Maybe I shouldn't have burned down the apartment, but I decided to play it safe and cover my tracks. I did feel sorry for the owners, of course, but I felt even sorrier for myself. And honestly, a dark mage at their doorstep would be worse than a fire. With little money left, I figured I had nothing to lose — so I took a risk and robbed a bank.
Well, "robbed" is a strong word. They handed everything over themselves. But let me explain: I bought a deep-hooded robe in Knockturn Alley, layered with Muggle-repelling charms, and picked up a potion with an effect similar to the Imperius curse. Then I walked into a Barclays branch and asked to see the senior manager who handled large deposits — cashiers in big banks only work the registers and don't have access to the vault, which makes sense.
Once I was in a private office with a middle-aged man, I sprayed the potion in his face from a little bottle. It works poorly and briefly on mages, which is why it's not banned, but for ordinary people it's more than enough. I filled my bag — expanded with magic — with about ten million dollars, which would be much easier to use in other countries, and walked out calmly.
Already in Thailand, I read in the newspapers about my "adventures" in England, where they called me "the hypnotist in a robe." Thanks to the charms, no one saw my face, and with gloves, I left no fingerprints.
Did I feel guilty about such open criminality? Not at all. I didn't kill or hurt anyone, and the bank wouldn't go bankrupt — for them, it's a month's profit. I was like Robin Hood, robbing the rich to give to the poor. And am I not poor? No home, no money — couldn't be poorer!
Now, with the emblem as insurance, I felt much calmer, but staying in London would have been stupid, so I left for Thailand. If I was going to die, at least let it be somewhere warm by the ocean, not in cold, damp London. I'd thought about India, but quickly remembered that, according to legend, that's exactly where I was supposed to go. Well, let's not tempt fate. I should probably reflect on what I did, now that I'd rented myself a small villa:
***
Three months passed, and Ariel should have settled in France by now. I didn't contact her — any attempt at communication would have ruined all my efforts at secrecy. I also couldn't transfer money, for another reason: mages would immediately sense the money wasn't mine and was obtained dishonestly. There are simple charms for that. And the fact that I stole it, not Ariel, wouldn't matter to anyone.
Still, I left seven million in offshore accounts — maybe one day I'll withdraw it and use the money only in the ordinary world. The accounts are under the name Marlowe, my mother's family name.
Then I continued studying magic, sometimes falling into a stupor at how vastly different modern magical systems were compared to those of the ancient world.
Let's start with the basics: no one teaches awakening true sight anymore. Instead, they use expensive enchanted glasses, the secret of which is known by maybe one and a half people in all of England.
Meditation and absorption of free ether from the elements and the surrounding background? No one knows how. Dematerialization of matter into ether? Forgotten. And as for Palms — the most powerful spells of archmages, capable of affecting entire continents — no one's even heard of them.
But enough with the bad — let's talk about the good. Wands are a truly genius invention of modernity. Sure, they don't give extra magical power, and they actually limit the mage, preventing proper development of the Nous. Lose your wand, and you're defenseless.
And losing it isn't hard — it's actually very easy. There are plenty of ways to disarm a mage, and the wand itself is fragile.
But even with all those drawbacks, one advantage outweighs everything: the ability to perform quick rituals. To make it clearer, let me give an example. Sumerian mages had three main ways to cast spells:
Rituals — the most economical in terms of energy, but also the most complex.
You have to calculate the ritual, sometimes taking into account the position of the stars, the weather in Zimbabwe, and the number of hairs on one of Nurgle's sixteen armpits. The conditions for time, place, and ingredients can be absurdly specific. But with rituals, a mage can do anything — a student could kill a god, if they could lure one into the circle. But when was anything ever easy?
Word Magic — medium in cost and power.
You read a spell, invest ether, and get a result. Simple, right? Its advantage is universality — even a water mage can cast fire spells, though at a higher ether cost. The downside is duration — some charms need to be chanted for tens of seconds, or even minutes. What are you supposed to do, ask your opponent to wait? Sumerians solved this by learning to "record" spells into memory, where they remain compressed. After filling them with energy, you can release them instantly. But you can't store many spells — unless you're a magister, who can keep a dozen protections. Lerah was a master, but weak, so he could only keep two.
Direct Control — willful manipulation of magic.
A fire mage can create a fireball by force of will, a mental mage can read and suggest thoughts, a metamorph can change their appearance, and so on. The downside? It takes years of training, and you lose universality — you focus on one or two, maybe three, directions, gaining affinity with them and losing it with the opposites. It's also the most costly, at least at low and medium mastery, which takes decades to reach. Word magic, honed over centuries, is much more efficient — a fireball with it can cost two to ten times less ether than with direct control.
And the genius of the wand? It's a quick ritual — a hybrid, combining word magic and runes, which you draw with the wand's movements. Ether costs are minimal. They're even lower because many charms have been used for centuries and are literally pressed into the planet's reality, or infosphere. And wands, compared to staffs, are like surgical knives, while the first two are swords.
Now the decline of magical art is clear: mages don't need to develop their shells, because even the weakest with awakened Nous can cast spells.
But I didn't want to give up the advantages of either system. Mastery by the Sumerian method takes decades and depends not only on talent and work, but also on the speed of developing the seventh shell — mine is better than Lerah's, but not by much.
All my hopes are on the ritual I performed. By merging with the shells of the unborn embryo and absorbing the mother's magic, I can change my potential.
But mastering the basics of wand magic can be done in a couple of years, and becoming a master in five or six — monstrously fast by comparison, though the "ceiling" is much lower. So, with a wand from Ollivander's, I learned to draw zigzags, levitate objects with Leviosa, and turn matches into needles.
And I meditated, drawing ether from air, fire, earth, and water. Drawing from earth worked best, but I tried not to go too deep into one element, sticking to universality.
The first month, though, I couldn't cast spells at all — all the energy my soul produced went into healing the tear in my third shell. No miracle happened, and a scar still remained. Whether it will ever heal is a question. After that ritual, I swore off soul magic, at least for myself — it's too painful and affects your personality.
Yes, I lost many colors in life and became more cold-blooded, a very unpleasant sensation that follows you everywhere. If not for learning magic, I'd have fallen into depression for sure.
So, lying on the beach and sipping whiskey with ice, I saw with true sight a huge protuberance of dark energy approaching. Here comes my client — found me after all. And I performed the flesh severance ritual! Fearing magical marks, I even destroyed Lerah's book!
My soul ached — despite the problems it brought, that book had been my teacher, giving me the chance to master magic when, by modern standards, I never could have.
Though there was something strange about it. Until the last moment, I didn't want to destroy it, always finding excuses to keep it — and that became the final reason to get rid of it. I don't like being manipulated.
***
As I expected, Gaunt is a dark mage — and of enormous power compared to me. He'd easily qualify as a strong master, maybe even a magister, by Sumerian standards.
For reference, Sumerian mages are ranked: Student, Apprentice, Master, Magister, and Archmage. There's no direct link to magical power, but if you reach Archmage, you definitely have a lot of it.
A student is just starting out — that's me.
An apprentice has been recognized by a teacher and can research independently in one of the sixty Sumerian arts.
A master has mastered one art and created a Masterpiece — an original spell or magical method.
A magister is a master in three arts.
Archmages... well, they possess colossal power. Maybe you need to reach the limit in your arts, or have enormous might, or master at least five arts. I can only guess.
Sumerian mages valued knowledge above all and shared it freely, which is why Lerah's book contained so many spells, exercises, and rituals not related to artifactory. In contrast, today's sacred knowledge is guarded jealously, and many arts are forbidden — necromancy, soul magic, demonology, even blood magic.
And they're fools. If they ever face an undead invasion or demon incursion, they'll just throw up their hands and wait to have their souls devoured, because they won't know how to resist. I hope they're not that stupid and have some specialists hidden away.
***
"Mr. Gaunt? Good day. Why the grimace? At our first meeting, you seemed so gallant and courteous," I said, lazily.
I was tired of being afraid, and the cold-bloodedness was taking over. Maybe it was the cyanide capsule I'd bitten, or the timer counting down the last seconds beneath me. But that's not certain. Either way, all possible battle options vanished when I saw his power level.
"Muggle!" the man growled, his robe fluttering in the invisible wind of ether radiating from his body.
"You dared to deceive me?! Do you know how long I've been looking for you? If you give me the book and translation right now, you'll die an easy death!"
"Oh, how scary," I said, catching the stench of rot in his lie — he had no intention of keeping his word. Still, mage potions in the ordinary world are terrifying. A couple drops of liquid Imperius, and a person will tell you everything you want to know. Including where to get a couple dozen kilos of quality explosives with a timer and detonator.
"Why are you smiling?" he asked, suddenly wary, renewing his protections and already casting some charms.
But it was too late — even before the red beam from Gaunt's wand reached me, twenty kilos of TNT, written off from a Thai military base, exploded beneath me, scattering shrapnel for four hundred meters. I'd chosen a deserted beach for a reason.
Naturally, Gaunt managed nothing except to throw up extra shields. And I died quickly and painlessly, not letting my soul be captured, just as I wanted.
***
From the twenty-meter crater, a couple meters deep, emerged an even more enraged dark mage. He was unharmed, but that didn't matter. A Muggle had fooled him. A MUGGLE, damn it!
Where to look for the priceless tome now? Maybe it was destroyed! Especially since the beacon had vanished, and he'd had to search for the bastard in a complex, dangerous, and humiliating way — using Legilimency and Imperius on Muggle and magical authorities, because the hair from the old apartment wasn't even his.
Did someone help him? Unlikely. He'd checked all my friends and acquaintances. Where did such skills come from? Only one answer — the tome! He should have just imperiused the little shit into idiocy! The only consolation — I still died, even if not by his hand. Tom Riddle needed to kill someone, or better yet, torture them to death! But he couldn't, not yet.
***
I woke not in a new body, but next to it. Which wasn't surprising — only a third of the pregnancy had passed. Still, the connection held me firmly, so I couldn't "fly" more than a meter away. The child's soul shells were already forming, but instead of an atman, the fourth shell, there was my emblem. I pondered what I'd seen in Gaunt's astral body.
I'd never seen anything like it. Darkness is a terrible thing, sure, but it isn't evil by itself. You can darken from killing maniacs and demons — is that evil? Hardly. No, the real problem was the rot permeating the man from top to bottom, a sign of constant lies, even to himself.
But even that was only half the trouble — if most people's astral bodies resemble their physical ones, his looked like a snake's, torn and chewed, as if it had been ripped apart and spat out. My own scar from the emblem looked like a surgeon's cut — what had he carved himself up with, and why so much? No idea.
Speaking of the scar — it was from there that a thin glowing line connected me to my new body. And through that connection, I felt the emblem was already at its limit, being washed away by Ariel's powerful mana flow!
Looking closer — I didn't need to activate true sight, since in my state it was normal — I saw that the flowing energy was trying to change my vessel! Damn veela, why are you so diligent? You're overdoing it! If this keeps up, I'll be a girl! No way — my little guy is dear to me as a memory!
So I immediately began absorbing ether in the state I was in, and let me tell you, it's damn hard, much harder than in a body! But astral energy flowed like a river, and I managed to stabilize the emblem with its help. From that moment began my great battle for Victor Jr.!
***
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