Serpentine

The running of feet tapped and echoed, disorderly down a sterile yet dark and eerie hallway.

The lights above flickered ominously, and lighting licked its tongue harshly in the distance sending out murderous booms and instantaneous white flashes.

*Thud**Boom*

A door was slammed open, off of its hinges and then discarded to the side like trash. The figure bulldozing through the corridor, continued to charge ahead, door after door, room after room. Running and smashing through doors…. like a barbaric madman.

The hooded figure stood 1.7 meters tall had broad shoulders, a thin waist with a black sinister stick holstered to it, gray hair, dark sleep deprived eyes, and several miserable scars crisscrossing the mouth. The hooded figure, emanated an aura of age, yet he expressed excitement and joy, as if he had just found the cure to an incurable disease.

Two *Thuds* and *Booms* later and the man came to a halt in front of a door labeled "Mason's Lab : DO NOT ENTER" 

Since the man was the owner, he strolled in, pressing his hand against a rune and allowing the door to slide open. The lights popped on and Mason walked past several cases, which contained bodies he wished to persevere.

Mason was a necromancer, not just any old necromancer, but one specialised in the soul, allowing him to body snatch to the age of two hundred years old.

However, well versed in necromancy, Mason knew his time was ending and almost up. He had been too greedy in gaining strength, making his soul too large, whilst his body weak, unable to find a suitable vessel, Mason decided to make one.

Greek mythology had a being known as a Chimera. This word has two meanings: meaning one: a creature with a lion's head and body, goats head and hooves, a dragon head and flames and a snake as a tail, meaning two: a mixture of animals fused together to create a powerful hybrid.

Mason, inspired by the latter meaning, got to work setting up the fusion room, which was made up of nine runes placed on top of nine pedestals, which surrounded an altar. 

The nine runes were:

Rune of man: 

Requirement: Blood of thirty archmages, a ferrous ball and a unicorn's horn.

Usage: Used to create a humanoid body.

Rune of Lizard: 

Requirement: Blood of dragon kin, basilisk venom and basilisk fang.

Usage: Grants the body Gorgon eyes of stone, with a secondary effect being fear and talking to reptiles.

Rune of Spider:

Requirement: Eyes and core of a brood mother, along with the face mark on the abdomen.

Usage: Grants the body extra limbs, webs, reflexes and poison glands.

Rune of water:

Requirement: Blood of three hundred varied aquatic creatures, and a fragment of the fruit, the heart of the sea.

Usage: Grants sea form, water speech, water breathing and water manipulation.

Rune of fire:

Requirement: Blood of ten different fire creatures and a volcano's heart.

Usage: Immunity to fire/ heat and offers fire manipulation and higher offensive capabilities.

Rune of wind:

Requirement: A dead gryphon, Sky snow and a storm in a bottle.

Usage: Wind manipulation, added reflexes/ speed, better hand eye coordination.

Rune of earth:

Requirement: Bat and ox blood, a cave's heart and a mountain's heart.

Usage: Extremely resilient, granted earth manipulation and diamond skin.

Rune of growth:

Requirement: thirty different grasses, a large amount of protein and a sun bomb

Usage: Grants nature manipulation, less/ zero limiters and immunity to poison.

Rune of balance:

Requirement: Elder flower

Usage: Harmonizes magical equations and increases the potency of magic, so success is almost always close to a hundred percent.

Mason placed his hand into his pocket and removed a white rose with gold leaves and a multicoloured stem, sparkling in the harsh light of the lab.

This rose was an Elder flower, a flower used in many alchemy based experiments like the philosopher's stone or the immortality pill. Extremely powerful, yet also flawed by its nature, which placed an inherent limit or a balancing factor in other words, onto the created object. Creating objects which were not overly strong but at least they were a prototype, an initial success to the larger proceedings.

Mason required this experiment to work without failure, otherwise he would die. Hence why he hunted all over the world for this flower, eventually finding it in the Amazon rainforest. 

Placing the last ingredient on top of the specific rune, Mason raised his wand, and let his magic gush forward like a flood. Mason after three seconds felt like a starving man throwing away his food, however, Mason knew creating life was difficult, so he had a few mana tanks available which he gladly used.

The harsh light in the lab was replaced by what could only be described as a singular point of pure and white light, and the blue liquid in the surrounding tanks rapidly drained until they *popped*. 

*Pop* x1

*Pop* x5

*Pop* x20

The tanks started *popping* until the lab sounded like a popcorn machine. Mason had sweat running down his face and could barely hold on, until the last tank popped, and Mason fell to the floor exhausted.

Did he succeed? Or was he going to die here?

Shakily standing up, Mason looked anxiously towards the altar, and was stunned.

On top of the altar was a naked three year old male body, covered in purple scales and light blue skin, two small fangs could be seen hanging out of the mouth and the humanoid, appeared to be undergoing some sort of metamorphosis. Sometimes it's legs would be replaced by a tail, other times the legs would have joints and an exoskeleton, however, the legs returned to a humans again and again, until the transformation stopped.

A thundering roar shook the lab, "I HAVE FINALLY SUCCEEDED! NO LONGER WILL I BE BOUND BY MORTAL CHAINS OR WIZARD SOCIETIES! NO LONGER WILL I HAVE TO SEARCH FOR MUGGLE VESSELS TO PROCESS! I…. AM….. FREE!"

With that exclamation, the body Mason had inhabited fell to the floor with a solid *Thud* and a translucent orb could be seen approaching the body on the altar.

Unfortunately for Mason, he did not consult with those in the field of life creation, nor did he pay much attention to muggle religions, so he was unaware that life, whether natural or unnatural, would experience ensoulment, and young souls would be protected by a strange primordial force.

In addition, Mason had not checked if the ritual had turned off. So Mason the necromancer, who had specialised in souls, and was trying to enter his creations body with utmost haste, had met his demise, and had become food for the young soul, naturing and removing any deficiencies it processed.

*Whoosh*

In a burst of smoke two individuals dressed in black and wearing skull masks appeared, from the tone of their voices, one was a woman and one was a man.

"Beth said Mason was going to die right? Mason the bodyswapper, the one and only soul snatcher, that Mason?" (Woman)

"Yes but she can never get her times right, giving us somewhere in 1980s is really unhelpful"(man)

" At least it's something, we saved Benny last week, ambushes from grythondor are a pain to deal with. Why couldn't they just stay cowering in there school for dorks and geeks? Seriou ..."(woman)

Stopping mid sentence the death eaters noticed a body on the ground, rushing up to check for life and soul, their examination showed that both were extinguished and that Mason was dead.

"Impossible! He can't be dead. He… he must have been transferred to another vessel and will surely contact us later, there is no way one of voldemort's disciples could just die, is there?" (woman)

" He is definitely dead. I've seen his work and when he switches body his last one turns to ash when he succeds, do you see ash? No? Then he is dead. Considering the set up over there, he must have wanted to transfer his soul into that creature."(man)

"THEN IT DIES!"(woman)

Pulling out a short sword, the death eater hysterically swung her short sword brutally towards the heart of the creature. *Clank* and was rebounded by the impact of hitting scales, landing firmly on her arse in a sorry state.

Against popular belief, not all wizards used wands, in close combat situations swords, axes, daggers, spears, and even fists are deadlier than sticks and chants.

However the sword that this death eater prided in using had a deep and visible crack, whilst some parts had even chipped away.

"Impossible, he survived being stabbed by a Cerberus's claw. Although it isn't the sharpest it can still piece steel, magic shields and spider generals fur. What is he?"(woman)

"A new addition to the squad I'm apart of, Rex should accept him easily. Help me to lift him up."(man)

"What? Why would you add him to the primordials? Are you crazy?" (Woman)

"With a bit of training he could be used to kill goody two shoes wizards, and he would be impervious from physical attacks and most spells." (Man)

"What do you mean he is impervious from spells?" (woman)

"Are you an idiot? Your sword was enchanted with hellfire, hence if he survived that spell we can assume he is impervious to most spells. Anyway help me transport him, he looks like he is in a state of smoothing out his soul, and considering how he was unnaturally made, he may imprint onto the first person he sees, which means we would have a strong child"(man)

Moving over to the altar the male death eater grabbed the individual on the table by it's armpits and was waiting for the other one to grab it's legs.

With great reluctance, the other death eater shuffled over grabbed the humanoid by it's legs, and then the room was greeted by silence as they vanished.