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London
–Damian Hawthorne–
He was deep in thought, behind the mask, as he looked at the entire situation with suspicion that was, in his opinion, entirely warranted. There he was, roaming around the sky of the city, looking for some magic user to see if they could help him, rogue or otherwise, and within the first few minutes of his search, he found a weird robed man just standing in front of a bus stop that had no bus coming for the next couple of hours.
The street was just as desolate, with barely a car passing through, houses having no lights, only a single flickering street light on one side, showing the entrance to a small park that was now closed, and a stable light on the other end, illuminating just the bus stop and the robed man.
The man was also standing completely still, and had his magic hidden, but not so well that a half decent sensor could not sense it. He had very little hope of this leading to a beneficial outcome for him, because this was clearly some mad scientists/wizard who was out on the prowl for some prey, only to be very shocked when the man showed him a sling ring and told him that the Ancient One had sent him…..to help.
Well, the phrasing was different but he knew of only one person who could arrange all of this when all his options were essentially blocked out. If it had been regular circumstances, he wouldn't have even looked at this, but as things stood, he was desperate and this was a hell of a lot better than shaking down people to get an international portkey, track down some random man playing basketball in some random alley in New York.
Looking at the middle finger that also had the sling ring on it, he decided to ignore the joke and nodded, "Alright. You can come. I assume she gave you further instructions?" He had to ask, just in case she had something planned. It would be a long shot to assume that the man could tell him anything but he had to try.
"No," His voice was deep, clearly modulated, and yet, nothing like his own. It sounded…natural.
Huh. Maybe he needed to work a little bit on the basics of his voice modulator because he had heard the thing in action and it was not pleasant to listen to. In contrast, the voice modulator being used was obvious to the other man, but it was not as harsh as his was.
He had only ever used it for his Giant Killer persona, who was supposed to come off as standoff-ish, unapproachable, and intimidating.
"She instructed me to help you transport a large group of people." He continued with the deep voice.
He dismissed his internal ramblings about the voice modulator and how he could improve his own studying the man's design and replied, "Very well. I need you to only open a portal and keep it open for a long time. Be warned, though, the place is extremely secured and as such, any attempt to do anything other than what is infrastructure will result in the wards activating. I can assure you that the outcome will not be pretty."
He tried to convey as much as he could the seriousness of the situation and the severity of his injuries should he try to do anything stupid like trying to venture out of the portal room. He was going to get tagged as a temporary guest for the portal room only. He will not be able to venture out or even try to get to the doors without the ward matrix intelligently analysing the magic, density, bodyweight, height, any magical relics on the person, and a couple of other parameters before taking the appropriate action.
He had programmed all kinds of creative methods, ranging from plain asphyxiation, to a light tap at the skull timed precisely to just knock people out, to fires so hot they would flash fry a normal human, or targeted magical pulses to target any magical relic that could interfere with the wards or his lair.
He was brought out of his ruminations by the man nodding and replying, "Very well."
Feeling the man being earnest enough and him being the only available choice, he chose to believe that and extended his hand, a silent invitation for side along apparition, to reach his lair.
They still had three hours until the sun rose. Plenty of time to save the majority of the thralls from being vaporised by the sun.
The man took the offered arm, and with a silent whoosh of displaced air, they appeared in his portal room, sterile white walls, sterile lights, with only two large doors to work as entry/exit. He deliberately kept the entire place completely plain-looking, to make it appear neutral.
Also, the wall panels house a number of weapons, ranging from non magical to some definitely banned magical relics. The robed man somehow sensed the magical section of the wall because his neck snapped to the side as the man glared at the panels.
A whispered "Interesting," aside, he did not react. For the next part, he connected to the wards, temporarily deactivated some advanced security protocols, and put his hand on the man's shoulder, disappearing from the portal room and appearing in the prison dungeon, the setup for the sleeping prison ready in front of them.
It was only a moment that he spent checking everything in front of him and making sure that nothing was disturbed, but in just that few seconds, the man had crouched on the ground and was seemingly in the process of thinking, which was a big no no in his book.
So, he hefted the man, who felt surprisingly heavy under the robe, "As I said, do anything I didn't tell you to do and the consequences will follow."
The man looked utterly relaxed, despite being held in his grip, probably because he was not dangling the man off his feet as that would require him to fly in the air due to currently being vertically challenged. Curse his still growing body and its inadequate height.
"I see that you have chosen the slow asphyxiation method before keeping them knocked out with a steady supply of air."
He paused, setting the man down as he seemed to have figured out the purpose with a look, a fact that alarmed him more than pleased him, because that meant the secrets of his lair were that much more visible to him. Once again, not having any other option meant his first instinct of tossing the man out was rendered null, forcing him to push down that concern.
"I want you to open a portal from this room to the other room. Can you do that?" he asked, while mentally a bit excited at the prospect of seeing a portal being opened for the first time inside his lair, under his supervision.
A controlled portal experiment, of sorts.
"Yeah, I can do that. Do you want to do that now?"
He nodded, taking a few steps back and pointing at an empty wall that was now covered in a slightly purple haze to mark it as the entry point, "Open one there."
The man nodded, raised his hands, waved them in a circle only once, and a portal was ready, a full sized one, burning at the edges with sparks of a localised wormhole. He tried not to let his disappointment show on his face.
Sure, the ward matrix was cataloguing it as a spatial anomaly and had already taken steps to make sure that anything that came out would be treated to a shock and many more things depending on the resistance displayed and nothing would go in due to the forcefield but the matrix could not close the portal down, not in the way he wanted.
It was not the matrix's fault though. It was doing the best it could, with whatever tools he had given the matrix.
The fault lay with him because as far as the matrix was concerned, the only way to accurately defend against such a portal that used energy that the matrix could not effectively block right now, was to make sure that nothing went in and that anything that came out of the portal was torched to the high hell.
Well, something he could improve upon once he got some light reading done in the library of Kamar Taj or if the Luck Gods shone on him, he might just find something in the Hogwarts library as well. He could only hope.
"Shall we?"
He followed the man back to the portal room and realised he had no name to match to the face, even a fake one.
"What should I call you?"
The man smiled at him and just then, the face hit him with a profound sense of wrongness, as if he was seeing an expression on a face that was just not meant to smile. Also, he looked really familiar to him.
"Lucien. You can call me Lucien. Also, as was instructed to me–" Lucien, apparently, said before taking out his wand. He tensed a little but then realised that he was on his home turf and coiled like a spring to take the man out if need be, so he just watched.
"I vow that I will not venture beyond the two rooms shown to me as long as I am here. This, I swear on my magic!" The wand glowed a brilliant white before the flashbang faded, showing Lucien with his wand back in its holster. A holster that was very well hidden and concealed from magical senses, inside his robe.
While not as powerful and reassuring as an Unbreakable Vow with witnesses and everything, this, along with him being sent by the Ancient One, was enough for him, at least for now and in this particular set of circumstances.
Now, to hunt some(many) vampiric thralls, and hoping that Dumbledore comes through with a way to rehabilitate them.
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