C091 - Runes, Beaches & Scars

Following the terrible thunderstorm during the Sorting Ceremony, the first actual school day was a rare last summer day on the British Isles. The sun was out, no clouds in sight. The winds carried the last fragrance of the summer-blooming flowers.

Done with a single lesson after lunch, I made my way to the Black Lake.

I spent a year in Italy, I was going to take all the summer I could take now that I was back in frigid Scotland during the school year.

Someone seemed to have overheard me telling my plans to Mandy, because a whole bunch of witches 'randomly' planned to hang out on the short sandy beach opposite the lakeside near Hagrid's hut to soak up some last minute sunshine, too.

Unlike two years ago, I was now a lord and a three-time dueling champion. And instead of calling me out in the press for leaving the country during tumultuous times, Rita Skeeter had used the fact of me leaving for Italy as another opportunity to drag Dumbledore through the mud. Which meant I was very much what most would call an eligible bachelor, or even a catch. I had noticed it in the stares during breakfast.

"So just like two years ago, none of you have anything better to do than watch me hop into the lake?" I asked, giving the few Ravenclaw witches near me a sarcastic grin, my gaze briefly scanning the other students.

Luna didn't join me either. She couldn't. Because she still had lessons.

"Just take off your shirt already," Lara 'complained' with a playful scoff, a rare tome I had loaned her from my private collection on her lap. It detailed the story of a Roman scholar who meticulously wrote down the downfall of the Roman Empire from his ancestor's perspective.

With amusement in my eyes, I did just as she asked.

If I was proud of my physique during the second school year after the dueling training and taking the body enhancement elixirs I got through Flitwick, I was doubly so now. Because puberty did its thing and I was now fully grown. There was a spell to check for it, and the mediwitch at Stati Magia was kind enough to use it on me. No more growth spurts at 17 – I was fine with it. The only thing I could gain now naturally was musclemass, but I was quite satisfied with my frame.

Too much bulk would make me an easier target at this point and being two heads taller than any witch at Hogwarts already made me stand out too much.

A few gasps rang out at the beach and not just because of my sculpted abs, my defined back or my muscular arms. My upper body now sported dozens of new scars. Some, like the fresh one on my back, came from magical burns where I put too much magic into the runic tattoos.

One, however, came from getting impaled by a poisoned spear.

—————

[3rd person, flashback to eleven month before, Italy]

During Talion's second month at Stati Magia, his house elf Urd, the only one of the three elven sisters who followed him to Italy, arrived with news.

"Talion-master, Urd found what you have been looking for in the muggle-city Venice," she reported while wringing her hands, hoping to get acknowledgement for her hard work.

It was the first time she truly acted alone, without her two sisters who learned under their parents, the elves of Hogwarts, and Patrick. She was flattered that her master had chosen her out of all the elves available to him. Well, all four.

The remaining three were tasked with keeping an eye on Talion's interests at Goldsborough and Magical Britain as a whole.

"Great job," Talion praised. "Keep an eye on the place but don't get too close. Don't enter the house either. Patrick taught you how to look out for shady muggle business and how to keep a log of comings and goings, right?"

"Yes, Patrick told Urd she wasn't useless many times," the small elf said as if that was the biggest compliment the old grouch could have given her.

Talion just fought the urge to facepalm. He regularly tried to fix the ingrained servitude in his three elves, but their 'society' and inherent need for magic through bonds with magic-rich environments like Hogwarts or powerful magical families made it a slow process.

Every two steps forward were followed by a step back.

"Just remember to take plenty of rest and eat," Talion ordered with a sigh and watched the elf pop away again.

Walking over to his magically extended suitcase, the young wizard dragged the forefinger of his left hand across the seams on the inside of the lid and had a secret compartment open up magically after completing the intricate pattern.

"Soon," he whispered, his fingers lingering on the simple drawing given to him Sir Frye, his mentor among the Brotherhood, the muggle Assassin guild.

A red cross belonging to the 'Knights Templars'.

— — —

Four days later, on a Sunday during the early hours just before mass, Talion was swimming in a canal in Venice while under a notice-me-not charm and a few other spells. Clad in a white turtle-neck and hood combo, and with a silver circlet resting on his head that held his wet shoulder-length hair out of his face – the reworked Ravenclaw diadem that allowed for underwater breathing – Talion's eyes were lingering on a quaint building that looked just like any other in the famous city. 

Except for a red iron cross hidden in the decorative carvings on the old wooden door. The cross that made Urd report this building to her master. The cross that Jacob Frye had tasked Talion with finding. The one that meant Templars had a base there.

Talion gave himself the mission to not only find those bases but also do reconnaissance at the very least.

Taking a deep breath more out of habit than need, Talion dove under the waters. His newly upgraded kelpie wand that was especially suited for spellcasting under water was aimed at his feet, propelling him forward without the need to actually swim. He still allowed his feet to gently guide and accelerate his underwater pace, using them like a dolphin would their tail fluke.

In no time, he was below the building with the cross on the door. His eyes were fully accustomed to the dark, murky surroundings as he activated both a spell to enhance his eyesight and his eagle vision.

Seeing nobody above him in the basement, Talion pressed the tip of his wand against the modern muggle reinforced and specially coated concrete that kept the waters out and kept the building dry. With his eyes closed in concentration, Talion willed the concrete to fold open to allow him passage with transfiguration. Once the hole was big enough for him to fit through without issue, he pulled himself up, dried his clothes and body, and closed the hole again. No muggle would ever find out that he entered through the floor in his room.

'Food storage,' Talion quickly identified as he walked past shelves filled with canned vegetables, cured meat, and grains.

Nobody was on this level, so he began to make his way up. Four people were in the building. Four people wearing the Templar crosses under their shirts according to Urd. They occasionally flashed them in some elaborate little social ritual. Possibly to ensure their identities and allegiance.

'Frye was vague,' Talion thought to himself. 'Thankfully he never needed to say much. My dreams showed me plenty of the Templars' sick machinations.'

With Eagle Vision constantly active, he saw through the walls with ease. His footfalls made no sound thanks to his enchanted boots. His magic erased his presence entirely.

Talion was sure that whatever he would find in this Templar safe house, he could deal with it.

"Orders came from above. We are to ensure that the food aid boats bound for Bosnia going through the port of Dubrovnik are intercepted," one of the voices said in Italian as Talion stood outside the doors of a study on the second floor.

"These boats hail from Monopoli, why is the Bari chapter not dealing with it?" Another voice softly complained without any heat in his tone.

"Ours is not to ask but to do," the first voice answered, indifferent to the complaint.

"The Bari chapter was taken out and lost two thirds of their members," yet another voice casually explained as if reading out the weather report from a newspaper. "It's why we were sent the crate with those filthy heathen artifacts."

"Why have we not burned those godless scripts and tomes anyway?"

"You were not supposed to browse the items, Gianluca," the first voice icily rebuked.

"So what?" Gianluca complained. "It's all just rubbish. Some weird tale about a man changing the weather for his son's wedding written in Latin or the recipe for a magical draught that claims to cure something called 'dragon fever'. Pah!"

"Why do we store such drivel, Davide?" Another voice asked almost angrily.

"They might not have value to us godfearing people," the first voice, Davide, said with authority. "But they are used as tokens to barter with some special patrons. Don't worry about it, we just keep it safe for those above."

"Right~," Gianluca sang with a disdainful sigh. "I'll go back to sorting it then."

"Treat the delivery with care. And lock the boxes and cases tightly again after you're done. It's important," Davide ordered. "And Giorgi, go prepare the speedboat for our mission on the Adriatic Sea."

"Yes," Gianluca answered, losing all of his playful banter from before. Another voice also stoically agreed, likely belonging to 'Giorgi'.

Talion watched the men leave the study whilst perched on top of a wooden beam in a shadowy corner of the ceiling, deciding to start with Gianluca.

Gianluca was orange in his view like the others. But killing him just because he had a low opinion on 'heathens', a common trait among those deeply devout and conservative Catholics which the Templars clearly fell under, was not yet part of Talion's plan. The Brotherhood assassins in his dreams didn't wantonly kill each and every Templar either the moment they identified them.

"'Morgana Le Fay hath reached out to our conclave. Her disdain for the mundane runs deep, something I may soon use for my own purposes'," Gianluca read with clear disdain dripping from his voice. "Who writes such ridiculous fiction? 'Strega Nona' is just folklore published by that American traitor Tomie De Paola. How could a good-natured witch from a children's story be involved with a witch from Arthurian legends? Damn these heathens and their blasphemy."

Talion watched the man chuck a well-worn leather-bound diary onto a shelf. It was very clearly a magical item going by the white color it was tinged in with the young magical's Eagle Vision. The true diary of a witch who seemed to have inspired a folktale. It wasn't the first time Talion had come across such books and such characters. Like the book on African animal magics written by 'muggle author' Burroughs that he found in the second-hand book shop in Diagon Alley years ago.

Item after item was taken out of wooden crates and sorted. Books went on shelves. Wands, blades and cauldrons went into glass boxes. Vials filled with suspiciously macabre items, like fingers or eyes, went into a huge glass-door fridge at the back of the room.

And each time Gianluca closed a case or the fridge, Talion's Eagle Vision was unable to see the true nature of the newly sorted items.

'Wards,' Talion realized with raised brows. He noticed the carved symbols inside the transport crates where Gianluca got the items from, but they were not in any runic language he was familiar with. Nothing he had ever encountered, not even in his dreams showing him the life and death of Brotherhood assassins during medieval times.

Templars managed to shield these magical items even from his special eyesight. Probably other methods of identification or even scrying. Or so it seemed.

This was a critical piece of information.

Templars warded against either magic in general or people with Isu bloodlines in particular.

Without making a sound, Talion jumped from the wooden beam with his hidden blade unsheathed and held it to Gianluca's throat from behind.

In fluent Italian, all thanks to a potion granting him temporary but lingering mastery over the new language, Talion ordered, "These symbols inside the crates and etched into glass of the display cases. Who is responsible for them?"

Gianluca stiffened for a mere moment. Hearing Talion's order, he whispered in Latin, "Amplecti animam meam [Embrace my soul]," and impaled his neck on Talion's blade with the full force of his body.

Not having expected such an outcome, it was Talion's turn to stiffen. Gianluca died almost instantly with a severed spinal cord and slowly began to bleed into the young wizard's sleeve.

"Holy shit, that was decisive?" Talion more asked than exclaimed. The situation caught him off guard entirely. It was as if a switch had been flipped in the Templar henchman's mind.

No bargaining, no pleas, no effort to fight back or alert the others that there was an intruder. Instant suicide.

As if he knew that Talion had means to get the truth out of him with magic.

"Or he was subconsciously programmed," Talion judged with a weirded out frown as Gianluca's body slowly fell to the ground with his assistance, ensuring that the corpse wouldn't make a sound and remain as unviolated as possible.

Something weird was going on, but Talion was unable to put his finger on it. After all, his only source of information in the room just killed himself pretty much instantly.

Just as he was about to get up and loot the magical items for his own purposes, Talion noticed that the top button Gianluca's shirt was opened, its thread cut with the otherworldly sharp edge of Talion's hidden blade as he took it out of his victim.

That red iron cross necklace they all wore was faintly visible.

It was white in Talion's special vision, a magical item.

Trying to get a better sense of what just happened, Talion looted it, too, together with everything else inside those crates. Both Mokeskin pouches he brought in preparation were filled to the brim, Talion was half a mind to ask Urd to come inside to help with the logistics of it all.

But now he wasn't so sure anymore. After all, there were plenty of other wards he could have missed now that he knew the Templars had them.

Wards he was unable to see.

"You know plenty of defensive spells," Talion whispered to himself in an effort to shake off his own growing apprehension. He walked deeper into the room and ignored the voice in the back of his mind that told him to leave and get a better idea about the Templars' methods first.

Just as Talion opened a safe that looked as old as Venice itself, an unprecedented sense of danger washed over the cautious young wizard. The all-purpose opening charm had just silently done its job, unlocking the intricate and heavy contraption in front of him.

Before Talion could reach out to pull open the safe door, a wooden stake shot out of wall to his right at impossible speeds. The spear, the contraption that shot it out, none of it appeared in his Eagle Vision even now.

A hurried step back was not enough to avert disaster either, his raised guard had not anticipated such a mechanism.

The spear cleanly impaled him just below his kidneys and under the ribcage. He was pinned to wall on his left, unable to move away.

"Argh," he moaned out in pain, once more entirely taken by surprise.

Templars did know about magic and they were way too good at guarding against those wielding it, Talion decided in that instant.

Severing the spear at his back instead of vanishing it to regain mobility, Talion briefly studied the wards on the inside of opened hatch where the spear shot from. Perfect concealment from his regular eyes and his Eagle Vision and he still didn't figure out the how.

"Shit," Talion cursed under his breath as he staggered a little. Thanks to Professor Sprout and his own interests, he had been around plenty of poisonous plants. He realized that the spear wasn't just a simple spear.

The wound where the spear ran him through quickly gained purple-green edges.

Two waves of his wand, and the once more closed safe was shrunken down to the size of his fist before a hole opened up near it on the floor, allowing Talion to jump through it back into the cold waters of the Venice canal system. Just before he jumped through, though, he threw all caution to the wind and dropped a glass vial as big as a pear.

It shattered just as the hole Talion opened closed, engulfing the entire basement in a scorching inferno.

Nobody inside the house would survive the fire.

—————

[1st POV of Talion Macnair, Tomb Creator instead of Tomb Raider, present day, Black Lake]

Lara scrunched her brows as she looked at the scar on my belly.

"Why has it not healed? Surely the mediwitch at Stati Magia can't be that clueless?" The muggle-born witch with a penchant for history asked curiously.

"Poison targeted at magicals," I answered with a shrug. The poor mediwitch at Stati Magia had done a phenomenal job all year. I had visited her quite often and allowed her to learn many new things to cure all that ailed me during and after my misadventures.

The spear wound looked as if it were still tender, but I barely even noticed the scars anymore almost a year later.

"And you ran into people impaling wizards with anti-magical poisons in Italy?" Isobel asked in disbelief.

"Let's just call it a disagreement in philosophies," I deflected with a shrug, transfiguring my slacks into swimming trunks.

"And the other scars? Those are runes, right?" Hermione asked, her eyes glued to my chest as if she were reading a good book.

"Yeah, learning to cast runic magic without a focus is not an easy process," I said as my fingers ran over skin near my belly button.

I heard a few quivering breaths near me and almost began to cackle, but I kept it in.

Those scars would heal eventually, I would have otherwise been covered head-to-toe in scarred skin by that point, but the magic was burned into my skin each time I actually used a tattoo, especially the temporary ones where I could wash off the ink. Even with potions to heal the skin, the red outline of the activated rune would remain for a while. It didn't even look too bad now. Most of them looked like skin almost healed after a nasty sunburn.

"Can you show us?" Mandy asked breathlessly, her eyes glued to my form.

"Runic magic?" I asked in return without even really looking at her. "Yeah, sure. The principle is relatively easy. The hard part is the alchemic medium and the difference in intent."

I rolled up my swim trunks on the left leg, showing off a permanent runic tattoo on top of my thigh. The ink for the permanent tattoos was almost skin-colored with a green-ish tint unlike the deep black and blue for the temporary tattoos. If you didn't know what to look for, it looked almost like regular skin when no magic ran through the rune, at which point it would light up in teal colors.

With the eyes of every witch nearby glued to my muscular leg, I pointed at the tattoo and explained, "Instead of an incantation, you need to find the corresponding rune. Thing is, runes can mean many different things. What works for me will not necessarily work for others because I understand magic differently from them. So it's either trial and error or a lot of arithmency to calculate the perfect rune to use a specific spell. This altered Berkano rune, for example, is used as a summoning spell. I could learn to do such spells wandless, of course, but the difference in force is remarkable. Not just comparing wandless to wand-assisted casting. Wandless casting compared to runic casting is not only harder, it lacks in speed and power."

I lied a little, I already knew how to cast that charm in particular without the need of a focus. I also didn't tell them that this rune was highly specialized and only worked on what I considered to be my magical focus to increase the power. And I understated just how ridiculously powerful the runic charm was. It pretty much explosively ripped my wand out of the hand of whoever held it, for example.

My partner in testing the rune, my elf Urd, had dislocated her scrawny arm, broken her wrist, and was dragged through the entire room on the first try. I only scolded her a little for not letting go.

There was no need to spell such a thing out to all present witches at the beach, though. This rune was meant as a life-saving measure, hence the permanent ink at a spot that wouldn't be checked by most enemies.

After the impromptu lesson, I finally jumped into the Black Lake for a swim. Instead of the circlet that the two founders had crafted for me after freeing the Ravenclaw Diadem from the Horcrux soul piece, I was wearing a blue silk scarf I tied around the lower half of my face.

Personally enchanted by me to allow for breathing underwater. An early prototype and my thesis I presented to gain my N.E.W.T. in enchanting in Italy.

Sadly, my casual dive to look for magical aquatic plants was cut short. The kraken was in a playful mood.

At least I learned that the scarf still worked despite getting dragged around by a gigantic prehistoric sea-monster.