A Magical World

by planetbean

Author Miranda Flairgold created an epic masterpiece in 'A Second Chance at Life' and 'Changes in a Time of War' unfortunately she never finished her third book of the trilogy. it has been eleven years since her last update of the third book 'A Magical World' and I have read her books a great many times. I only hope I can do her justice.

4. Chapter Four

Rakesh's abs and cheeks hurt by the time he shook off the spells Daray had cast on him. Overpowered as they were, a simple Finite wouldn't cut it. The physical aftereffects didn't bother him nearly as much as the predatory glint in Daray's eye when he implied that this event meant war on the wizard. Rahkesh shuddered to imagine the kinds of pranks Daray would pull to exact his revenge. Hell, the one Rahkesh had just executed was Daray's idea in the first place, he'd just turned it around on him. The only thing that gave Rahkesh any peace of mind was his confidence that he'd give as well as he got, but then even that was discomforting. In war there are no winners, only those who lost the least.

"Priceless." A random werewolf Rahkesh didn't know told him, sporting a cheshire grin as he walked past in the hallway. Rahkesh sighed. "I might be in over my head here." He hissed in parseltongue to the empty hallway. Marching along, he soon came to Namach's doors, knocked, and after a few moments, they swung smoothly open seemingly of their own accord.

Rahkesh stepped in and around Eli, who was laying in the entry hall staring at the ancient professor. The curmudgeonly, overgrown, lizard seemed concerned and the fact he left his back turned on a long-standing enemy without so much as a warning hiss or growl lent credence to this observation. Following the reptiles gaze, Rahkesh could see why.

Namach appeared to be suffering from a migraine to rival the Cruciatus. Head in hands, hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot and swollen in agitation and a mantle of magic surrounding him churning in such a chaotic mess that it was rapidly beginning to affect the wizard's own head.

'Great.' Rahkesh thought. 'The all-powerful king of vampires has contagious headaches.'

"Is this a golem? Looks like it's been a little overused." Rahkesh said apprehensively. Namach looked up sharply and the wizard was immediately inundated by a cold dark power causing his skin to prickle and ache, and his insides to feel unsettlingly cold. Seeing that Namach didn't seem to be regaining any control over his magic, Rahkesh centered himself, closed his eyes, and let his own magics loose.

A rush of burning ozone enshrouded him. A sensation not unlike statically charged feathers brushing against his skin fought to win his attention but was ruthlessly brushed aside as Rahkesh focused on the feeling of his magics forcefully beginning to subdue the ancient vampire's intemperate aura.

When the basilisk animagus opened his eyes, they were a glowing mass of black shot through with streaks of killing curse green, almost artfully riddled with splashes of vibrant gold, and rimmed in pure silver.

Rahkesh knew Namach had no intention of hurting him. had no reason to, though an outside observer could reasonably argue that there was clear malevolence in the gaze and stance of the professor.

'Did I do something to piss him off again?' The wizard wondered dimly as he reinforced his mental barriers tenfold, but the fact he was able to buffer the ancients magics with his own told a different tale. Realistically if Namach had wanted to do him harm, he'd have already done so and no amount of resistance would have averted it.

"No." Namach replied simply. This fact made Rahkesh worried. The multi-millennium old vampire often boldly boasted that frequent rest was for the inferior, and that he could stay awake for a year or more without suffering any adverse effects. Rahkesh didn't know exactly how long his professor had been going without sleep, but it couldn't have been more than a few months.

And sure, he'd spent a colossal amount of energy playing with the demons and more still on his veritable army of clone-like golems running around attending to the mountain of mundanities he was responsible for, but what stood before Rahkesh now was a disaster of a being. Rahkesh took a shot in the dark, literally, since the room was almost pitch black, as if the light feared to encroach upon this seemingly mad man's territory.

"The golem is trying to slip the reigns so it can replace you. The partial autonomy is no longer so partial, is it?" Rahkesh asked grimly. Namach locked eyes with his student, baring an expression completely devoid of emotion.

"Is it so obvious?" he grumbled grouchily. Rahkesh was speechless, this could become a problem far worse than the demon invasion. Namach's golems possessed all his intellect, all his knowledge, all his myriad powers. Having such a cataclysmically powerful being, wrapped up neatly in a nigh-indestructible shell was a magical marvel to be lauded and praised to high heavens, but the potential for disaster was ever-looming. Sure, so long as it obeyed its creator, a well-made golem was an indispensable ally. But if it decided it wanted to usurp the creator? It would be very, very difficult to combat.

"Didn't you install some sort of kill switch? What is it doing to have you so ravaged?" Rahkesh asked. He knew the ancient maintained a constant mental connection with his golems, enabling instant unfettered one-way memory transfer and thought streaming, consequently robbing his doppelgangers of any sort of mental privacy or real autonomy. This was supposed to drastically minimize the chance of rebellion to something roughly approximating 'not happening'.

That said, here Rahkesh stood, warily regarding a wildly bedraggled rebel wearing the likeness of his professor. Namach sighed and shook his head.

"Due to the blood crystal structure, it isn't affected by my physical or mental state. Yes it's thread magic core technically has a time limit, though it's an extravagantly long one due to my penchant for overachieving. Of course, the primary failsafe was to ensure it couldn't recharge itself, which it, being made in the image of its creator, has naturally discovered how to do on its own. It's managed to get its hands on some of the stores of my own blood, and it also has accessed my knowledge on how to craft and implement more threads."

"In a surprise twist, it hasn't used the blood to create a new core but rather, to perform blood magic to obscure the mind link and block me from summoning it back to me, not that I would want to. That little spat that I had with Fairraidar a millennia or so ago was bad enough and that mostly occurred on another planet. I fear if we were to encounter one another as we are now it would likely turn out rather more spectacularly catastrophic than anything you could probably currently comprehend."

"Under normal circumstances I would exterminate this imposter with extreme prejudice but given how diminished I am after dealing with current events and considering the backlash this little rebellion has inflicted upon me I am… reluctant to physically confront it at present."

Rahkesh thought it deeply unsettling, hearing his professor speak completely normally whilst his voice was coming from such a lifeless looking mouthpiece. Namach's golem really put the dead in deadpan.

"If I were to sleep it would know and most likely attempt to assassinate me. It could try to kill me in other ways, but this would be the most efficient and effective. It being my golem it could subvert my guards and defenses easily enough. And by eliciting my death and using my corpse it could theoretically make itself permanent. It would be very difficult and most likely fatal, but plausible."

Rahkesh was momentarily speechless, this was the last thing he needed. The demons invading, the instability of the barrier between worlds, his impending supposed transformation (specifically the one he still didn't know anything about), the subsequent attack from the elves, the blood tree, the additional subsequent attack from the elves, and now Namach's golem seeking to overthrow and replace the supreme ruler of the vampires in as inconceivably violent a fashion as possible.

Rahkesh wondered if his hair might soon start turning gray or if he might be able to resurrect Voldemort just to have something manageable to focus on for a bit.

"Isn't there something we can do? Could we temporarily mobilize a guard rotation with some of the Ateres and our other allies while you recover? At least enough to resolve this. What about your life crystals, surely you have quite a few..." Rahkesh scrambled for a solution.

"Ah, yes, the life crystals..." Namach trailed off before continuing "No, the life crystals only provide life energy and that wouldn't be of much help unless I was already dead, or close to it. Though the idea of guarding me is not necessarily a bad one, there are many who would take advantage of the opportunity to try to overthrow me and I do not wish to dispose of anyone powerful enough to pose a problem for the demons. If we were to gather such a group to guard me for even so much as an hour the world would most likely be overrun with demons, so as of right now no, there's nothing we can do... Maybe..." Namach trailed off.

Rahkesh waited but Namach didn't seem to want to finish his thought. "Maybe what?" He prodded, hoping to prompt the vampire into saying what he was thinking. "Maybe give it some of my blood? Surely that would cause the threads to combust."

"No, that is a horrendous idea, the golem shares my power remember? Your blood would kill just about anyone, but not me. The golem could do some serious damage to this universe with a taste of your blood. No Rahkesh, you must never allow your blood to fall into the wrong hands." He declared with an air of finality and doom.

Getting up with a flicker of irritation (the first sign of emotion Rahkesh had seen on the doppelgangers face since he'd walked in) Namach silently stalked deeper into his rooms and through the beaded curtains that sequestered his private quarters without saying another word. As he left the room, the doors swung open.

Recognizing his cue to leave, Rahkesh turned to Eli and briefly made eye contact. The damnable lizard gazed at him imploringly, as if trying to convey something, but he was not Rakesh's familiar and Rahkesh couldn't figure out what he was trying to ask. Flustered, confused, concerned, and out of ideas, Rahkesh left for his own rooms to think.

XXXXXXX

Shortly after stepping into his rooms Rahkesh fell. Not onto the floor but rather into a… pit? The floor had simply been there one moment and vanished the next. Surrounded by pure nothingness as he fell, Rahkesh couldn't tell where the bottom was. After several moments of instinctual panic and a long minute to think he realized he was either about to die from an extremely high fall or that there simply was no bottom. 'Damnit Daray.' He hissed and heard Sygra laugh in response. "Sygra?" he asked.

"Yes master?" She replied, sounding thoroughly amused.

"Are you in here with me?" He asked, hoping Daray hadn't cast her into this void as well. It would make sense considering she'd intercepted his most recent prank. He wouldn't put it past the impetuous vampire demon, though he was sure that Daray wasn't foolish enough to intentionally land himself on Sygra's bad side.

"Hmm, yes and no." She said, playfully ponderous.

Rahkesh's first impulse was anger towards the exasperating snake for such a singularly unhelpful answer, but then on further consideration he caught the implied hint. 'This must be an illusion' he thought. He was probably just blindly floating in the middle of his kitchenette, flailing about like an idiot.

But before he could act on this revelation, a gut feeling he couldn't explain warned him of magic that wasn't his and he immediately cast a shield just in time to deflect a curse. A loud, oddly wet sounding yelp was the response, then he was briefly truly falling and promptly crashed to the floor, hard.

Having regained his senses, the first thing he spotted was an annoyed looking squid with long black hair glaring at him. Before he could process the fact that a bright purple cephalopod had invaded his kitchen, The small, obnoxiously vibrant creature reached out with one of its wriggling tentacles and slapped him across the face.

Rahkesh rolled and whipped out his wand but before he could let off a spell the squid used another of its many writhing appendages to grab hold of a wand and transfigure itself back into his less strikingly colored friend Daray. "How did you know I was here? Did Sygra sense me?" He asked.

"No, and I didn't, I just sort of sensed your magic. Did you have to put me on the ceiling?" Rahkesh grumbled as he regained his feet, rubbing at his elbow and face to alleviate the pain. Less than a moment later a large black blur blew past him and tackled Daray to the floor.

"OW! NURI! STOP IT!" Daray bellowed from beneath the midnight mass of fur and claws while Silas strolled in laughing.

"Grandmother wants you to report back to the compound tonight, she and Sierra are working on something and I was told they'll need your help." he informed Daray. Daray, getting back to his feet with several deep scratches that were rapidly mending themselves due to his vampiric healing, scowled at his cousin.

"What are they going to need me for? If it's something to do with demonic magic I think I'll have to come up with an excuse. The last time they tried something like that it hurt. A lot." He said plaintively, then scowled down at the cat and attempted to kick it. Nuri hissed in outraged offense and mauled Daray again. The impromptu wrestling match began anew, accompanied by much hissing, growling, and screaming. Rahkesh and Silas laughed.

"Where have you been?" Rahkesh asked Silas, eliciting a tired look from the Ateres.

"Helping with interrogating the captured demons, nothing new really. I rather think the interrogations of the demons are kind of hopeless at this point since they all keep saying the same things. A few of them have gone and died and another one has just decided to retreat into its mind. That one won't even respond under torture, it's as if it's gone brain dead. Sharahak says that our.. methods.. are plenty effective but that he doesn't know how thoroughly they've been trained so they could be tougher than we think." he sighed.

"What sort of techniques are you using?" Rahkesh asked.

"Some thoroughly nasty things, acids in the eyes, removal of fangs, teeth and scales. We're trying some other things as well but I'm not sure I'm allowed to reveal them."

"Have you tried electricity?" Rahkesh asked smirking deviously.

"AAAAHHHHRRRR! Motherfucking rabid feline!" Came the voice of their unfortunate vampire demon from behind.

"Yes thunder, we've tried electricity but unfortunately unless we have a thunderbird to pump up the voltage it doesn't seem to be too effective." Silas said with an eye roll and a smirk regarding the wrestling duo. "How have classes been?" He asked, changing the subject before accidentally revealing any family secrets.

"I haven't really been to any." Rahkesh grimaced, allowing the subject change easily. Secrets were important in the society he now resided in after all, and respecting them even more so.

Rahkesh knew his sporadic attendance could turn out to be a problem but from what he had heard nobody was really learning anything of value anyway, what with the schedules being so chaotic and haphazard. Not to mention that half the student and alumni population were consistently earning lengthy stays in the medical ward.

"Considering most lessons nowadays are the practical sort while we prepare and/or conduct tasks and such to support the war effort, most of us aren't really learning anything new anyway. The professors think it's pointless because nobody's able to show up to routine classes. The headmistress is really the only one who wants classes to continue right now and granted, it is helpful for some trying to learn about the things they're doing to contribute to the war, but regular classes just won't work." Tyler said strolling into the room and grinning at the still wrestling pair on the floor.

"OW! NURRRRIIIII!"

"There are still a few classes that are carrying on as scheduled though. Potions for one, and several of the combat courses. Aelfly has high expectations of our budding potioneers, and one can never get enough combat training. And bloodmagic and necromancy of course, special projects aside." Ally said just behind Tyler, she was carrying a small black box that seemed to be missing its lid.

"My brother said that they've managed to kill most of the demons that escaped the portal in southern Russia but that they don't actually know how many escaped that portal so." She added.

"ALRIGHT!" Daray breathlessly bellowed, shoving the shiny black panther away and shooting to his feet. It was clear who'd won the fight, Daray was cut up from head to toe and bleeding all over Rahkesh's floor. Nuri on the other hand looked completely fine except for the small chunk missing from his left ear from the last battle. Daray glared at Silas, but Silas didn't seem to notice, or maybe he didn't care. Probably the latter.

"Clean your blood off the carpet." Rahkesh told him earning himself a murderous glare as well. The next fighting class with Professor Ahmad was in thirty minutes and Rahkesh hadn't been to any classes in a worryingly long time. He really didn't want to fail any of his courses due to poor attendance.

"I'll be going to Ahmad's class today, will I see you in bloodmagic this evening?" he asked Daray, to which the vampire shook his head in reply.

"No, apparently I'm needed at the compound." he grumbled and mocked before sulking out the door, clearly sour about losing the fight with the overgrown house cat. Ally smiled awkwardly and shifted on her feet, looking like she wanted to say something but was reluctant. Whatever she was going to say would have to wait because Tyler, standing just behind her now, hadn't noticed and spoke before Ally could.

"The wyverns have joined the war in several key locations that needed the most reinforcements. Some have been injured and removed to local fallback encampments for healing, but none have been killed. Things are getting pretty bad; the demons just keep coming through. Portals that seemed like they couldn't transport very many are transporting a lot, they're sending so many through the portals so fast that the portals aren't just melting but exploding."

"It's like the demons in the demon realm have learned that our fighters are stomping out the portals before we can be overrun. There aren't so many arch demons coming through anymore, but they've made up for that with their sorcerers. We know and they know that while they have vastly superior numbers they also only have so many portals. The real problem is going to be when they start coming through the portals we don't know about, then they'll be sneaking up on us from our blind spots."

At that there was a moment of silence, this war was rapidly turning from bad to worse.

"Do we have an updated death count?" Rahkesh asked not really wanting to know the answer, updated or not the number would be too high.

"Yes." Ally sighed. "I just came from downstairs to check on that, they estimate that we've lost over fifty-thousand, but they don't know the exact number." She shrugged, turned, and left. Rahkesh and Silas looked at each other, both picking up on the fact that something was bothering her, neither one having any idea what.

"Well, I guess I'll see you in combat class." Tyler said before leaving as well. Silas went and sat on the couch, Rahkesh wandlessly closed his door and started to collect his things for Ahmad's class.

"Are you going?" he asked Silas who seemed perplexed and lost in thought.

"Yeah I guess so. I heard something happened after your last blood magic ritual but I didn't catch many details." Silas said after a few moments.

"Ah, yes. Namach is... In a bit of a situation, a really bloody bad one actually..." Rahkesh trailed off and finished gathering his things. "Come on, I'll tell you on the way to class."

XXXXXXX

"Well shit." Silas said as they sparred. They weren't learning anything new today, just practicing the more complex moves that they learned in their last class. Silas hadn't been able to attend that one so it was all new to him, but he seemed to be grasping the moves rather quickly. Being of the Ateres line probably helped but Rahkesh was still holding his own.

"So, what then?" Silas asked as he took Rahkesh's legs out from under him and pinned him to the floor, Rahkesh barely managed to keep his left arm free and threw a punch at the side of Silas' head. The vampire was forced to roll off to keep from getting hit which was what Rahkesh was hoping for. Rolling with him, the wizard put his legs over Silas' arms and started punching him in the face. In response, Silas threw his legs up and wrapped them around Rahkesh's neck, then roughly pulled him off. Rahkesh rolled backwards and kipped up to his feet to face his friend again.

"I don't really know, I suggested guarding him while he slept but we can't spare the people needed for that, and he's worried that word would get out about it and that some idiot would try to dethrone him." Rahkesh panted. "Honestly I don't know what to do." Silas was apparently of the same mind because he didn't offer up any ideas either.

As they circled each other the room changed, they were in the basement which was designed to become any type of climate and/or terrain. They had been in a forest at first, then a desert and now it changed to a snowy, rocky terrain not unlike the mountains around Akren.

"Maybe Daray will take the opportunity to try and defeat him so he can become the next vampire king." Silas joked and they both laughed.

"Namach might be weakened due to the circumstances, but he could still take anyone who tried it. Much as Daray is the epitome of all things vampiric, he isn't suicidal enough for that." Rahkesh said, Silas shrugged.

"We both know he would entertain the thought though." Silas replied while driving forth to deliver some painful punches to Rahkesh's side. "And the fact Namach would hear him thinking it and tear him apart for such thoughts wouldn't deter him from thinking them either."

"I rather think Daray likes their little... Chats."

"Namach fucks like a god." Silas mocked and they both bust out into laughter.

XXXXXXX

The next morning Rahkesh was showering when an alarm sounded, it was his turn for battle. He jumped out of the shower, banished the water off himself, got dressed in his battle gear, then grabbed his wand and weapons. Racing outside he met up with Silas, Ally, Tyler, Matolo, about half of Matolo's pack, and roughly a hundred more students.

"Listen up! Everyone grab a portkey bracelet and prepare yourselves; we're deploying to a portal just outside of Sydney Australia today and it's going to be hot." Professor Marluck (male) announced. For professorial representation, the students were joined by both Marluck's (male and female), Professor Ahmad, and professor Stiali, the thread magic teacher. They were all thoroughly decked out in blood metal. Arm bands, leg bands, necklaces, earrings, and belts.

Professor Stiali was the odd one out wearing only a scant few pieces of the magical metal, but he more than made up for that lack in defensive thread magic pieces. His entire outfit shined lightly with a pale, ghostly glow, the kind which spoke of power only the intricacies of thread magic could produce.

The professor was even wearing a crown made from thin glowing red threads. Rahkesh didn't know what sort of purpose that would serve but he could feel the power radiating from it and knew whatever it was it would probably be impressive and annoying in equal measure.

'Someday I'm going to learn thread magic.' He thought to himself, determined to eventually figure out why he still couldn't perform any and briefly pondering how he could. Thread magic persisted in being obstinately opposed to Rahkesh's ministrations to this day, even something as simple as tying chains together.

"Ready then? Here we go!" Professor Ahmad announced. In a flash people began disappearing, then Rahkesh received the mental image of the site from the professor and apparated out. The first thing to hit Rahkesh was a blistering gust of hot air, the Akren valley was a brisk thirty-four degrees (much warmer than it usually is this time of year) and drew a stark contrast to the blazing Australia heat. It couldn't have been any cooler than a hundred degrees.

Immediately Sygra hissed, lunging off his shoulders and transforming before she even hit the ground, spitting acid onto a tight grouping of demons and crunching an airborne pair of Alphas with her mouth as she gained altitude. Rahkesh was pretty sure she was really starting to enjoy these battles, given the way she flew around with elated ease as she disemboweled, crushed, and dissolved any/everything around her.

Focusing on his surroundings, Rahkesh grimly realized that there were demons everywhere. It reminded him of the battle Namach had summoned him to, chaos and pandemonium reigned. There were no ranks or formations, just all-out carnage and death as far as the eye could see.

Taking a closer look, the black-haired wizard noted every kind of demon in attendance, including a couple arch demons inelegantly flying around and leaving a path of utter destruction in their wake without care for the damage they wrought, even upon their own allies. Everything was charred, burnt, and melted. Fires flickered and raged everywhere, the sky was choked with smoke, winged demons, fighters on brooms, and the occasional animagus zipped around after each other pell-mell in their desperation to gain or retain air superiority.

Rahkesh could see a couple of giant eagles, a griffin, what looked like a gorilla with wings, a Phoenix, a roc, and even a bright green dragon wreathed in flames which was locked in battle with an arch demon. The bright green dragon seemed to be immune to the magic being hurled at it as the cloak of green flames simply consumed the spells that all the sorcerer demons were throwing at it.

No demon could come close to it either for the fire, while almost docile in its defensive actions, seemed to have a vicious streak in its offensive strikes, violently charring anything that got too near to a crisp. 'Heh, guess these demons are unfamiliar with the story of Daedalus and Icarus' Rahkesh thought in a flash of dark amusement.

Rahkesh decided he needed to meet this dragon and ask about that fire. 'A potion maybe?' He thought. 'Probably.'

While the dragon seemed utterly unaffected by the smaller demons, it didn't look to be doing too well against the arch demon, especially considering the other two arch demons kept conducting strafing runs on its blind spots. Rahkesh wanted to dive in and help but releasing his thunderbird would dole out equal amounts of punishment on his allies as his enemies, even with his recent blood magic piece granting him better control of his electricity. Further, as much as he admired the dragons green fire he doubted it would protect it from lightning and being so large and so high in the air it would undoubtedly become an unwitting, living lightning rod.

Trusting his allies in the air to hold their own Rahkesh whipped out his wand. "Sectum Sempra!" he yelled using the verbal incantation. While he was well capable of wordless magic, verbalizing his spells tended to lend greater power to the effects of his casting.

He couldn't wait to knock out a few more magic-focusing blood magic stages so that it rendered incantations completely unnecessary. The spell worked fantastically and Rahkesh began cutting the demons engaged in the battles surrounding him into pieces.

Silas soon appeared nearby a recently decapitated beta demon, smiled, and waved at him before turning to and engaging in battle with another demon. He had evidently been fighting the demon Rahkesh had taken the head off of. In a motion almost too quick to follow, Silas whipped his wand around and flung a spell in the wizard's direction. As he spun around to dodge a swipe from his current sparring partners claws, Rahkesh hit the ground just before the demon behind him exploded into flames from Silas' spell.

Rahkesh lunged from the ground and summoned the staff that his friends from back in time had crafted for him out of its holster then immediately engaged in battle with an Alpha. As the fight progressed, more of the smaller wingless types that were in plentiful supply feverishly tried to interfere to give the alpha the advantage, and ultimately, the kill and Rahkesh realized the tactics behind it.

The demons had learned that Earth's fighters were mightier than their young demons and that they couldn't send in very many adults. But they also knew that they had numbers. While the wingless demons were weak enough that even a decently educated Hogwarts graduate could've taken one, they didn't stress the portals much on transport.

The demons had sent the unfortunate wingless beasts through purely to serve as cannon fodder. Their only goal was to keep earths forces distracted while they fought off the alphas and betas. Clearly they had told them not to interfere with the sorcerer demons because, looking around, the wingless betas kept a wide birth in battle around those, opting instead to assist the magically weaker alphas and betas. As Rahkesh realized this he spun in a circle not terribly unlike a dancer and twirled his spear-tipped staff in a wide arc slicing two wingless betas' throats open and ending the pirouette in an upward thrust, under and then through the chin of the alpha demon.

Tuning out the screams and shouts of those around him Rahkesh fought like there was no tomorrow. He took down over a score of demons with wand and staff before one of them snuck a lucky shot in. While fighting a rather impressively large gold, bronze, and grey colored beta, another demon behind him swung its axe at his side.

His thread magic Akren Crest on that shoulder prevented the blade from taking his arm but he still felt like he'd been hit by a truck. The impact sent him flying ten feet to his right, directly into a werewolf he didn't know. The two went down in a tangle of limbs and the werewolf was impaled on another demon's axe.

Rahkesh rolled, pulling the werewolf with him, happily resulting in the axe sliding out of the wolfs back at the same time. Surrounded by demons the werewolf brought his wand back around to bare and started attacking anew from the ground while Rahkesh tried to heal him. With so many demons swarming and the werewolf unable to get up all Rahkesh could really do was prevent any demons from finishing him off. Every time Rahkesh tried to heal him the demons closed in, and his attention was pulled away from healing the werewolf to defending the two of them in order for them just to survive.

'Where is his pack?' He wondered, struggling to keep the werewolf alive. Knocking a wingless betas sword awry with his staff then viciously summoning its brain through its nose, he looked around for support but couldn't see anyone else in the chaos. He sent out his mind searching for Silas or Ally. He found Silas but tore his attention from the connection as a pair of sorcerer demons plummeted out of the sky towards him.

Rahkesh fell back and rolled, bringing his wand around he sent two stunners and a blood rotting hex at the demons who batted them back as easily as a professional at Wimbledon. Dodging his own deflected magic and an additional series of nasty feeling spells Rahkesh had an idea, and he summoned their magic. Focusing the summoning and imagining the magic leaving their every cell, scale, and pore, the two demons started shrieking and convulsing. Blood began to ooze from their eyes, ears, nose, mouth and even the gaps between their scales and they soon after collapsed.

Rahkesh felt their magic surrounding him, completely uncontrolled and aimless. Thinking fast he funneled it into himself and was delighted at the rush of energy and strength he felt. Dashing back towards the still barely-alive werewolf, he sent out his mind yet again and this time found Silas easily.

'I need help! I have an injured werewolf over here and there are too many demons for me to heal him.' Rahkesh told him whilst simultaneously igniting another demon's very flesh. He took a fraction of a moment to relishing in its dying screams.

'Where are you?' Silas shot back. Looking around while taking the latest demon's arms and legs off with his favorite potioneers spell, Rahkesh realized landmarks weren't going to help to describe his location.

By the charred tree? Near the big melting boulder that bares a striking resemblance to all the other large melting boulders? No, but he had an idea, one he had been excited to try out ever since his last bloodmagic ritual. He had thought Namach would try to stop him from doing this ritual but the ancient instead seemed eager for him to perform it.

"Fulguris!" Rahkesh couldn't wait to direct the lightning into all the demons' eyeballs and down their throats. The sky rumbled, Rakesh's' bloodmagic flared, and he screamed in pain and surprise as a white-hot light from inside his mind overtook his vision. Blinded and sent crashing to his knees, Rahkesh quickly let the lightning spell go. Being blind in a battle like this spelled death.

When he regained his sight he saw a huge black demon lunging for him with its claws outstretched, reaching for his chest. Thinking fast and falling flat on his back, Rahkesh transfigured a spear tip at the end of his staff and drove the pointed end into the demon's chest as it came down on top of him. The transfigured polearm drove straight through its heart and the demon more rattled than screamed as it died.

'Oh what a lovely sound that is.' He thought.

He rolled and came up to his feet only to find a whole pack of demons on top of the werewolf he was trying to protect. Rahkesh wasn't sure if he was still alive under there, but there being so many demons on top of him Rahkesh was left with few options. As a human, he couldn't take that many at one time and certainly not quickly enough to save the werewolf. There really was no other option, he cast again.

"FULGURIS!" He roared, again he was blinded by a white-hot light that seared his mind and body, but he kept giving the spell all he had anyway. He could feel what the lightning was doing and was able to direct it easily, even though he couldn't see it and what it was doing like the bloodmagic ritual should have allowed.

The lightning striking in front of him was the only thing he could sense, all he could see was white light, all he could hear was the crash and roll of thunder, all he could smell was ozone, but he could feel the lightning strike in front of him. Channeling his offensive bloodmagics he took control of the lightning and sent it circling around him.

He felt something explode behind him and was splattered with a hot goo that he knew to be the flash-roasted innards of a demon. Rahkesh knew he'd just barely avoided death as that demon had been right behind him.

Finally, he couldn't take the pain and light any longer and let the lightning go, but his sight was taking it's time to come back to him. With thunder still rumbling and the screams and shouts of battle ringing all around him his hearing wasn't doing much better. He knew if he panicked he'd die so he stood still and calmed himself, called on his magic to surround him and simultaneously called on his healing bloodmagics to hopefully repair his sight fast enough that he wouldn't be caught blind.

He sensed demonic magic about to be released to his left and dove towards it, staff coming up first he hit the demon across the face, swinging around he jumped up throwing his knee into the demons gut whilst driving his spear tipped staff through the bottom of its jaw, he sensed the demon go limp, yanked his staff out and spun off its falling body, immediately getting raked by a set of claws down his left leg from another demon.

While it still hurt like hell the demon didn't actually slice him open owing of course to the Akren thread magic patch he was wearing on each thigh. 'Good stuff that.' He hissed to no one in particular.

Rahkesh lobbed a couple of spells at where the claws had come from and sensed a demon deflect them, having a better idea of its location he activated his first offensive bloodmagic set and thrust out his hand crushing the demon to death in a confluence of air magic.

He next sensed movement behind him and spun to his left as a demon tail was thrust toward his head. Ducking beneath another's claws as a sword hacked into his right thigh, he realized the demons must have obtained some of the Akren patches because the wingless demons were wielding all sorts of enchanted weapons that were capable of breaking through the thread magic.

As far as anyone could tell their weapons couldn't do anything against blood metal but they did a great job at ignoring thread magic. Screaming out in pain he yanked the sword out of its wielders' hands, spun around twisting the blade as he went and thrust it back into that demon, driving the blade deep into its gut and stumbling away as the handle of the demon's sword started to dissolve, confirming for Rahkesh that the demon was in fact dead.

He really wished his eyesight would come back already. "Sil-AAARRGGHGG" Rahkesh tried to call out to his vampire friend but was cut off as he was slammed to the ground from what felt like a wing. Rahkesh rolled backwards but too late, he realized that he rolled the wrong way. A tail spike was driven all the way through his back just below the ribs, poking out his front and lifting him from the ground.

The wizard gasped and coughed blood, he had just enough time to think that this was it. They had apparated into a battle and got overrun, it didn't matter that the tail sticking through him wasn't poisonous, he was completely surrounded, overpowered and blind. Just as he thought he was going to die he heard a familiar roar and the demon standing over him was ripped away as Sygra landed next to Rahkesh, picked him up and soared back into the air.

'Is your sight returning yet?' Sygra hissed. Rahkesh breathed a painful sigh of relief, cast a healing charm on his torso and laughed. The wound from the demon tail spike wasn't fatal to Rahkesh, far from it actually. The dragons blood caused his blood to clot in wounds at an alarmingly fast rate, so it had stopped bleeding almost immediately.

His healing blood magic was extensive enough that he began recovering as soon as he was injured. Rahkesh had dumped a ridiculous amount of life energy into his life crystal, and he had never stopped his daily Black Verbena Tea ritual. All of this culminated into Rahkesh being almost as hard to kill as a vampire.

'Yes, slow-' he cut off as he briefly became weightless because Sygra had dropped him. Panicking now, he transformed, but not into his Thunderbird for fear of the lightning making things worse. Instead, he transformed into his basilisk form and hit the ground hard with a pained hiss, the impact causing a small earthquake.

The wizard-turned-basilisk was instantly swarmed by demons, but he could see shapes now and started attacking anything that looked too oddly shaped to be human, or any offshoot of human, fae, vampire, werewolf, or the like.

'Fucking gross.' He hissed as he involuntarily ate several demons, snatching so many up and attacking the countless masses of them he couldn't help it. As everyone under the umbrella of his scaley rage started to rally around the giant basilisk, Rahkesh rolled, thrashed, and snapped at every demon he could sense.

Calling on his magics the air around him became heavy with poison, as his vision finally started to return to some semblance of functional, he glanced up to see Sygra swatting demons out of the sky so fast it looked like it was raining demonic limbs, blood, and guts. Rahkesh looked around for his friends, he wasn't pleased when he found them.

They were gathered around the last standing tree for several leagues, the tree was on fire but somehow still green on the top. It was maybe a hundred feet tall, a monster of a macadamia, his friends circled around it fighting for their lives. Each had literal swarms of demons attacking them from all sides, it looked like flies on a rotting corpse on a hot summer's day.

Silas had bewitched a few demons into attacking their nearest comrades and a panther (Nuri, he confirmed) was now the size of an elephant and throwing demons around like cat toys.

'That's new.' Rahkesh thought.

Ally was a blur she was moving so fast, fire whips flashing around her making her look like the world's most murderous Olympic rhythmic gymnastics gold medalist with parts of demons raining down all around her.

Matolo and a couple of his werewolves were all injured and clearly just trying to stay alive. The professors were holding their own easily enough, with each periodically stealing one or another demon from a student. As he watched he saw a demon get in a rather lucky swipe at professor Staili and the professors thread magic crown flashed a vibrant red.

The demon shrieked and withdrew from the professor, missing its entire arm, and Tyler... As Rahkesh watched she went down under a dog pile of demons. Rahkesh roared and slithered towards his friends completely ignoring the demons trying to attack him until his path was blocked by at least a score of sorcerer demons descending from the sky before him.

They all collaboratively cast a spell at the same time and a veritable tsunami of burning purple magic surged towards him. Rahkesh wandlessly threw out a shield but the spell couldn't deflect all of it. Most of what got through fizzled out over his scales thanks to his basilisk self being naturally resistant to magic, as well as his recent defensive blood magic shielding piece, but some seeped into his skin and made it feel like his organs were being microwaved.

Rahkesh screamed in rage and pain and attacked the sorcerers with a burning fury. He managed to turn one to stone which promptly shattered into a hundred pieces upon impact with the ground. The pissed off basilisk animagus snapped up four more in his jaws and chewed them like bubble gum, ignoring the hot toxic spice of their magic, blood, and viscera.

Rahkesh hated that the demons tasted good, their blood, and how their bones crunched between his fangs was just, delicious. Gross. The other demons kept attacking but his defensive blood magics deflected most of their spells and his scales rejected almost everything else that got through, but some were causing excruciating pain all throughout his body. He whipped his tail up and around and smacked three more out of the sky.

Rahkesh kept up the punishment on the sorcerers until they were all dead or dying but more kept showing up like an endless horde. With there being so many demons, no one was able to combat the portal from which they were coming, too focused on staying alive.

As Rahkesh inched his way closer to his friends he heard a deeply pained roar reverberating across the sky and saw the green dragon, no longer flaming, dropping from the sky, shrinking away as whoever it was reverted to their hominid form, defeated at last by the arch demons. Rahkesh slithered ever closer to his group of friends and when he was finally near enough, transformed back into his human form.

Spearing two demons together like a kebab with his staff and severing another's head with a spell, he forged a path the rest of the way over to Tyler, but what he found enraged him even further. She was not only dead but torn apart. Most of her organs were missing, her eyes, brain, tongue, her entire abdomen was shredded and hollowed out, even her limbs were torn off. With such extensive damage not even a life crystal could bring her back, in fact with the state of her body all the life crystal could have done was slow her inevitable death to an agonizing crawl.

Rahkesh screamed with unbridled fury, the basilisk and thunderbird lent their own rage to the shout in shared wrath and his throat tore from the sound of all three screams letting loose from his human throat.

His magics shrouded him in a whirlwind of power. Behind him, Matolo and the remains of his pack went down, then Ally too screamed in pain. Silas went down under a barrage of demons and magic but worst of all, Rahkesh noticed, was that Sygra was swarmed by sorcerers and he could hear her screams of pain. He was not going to let his familiar die.

Thinking fast, Rahkesh remembered the death cloud the necromancers had built using the soul of a demon. There were plenty of those floating around. 'It couldn't be much different than summoning their magic.' He thought.

Summoning a few demon souls, he felt a coldness enshroud him and threaded the chilling miasma throughout his magic then sought out his connection with death. Throwing caution to the wind Rahkesh transformed in an explosion of thunder and lightning and time seemed to slow. He could feel what each string of electricity was doing and where it was going.

With an ethereal avian smirk Rahkesh took to the air and sent his lightning and magic across the border of death then summoned it back, all the while weaving his lightning bolts throughout. With a jolt Rakesh realized he must have magically charged his brain to think faster, for as he was doing this everything around him seemed to be occurring in slow motion.

With a sadistic twist he fed his basilisk venom into the budding web of lightning, turning the bolts a deep, sickly green in color. The sky nearly turned black; storm clouds over-saturated with poisonous electricity began propagating of their own volition. Taking the demon souls intertwined within his magic Rahkesh spread them thin and layered them into the rift. Everywhere lightning struck demons dropped, the flying demons fell lifeless to the ground in droves, forcing everyone below to begin performing a desperate, dance-like jig to avoid being crushed.

As Rahkesh winged around the portal and up higher into the clouds he saw an arch demon falling from the sky, the most recent victim of his Murderous Cloud of Doom but it wasn't enough, there were still far too many.

Following instinct, he breathed deep and sought out the border between life and death. Rahkesh's heart rate slowed, his vision faded, the sound of battle all but disappeared, all his blood magics flared, the magics of both his forms intensified around him, and he plunged into the all-encompassing black stillness of death with the intention of dragging the entire field and portal down with him.

Savoring the smell of tangy, poisonous ozone blowing around in a magically electrified wind, Rahkesh was dimly aware of the demons closest to him screaming and spasming, plunging to the earth as the storm expanded and lurched towards the ground to consume the battlefield. Rahkesh summoned their magic, the magic from their deaths, their very souls and dragged it all into the dead realm, all the while pulling as much of the other side as possible out through the rift and spreading it all over the field. His eyes glowing gold, silver and killing curse green, he called on all his magics, every ounce he had. He wanted every damn demon dead, he wanted the portal obliterated, he didn't even care if he accidentally killed allies.

And once he felt his last grasp of reality falter, he let it all loose.

Sensing the immense death magic disturbance Namach teleported into the battle. "shit!" He breathed, realizing what Rahkesh was attempting. Acting fast he sent his magic out to every portkey within a hundred leagues and sent everyone away before they could be consumed by the death cloud Rahkesh had orchestrated, sloppily, at that.

'Well, this will certainly kill all the demons here, and probably Rahkesh with them.' He thought, half-heartedly trying and failing to look on the bright side of this situation. 'Rahkesh is far from well enough trained for this, is hardly trained at all in necromancy.' There were dangers associated with delving too deeply into the dead realm that he didn't know about.

If Namach didn't intercede there was a strong possibility Rahkesh wouldn't be coming back, becoming locked in the dead realm permanently amongst the best of possibilities, releasing something.. other.. into the realm of the living being the worst.

Blood magic igniting all over his body, eyes glowing silver, Namach swept his hands from one side of his body to the other rhythmically, ritualistically, channeling the death magic into a self-sustaining funnel type system so-as to keep it controlled rather than letting it continue to try to consume the world.

Cocooned in pure nothingness, Rahkesh wrapped himself in lightning and magic to protect himself from his own creation. As his death cloud enmeshed the battlefield the dying-but-not wizard could see whisps of luminescent vapor flitting hither and thither that bore a distinctly demonic presence, and he smiled to himself, it was working.

As he continued to push the dead realm further into the living he noted that his vision was finally nearly completely recovered. He could make out the shapes of rock mounds on the ground, dead tree stumps and lifeless skeletons, fires still burning, although in the dead realm the flames burned an inky black.

From seemingly nowhere Rahkesh thought he heard a roar. 'But that's not possible, nothing lives in the dead realm.' He thought. But then he also thought that the dead realm was just an endless abyssal void and, nervously glancing up and around, Rahkesh discovered that seemed to be incorrect as well.

Deciding he didn't want to meet anything that might call the dead realm home, Rahkesh turned and sought the barrier between life and death so that he could (quickly as possible) cross back over. However, with a soul searing stab of pain Rahkesh was twisted over and thrust to the ground. Reacting quickly, he transformed into his basilisk form and turned in the direction from which he felt the magic that had just attacked him.

From behind a warped and withered tree a strange, terrifying, beast slunk out into the open. The sight of this thing instilled such immediate horror that the wizard turned basilisk nearly gave himself whiplash from instinctively recoiling. This nightmare made flesh, for Rahkesh had no other words for it, had two large, curving, horns of bone protruding from the sides of its head. It had no hair, nor face nor eyes or nose or mouth or even ears. Its arms were long enough that its gnarled, contorted, clawed hands hung low near its knees. The feet were covered in strange, pustule-like growths and sores and the creature didn't look to have any skin, though it was moonlight pale white and blue.

Rahkesh sent his killing gaze at it immediately, but it had no effect, the thing just continued to prowl ever closer. Growing desperate the wizard spat venom at it, covering it from the tip of its featureless head to its bottom-most foot growth which at least did something as it roared in protest. A pyrrhic victory at best, as the effect was worse than if Namach had roared at him.

The sound was composed completely of magic which made sense given it didn't seem to have a mouth. The magical command was crippling, Rahkesh spasmed and squirmed as he slammed into the ground. It felt like that roar had lit his insides on fire while simultaneously setting off a fragmentation grenade in his skull. Through the haze of agony, he saw that the beast had stopped. Rahkesh, realizing dimly that he was dying, transformed now into his Thunderbird form and attempted to flee, this creature was clearly well beyond his ability to combat. With one strong beat of his wings, he sent air, magic, and great cascading bolts of lightning rippling away towards the creature.

Rising twenty feet with that single thrust, Rahkesh was cautiously optimistic that he could escape this creature, but he had drastically miscalculated. The being brushed off the weaponized air with a gesture of distilled disdain, took hold of the magic and electricity and spun it around itself, all of it flashing red before slinging it back at Rahkesh with a silent but deadly growl.

The thunderbird cried out in pain at the growl before the red lightning even struck. The cruciatus curse was outright pleasurable in comparison to this. Rahkesh desperately called on the lightning of the storm to strike at his foe, but instead it redirected upon himself and only exacerbated the pain. On instinct Rahkesh transformed back into his human form, whipped out his wand and started hurling curses and hexes at the beast as he fell to the ground. Haunting, cruel, laughter emanated out from the magic enshrouding the ten-foot-tall monster before him and without warning, the being charged.

Seeing the lightning vanish abruptly without interrupting the death clouds rate of expansion did not sit well with Namach. Akren students were supposed to be independent, supposed to live or die by their own decisions, supposed to be smart enough not to make potentially idiotic world ending mistakes.

So why then, did Namach stand there counting the seconds and holding his breath as the lightning was snuffed out? Because of the dangers of enteringthe dead realm? Sure, he had done it, on accident and on purpose. However, necromantic magic was done by staying in the realm of the living and routing your magic through and then back out of the dead realm, though that didn't mean you couldn't enter that place.

Most people died attempting it and of the lucky few that didn't, very few ever came back. Most beings didn't know why, they figured they got stuck, lost, or that they simply dissipated into death. Most beings would be wrong. As an ancient multi-millennium old vampire, master of necromancy, and master of soul magic, Namach knew specifically the kind of dangers that dwelled in the dead realm and thus, knew exactly what kinds of creatures crept behind that particular curtain.

With a phenomenon not unlike a submarine imploding in the depths, the lightning and thunder erupted again, but this time a deep blood red in color.

"FUCK!" He yelled, immediately switching tactics. Namach's skin flared bright gold as the magics around him began to dance and vibrate with a low hum. Inflicting a couple of shallow cuts in various places, the unofficial king of vampires commenced with manipulating the dead magic surrounding him, forcing it to glow a pale silver in color, then taking the shape of a doorway. The ancient dropped his knife and took a stressed breath, glaring at the doorway. "If this doesn't kill you Rahkesh, I will." He muttered walking through.

Rahkesh dove sideways like a matador dodging a charging bull, summoned out his Chachapoyaro staff, transfigured a silver spearhead at one end, and swung it around behind him anticipating the beast reaching out for him as it missed its target.

He was correct, it did in fact reach for him and his staff took it's hand off, but the beast didn't seem to realize or care. It stopped its charge and turned, the magic shrouding it seemed to coalesce around the now severed limb and within seconds regrew what it had lost. Vacantly Rahkesh wondered if he'd ever be able to achieve that with advanced blood magic, but then, taking in the monstrous mass before him he figured that he probably wouldn't live long enough to find out.

Suddenly Rahkesh felt a pull in his gut, not like the typical portkey 'hook behind the navel' sensation but rather more like a harpoon being recalled, and he realized the monster was summoning him to it. acting again on instinct he countered with a summoning spell of his own, summoning the things magic as he'd done with the demons, for surely this beast wouldn't be too hard to defeat if it was without magic.

For a moment the two stood still, a battle of wills and magic waged between them, surrounded by the dead-realm-parallel of the field that had held the demon portal, everything inky black and cold, not an ounce of life anywhere besides the two of them battling.

With a silent resounding crack resembling the splitting of an iceberg, it seemed Rahkesh had won out. The beast capitulated its magic to the wizard, but then it doubled down on the summoning spell, the result of which had Rahkesh becoming completely engulfed in a cloud of toxic magic that he quickly noticed was entirely outside of his ability to control while hurtling through the air, ultimately crashing harshly to the ground right at the ugly misshapen feet of the creature.

Whipping out his tasers and the first blood magic knife that he'd crafted himself, Rahkesh launched straight into hand-to-hand combat, but nothing seemed to work. The electricity from his tasers seemed to have no effect, stabbing into the creature didn't cause it to bleed or even flinch, and punching it was like bouncing a tennis ball off a steel door. Becoming frustrated, Rahkesh lunged back and swung his staff around for its head, but as he turned the beast reacted with lighting speed.

It reached out and grabbed the staff, ripped it from his hands as if he were a toddler and snapped it in twain, the staff emitting a wave of magic in the process. Time briefly slowed and impotent fury raged inside the wizard as he registered his beloved staff being irrevocably sundered. Rahkesh swore vengeance for this irredeemable sin, hatred flickered in his eyes, and the world around him careened back into motion.

The thing then reached out and picked him up, one hand easily closing entirely around the circumference of Rahkesh's neck and lifted, feet dangling, so that they were face to face.

Finally in a full panic Rahkesh called on all his magics to do something, anything. His blood magic flashed, but the thunderbird did not heed his call, nor did his basilisk. 'Fuck it then' Rahkesh thought, without time to evaluate this development he decided he didn't need them. He knew how to use magic and was pretty good at it too. "Fulguris!" He choked. Lightning struck down from above and inundated Rahkesh and the being but still, it held tight.

Exiting the silvery doorway into the dead realm and taking in his surroundings, the eerie magical glow suffusing the general area of the battlefield served as a very unwelcome and unsettling confirmation to Namach. This meant that he was not alone. The dead realm was usually an inky black abyss, so totally devoid of light as to give "Vantablack" aspirations, but the beings that dwelt here typically naturally radiated a magical aura such as the one the ancient vampire now found himself within.

Immediately Namach began to search out Rakesh's magical signature but was annoyed to find that he couldn't. Clearly someone, something, was blocking him. Trying a new tactic, he searched out his own magic, specifically the magic that he'd left in his student's neck and sensed that almost immediately. Praising himself for his magnificent foresight, he set off towards his necromantically inept student.

"While a great many from both sides of the veil would heartily support your decision to murder that one, I should have to warn you that his death would surely mean yours as well. You may think otherwise, your kind are usually quite overconfident where-regards your 'invincibility'. To be honest you're admittedly not far off from it, but the magical backlash from killing him would obliterate your entire physical existence, essence and all, all the way down to your mangled, desiccated soul." The ancient said stepping into the open, eyes and skin aglow, silvery cold magic shimmering around him wildly.

Namach was displeased to note his errant student lying unconscious at the feet of a Nightwalker. He could sense that Rahkesh had not been turned into a muggle, rather, the amount of magic the child was giving off meant that he had only really just lost the fight and his mind was probably currently trying to kill itself to power one final attack so that he might defeat the Nightwalker.

Clearly he had partially enacted his final transformation. He would no longer be able to kill himself this way, not that he'd ever succeeded in it before anyways. This also told Namach just how mistaken he had been in his assumptions regarding Rakesh's' final transformation. He had thought Rahkesh would snap into his final form, like a rubber band pulled over taut, but he realized now that it would be more akin to an archers bow string, insomuch as the changes would occur slowly, snap into place, then repeat until there were no more 'arrows' so to speak.

The ancient was not overly worried about the Nightwalker, he had fought a few. They could consume and use almost any magic, and they could sense magic better than a vampire could sense or smell blood. Most nightwalkers were actually former necromancers that failed any number of necromantic or soul magic rituals, resulting in getting sucked into the dead realm. Most often with botched rituals dealing with necromancy or souls, the wielder would be torn down to a vapor and dissipate into death slowly and painfully, but sometimes they would be thrown, whole and alive, right into the dead realm.

Other times, a necromancer could forcefully imprison someone in the dead realm, where the enterprising intrepid survivor of such could maybe live and carry on in a way, if their morals were loose and their will strong enough. They would still die eventually; nothing could actually live in the dead realm, but even those that were locked or lost in the dead realm in a somewhat healthy state most often chose to die instead, because the alternative, stood before Namach now, was to become such a monster that they would have preferred death.

Nightwalkers were some of the worst beings to be found in the dead realm, not that any being in the dead realm was ever a welcome encounter, unless of course you were a particularly powerful necromancer in need of one of these 'denizens of the deep' for whatever likely horrifying purpose you had designs for.

To defeat a Nightwalker magically you would need to be immensely more magically powerful than them, and to defeat one physically you would need strength equal to about a thousand times that of a normal human, and even then heavily enchanted weapons were all but required. There existed a very niche algorithm to predict the power ratios required to kill a Nightwalker, but that obscure math problem was hardly even known to the author, let alone your average necromancer.

The ancient came to this battle rather unprepared for a physical altercation with a Nightwalker but that didn't matter much, he was magically capable enough of dealing with a Quidditch teams worth of the things. Who needs complicated, dubious calculations when you could just drop a nuclear warhead on its head instead?

The nightwalker raised its head towards the ancient and thrust out its hands. Namach was not surprised at the action, in fact he had expected it. He was also not overly surprised at the quite large mass of blood-red lightning that exploded from its grotesquely clawed fingertips. Horribly displeased certainly, but not very surprised.

Reacting to the bastardized lightning far quicker than the human eye could follow, the ancient grasped the magic surrounding himself and spun it, effectively capturing and containing the lightning in a magical vortex that now violently oscillated as if stuck in his own personal orbit. With a bright silver flash Namach stomped his foot, lunged forward, and thrust out his own hands towards the nightwalker, flinging the shimmering silver electrified vortex toward the beast like a horizontal tornado.

As his improvised tornado surrounded the nightwalker the ancient activated a couple more sets of runes, adopted a martial stance, and roared through the thin opening he'd created in the shining silver, red, and black mass of magical vortex that now hung between them. The nightwalker shrieked and screamed as it collapsed to the ground, falling into a vigorous death seizure. Namach's magic ate away at the beast, shredding its magic, mind, and body until there was little left but ash and foul smell. Disabling the blood magic set that enhanced his hearing, Namach cursed himself for forgetting that those things shrieked like banshees when killed.

Namach heard another faint roar in the distance, the death of one nightwalker tended to attract others. Even without his blood magic enhanced vampiric hearing he knew that the nightwalker was quite a ways off but they could certainly travel fast when they wanted to. The ancient summoned his unconscious student to himself, letting the limp body flop to the floor at his feet like a fish, and began activating a few of his more esoteric blood magic pieces before closing his eyes and channeling his magic around himself and Rahkesh. Entering the dead realm was far easier than exiting.

XXXXXXX

Rahkesh awoke to a tapestry of an ice dragon obliterating a castle, hanging on the wall before him. Said castles grey stone walls were in the process of being blasted apart by a wide bloom of fiery ice originating from the dragon's gaping maw, its claws crunched carelessly through a tower. In fine detail at the base of the castle, people could be seen running away in terror with their arms in the air. The background of the tapestry appeared to be a beautiful scene of what looked like islands in the Mediterranean (probably Greek) off in the distance.

After staring at the tapestry for several minutes Rahkesh came to three conclusions. One, that Namach had clearly saved him from whatever that beast was, two that the ancient had not told him about all (read any) of the dangers associated with fully entering death and three, that what the tapestry was depicting had almost certainly actually occurred at some point in time.

He turned to take in the rest of his surroundings and found himself lying in the middle of one of the biggest beds he'd ever seen. As his Blood Magic Professor was oft prone to, everything about it was opulence incarnate. The top-most layer of blanket was a rich purple with gold highlights, precious jewels woven intricately into the edges of the fabric. He couldn't tell for sure but, it being Namach's, he was guessing that the glinting golden threads in the fabric were real gold. The bed was easily as big as a boxing ring and with a repulsed shock Rahkesh imagined the kinds of things that the ancient vampire had and would do on this bed, his bed.

The wizard, through force of will alone, managed to ignore this thought, focusing instead on the fact that Namach was exceedingly clean and tidy for a vampire.

The floors were a shining white marble with grey swirls artfully splashed here and there and the pillars were threaded through with blood metal vines. The same type he had seen in the cavern where Daray had undergone his transformation, Rahkesh figured on closer inspection. He registered before even moving that he wasn't in too much pain which surprised him, for all that that thing was and what it had done to him he figured he should be in a world of hurt but all he felt was an ache in his neck, even that being quite mild.

Deciding to go through his magical and physical stretches to check his mind, magic, and body he abruptly realized that he could feel neither a basilisk nor thunderbird presence in his mind or magic. Panicking slightly, he tried to call on the thunderbird, but nothing happened. Doing the same for the basilisk he also came up blank. In search of answers, he got up and walked through the strings of glinting jewels that cordoned off the bathroom.

Naturally, the bathroom was breathtaking as well. The toilet looked like an actual throne, made of gold with a velvet seat. The sink, too, was wrought from gold, though it had tasteful silver inlays which the toilet lacked. The countertop was marble and edged with rubies and diamonds. He estimated the bedroom and bathroom combination to be worth at least a few million dollars. A fact that in his current state he couldn't care less about.

Glancing into the mirror he couldn't quite believe what he saw. The first thing that he noticed were his eyes, swirling pools of gold, silver, and killing curse green, glowing as they always did whenever he let his control over his magic slip. Magically he felt just fine and although he looked a little more like a walking corpse than he usually did, his skin visibly pale and waxy, he also looked just fine. So why couldn't he connect with his animal selves?

"When your professor appeared with you he had to save your life for a second time, did you know this?" Sygra whispered, slithering into the bathroom behind him.

"No." He didn't know anything that happened after his brutal encounter with the freakish being from the dead realm. "Was it the demons?"

"No, the death cloud you created using the demons' souls did a very fine job of killing them. Would have killed everyone else too but the blood drinker showed up and sent them all away before vanishing into the death cloud." Sygra replied testily.

Rahkesh was picking up on a lot of attitude from his familiar, both her tone and the solid death glare she was giving him. Thankfully she had a soft spot for him, otherwise he might be facing her real death glare.

"Were you injured badly?" He asked, noting that she seemed perfectly fine. Namach had probably healed her.

"Not terribly, I am too fast and too strong for those silly little demons to hurt me. When the vampire reappeared holding you in his arms, clearly having narrowly escaped death I was quite enraged. You again went off on your own and almost died. I do not wish to find a new human but perhaps I should go and find one which I can control. Hmm?" Sygra hissed in mounting fury. Rahkesh silently cursed, his familiar clearly wasn't about to forgive him for almost dying again.

"Maybe I'll go and fetch you some iguana eggs to make it up to you?" He tried weakly to appease her.

"Maybe I'll go fetch the iguana eggs and leave you locked in a cage?" Sygra replied coolly. "Alas, you would probably find a way to trick the bars of the cage into trying to kill you." She rasped while slithering up his leg.

Resigned to the fact he would have to weather his familiars biting diatribe every time he had a near death experience, Rahkesh helped her onto his shoulders and decided to go find the ancient.

As he stepped through the bejeweled curtains into the bedroom a hot burning pain flared from his neck, rapidly spreading throughout his body. Stumbling forward, Sygra pulled her fangs out of his neck and nudged him hard on the cheek. Rahkesh tried to grab her and throw her off of him as he stumbled into the side of the bed, but she constricted tighter around his neck so that he couldn't.

"Sygra!" He choked, struggling to breathe through the pain and the pissed off basilisks' coils.

"What?" She responded nonchalantly. "They say discipline works with children."

Rahkesh practically fell from the bedroom into a dining hall that was bigger than most suburban houses while silently fuming at his familiar. The ceiling was at least one hundred and fifty feet above head, and the whole cavernous hall glowed with an amber light owing to the black iron torches on the walls and a chandelier the size of a tractor. Rahkesh wondered just how many estates the old vampire actually had and whether he would ever get to see them all. Probably not.

He was betting that if he didn't manage to die in some spectacularly ridiculous incident, he'd likely be killed by his pet snake instead for doing something lethally stupid without her supervision long before he ever got the chance.

Making his way around a marble table the size of a concert stage towards a pair of elaborately carved, elegant oak doors big enough for a freight train to fit through he felt very small. Pushing on the doors, Rahkesh was surprised to find them swinging open with ease. To be so perfectly balanced could only be accomplished with magic, but then this was one of the unofficial vampire king's estates and said unofficial vampire king simply didn't do humble. The wizard next found himself in the entry hall of a castle with titanic windows lining the front wall.

Looking out through the enormous windows, he saw a ring of lush green mountains in the distance, a sea far to the west, and green pastures dotted with trees, bushes, plants, and flowers filling all the space in-between. Taking a moment to absorb the sights, he noticed that all the foliage was magical which was surprising since he saw so many magical creatures roaming around foraging on the stuff.

He saw several Baku, herds of Thestrals, unicorns of various color, owls in the trees, hell steeds, a couple of hippogriffs and many more creatures that he didn't know the names of, all of which should have eradicated the magical plant life a long time ago.

"Entrancing no?" Rahkesh startled, he hadn't realized Namach had come down the massive staircase to his right, hadn't realized there even was a staircase due to the magnificence of the sight that confronted him as soon as he'd opened the doors of the dining hall. Everything about this estate was massive, as if it were designed for a giant, or by a giant.

Turning towards the ancient, Rahkesh was surprised at how much better he looked from the last time he'd seen him. Namach seemed himself again, handsome as ever with his long, tidy, black hair that could have been cut from shadow for all its silky texture. Chiseled jaw, silver eyes giving off a slight glow, he was wearing long crimson robes and a black button-down shirt that was halfway undone, black silk pants and mean looking black combat boots. The ancient was also decked out in blood metal; earrings, necklace, armbands, shin guards, he even had a thin gold blood metal crown on his head with swirls of crimson red runes glistening all over it.

"It's pretty incredible." Rahkesh agreed. "You look better." He observed.

"Yes, quite. You had a rather unfortunate encounter with a Nightwalker and rather than banishing the beast I figured I could use it's magic, so I consumed it." The ancient replied going into lecturing teacher mode.

"It was.. a special brand of stupid of you to enter the dead realm without the proper training. I understand you thought you could because of your little experiment with Silas Ateres and your uncanny ability to find the barrier between life and death. Alas, I hope you have learned that you are not ready for that. You have dabbled along the barrier a few times and brought a significant amount of death back across, but to enter it is an entirely other matter. Had I not been there, that Nightwalker would have consumed you, broken the barrier, come across into the land of the living, and brought with it a colossal tidal wave of dead magic, ultimately resulting in the complete obliteration of most life on this planet." Namach lectured severely, a hard glint in his eye.

"In the extremely unlikely event that you would have been able to defeat it," The vampire took in the rebellious glint that briefly bloomed in his student's eye and added salt to the wound to drive his point home "..which you couldn't, by the time I arrived it was well on its way to finishing you off. Anyway, you still would not have been able to get back across the barrier between realms, leaving you instead to either slowly evaporate to death or turn into one of those things yourself."

"Entering the dead realm completely, body and all, is not in and of itself all that difficult. Especially for someone with as strong a connection to death as yourself. Getting back across however requires a great deal of magic, knowledge, and effort. If you had died then your soul would have been pulled into the dead realm for want of a viable host. Since you have a piece of soul already residing in that realm you would have switched places with it and with proper training and knowledge you could have resurrected yourself, but that is neither here nor there since you do not have said proper training yet. You'll not be doing any more necromancy until you have been trained to an acceptable standard on that specific branch of magic." Namach finished, holding himself like a father scolding a toddler. Rahkesh was very aware of the ancient's disappointment in him, could see it in his face and hear it in his voice.

He was also not unaware of the parallel between this situation and the aforementioned toddler and he almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation he now found himself in. His angry and disappointed three thousand-ish year old vampire professor scolding him for nearly accidentally killing everything in a hundred-mile radius, recklessly breaching the barrier between worlds, picking a fight with a Lovecraftian horror, and having to be rescued from his own childish stupidity.

"A nightwalker?" Rahkesh decided to ask rather than justify himself and his actions.

"Yes, nightwalkers easily rank amongst the nastiest creatures in the world of magic. They are beings that used to be human at some point, or at least hominid. Most come into being when a necromancer disposes of an enemy by way of the dead realm without killing them first. It's an effective, cruel, way of killing a foe. The rest are most often necromancers that botched a ritual and were sucked wholesale into the dead realm." He replied with a glare at Rahkesh.

"I thought a botched ritual caused the body, mind, and soul to be torn apart and dissipate into the void?" Rahkesh asked perplexed. He had done research about this when he was dealing with Voldemort's horcruxes, had watched Saul's magic and soul get shredded right in front of him as his physical body melted from a purposefully botched ritual.

"Most of those rituals result in disintegration of body, magic, and soul but not all. As you might have noticed with blood magic, there can be some rather extravagant failures. Create a big enough hole in the barrier between life and death and there will be no avoiding the pull. The rituals that result in the caster being dragged across the barrier almost always require you to rip a hole in the border to begin with. You may not have noticed but you are incapable of using your Thunderbird and basilisk forms right now." He added the last with an almost intangible grimace, which bothered Rahkesh greatly. Anything the ancient would grimace about was probably pretty terrible.

"I did notice that I can't reach them." He responded, hoping the vampire would offer more information. "You wouldn't happen to know how I could fix that would you?"

"Yes and no. The nightwalker was threatened by them, saw them as a potential problem in the way of its desire to consume you, however, it didn't kill them because it wanted to absorb those powers so it simply invaded your magic and placed blocks so that you could not access them. It also seems to have keyed these blocks to its own magical signature so that you couldn't undo it, at least not fast enough to use them against it before you died. So, they're alive and still within you but you can't access them." Namach said peachily, clearly delighting in his precocious student suffering the consequences of his own actions.

"Great, so how do I remove these blocks?" Rahkesh sighed, Sygra was right, he had way too many near death experiences.

"That's the hard part. Those blocks are removable but they're somewhat like blood magic, in that it's very individualized. The only guidance I can offer you is to do a deep-dive blood and soul magic ritual into your magic and soul to find and undo them. It's highly risky and could most definitely result in your death so you should do just fine." The ancient replied with a fanged smile.