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Siberian Taiga[1998]
–Severian Olegovich Drovosel–
He looked the strange child right in the eye as he smiled at him, despite having no wand in sight, though judging by the explosive sent his way, he was not entirely unarmed.
His voice came out hoarse, "This is a dangerous place, child. What are you doing here?"
He did not know how to talk to children. What little social skill he had left him when he decided to make this place his base of operations, hidden away from civilization, only him and nature to keep him company.
The child smiled at him, and once more, he was hit with a realisation that the child did not fear him or this scenario. Something was wrong here. His hand tensed around his wand as he found himself on the verge of doing something he might regret here.
"Who are you and why are you here?" He asked again, a bit harsher than he intended. The Aurors and then the curse breakers from the ICW had come alarmingly close to his sanctuaries, forcing him to call on backup. Backup that had returned without fighting, which was good but since then, the entire sanctuary had been restless, and only recently, he had been able to venture out to see what exactly that disturbance was.
Only for him to run into this strange child, who had put Ezekiel on the back foot. His magnificent familiar, a rare Spectral Owl, was someone whose instincts had helped him survive this long. Ezekiel had never been wrong before, and for good reason.
His excellent senses had served him well, warning him of any wizard approaching, along with telling him about their magic. Ezekiel was sensing slight taints of dark energy on the boy here, along with something else, most likely the cloak of magic around the boy.
Magic so dense, filling the area around the boy that even a novice should be able to sense it.
"My name is Damien Hawthorne and I am looking for a way out of this forest." The boy finally replied.
Hawthorne? He'd heard that name before, but never in a good sense. Hopefully, this one strayed away from the norm. Last he heard, they were a Blood purist British family, with no sense of magical or natural preservation, at all.
He raised an eyebrow at the second part, "I see. I can help you get out of this place, if you promise never to return." There, he did what Ezekiel was just screaming at him to do.
Which was getting this kid out of this place and making sure that he never returned. It was not the dark Taint on the kid's magic, that made Ezekiel so skittish. It must be something else.
He had not missed the projectile that Ezekiel threw at the kid when the kid threw the explosive at him.
The kid tilted his head at him, "Sure, but first you have to tell me where we are and what you are doing here."
He eyed the kid with ever-increasing confusion. Was he lost or was he gone in the head?
___xx___
–Damien Hawthorne—
Well, this was fun. His first proper meeting with an actual normal person, well, as normal as someone could be in this place, in what felt like forever but was only over a year.
The man looked young but his expression told him that the man was not young. He was looking at him intently, to judge his reaction based on the demand he had just presented to him.
Just the way out of here would have been fine but he was curious. About the wizard, about the second magical signature he felt in his range, exposing itself for a split second as something came flying at his head, impacting his forcefield.
It was probably just a normal rock but if it hit the unprotected head of a wizard? Concussions would be the least of their worries.
He tried to keep his expression casual but he had a hunch that he was smiling a tad too much, especially since he was supposedly lost in a remote place.
The man huffed at him, as he beckoned with his left hand, the one that did not hold a wand in it, as his neck snapped up, his gaze zeroing in on a magnificent bird dive bombing towards them.
He tensed a bit then relaxed as he was surrounded in his forcefield but he sent a look at the man, to either dodge or cast a shield but the man did nothing as the giant owl slowed down at the last moment, which had to be magic, before gently settling down on the man's outstretched hands.
"What I do here is none of your concern, kid. Be glad that I have some modicum of morals. If it were someone else coming across an unarmed, lost kid here, especially a wizard like you–"
"They wouldn't be able to do anything. As I said," He said, as he used his Shaped Durability enchantment, to carve a deep gouge in the land with a feather light jerk from his leg.
The man eyed the hole in the ground with the same indifferent expression, though he noted the owl itself tensing in response.
A magical familiar then?
The man then seemed to sigh before turning around, "Fine. Come on. Follow me. Best to get back before they get too rowdy in my absence."
Who was they?
Shrugging, he followed after the man, smiling and waving at the owl who seemed hell bent on boring holes into him. The owl itself was large, way bigger than it should be, with white wings that had astral black streaks in between them, trapping light in between them.
The face was oddly expressive as well, and equally massive. It huffed as he waved at it, and then turned around.
"Can you fly?" Out of the blue, the wizard asked him and he had to suppress the sheer glee that threatened to burst out of him.
Still, he pretended to be clueless, "Fly what?"
All he got in return was an eye roll before a broom was thrown his way, having been taken out of a bag of holding.
He must have had literal stars in his eyes as he looked at that bag with so much greed in his eyes that the man quickly pocketed it. Eyeing the enchantments on the broom, faint and worn out as they were, he regretfully shook his head as he couldn't make much sense of the interwoven ones but the basic ones were easy enough to be read.
Sadly, that did not make him an expert on flying and despite the itch to test out the Kinetic Absorption enchantment and how much Kinetic energy it could absorb and its capacity to act as a cushion from a high enough fall, this was not the right time to do that. There would be plenty of time as well as test dummies to experiment on later on.
So, with a sad look in his eyes, he tossed the broom back to the man, shaking his head, "Nope. I can't fly that right now, but I hope to learn soon."
The man took the broom and eyed him for a moment before his gaze slowly turned to the owl standing on his shoulder. Man and owl shared some sort of internal telepathic conversation before both of them turned to him, with matching evil grins on their faces.
Something told him that he was not safe here.
"What?" He snapped, defensively.
The man had the gall to shrug, "Well, if you want to know what I do, you will have to fly there. And since you don't know how to ride a broom, there is only one other way to do so."
The owl then chose the moment to fly from the man's shoulder and fly right above him, eclipsing his tiny body as the owl's massive wingspan was revealed to him.
Curse him and his curiosity!
"Also," the man continued, "lose that cloak of magic. They don't like it when unknown people come near them, let alone people brandishing their magic around like that. So do us all a favour and stop that."
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