Ferry Me Away

"No, it's pronounced 'Sauh-gauh-kour', shall I repeat the rune's functionality aswell Master? In case that knowledge too escaped you?" Kali asked from one of the luxury rooms on a ferry headed to the French city of Calais; the previous occupants of which had an unfortunate fall into the English channel.

Harry shoots a glare from where he's huddled over his notebook. "I'm not stupid, but it's like asking an American to speak the queen's English..." he sighs. Demonic runes were turning out more difficult than he'd thought, true he'd taught himself basic applications of Norse and Gaelic runes for his rituals, but the symbols and pronunciation of Demonic runes were akin to Hierglyphs for him.

In the same manner the Spanish roll their R's, African folks click, and Australian people swear, there were some things you couldn't easily learn from other languages. Problematic, given that a single syllable spoken out of place or incorrectly could lead to the speaker imploding in a violently and spectacularly gory fashion.

The fact that you had to know how to speak the runes as you inscribed them made becoming as fluent as any native speaker essential...

Kali herself, despite attempting to restrain her reactions was becoming frustrated at his less-than-adequate rate of learning. Even if Harry himself thought he was doing exceptionally well for someone his age, and who hadn't been dabbling in magic all that long.

He'd been taught much over the last couple of days, the biggest being to NEVER attempt another ritual without Kali's express permission. She'd somehow connected her mind to his and shown him the results of past practitioners who'd used more protections than he had. There was something to be said about watching some Eldritch Cthulu monster break through the walls of reality and tear a man to pieces a million times a second, as if causality simply glitched in its presence.

He half felt like he was back in school, going through boring motions to learn the absolute basics. She even had him doing 'naptime', though he was being slightly facetious in his description of it. Methods of meditation and collecting of his mind in preparation to start learning defences against mind readers, along with other mind arts.

She did promise to teach him something fun as soon as they had somewhere safe to practise, but he doubted they'd find a spot anywhere soon. With the growing number of posters with his face on it, and magical folks walking around non-magical streets like costumed magicians, he suspected they'd continue their pursuit even in further Europe.

"Master," Kali's voice snaps him back to reality, prompting him to adjust his glasses and go through the motions again, "Sauh-gau-kour..."

"Wrong again, if you attempted to inscribe a rune like that you'd cause a gravity anomaly for a second before it fizzled."

He quirks a brow at that, "That sounds useful?"

"You would think so, until the gravity around your eyes and head start pulling in opposite directions." she drawls, holding his hands in front of her face and making a popping sound, drawing a small chuckle from him.

"I'm surprised the runes can muck with gravity at all." he says.

"That's the main difference between Demonic runes and the local variety. All grew in significance and power with age, but ours were purposely created and with scientific principles backing them. These Egyptians and Vikings didn't even have a word for Gravity, let alone any of the other primal forces of the universe, thus their runes reflect that. Then there's their effectiveness when taken from this realm. Do you think the native languages would work in another?"

Harry shakes his head, "Uh, no?... Maybe?" he mutters in thought, "You said it's the belief of people that gives them meaning and power, that it eventually becomes imprinted in the magic of the world. On another world I'd imagine they'd not work at all?"

Kali smiled, "Well thought out, but alas, incorrect. While most of what you said is correct, you forget that you yourself can give meaning. Your own magic acts as its own foundation with which to build from. If you inscribed Norse runes in my world, they would work as long as you intend them to, even if they would be far weaker than usual."

"Magic is intent made manifest..." he intones to himself, nodding in thought, "Hey, does that mean we could use Sauh-Gour-kor, the Demonic rune for Gravity, to impress the 'weight' of another concept?" he questioned.

"You're chopping up and repurposing the phrase 'gravity of the situation', Master... But that may work as long as it makes sense to you, follows the logic of the rune, and doesn't stray too far from the collective intentions behind them. You might even find it easier to do something like that outside of your native realm, to separate the collective and enforce your own interpretations..." She shakes her head, "Alas, these Advanced discussions can wait until you can properly pronounce the rune, Master."

Harry lets out a grumbled breath and reluctantly gets back to it...

---------------------

"Master, you need to wake up." Kali's voice punches through Harry's pleasant dream, the marshmallow he was burying his face into morphing into the succubus bosom as he opens his eyes.

He blinks, feeling a slight shiver as Kali releases one arm from his shoulder, freeing him from the embrace she'd had during his sleep. "Smnnthing wrrng...?" he sleepily groans, direly missing the warmth.

"Some magicals arrived on the boat with flying broomsticks, searching for you, I imagine." she warns, causing him to shoot upright, now completely awake.

"What do we do? They'll find us eventually." he asks, somewhat panicking at the thought of getting caught. For all intents and purposes he'd be regarded as absolutely evil, which might not be wrong given he'd sacrificed people and summoned a literal demon...

"Don't worry, Master. There's only two of them, the last thing they'll ever do is encroach on our private time." she smiles laciviously, running a finger from under his ear, past his jaw and to his lips, drawing a big blush forth.

"K-Kali!" he squeaks, brushing her off and clambering to his feet. Did she always have to be like this? He knew she was doing it on purpose, even if she claimed that she couldn't help it as a succubus.

Shaking his head, he throws on his clothes and gathers all his possessions and research materials into the expanded bag Kali enchanted for him. The ferry should be reaching shore fairly soon if he had his times right, so they'd be able to escape into France after getting rid of the wizards.

."Any plan?" he questioned, looking to her for advice.

She shrugs, "I'm merely a servant, it wouldn't do for me to tell you what to do."

"But you do that all the time!" he throws his hands up and retorts.

"Maybe, but they're after you. Don't you want to decide their fate?"

...

"They're looking to chain you again, Master. Do you really wish to allow anyone else to decide this for you?" she presses in a crooning tone.

"Y-you're right." he half-growls, drawing Reprisal from the bag and gripping it tightly.

It didn't take long for the two wizards to search the ferry as it wasn't very large, barely housing a hundred people, comparatively nothing to other luxury vessels.

"Like we're gonna find the brat here, if the steward or that sexy bitch in uniform didn't know him then we're better off going diving!" a brusque voice states from outside the room, the sound of the door next to their opening and the feminine shout of surprise of their cabin-neighbour being cut off.

"Stuff it Yaxley, you're lucky the Minister didn't order all the sewers searched too. We're lucky enough with this job, unless you'd rather swap the lorries with Giblie's team?"

"Sod off, that toadie deserves the extra work." Yaxley sighs, "Atleast here we get to sample the goods. Don't know about you but I'm taking home some wine, the muggles won't notice it's absence."

"Hmph, thought you'd start talking nonsense about that hostess' arse again. Creepu fuc-" the man starts but is cut off as he opens the door to Harry's cabin. Neither Auror expected to be ambushed, and both barely had a grip on their wands, causing them both to lose it when a harsh telekinetic blast slammed into them.

Yaxley's head bounces off the metal wall behind him while Johnson rolls to a stop down the hall. Harry jumps out and sprints at the man like a rabid dog, Reprisal's blackened surface glinting in the light as the Auror searches for his wand... Only to find it behind the maddened boy.

"H-Harry Potter!" he shouts, raising a hand to hold the boy off.

To no avail.

"DIE!" he screams, jumping on top of the man and stabbing him in the arm, then the chest, then anywhere else he could reach. "YOU AND THE REST OF THEM!"

"S-staup... H-haarii... Gaahk!"

...

"Master?" Harry sucks in a breath and looks from the corpse, stabbed half a hundred times, to Kali. The succubus sits on her haunches next to him and grips his face, coming close and dragging her tongue across his cheek, "You've got something there."

Blinking in confusion he touches his face and only now realises how much blood was covering him. "O-oh! Uh... Sorry?" he grimaces, "I-, shouldn't have lost it like that." he gestures at the corpse with his bloody knife, "Unless you know a way to make a dead man talk?"

"No need, the other one is still alive. He'll survive the headache." she nods over at the unconscious form of the one called Yaxley.

"Ah, great!" he happily chirps as if he hadn't just brutally murdered someone.

She nods, "Now, go clean up. As much as I like seeing you like this, blood tends to smell off quite quickly. I'll have this one prepped when you return."

--------------------

"Now, this is just a mess..." 

"This is what you called me in for? Peh! Green boys." Moody sniffs at them, his prosthetic eye darting around the room with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

"Well, it was either you or the Unspeakables... 'Least with you we can look you in the eye, creepy tossers..." Dawlish shakes his head, "Wanted to know if you've seen anything like this? To us it resembles Dark ritual magic, same thing with the Carrows..."

"Carrows? Someone finally offed those nutty fecker's then?" he huffs an ugly snort, "Personally don't see the problem."

Dawlish blinks owlishly at him, then at the chair covered in blood, bile and other bodily wastes. "Either you've finally gone barmy or you're letting biases cloud your judgement, Moody! Now I despise Death Eaters as much as the next man, but this?" he jabs a finger at the bloody mess, "Used to be Yaxley and Johnson!"

That gave Moody pause, "Them? Can't see the resemblance," he jokes before limping over, his wooden leg making it an effort. "Well, I can tell you they shat themselves before they perished. No magic to be seen though. Regular muggle torture, someone took their time with it..." he tilts his head at the scuff marks decorating the armrests, "Got their kicks out of it."

"Sick..." Dawlish grimaces, "Are you sure there's no presence of magic? I find it hard to believe that those two were put down without a fight."

Moody shrugs, "You miss the scuffs on the carpet outside the room? Or that small smear of blood on the wall. They didn't get the chance to fight, an ambush. But why...?" he stomps closer to Dawlish, prosthetic eye ablaze, "What were they doing here?"

"You didn't hear? The Boy-Who-Lived is missing, they were one of many teams searching for him."

"Then the people who did this have 'em. Took the opportunity that presented itself." he groused. "Who knows what dark magic they'll be casting on the boy now that they have powerful reagents."

"Reagents-..." Dawlish starts but trails off, glancing at what was left of the bodies, "Y-you don't mean-"

"I do, sonny! So you best get back looking before we find Potter au Poivre on menus in France!" he exclaims before stomping to the door.

"Y-you're not going to help?"

Moody pauses and wheels a glance over his shoulder, "I'm retired, perhaps a vacation is due."