Magi and Djinn World Tour- Student of the Dark Arts

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Chapter 22: Sad Sons and Simpletons

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Michael was hung up the next fee hours after lunch to squeal on someone's fun. No one wanted to be around him as of later. That had to be Amber or Jack's doing. They fucking wanted him tossed off the grounds since that fist fight in the courtyard.

His father had said not to cause a stir. To stand tall and not come home if that name meant nothing. Michael, they called him that yet his mind felt dumb for letting the pins drop where they could be recalled.

As if…

He turned round from the rest room as his hands were cleaned enough. The mirrors here fed no ego today in his soul. He was not a mighty warlock. Not a vam –

The boy turned a curt way more to see the face if one he didn't recall. A black dog. Wolf? "Call off the farce on it, Bloke." Groaned Michael as he found the dryer to his hands.

The black as night wolf dog only stood with a cocked face and closed in on blocking the way out. "Move. Class start –

The thing's eyes were not red. But a ruddy reddish hue to their brown orbs. Shadowed was the rest of it as the beast never growled. Only moved as a goalie blocking the shot the bit was willing to make past it.

Larger. It wasn't small as the boy backed away. "Filmore's course is working for you, but I'm never tardy. Out of m –

The red in its eyes had his breath choke back. Masterful reels of memories flooded the boy as he boulder his head.

~ Your true self can break the silence of my own kind. You will silence them for him.~

"H…HIM?" Michael didn't feel sick or much else, floating as his mouth moved, yet an image of wings and a castle.

And a younger Raku in black and tan cloaks. He looked…so sad?

~ He is your god and he belongs with our kind. Fae blood in ye, it shall awaken to secure the lord clad in sacred symbols. ~

Sacred…was he? That boy, who…why did he look like him then?

The one with silver hair, eyes that pierced the coldest creatures of the night. That boy was a bully as Michael scowled at the picture. A noble by blood though foul in disposition, he tormented them all. Anyone close to Raku, he came after with claws and coming to spare.

~ To appease and appreciate him, you must come with us. Go to the band though first that claims to be stronger and finish him with your power.~

The blonde youth stood away and clutched the sink behind him. "You know nothing of those abilities! How? What are you?? Where is…"

~ IN A PAST, YOU ERRE AT WAR WITH OUR GOD. HE SHALL STAND ATOP BONES OF THE ANCIENTS AND BE IT SO – HE WILL FREE US ALL. THE RED KING HAS DEEMED THIS THAY THE LORD OF FALLEN CYCLES WINS ALWAYS. YOU WILL BE THERE. TO GREET, TO PRAISE HIM. TO BECKON HE REMAIN A SERVANT OF THE OLD FAITH IN SIN.~

"Sin??" Michael rasped angrily. "He's a dumb boy with magic, like me! I'm not a bloody fae, wolf! Get away and never dare –

~ The red lord has you. He brought you back. Boy with a singed mind, heart and blood that never sours. You are his reason to have returned to this forsaken plane lf existence. You, are the very siren. Not the warlock, for hid blood was long to sand. We of the coven of the red one are not absolute. As are you, should ge come to seek your –

"I'M FREE! What is this?? A vision?? This school would never allow –

~ The angel. Raphael. He is dead. Adam. The man that protected it. These walls will be likened by our darkness and seep through the foundation of your world.~

"Damn…damn! Amber? You must be her familiar. Then she IS a bloody demon! They all are!" Shouted Michael as his hair fell over one eye.

~ And your covenant long ago with the witch, was passed down to another's hands. You belong to my lord and you shall do as he bids thee. Control the magic here. Make it powerless to stop the red king.~

"Still you ….you, go on!"

~ Getting by is what mortals do.~ Snarled the coal black - ashen beast with eyes as red as twin flames. ~ Ye, hath a role to fulfill, and ye shall. He is the wish granter king. He must realize his destiny!!!~

Whipping nightmares abound, Michael screed out as the stalls shattered as glassy walls of sheet ice. Jack…Jennifer? They would pay for making his life a living hell!...

Michael looked up as the broken things showed not a reflection of himself, yet a half wound, clockwork boy with the skin of a teenager. A ghoulish troublemaker from the grave.

Skin as white as pure death, he did faint in to the sink, not forgetting to recall the face of the boy that was too busy turning into a winged monster, possessed by a monster.

And she …she was, so beautiful.

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Looking at the door, Chas didn't intend to open it. His cross in hand, this was an unholy being that may not even be a real vampire. John had said more than one type. What type was there?

Raku was in the room, fighting a curse. Jen was in too, stopping his fits while they waited for nothing. No, not nothing. Jen the big bad Authority member was on her way to John's location. No.

He wasn't a place to be. She could also –

"He's out cold, Chas."

Chas swung around to see teenaged Jen with her fists a bit dampened. As if she'd just gone in to rinse her face off to calm down from something awful.

"Did he…is he still not the same, Jenny?"

"He was. Out of sorts. Was still as bleeding frightened as a child could be. That thing that stole John and Zatanna?"

"It's finding a way through someone to get by these doors, or so we want think. He wasn't wrong to be afraid."

"No! What about….Is there anything to do??"

"Calling in help would cause strife that we aren't able to talk about right this instant. Here, go to the room and ask the archive about Lothos. If he comes up, we have some way to defend ourselves. At least, until dawn."

She nodded, flying back to the room as it allowed her entry again. Such things were wishful, yet this thing…was no Nosferatu. No Dragul. It had to be stopped, but sunlight…was that the answer?

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John didn't seek the light in his dim dwelling. He sought her safety as he found her. Tangled and blood let with eyes shut.

"She dreams of peaceful, humble times between the two of you."

John stared up with dark circles at a looming figure of darkness embrace. "I won't hold you. Not long. I want a trade-

"You had our answer." John hoarsely responded. "She's at death's door, and I could bargain him one better than I might ever whatever you're wishing us both to address you as. Lothos?"

"Right. You do, read. Into these things. Sadly, it us so soon, Constantine." Sighed the beast as it rose as a mistress from it. Fully clad, cleaned of its evidence.

"I've decided to give you three weeks left of that peace. I'm in need of some research of my own. Your blood tells me many things. Of pain, and sorrow and madness. Mostly, of want." The beast frowned at the magi. "Want, of whom? You gave your pupil right here –

"She is a fear friend. Raku….is not that."

"Then, your foster boy? He is better off inside a glass cage. He is too special to grace this plain on foot. You know it –

"YOU WON'T TOUCH HIM."

"I already have." Smirked the beastly ghoul. It tapped at its skull with a long-gloved finger. "Long ago, I had him understand our bond. Even to this new life, he will decide the right choice to never part of it. In the clause if that oath, Lilith gave me full custody, should sge be in passing. The gods had no right."

"You abused him! Tried to change and chain him down to your seductions! I know, he-

"He has marks that you cannot see. Most were, not from the lovemaking of then. They were out of vengeful annoyance." The creature walked to seek out a bottle of wine. So, it wasn't –

Then, it wasn't.

~ Life wine drove those unworthy, mad. It made them lose their very essence if self. They were only to serve monsters fir their days left and were chopped to bits to make more if the elixir. Life wine…~

It was clear as ether and yet had tiniest of black clots, marrow and the singular screams were a whisper as the demon sipped it.

"Mmm…It was all but destroyed. The last recipe for my student's marvelous creation was erased. To think it was inside of the stolen tome I know to use, now? John? Would you care –

"No." John snipped at the monster. "Thanks, but I'm just a light floaty from your damned drinking habits already."

The demon pursed its lips as it to speak, yet shrugged. Lifting up the glass, the screans had John staring at the goblet if dying souls.

After a sip and a lick of his red lips, the demon smiled with a hum before placing his goblet to the side. Flipping his hair away from one dangerous set of eyes, it then explained a great deal of what was happening. And what would.

"What humor you have, Johnathan! Too bad. That angel might have been one if those to see it. You might have thanked him better before his descent."

John's eyes narrowed on the glass, not the demon. Then….

Adam.

"You….killed him."

"Not I! My followers."

"ERS??" John coughed, sputtering as he covered his nose and Zee from the demon's own foul amazed laughter. "Did you not find out?? Atticus had those that stayed at his side. Children, headmasters, council folk. And, the very one to have used their bond to thos life – after I brought him to me, I promised life. A heart. Poor, broken thing…he was in pieces."

"Je…Marcus." John huffed. "You did give him a false life, a new one. And his own father was then –

"One connected by blood to a pact to set me free. Long enough to unbind another. A, follower? Nay. A prize."

"Raku is alive if you didn't guess it. We are all here, and fighting you…this."

"Won't be a walk in the park, magi." The demon took another sip as the screams were next to dead clicks. No longer heard. No longer felt along this timeline again.

"No reincarnation. No hope. I intend to share my full wish since we were interrupted. That young godling owes himself I night in my –

"Freaks, all of them! Whatever cult you ran, Lilu was envious of that."

"She is dead. So, I could care less." The demon rolled his eyes to the window as gusts poured in to chill them. All three, two. Zee could not even fell herself among the waking world. Completely still.

"You're right. Yet that was not how I went. Do you want to know, Johnathan? I shall tell you. Show you, through the gaze of my memory of that time."

"I won't ask fir you to do anything to pursue your next big career in tyranny. Your time is done. This one-

"Could belong to him. He could fix it all. No more pain. No more suffering. He could have, yet…"

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Raku scrunched into a ball and wept. Now, tears? Jen grabbed him and propped the child up. "You're possessed, we get that. Chas is –

The rattle came as the room moved itself to resume a great red and tattered gall of a dark one. A vampire's bony hand was not as he, yet a one youthful and glowing. Raku was there at its council. Confronting it, nearly grown.

~ Lord Lothos!!~ The god called out, his face as tirelessly against going this distance at all. So many illustrations, so much to plunder. The red-haired one looked down from his throne of spikes and blood let mistresses if the male's past exploits. Thankfully, Raku had escaped. He had been spared. Still, the scars were fresh on his flesh as the demon beckoned to another. Raku was a dragon now. He'd become a ruler to smite his teacher. To put him to the site of his deathbed for good.

~ Your time to this territory is nigh. It belongs to the lord you see before ye. I am –

~ No king, my child. I see right through you. I always knew you'd usurp anyone that tried to peel back the layers of your soul so quickly. ~

Jen saw the story as John in the other page of this tale, let Lothos tell his side. Jen saw the full piece, while Lothos told not a lie. Not one.

He didn't have to. Raku was going to burn this thing. Crucify it by his bound word. Guards came forth under the king as Lothos had post power. The arrival had enforced nothing. Taking everything from him, Lothos simply waited to see if Raku or Roku now, was a capable future enemy or ally.

~ Take him back to the pits of his becoming. This thing shall not breathe life nor the paradise he hides to they will all be erased. And ye shall know it ~

As Lothos rose, his shadow took hold of the room. The soldiers spammed and fell into blooded heaps. ~ You knew you'd come, but whatever else? If I cannot give you what you therein crave, my pet….my job then coukd be done.~

~ I was never below you nor dear Lilu ~ Roku snarled, teeth as sharp as his masters'. ~ This us domino and my own justice I seek. To cull the world of your last brood, it hath been done.~ Roku snapped his fingers as his guards brought the corpses of women to the count's cult. The breeding women that birthed more of his kind.

~ I loath to think ye hath any work. He hath no heart. Doth thou??~ Laughing, the incubi cackled and spread out its hands to the alter of its one God. "Raku, you can admit what is true. You love the flesh of man. You cannot spare-

~ Coward!! I am of hatred for any of thee to ever walk by his contract….ye hath summoned ill upon thine manor and so of it…it us done. Fire, erase this land from existence…!~ Raku or Roku shouted to his followers. The took up torches, tools and did the damned's work. John watched on as blood spilled everywhere. Lothos riled and became something not of a man's shape, not if a serpent or a spider or a raben and a wolf. It was so bestial a display of power that when the dagger was lit by Raku's dragon breath and stilled thr beast's heart – it reverted to Lothos. A disheveled man, a monster as he was bound and torn at. Stabbed and staked. In his chambers he was left to burn as Roku used a not as dark spell to erase as he said he would. The last red lord before, was now he to replace it.

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"Roku, now was coated entirely in fire and the blood of his enemies from that day onward."

John spat at the idea of them turning him against the boy. "That?? A petty vengeance to me is justified. He was a person, part mortal!"

"Demi gods do not choose their side of living. The gods before them. The mighty ones, like Ignito. They can do as they wish of their fate and so on. Do you ever wonder why mortals wander aimlessly through life? Their families before never continued a pact, never. They instead fell to uncertainty and THAT. Is how reincarnation, dies."

"Not every and all ways of it, genius creature. Should I give you a hand with that thought? I can't even call you my bloke since you plugged my pupil up with your rubbish for bloody eons??!"

"You've made a point. Now see that you don't again."

John rose as his body was staked to the floor by striking bits of twine in the skin. Anchored to ut, it was a psychic visualization of the curse of being fed upon.

"I will keep you, but not to do my bidding. No. To break every last defense. To make the desire for an end so great that you will beg me to take him from you. My little wish granter."

"He us n –

The lips sealed as the thing got up to look to the window. The sun was coming up as John watched. He was ashamed to say that some fairytale were full if shit.

"See? Do you understand, now? I am no true aspect of death. I am not a plague, nor a curse. I had a living body, maybe. Though, not of your plane. As you found of the fae in Dragul's realm if Knights and horses, Johnathan." The thing went on. "He was like me, only weak. I? Am no more than his descendent through space, time. The cosmos. My mother was a bit strong on the occult, you see. My father…he woukd do anything for a taste of his firver utopia in his mind's eye. And, frankly? I hated it, very much. The petty disagreements. My future being to sit and look regal. I'm not!" The beast flipped to being more a pedicured aristocrat as the lips showed it "I was very lovely to stare upon…and then, I met her. Well, she was sweeter than life wine. There was no such desire. She told me herself; in the future, raise my child, and when you do, it shall grant you something to build upon that beauty ever forever further. At the time, I knew not of what she wished? What for? Why was she teasing me as she did, and then…my mother and father found me alongside too many I'd decided to snack upon. They tasted fresh as spring and summer in my mind….Oh, John…" Sighed thevdemon , romantically. " When I saw that little foal for the first time, it might have been fate! Yet I had troubles well before that day. My parents were no longer so pretty and good to our world. It was time for them, to retire. I decided to ask the demon goddess a favor and in return fir their bodies to she, I was given the wish of a lifetime! Invulnerable magic of my own. And I used it, I stayed well until, I had to keep feeding. It was a curse. A curse that would only last as long as my veins remained full. My chambers lit. My mind, calm."

John shuddered as the psycho was indeed a cannibal. No, a monster.

" They were no longer my problem, so I waited and waited to expand to new territories. That I did. I even found a little half dragon brat's castle of Knoll. And made myself a figure there on their high council. Because of my half blooded being since birth, it made me so glad as all any to be able to seek the word…that I'd have to see her again."

"Lilith contracted with you.' John coughed.

"And the consumption of her blood, she never dries of it. They say her rivers run as wide as my own. Yet in those books, they talk of her using not loving. Shameful, your boy keeping her erased as I was. That is…"

"She can't get out, and never will."

"And I don't want her to ever come between the demi god and I, John." Lustfully, the demon grinned back. "I wanted HIM. He was a soul mated as my own and at the same, I could touch him. No one else was able, and sge allowed that to awaken his dark being. Roku, awoke because I turbed him. She only permitted it happen while I-

"No more, you stopped at nothing to break him. You sold the sound of your own parents. Entrapped a fae kingdom to its demise. J know Malchior. I know that Roku later took over your role and killed the royal family. Dragon earth save the day, yet you sowed those seeds as they COULD happen in that ducked mind of your shine "being" or whatever it's called…Raku warned me enough that you can't exist. You shouldn't-

"But I told you already, John. The demigod wins. The god in him, cares not for you nor I."

"So what? I'm no pacifist, mate. Dead to me is demons being dead. Cold as winter air. You….should be."

"Why can't you see it, John!??" H8ssed the monster as its eyes lit up, the glass near toppling as a tail slipped out to save the thing from spilling over to the carpet.

"Fucking….incubi?? What are you??" John looked on in disgust it wasn't an average monster from the films. Could it steal his control with a single glance?

"I told you, John." The thing shook its head and reverted its body, nearing to him as it near crawled and touched his face to have the magi to his knees as well. "I am nothing of a vampire, nothing of a fae. None of the mystic measures to a warlock. Not a seer of the past. I am…."

John could only wait as it took to his lips and the at….

It crafted something dark, as it took a secret from them while trading for another.

"Am the addiction you dare to crave, personified… for Raku." The demon sat back and caressed the other's cheek, "It was power, someone to care. I had both of those, and he tried to have me grant it in turn. You? A fear of that trust that will not open. Pain has closed the doorway to your heart, yet, I…"

"Won't-

"I can, and he has the power to heal every wound by my touch!" John fell back as his eyes watered the time it had him. "In the hour, you will be at that doorstep to put your beloved partner to bed. Yet. CONSTANTINE? "

John groaned as the tears blurred his sights terribly. Rain, it was….

He blinked again, only to see that Zee's home. Her bed. They were there the entire time?

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Oh, mind blown!! Find out!