Magi Djinn World Tour- Student of the Dark Arts

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Chapter 14: The Plague Man Cometh

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Analogy! How the undead bring ill tidings, not an actual plague.

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Raku sat up as the clock changed. It was daybreak and he'd gone to bed, not seeing John step in the house. It made him worried as any child for their teacher, right? And even Ignito hadn't breathed a sound in his dreams, even worse. Kuro, the tiny fae like being he kept as a familiar, was afraid of something. It had stayed quiet, so very mouse quiet while Chas was up right after, and he'd gone to his room. Raku, had not.

"Aw, John isn't in today, lad. Well…would you like something to eat?"

"Are classes postponed?"

"I believe they are. Did you not have a notice by o…." Chas cleared his throat. "How is your classmate holding up?"

"Amber, she didn't say anything to me. I just…" Sighing with a morbid trance- like gaze at the floorboards, Chas redirected the question. "What do you fancy yourself for, toast to start?"

Raku meekly nodded, his eyes blurred by tears that he was afraid had something to do with his prediction that John had gotten hurt. Hurt, because he was a part of who had done so, and knew Raku. He was sure so much that the toasted ended up tasting like salt. The sun was too cold and…

This, wasn't his reality.

He turned from the sofa while his plate to any other still looked edible. To a disturbed, autistic demi god, it was poison.

"Chas, where is John?"

Chas looked on, pulling his cell up and dialing right away.

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Longing fingers gripped the device as Raku's breath shook. "John…John? I had a terrible feeling that something was wrong! Why were you not-

~ Deep breaths, lad. I'm at Jen's flat. It was a murderous nut to crack. Did you get any shut eye at all?~

"Not a wink by the looks." Chas sighed and rubbed his neck. "Raku was wondering why he didn't get a memo on his classes being withheld up until they clear the investigation."

~ About that, neither did we. As a teacher, you think that would be the right way of doing things. Lad, it's true that…I was nervous about you being back there, and from what I know about that school, they always relocate during an emergency. I let soot sprites multiply in our meta – physics course back at the time I was enrolled.~ Said the blonde sorcerer. ~ I was suspended for four weeks and I still had coursework in bed. My father never let me leave until it was done, and mum paddled my arse so –

" Understandable, John. But what about you?"

~ Me?~ John could tell them when the balm took out the last of the boils. They literally fell off and it was a pretty dastardly curse. The fact it only lasted a night was even worse. Minus the fact there was no pox.

~ Zee fainted.~ He lied, seeing as she had her hands to her hips on that line, Raku not knowing but feeling it wasn't a genuine one.

" I see…" The boy pursed his lip, chewing through the inform, he was about to speak, until Chas said exactly the same of what he had in mind to ask anyway, "Listen, John. The child can't loll around all day in the apartment or the House. Whatever is happening, don't be so ready to pull back into your coffin –

Raku again felt his world tilt as John noticed and spoke. ~ I'm alive , bloke! When have I ever been any less of a complete wanker to those that need me?~

The wasted enquiry had Raku blinking back to this reality; if he lost control, that could hurt Chas. Anyone in the building…

He shut his eyes and took a breath. "I'm going to wash up. I, just thought that maybe I could see if Amber was alright."

John and Chas both went a little quieter as the boy made his request clear. "She's got to be as frightened as….as I am, and Michael…that wasn't wrong, was it?"

"It was an emergency we weren't prepared for, lad." Chas said, as John didn't bother to reinforce the same assurance in the teenager. ~ I'm resting off the spells used last night. Discovered a few clues to help along the case. ~ John knew Raku was nodding, and in his mind the boy would later brood like a bear in a cave. Reflecting and staying within his world to stay safe. Just until John was safe, he imagined.

The boy was frightened by something, and those bite marks were the key. Raku might have even known or had a gist of the culprit. If so, could he drag out the answer and be so forceful in his interrogations? He may as well, would have to. Eventually. ~ We'll talk some more by this evening. Zee is swinging by to do a bit of intervention, and…I think you'd be best to participate. ~

"I see." Raku was steeling himself and Ignito was not there to talk the boy into a calmer mind set. Nor to distract him. That, was what he was. A guide with a sparky edge that knew well, despite what it did.

It, was his safety net. A formless entity to all but the time lord's son that expected a god to rise from that mound of unborn shadows. That Raku should ever take its advice to heart, and become what Azag had warned them of.

Azag had been that time lord and had sided with human suffering to help them overcome it. He had swallowed their sins, their pain and mourning to become the god of an eclipsed world. Raku was the child of the wise, the scribe abd the sorcerer. The archivist and the descendent by his mother's blood of Solomon or Suliman depending on where he hailed from. A demon tamer, and summoner. A killer of kings and the man who had in some other times, even tamed Lilith.

Or so they say.

Lilith would not admit to this, yet while Azag was busy wooing Thalia, Lilith must have been in another timeline working her magic against this frightful boastful demonology expert.

A grimoire of the king was then the soul purpose of immortality to any, including why he was ever connected through a thread in time to Thalia, even in the past.

Though not a coincidence, Raku could not cope as well as John believed. He would eat, and then the world he lived in created for him an entirely new view if he were ever disturbed by it.

Azag could create and destroy. If Raku lost his composure and his emotions took root in to the cracks of the wrong house…

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Amber wasn't human fully, yet she didn't mind with waiting fir a buzz from her soon to be muse – well, her master's. Future, as a yawn escaped her eye. She grinned and showed the reanimated mummy of a demon her screen. "He is such a pup, you never told me. May I go and ring his –

~ Gently, this sort of creature is…not as sturdy. It is partly myself at fault for this. Have you brought what I asked for?~

" Oh, right." She dug round through the satchel she'd toned along. A great book that was missing from the volumes in that drawer. ~ He had some nerve. To take wasn't was not his…~ Snarled the dark one as Amber nodded along. " Regis you said worked with the young god we're trying to save, right? That man, Adam was his host while he was being reborn. Where did he go to now?"

~ Your guess would be as well as my own, child." Chuckled the demon as it made the sounds of many bones crunching away, enjoying its breakfast and a taste of daylight like before.

" You're a powerful warlock and a ..well, they already can tell you mean business. Will I have what you promised, sir? If I get rid of that old bat, Atticus?"

The demon smiled, wiping blood from its face with a cloth it was graciously given by the same old bat that had summoned it here. It had read the wrong book, because Lothos had wished it to. To freeze him, to gather the source of his life to keep in this plane. And only, if he took back a part of that post soul in the boy he had spoiled. Hot blood poured from the neck of the lamb he was feasting upon.

As long as the purity was real, the gender to he mattered not. Yet Raku, was an interesting being that did not call himself here as a he…very peculiar…

( Raku is non binary and gay. I said that. But for some reason, he has a confused admiration for Amber until she picks on him too. He is gender fluid ( depending) but still is more attracted to men. Aiden, Ardeus, even John he won't admit that he's unsure if it is love, etc. Any women he cared for he either hurt or they got hurt or hurt him, so fir some reason that is his trauma. That one man he loathed took his virginity before Lilith.)

His predatory stance in those olden eras was workable in the background. How rearing a young prince to be king was never a crime. Especially among demon's that loved him fir the trials he had the child commit to. Learning of the taste, his first, of something akin to the elixir of life – how it scalded his insides as he rejected it fully. Later, that sane alchemy had been used by Lord Roku to craft the forbidden Life Wine, which thankfully…Lothos had a recipe for in that book that he'd had Amber retrieve.

If Regis had dared his little contracted magi, Adam to find the recipe first, Raku deserved it more. Adam was nothing without his seat at the table he wore to.

Now, dead.

Lothos bit into the ear of the petrified maiden he swore never to taste until he was fully awake. ~Grant Atticus our time. Little impling."

His voice changed, more mortal as his body also seemed to bend. Life was given in each sacrifice. Each time, he could walk among them. Among the children of fate's cursed lifetime.

Among the gods, and his failed experiment.

"Lord Roku may never return to us, yet if he decides to save his pure self to have for eternity at my ear, I'll allow it. That boy fears many things. The king feared nothing always swore to do away with such pangs."

"My…you are….gorgeous!" The girl, Amber, grew a slippery black tail out her backside. Her horns grew at the scalp and her eyes to slits. Teeth to a point as a cute kitten.

"Master! You've returned!"

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So, Amber is not human, Michael is a reanimated puppet by Atticus who also made a contract and brought back Lothos to have immortal life when he'd almost lost it earlier in time. Marcus's soul then may reside if that were the case, yet I think he's the body that was retrieved in earlier arc Storyteller that they never found. Raku has read the signs and knows that John is lying to protect him from his past foes. Yet dies he know why? Adam was in earlier arcs, a character that was added into this – but Dr. Regis was a student beside Veravakumu in his past that was cursed into the form of a white Salamander by Lord Roku and served him in a body nearly identical in face.

The fact that his own face was stolen shows how willing he was to conform to the dark arts even against his better judgment and summoned Roku's attention by dabbling in magic that could be considered demonic.

Adam died so that Lothos coukd het away with stealing something they were both after. A part of the confiscated forbidden myth that held a written recipe for "life wine," an elixir made from the souls of the murderer and dying , or mad. Verra was forced to have some and almost went mad yet did not turn, since most cases the elixir to demons makes them even more devil. Lothos's want is for the ecstasy of what he had when Raku was still under his care when Lilith had been the boy's teacher.

In the myth, Lothos sexually emasculated and even took Raku's virginity at Lilith's allowance, yet when the boy still wouldn't turn, she cast a curse and took it again, this time forcing Roku into existence. So say it like this; Lord Roku is the "child" in a way of Lilith and Lothos. Raku was the catalyst but the temptation and the hurt all brought it out as the guise the Titans fought to stop. Raku was powerless for years in doing so and even so, even so? He never fully turned into what Lilith wanted.

So, by a failed experiment, Lothos is going to try and make Raku his servant no matter what, even going so much as harming his human and non human allies to get the boy to give in. Now that Lilith isn't there to compete, Raku has to fight off the monster and face his past. His trauma while John dies his best to piece together a spell strong enough to fight alongside his pupil.

Well, that's part of it. Amber is actually an imp and a turned being by the fact she worships a vampire lord that can use magic. She herself can, though her past self was able. She won't tell Raku, yet was told to tear him away from his rejection of female want and confuse him. Tease him, like Lothos and Lil did to the boy when he was still their plaything.

The scare is if John can't get to the bottom of why the school is so corrupted on the inside by one individual, then I'm not doing enough. Truth is…..oh, not telling what! It's in the title! There is more to this, actually. Why would Amber say Raku is a savior of a sort? Find out!