Prologue

DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J. K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Author notes: I would like to thank any future reviewers for their input.

Once long ago, before there was such a thing as time, the world was shrouded in darkness. Then came the splendour of light bringing life and love to the world and the lord of darkness retreated deep into the shadows of the earth, plotting his return to power by banishing light for ever.

But precious light is protected; it is harboured in the souls of Unicorns, the most mystical of all creatures. There are those who believe that only the purest of hearts can find the Unicorns. They believe in their innocence that only goodness should exist in the world. In time they will learn that there can be no good without evil … no love without hate… no heaven without hell… and no light without darkness.

The harmony of the Universe depends upon an eternal balance. Out of that struggle to maintain this balance comes the birth of Legends.

Prologue

5000 years ago at the scorpion temple of Asek Mer Kan in ancient SUMERIA

Eridu and Kesh, high priests of the scorpion temple, were discussing the war effort and they were not happy with the results so far. They were high priest mages from the first Kuric. The Kuric were Magic Sorcerers to the high Kings court.

Eridu said, "The war is not going well for us, I am not sure what else we should do, it looks like we will loose this war because that idiot king and his concubine slut failed to listen to our warnings."

Kesh turned around facing the whole congregation and replied, "The king has failed us brothers, but make no mistake, Tiamat's teachings will not die with us, she will rise again. We will make sure of that. "Kesh was referring to the ancient dark magic of Tiamat – Leviathan, goddess to the underworld realm. She is the ancient Sumerian Goddess of the primeval depths.

Kesh continued, "Her spirit and knowledge will live on in our teachings. We must now put all of our efforts into leaving our beautiful home. They may have won this battle but they have not won the war against our kind brothers, I promise you that."

Kesh warily sat back down while Eridu briefly outlined what they were going to do. Kesh was now remembering all he had learned as a young initiate about the Goddess Tiamat. Kesh recalled being told that she was the Goddess who took the form of a dragon and swam in the primal waters of the nether world. Tiamat, who warred on the gods, and spawned the dark realm's magic to brood dragons; sphinxes, scorpion-men and other demons and monsters for her army. She waged war on the unfair Gods. In the end, Marduk her brother betrayed her and slew her. He defeated her with dark magic and powerful rituals. Marduk managed to split her in two, and cast one half of Tiamat into the sky to serve the heavens and the other he cast down to the nether world. Although she was slain, she was not destroyed. Half of her soul was left intact in the nether realm. She vowed revenge on her brother and would wait, and when the time was right and the fates blessed her again, she would choose her champion to fight for her salvation. She will redeem herself in the eyes of the Gods so that she may become whole again.

Eridu said, "My brothers, I was granted a vision from the great goddess Tiamat. I have foreseen the destruction of the great city of Sumer within 3 moons."

Seeing that everyone was waiting for him to continue he said, "Our primary duty is to preserve the ancient knowledge and make sure that our clan is not destroyed. To that end the elders have already decided where we will go; we must hurry and gather all of our records. Nothing must remain for the enemy. The enemy must never learn of the high snake language. I have foreseen the destruction of our temples in Sumer, but we will continue. Our future heirs will learn of the sacred magic and continue our quest to gain knowledge of the dark realm."

With their fate hanging over their heads, and the survival of their sect at stake, the high priest recorded and stored all of their sacred knowledge bestowed to them by Tiamat in special stone containers. A black scorpion mark, the same as the one tattooed on their forehead, was printed on each tablet thus indicating property of the high priest. The mark ensured that only the priest and their descendent schooled in the language of the high snake would access the knowledge recorded on the tablets. They further protected this knowledge with ancient blood and ritual spell magic. Thus began the book of "Saaassseeek." The book written in high parseltongue roughly translates to battle magic of Tiamat the Goddess.

In time like all empires, the ancient Sumerian empire fell as foreseen by the priest. With the advancing army coming, the high priests of the main capital of Sumer, having packed over a month ago, took to their camel caravan and took all of their belongings and knowledge of magic and escaped into the night.

They eventually retreated to a place along a great river, which would later be called the Nile. They high priest eventually founded another temple in what is know today as the ancient site of Hamunaptra. Hamunaptra would later be known as the ancient city of the dead. Over time, they melded with the people of the region and they reformed themselves to the beliefs of their subject and the lore's of the time. However, they remained true to their past and simply started a new cult following. They eventually became an essential part of the great Egyptian Empire

In time, the ancient priest of Sumeria became the high priest to the Egyptian Pharaoh's. The great Egyptian empire would become one of the greatest to have ever risen in human history. Their great empire lasted up until circa 1712-30 BC when the Assyrians and then the Romans invaded Egypt and the ancient ritual sites. The ancient city of the dead, Hamunaptra had become a seat of power to the ancient Pharaohs. They protected and nourished the aspirations of the priest in exchange for their knowledge and power. The temple priest would help keep and make prosperous the ancient Egyptian empire together for no less than 2500 years.

The last of the high temple priest Horek being a seer, had foreseen the fall of Mighty Egypt and decided to make certain that none of their ancient magic would pass to the Assyrian infidels and bound all of their teachings into a sarcophagus in the shape of the mightiest priest of their order Anubis who lived 1500 years ago during the rise of the first Pharaoh dynasty. They made sure that only a parseltongue and one with a just soul who neither favoured dark or light magic, but instead favoured a balance of the two would be able to open the sarcophagus with the help of a bonded temple cobra.

The temple priests specifically created these cobras and imbued them with very ancient and powerful magic. The cobras were created from pure magic. They made the specimens have extremely lethal venom that caused victims to dry up like a mummy in seconds. They were also given telepathic abilities to allow them to bond to a sorcerer priest and would help them develop as powerful occlumens and legilimens. The temple snakes could also help the sorcerer learn high parseltongue. High parseltongue was different from of normal parseltongue. It was much more refined and older than contemporary parseltongue. The high priest needed to know high parseltongue so that they could use the ancient battle language of Tiamat. The high priest imbued the temple snakes with many other abilities. The snakes could also read all magical auras and teach sorcerers how to reach their magical cores and read magical auras. One could recognize these cobras by their indigo colouring and deep sapphire blue eyes.

Horek made sure that before the invasion came, all of their teachings were to be put in the sarcophagus. With the help of shrinking charms, they put their entire tome in and sealed the sarcophagus with their most powerful charms and wards. A minimum of 4 temple cobras were put in a special stasis field and laid in special obsidian pots to guard the tomb. The tomb was created 50 km north of Hamunaptra. They then summoned a powerful desert storm to burry the tomb. The next day all of the temple sorcerers went with the defending Egyptian army and cast magic that created giant scorpions, hydras, dragons, fire demons … they helped stave off victory by the Assyrians for a month, but in the end their numbers were too great and the prophesy came to pass, and in their final act, the sorcerers killed themselves instead of being captured and have their knowledge be extracted from them. The ancient magic would lay dormant for a very long time.

September 17, 1996 A.D Egypt

Cyrus Archaeology Corp. Gander Cyrus was an archaeologist, miner and wizard extraordinaire along with his young partner Xoran Zabini who was also a wizard, and apprentice to the former. They were helping set up camp 48 km north of the ancient temple of Hamunaptra. They had been exploring the ancient Valley of the Kings with a muggle archaeological dig from Oxford U.K. They had been hired for their expertise of the terrain and their knowledge of the area. Gander had made it his life to know all there is to know about the ancient civilizations of the Middle East.

These civilizations are often regarded as the birthplace of muggle and wizard civilization alike. Over the years Gander thought he had uncovered many profitable digs both muggle and wizard kind. Some tomes had revealed ancient magic, which was lost in antiquity; many of them included ancient warding charms, booby traps, both dark and light.

In fact, one of these particular tomes made him quite wealthy; he had found a tome on ancient wards that were nearly impossible to break. He had come into contact with a goblin by the name of Zarock, high minister of securities for all Gringotts banks. After a quick meeting and an explanation of what Cyrus had in his procession, he could tell that Zarock was very interested in acquiring this particular tome with the express condition that it never be copied on paper and that Goblins would be the only ones with a copy of this particular tome. He can only imagine that wizard money is more secure then it's ever been. After seeing the offer from Zarock, Gander had readily agreed to the deal. Since that little encounter, his worries about securing a living were over.

After the deal, he had taken a well-deserved vacation and travelled to other countries, he soon grew very bored of the posh lifestyle. If nothing else Gander Cyrus was very honest with himself and he felt that his real home was Egypt.

He felt this way for several reasons: he loved the area, he was a sand creature if there ever was one, he loved the desert sunset and sunrise, he loved the culture and its people, he loved the ancient feel of the place, finally he liked the feel of power that the area gave off, he just could not put his finger on it but he always felt that the next great discovery lay within his reach. Gander loved to acquire knowledge just for the sake of knowledge itself on both ancient Egyptian muggles and their wizard counterparts. Since that time he had founded his little company and spent all of his time on digs.

Gander turned around and said, "Hey Xoran don't forget to put the cold repelling charms. It gets mighty frosty at night in these deserts! "

Now Gander thought, here was his young partner. Xoran was an enigma onto himself. He was 17 years old, and was about 6'-2". He had long jet-black hair, with amazingly deep blue eyes, square jawed, and sported a very nice tan. In all fairness, he had a very handsome face and a very athletic physic. Apparently, he had been attending Bauxbatton Wizarding School, but left In the middle of his last term before finishing his NEWT.

He seemed very reserved and did not talk much. In talking with him, he found out that his relatives were an old pure-blooded wizarding family. They were not fanatics about the purity of their blood or anything, but they made sure that they did not marry any muggles. Marrying muggle born witches or wizard did not seem to be a big taboo as long as they were of high standings in both money and intellectual capacity. Something about family honour, pride and tradition, and not wanting to have their children bereft of the power and beauty of magic.

According to Xoran, he had had met a beautiful French witch, and had fallen in love with her. One thing led to another and he recently found out that that his girlfriend was pregnant with his child. His family had not been impressed to say the least. He and his family had gotten into a big row and they had disowned him, his twin sister Xiana had tried to act as a mediator with the family, but apparently, his father had made it quite clear that he would not support this muggle born witch and their child. Xoran's father felt that she did not meet family approval. According to his father's contacts at the French ministry, she was not particularly well off.

Xoran had tried to argue, that she more than met all of the Zabini family requirements except for not being well off, and told his father that these particular criteria had never been one of the conditions for marrying into the Zabini family. His father had told him that he thought that his future wife had trapped him. She had simply seen that he would one day be the heir of a rich and influential family and that she was a gold digger. He had been enraged with his family and had in turn told his father that for the exception of his twin sister, that he disowned the Zabini family and that they would be dead to him, and to never try to contact him ever again.

Apparently there was another set of younger twins Blaise and Brianna who were 11 months younger than they were; they had both sided with their father, probably under pressure. Apparently, Blaise went to Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry in Scotland. His younger sister Brianna went to Durmstrang in Russia. Gander had met young Xoran at the Golden Tea Leaf. It was a popular wizarding watering hole for the locals in Cairo. Gander had been looking for someone to help him catalogue his findings and searches. He was to follow up on leads and do other grunts work, like setting camp and such. Gander was glad to have found Xoran for he was quiet, intelligent, willing to learn and a hard worker. Gander looked at the sun and figured they had to set camp fairly quickly.

Gander said, "Hey, Xoran."

"Yes sir!"

Gander replied, "We are going to turn in for the night and tomorrow we'll scout ahead to see if there's anything for the muggles to cut their teeth into."

Gander looking over the horizon noticed a massive black cloud in the distance. It appeared to be moving their way. Judging by the distance it would probably hit them somewhere around 11:00 pm tonight. Gander though this storm is going to be a dinger.

For his part, Xoran made sure that the telescopic breathing pole in the tent was erected. If the storm buried them, they wouldn't suffocate overnight. Xoran bellowed, "I'll go and check to make sure that all the equipment is tied down." Wizard or not Xoran thought, there are no charms that anyone knew that could withstand the fury of a full-blown desert storm.

The next morning, after digging themselves and their equipment out of the sand and making sure that the muggles were o.k. they made up a quick breakfast of eggs and sausage.

Gander said, "When we clean up we'll head up north for a bit and take some topography readings. We will correlate these with the Valley of the Kings coordinates."

"There is a rumour passed on by the locals of some ancient Egyptian priest Shrine somewhere around here. Xoran I'll pack the camel with a day's supply in case we find something and decide to stay over night. "

With a plan agreed on, both men started on their way up north. At about 3 kilometres north, Gander said, "Let's stop here and get our bearings."

Gander took out his latest muggle binoculars with laser range finder. Gander loved his muggle toys. His new binoculars were a really cool piece of muggle technology. He started a scan from 9 o'clock to 12 and saw nothing, he then started a scan from 12 o'clock to 3 and at about 1 he noticed something jutting out of the ground, it looked like a pincer of sorts and looked to be obsidian black.

To make sure he was not looking at a mirage, he gave the binoculars to Xoran and asked him to do a scan from 12-3 o'clock. He picked up the binoculars and started to scan, at 1 o'clock he said he saw some black thing sticking out of the sand that looked like obsidian?

Gander said, "All right lets head towards it and see what we can find."

As they got closer to the object jutting out of the sand, Gander got his foe glass and his dark arts detectors out. The foe glass registered nothing, but the dark arts detector started spinning wildly. Hum, Gander though. As they got nearer to the protrusion, it looked like a claw of some sort and looked to be made of obsidian.

Gander got a queasy feeling in his gut, but decided to excavate the site anyway, he told Xoran to start using banishing charms and half power reducto's to clear the hard sand stone deposits, as they were banishing and clearing sand, they began to make out the outline of the protrusion. It looked like a gargoyle of some sort, but it had the pincer, skin, and tail of a scorpion but the body of a man. The gargoyle was sitting in an alcove in between twisted obsidian pillars, the pillars themselves had ancient runes that were comprise of Egyptian hieroglyph and some other ancient language that resembled something like ancient Sumerian?

Gander did not recognize this particular temple and was certain that they were onto something completely different here. He said, "All right, lest keep clearing until we see some kind of entrance."

As they were clearing the doors, they noticed more Hieroglyphs of creatures, which were not common to Egyptian mythology. There were half scorpion men, men with Jackal heads, Nephelems, Hydras, Dragons, and other creatures he had never seen!

As they got the door cleared, they noticed a squiggly kind of writing on the door at eye level. If this was a language, it was one that none of them recognized. They completed a magical scan of the doors and found that there were wards that they did not immediately recognize either. Looking at their low power levels, Gander concluded that they must have degraded due to their age. Of course, having been subjected to the sand storm from the previous night, the wards would have weakened in a major way.

Time was of the essence since these wards could very well regenerate in time. They decided that since they were greatly weakened, they might have a chance at taking them down. An hour later and down to their last charms the wards finally came down.

Gander speaking to Xoran said, "This was interesting, the last anti-ward charm I used was very old and came from an ancient tome that I no longer possess, had I not studied this tome we would never have broken through these wards."

Gander said, "Let's have our wands at the ready and be prepared for anything."

Gander cast Alohamora on the door, they waited a second as if the door sat there thinking and suddenly a click was heard, Gander rotated a 6-inch knob on the door in a clockwise manner until it stopped. He then heard the knob pop back into place 180 degrees from its starting position. There was a whooshing sound and very stale air came rushing out of the door.

At this time Gander was on high alert, his very fibre told him to be very cautious. He told Xoran to stay outside and guard the doors, but for the first time since they had known each other Xoran said

"No way am I going to stay here when an important archaeological discovery is about to take place under my very nose!"

Gander looked at the youth, and noticed a fire there, maybe he wanted to get in on the find and get a big payout to show up his family and take care of his future wife and kid? He had never seen this eagerness in his your protégé before.

Gander replied, "All right, but you stay at my back and cover my rear."

"O.k.", replied Xoran.

They fully opened the door and proceeded inside the tomb. Thank god they had the 10 o'clock sun at their back; it provided enough light to highlight the inside of the tomb. The first thing they noticed was a sarcophagus set on a three-foot pedestal.

The sarcophagus itself was obsidian black but it also had silver, gold and platinum inlays of the same creatures that they had noticed on the front doors. There seemed to be 3 clay pots spread out at strategic corners of the tomb they were about 3 feet in diameter and were also made of obsidian. They didn't notice the 4th pot residing behind the opened chamber door? Gander also noticed 8 torches set at equidistance around the octagonal chamber.

Xoran cast Adlevo-Lampas and the torches came to life. They could now see that the walls of the chamber had that same squiggly writing all around the chamber as they had seen on the front door. They looked to be arranged in paragraphs and chapters. He had never seen this language before and it truly intrigued him.

This chamber certainly has a story to tell Gander thought to himself. He turned around, examined the sarcophagus, and started casting some spells to determine if there were any curses, jinxes, or wards put on the coffin. Sure enough, there were loads of protective spells for keeping an errand wizard from getting into this little beauty.

He decided he would start with a couple of curse breaker's and anti ward spells. In the mean time he told his apprentice to go start looking at the writings on the wall and cast some revealing spells to see if there are any hidden messages or instructions. Unknown to either of them, the pot behind the tomb door began to glow a light blue colour and then was gone, suddenly a 4 foot indigo temple snake slowly slithered out and began to quickly flick its tongue and feel for scents.

It spotted a scent by the adjacent wall and began to slither to its intended target, Gander was too absorbed in his study of the sarcophagus to notice the scaly menace slithering away. Suddenly there was a loud hiss and Xoran screamed. Gander whipped his wand and jumped on the sarcophagus to gain a high-ground advantage and quickly located the cause of Xoran Screams, he saw the snake and cast Immobilus- Tempest at the snake, which instantly froze it in place. What happened next would stay in Ganders consciousness for a very long time.

Xoran started to go into convulsions, he was already frothing at the mouth, this went on for at least 30 seconds then Xoran started to shrivel up and his skin began to turn into a greyish colour. His eyes rolled over until only the whites of his eyes were showing, than in one final inhuman scream, he toppled over and looked completely parched. He looked like he had been mummified for thousands of years.

Gander suddenly leaned over the coffin and threw up. After a while, his brain started kicking back into high gear and concluded that the snake must have come from one of those Obsidian pots. He decided to cast an immobilizing stasis spell on the remaining pots to make sure he wasn't going to be attacked. He briefly considered killing them, but upon closer inspection, he thought that they might be the same temple snakes that he had read about in one of his ancient tomes.

If they were then they could fetch a handsome return. It was obvious that they were magical. The ancient tome had mentioned that they would only respond to a parseltongue. Gander felt very responsible for what just happened to Xoran. He never bothered going to help him. He knew that Xoran's condition was permanent.

He was glad that he had made the lad take a hefty life insurance. His pregnant girlfriend would have enough money to have all of her needs met. To sweeten the pot, he would make sure that all the proceeds from the temple snake sales would go to her account. It was only fitting as one of these snakes had taken Xoran's life.

Well he has many things to do now, he needed to conjure better restraining containers for the snakes, he went to see how many snakes there were, out of 4 pots, 3 had snakes, he stepped outside, took out his wand and cast Aggero-Vitreus a 3 ft diameter crystal pot was formed, he repeated this another three times and went back and picked the snakes and put them in their new containers.

He then went back and used a cutting charm to cut 3 inches of base below the coffin. There seemed to be a permanent sticking charm to the base itself. Next, he cast a charm to copy all of the writings on the wall. Pointing his wand on the first wall, he cast Scribere-Comperio. Once this was done, he sealed the wall writings in obsidian stone jars. Gander then moved both the coffin and Xoran out of there. He created a portkey and transported everything back to his house in Cairo.

Once he had secured his charge he went back to the site and resealed the tomb. He then used banishing charms to reseal the whole thing with sand. Once the tomb was completely encased in sand, he went back to the muggle campsite, and told them that he had received a call concerning a family emergency and needed to take his leave.

This was not a lie. The death of Xoran would hit him in the coming weeks. By the time he was done with all of his administrative duties it was nearly 9:00 pm. He went back to his home in Cairo, took a long hot shower and had himself some pasta and some firewiskey. He decided that he needed to let his mind rest for tonight, and he would think about what needed to be done the next morning.

Gander woke early the following morning. Overnight, he had decided that he would send Xoran's body back to his parents via a designated portkey location. He would keep the tomb findings to see if he could break into the coffin. If after a period of 6 weeks he was unable to break in, he would sell the whole kit to a dark arts merchant. He would have to be very careful, as Egypt had a specialized secret Auror department specifically dedicated to tracking and confiscating any Egyptian dark arts find.

He had some friends in England who had contact in the U.K in Knockturn Alley, and they would help him get into contact with a dark arts and a magical pets secret buyer there. Until then, he would devote all of his resources and time to finding a way into the sarcophagus. He went downstairs and into his basement and made sure that all of his magical anti detection wards were intact and began his work.