled his eyes skyward.
"I know you've been preoccupied with switching classes but really, Rahkesh, it's eight p.m., that duel was two and half hours ago." Daray said. Rahkesh checked his watch, oops. He'd eaten in his room that evening, working on this project, and completely lost track of time. The project was due the next day and he'd been delayed the day before with a tricky potion that had taken several hours longer than he'd thought it would.
"You won?" He asked, the vampire's head shot up from resting on the arm of the couch to glare. "Never mind, of course you won. What was the prize again?" Daray rarely fought without stating some sort of prize for the winner. The vampire grinned smugly like a happy cat, there should have been feathers.
"Him." Rahkesh shook his head; of course it would be something like that. Daray and Saul did not get along. Something simpler would have been too mild.
"Good blood?"
"I wasn't referring to his blood." Daray purred in reply. "Though I got his blood too." The vampire added, and frowned. "And neither was very good." Rahkesh shook his head; he never understood the vampire philosophy that life was all about sex and blood. Saul must have been very confident of his fighting abilities if he'd agreed to a bet like that. More likely Daray, being much more clever than Saul, had argued the vampire into such a corner that he couldn't say no without appearing a coward and couldn't say yes without appearing stupid. If given a choice like that Saul would have to take stupidity rather than cowardice. He could stand to appear an idiot; loss of face due to cowardice was unacceptable.
Well, Saul wouldn't be jeering about Rahkesh switching classes anytime soon.
"You know you could have claimed the prize was another duel with the winner of the first duel's choice of weapon. You know he can't duel worth shit with silent magic. You could have hung him from the dinning hall ceiling and repeatedly electrocuted him so he'd flop around and amuse everyone." Rahkesh suggested, he didn't like Saul either but the arrogant nasty vampire had never challenged him, yet. Saul was still getting over his first fight with Rahkesh outside the entrance to Akren valley.
"Again I ask, what is it with you and electrocuting people?" Daray said, Rahkesh shrugged again.
"It makes them cry?" He offered weakly, and immediately regretted saying it when the vampire snorted and broke out into a delighted toothy grin.
"I knew you were a hidden sadist. Next time the brat pisses you off you can do that to him. Maybe if he gets humiliated enough he'll stop being such an ass. Everyone knows what our bet was and everyone knows he lost, the duel only took five minutes you know, and about a third of the school was there in the gym, so I'd be surprised if he shows his face at all for the next week." Daray stated.
Rahkesh had to laugh, Daray didn't do anything half way and if he was going to beat Saul then the larger the audience the better. Especially if it was a vampire audience, there was a sort of wordless communication and understanding there that Rahkesh couldn't quite get. And everyone hated Saul, his superior attitude, which was completely unjustified, made even the other vampires hate him. Even the vampires who thought they were better than humans hated him, because Saul had no real abilities that counted at Akren. Sure he was much more powerful than the vast majority of Rahkesh's classmates at Hogwarts, but only with spoken incantations and a wand, which amounted to nothing here, yet expected to be treated like he was something special.
Sygra slid down from the shelf above his desk and coiled herself on top of his homework. A sure signal he'd been working too long. And why hadn't Sygra noticed the vampire coming in?
I was asleep. I usually do notice, it amuses me that you do not. The snake replied to his unspoken question. They really did think alike. She always knew what he was going to ask. His friends knew about the snake, but they didn't know he could speak parseltongue. No one needed to know that. There was too much chance of someone making a connection between a certain missing parseltongue that the British Ministry of Magic was going crazy over, and Rahkesh Asmodaeus newly arrived at Akren from that same country.
"Perhaps I'll just leave Sygra on the couch." Rahkesh wondered aloud, "she can bite you and that bat when you sit down. And wouldn't that be funny."
"Getting bit on the ass by a venomous snake? That would not be amusing." Daray said. "If that snake bites me I'll send Satan to bite you."
"All I'd need would be a good lumos spell, he hates light."
"Whatever. Keep the snake in her cage. It isn't funny."
"Oh I think it would be. It's not like it could kill you, you're already dead. And I can just imagine you screeching like a little girl." Rahkesh said, deliberately provoking the vampire.
"I do not screech. Ever." The vampire proclaimed indignantly.
"Shriek then. Snake bites hurt." Rahkesh snickered. Picking up Sygra and letting her wrap herself over his arm and shoulder.
"You are a sadist. Ever thought about becoming a vampire? That type of nastiness ought to reserved for our kind." Daray said, Rahkesh just rolled his eyes. If nastiness was a sign of being a vampire Severus Snape would be ruling the vampires.
"You vampires take yourselves much too seriously. It isn't healthy."
"Snakes are more our forte than that of humans."
"No they aren't." Rahkesh disagreed; the vampire had no idea what he was talking about. Neither Voldemort nor Rahkesh was a vampire. "You haven't the slightest clue what you are talking about. Animals do not belong to any of the humanoid species. Snakes are not at all dark, and neither are vampires. Really you have no claim to them. Sygra is my pet so if I ask her to wait on the couch to bite you she will."
"I'll just check the couch next time." Rahkesh noted the vague note of worry in the vampire's voice.
"Won't work." He smirked evilly at the bat and vampire sprawled out on his couch. "I'll get you my pretty, and your little bat too." He said, in a high screechy voice. Daray started laughing.
Rahkesh put Sygra in her cage and glanced down into the mouse burrow on the bottom level. The original two mice had bred, and Sygra had taken to eating the little ones. She thought half grown mice tasted better. Rahkesh had not been aware snakes had taste buds. There was a new litter there, three or four this time.
Delicious Sygra said, peering down from an upper level at the mice. The adults, as always, went into spasms of fear at the sight of a snake.
"That snake is the truly sadistic one. Torturing those poor mice." Daray said, joining him to watch the snake terrorize the mice.
"It is just a little cruel. And rather amusing." Rahkesh said, closing the top of the cage. "She likes having her choice of live food. Once winter is over I've made her a larger cage to go out on the balcony. There's room in there for the mice to feed themselves on the plants. I'm thinking about getting a few shrews or moles as well as the mice." The ground level of that cage was nearly six square feet.
"Are you coming with us to the hot springs tonight?" Daray asked. Rahkesh remembered that it was Saturday and their schedule meant that they had no classes until noon the next day. Typically that meant that the dozen or so students with that schedule would go swimming late at night in the hot springs. It was November, and there was two feet of snow on the ground. And the older students said it was a mild winter so far. Akren, being at such a high altitude, and being separated from the world, had weather generally unlike what the part of the muggle world it had been taken from had.
But even in the coldest months the students frequently went to the hot springs, despite there being perfectly acceptable hot tubs and a heated pool under the school. The springs were fun in winter, with everything white. The actual hot springs were too hot to swim in, but where the water hit the river, or one of the small streams flowing out of the mountains, it was just cool enough to swim in. There were dozens of such spots, and even during snowstorms the students would go there to swim and hangout, and the smaller spots were used by couples wanting some privacy away from the school. Rahkesh was looking forward to the annual party that took place in the hot springs when the first blizzard hit. It was a long-standing tradition to go for a soak in the hot springs during the first real blizzard.
"Like always, why?"
"A few of the older students are coming, and so are a few of our teachers. Apparently there're some hot springs we haven't found yet that roll down the rocks like a waterslide. They invited a few of us to come with them. Not all of us, you, me, Silas, Ally, and two others I don't know, Rianae I think." Daray explained.
"When and where are we meeting them? I'm guessing that they don't want all the other first year students to know we're going."
"It's invitation only. In the stables, at eleven, we're going on horseback. Ever ridden a Fire Horse before?"
"No. Won't they burn us?"
"Well sure, if you kick them or yank on their tails. They're okay really, a bit like hippogriffs, they decide what they're doing and pushing them around doesn't work."
Rahkesh set his papers aside in a neat stack. Potions on top, then bloodmagic, then transfiguration, the order he had the classes in.
"Sounds fun, I'll be there." He turned to look behind him, Daray was gone. He must be really slaking off; the vampire had gotten into the room and managed to leave without him noticing either. Usually he at least caught him on the way out.
Sygra. Can you please tell me how on earth he manages to get in here?
No. I don't know how he does it. And if I did I wouldn't tell you. It is amusing. Try the trip wires. I should like to see that scrawny little bat get shocked.
I might. You'll have to look out for the trip wires too.
I'm too smart to get caught, and I can go under them. You could just attach those electric whips things to the couch.
The tasers? Maybe. I'd be worried about killing the bat. Or having someone else sit down before I could disable them.
Shocking the other blood drinker would be amusing too. Sygra didn't know how to say vampire yet, snakes just called them blood drinkers.
True, perhaps I will. And I'll install a camera.
A what?
A device to capture images. Like a painting only it records what it sees.
Do that. The magical cobra hissed. You can use it as blackmail. She really was a bit vindictive. And she enjoyed getting the better of people. Sygra worked herself partially into the sand on the top layer of her cage and went to sleep. Her tongue flicking out now and then. Rahkesh went to find his swim trunks and a book to read in the hot springs.