Here you go guys. As promised, next chapter. Entering the countdown to the end. I'm still speedwriting so keep that in mind…
Chapter 43.
Osiris watched as the soft fabric slipped off Isis' shoulders, revealing her smooth, beautiful curves and rich, rye-tinted skin. She had her head bent, chanting over the repetitive hum of her followers surrounding her in a tight circle, casting the spells that would mask Isis' magic from the prying eyes of whoever was looking- mainly that insolent kefa, that auguror that had been a thorn in their sides since Isis brought him back, destroying all the ingredients that were intended for his Anchors' amulets…
He seethed just thinking about him. But he was nothing; a worm, a roach that had been lucky so far. But luck ran out, and Osiris knew that Isis was making sure of it with this incantation. He focused again on Isis as powerful, lime green fire erupted around her and her followers intensified their humming. She raised her hands up into the sky, directing the flames as she chanted, and started swaying with the cadence. She was graceful and terrible in the same time, a force and a scourge, the true mistress of the cosmos. As her arms transfigured slowly into wings, and she continued the ritualistic dancing, the flames licked and caressed her like a lover; Osiris breathed in as if trying to steal some of that essence for himself. He hated that he wasn't part of these chants, of this absolute magic. He had always hated it, it felt like it was always beyond his reach.
Be patient. It will soon be yours.
The green flames that snaked and threaded around Isis started thinning out, spinning centrifugally as she danced, unfurling from the invisible spindles that the prime witch's energy created until they formed a firey, pulsating net over their heads. Isis arched back then, as her followers around her bowed their heads to the ground and stopped the humming. With one command in a language so archaic that Osiris himself didn't quite understand, the net erupted concentrically, spreading in all directions until it disappeared from sight, and all was still.
Osiris rose up then, as Isis' arms turned back to human form. He picked up her robes and gently pushed them on her shoulders. She smiled at him with that quiet yet so unnerving smile of power and assertion. Not even Ra had been able to withstand Isis' cunning. A puny little mortal like Galanos and everyone else he'd ran to for help would not be any different.
Nobody ever was any different.
"It is done, my Ausar," Isis said. "Now, all we need to do is wait."
/
Hermione was tingling with excitement over this. If it worked, it would be one of the most important magic endeavours she had dabbled in; and she'd dabbled in more than her share of important, ground breaking or extremely important magic in her years.
Waiting for the rest to arrive, she pulled the appropriate books from her book bag and started setting up for the experiment. With a piece of chalk she started tracing the signs on the floor. It was when she was about finished with it that Ron entered with Harry. He had a pretty big rat in a cage.
"Nice going, Ron! Harry, did you get it?" Hermione asked Harry.
Harry pulled what looked to be a trinket from his pocket, and with a quick swish of his wand unshrunk it into its real size- a large golden cauldron.
"Yeah," he said with a smile. "Wasn't that hard. For a change being the Boy-Who-Lived helped and I was sent this post-haste."
"Good," she smiled and levitated the cauldron to have it sit at the middle of her scribbled floor signs. "So now we just need to wait for Rasmus."
"I'm here," came the younger Snape's voice not too long after that. "Sorry, I needed to help Finn with some of his homework, or he'd ask questions I didn't feel like answering."
Rasmus looked troubled, or harrowed, or both as he entered. He looked around at the Golden Trio and nodded.
"Are we ready to try this? I got all the other ingredients we need."
Hermione was burning to try this. Making such a potent potion, that was not quite a potion, but a combination of spell and chemistry that bordered on sheer Alchemy, captured her inquisitiveness and urge for experimentation immeasurably.
But while she was an adult, and Ron and Harry too, and with quite a few battles under their belt, Rasmus was just 15. While she was aware that Rasmus had managed not to die against a duel with Osiris himself, she knew that just like in Harry's case in the past, most of it was sheer good luck. He should be allowed to have more chances to live than his father had.
"Rasmus, are you sure that if we talked to your uncle, he wouldn't understand? Help?"
Rasmus scowled.
"I surely hope you haven't given anything away to him."
"No, of course not," she hurried to say. Harry stepped in too.
"Listen, Hermione's only saying that she doesn't want you to be seriously hurt doing this."
"That's why we got the rat," Rasmus said. "We're going to test, first."
"We all know we're gonna do this," Ron said with an eyeroll. "Otherwise we wouldn't be here. So let's get on with it, I think none of us wants to end up hurt or dead, and that includes the little Snape." He smiled at Rasmus as he was looking at him surprised at the redhead's words. "You're a little Snape. Snape was a lot of things but no idiot, and all of his plans worked so… I just wanna get to the action. I react better under pressure."
"Could have fooled me," smirked Rasmus but he nodded and opened his knapsack- it was filled to the brim with potions ingredients.
/
Under the odd words of Parseltongue, Adeline touched her wand to the canvas, right on Salazar Slytherin's painted hand. The man in the portrait responded in kind, and reaching in his robes he retrieved his own wand and touched its tip to Adeline's. Nikos and Minerva almost gaped as they watched the colours in the canvas kaleidoscope into a vortex around Slitherin's figure as he and his true heir chanted in their tongue. They didn't stop while the colors pulsated and churned and roiled, looking into each others' eyes with that smug understanding of before.
They only stopped their otherworldly chanting when the colors settled into a new background behind Slytherin- that of a long and dark rock-hewn cavern. Adeline turned to Nikos then and tended her hand to him.
"Take my hand, sir."
And Nikos did, and followed the girl as she stepped into the frame, using the sturdy wood as a step, and entered the painting with him. Salazar stood to the side to let them in, with a self satisfied smirk. Nikos was amazed. This was magic he had never encountered before.
"This is amazing," he muttered.
"I kept some tricks of mine… to myself," Slytherin chuckled as he turned to lead the way in the cavern, his robes swishing around him majestically. "I promised Pythagoras that I would make sure at least one Key would never be found by those imbecilic Egyptians, and I kept my promise."
"I thought these portraits are made post mortem," Nikos said quietly, almost reverently, as if he too was a student before a master.
"They normally are," Slytherin said. "But there's no reason why not to choose the setting and the canvas beforehand… so I did. Gryffindor was kind enough not to ask questions for a change and followed my instructions to the T. He destroyed, I hope, the spell scroll after he hid this. Evidence implies he did."
The Slytherin House founder led Adeline and Nikos deep in the cave. It smelled of the oils and egg of medieval paint, giving it a surreal feel that Nikos would never forget.
"You have hidden the Key here."
"Exactly… and now I am going to give it to you, because your bloodline is drawing it to you, and so I trust you won't lose it after all this trouble taken to hide it."
"I won't," Nikos promised as Slytherin bent to one of the darkest corners of the cave and retrieved a silver box.
"Take this. Don't open it here, or my canvas will be destroyed and I won't be happy about that," he instructed. "Destroy them; they are insufferable twits that think they can go against the nature of the cosmos… such idiocy cannot be tolerated anymore than muggle idiocy against wizards."
Nikos smiled.
"I promise you that, master Slytherin." He turned to go with a small bow.
Just before exiting the painting, Slytherin's voice reached Nikos' ears.
"Please, make sure my real heir survives, as well."
/
And that's that for tonight. The Key of Wind is finally found.
A word or two from you guys will be appreciated. I know you're reading might as well tell me your thoughts, you know.
More tomorrow.