Chapter 90: New Home and New Visitor

Village without a name, North of Scotland

May 2nd, 1053

–

Erik and Selena were on a pause. After their time in Greece, they traveled to Egypt via ship, where they visited a lot of different places and bought every piece of magical knowledge that was available. Even so, some knowledge could not be bought but the owners accepted an equivalent trade. Lucky for them that they had a very big library. After Egypt they visited some of the countries in Africa that made borders with Egypt, focusing on the east and west countries since most of the countries in the south didn't have a centralized government, being mostly tribal communities at this point in time.

They had some encounters with bad people, but they were nothing that Erik and Selena couldn't handle. But the worst of the encounters was not really with a bad person. He was more likely an entitled one. A Sultan from one of the merchant cities of the desert had put his eyes on Selena and, enamored with her beauty, wanted her as one of his concubines. Needless to say, he was firmly rejected by Selena but being an entitled person like he was, the Sultan ordered the capture of Selena and the imprisonment of Erik. The Sultan's guards were not successful in following any of the orders. They had tried but every person with ill intentions that approached the villa where the couple was living turned back after forgetting who they were and what they were doing for an entire day. Even after a week of having every guard that he sent after Selena and Erik turn amnesiacs didn't teach the sultan a lesson and Erik had to act. He had tried to be civilized at first, but the Sultan didn't understand 'no' as an answer. During the silence of the night, Erik visited the Sultan in his chambers and had a man-to-worm talk with him. Selena didn't ask what happened but the next day a guard appeared by their place to ask her forgiveness in place of the Sultan and gifted her with some jewels, some rare scrolls on magic that he had gotten from travelers, and a carpet that was said to be enchanted to fly. It turns out that the carpet was really enchanted to fly, but a string had been pulled from it and misaligned the woven magic runes that made the core of the enchantment. After a quick fix, the couple followed with their travels while now flying on their 'new' magic carpet.

Lucky for them, they had not had any more encounters with gods. After what had happened in Greece, the couple had doubled their caution. They were strong, but not that strong yet to ignore the 'top' powers of the world. If compared with Devils, Erik would be in the middle of the Ultimate class, mostly thanks to his sacred gear's balance breaker, while Selena would be at the top of the High class.

They had spent the last two years traveling and now they needed a vacation from the vacation. Erik planned to build a house for them. Until now, Hogwarts had been their home, but to keep living in the castle would be against their purpose of letting the school run without their interference. And for that, he decided to build a new house for them. He already had the plans for it drawn, and just needed to find a place that was liked by him and Selena to start building.

Selena's plans were tamer in comparison to Erik's. Or not. She had her head full of ideas for the index and felt the need to start it before her head would be too jumbled with ideas that they would end up mixing. And for that, she needed a place to start putting her theories to the test.

And that was what they were doing now. Erik and Selena had flown over a lot of places in the last few days but none were of their liking. Finally, they agreed on a location: North of Scotland, more precisely, where the village in which Erik was born was once located. The village itself was a temporary settlement for Nordic warriors and their families and had been dismantled some decades ago with the families returning to their ancestral land. The place was a 'perfect' location for their first house. It was isolated, had its own beach, and the stone cliffs around helped to protect the place from the harsh storms that sometimes happen in the region.

A tent had been raised as a temporary shelter for the couple and it had all the necessary commodities inside its hugely expanded interior. They would live well during the summer while Erik was building their home. The material for the house was collected by Erik in person. He mined their own stone from a quarry. Chopped their own wood from the borders of the Black Forest. Crafted his own nails from iron. Shaped and fired his own roof tiles from clay. Magic turned this process so much easier that, in a month's time, he already had the house almost ready to live. From a foundation using Roman cement, to the outer walls using stone and beams made of treated wood. Everything was put together in a month's time with the use of magic to help.

The house was rustic. It had two floors. The second floor consisted of only bedrooms. Six bedrooms in total, and each one with its own bathroom. The rest of the house's rooms were on the first floor. A communal bathroom with bath space, a large kitchen with a big heart and dining table, a big lounge room with a big fireplace, and a huge office that worked as a library too. But the 'star' of the project was really the underground facilities. It had a refrigerated pantry, a training room, a research room, a potions lab, a ritual room, and more. The underground levels were huge. If the house had two floors above the soil, it had five under it. Erik had made it that way so it could pass as an inconspicuous home.

Selena was enamored with the place and she had a lot of fun while choosing furniture for all the rooms. The house-elves from Hogwarts had helped a lot with it, giving her ideas for furniture life while using their amazing woodworking skills. Her favorite feature of the house was not even the huge library space. It was the bathrooms. Erik had used his ideas from his past life and crafted showerheads using copper, bathtubs using white marble, and toilets using marble too. Everything was enchanted. Faucets that gave hot and cold water on demand and toilets that clean themselves after each use. It was a dream for her to just soak in the bathtub while being massaged by jets of water after a tiring day of research.

It was the beginning of July when they finally moved in. They had sent a message to their friend, Hestia, to come by and visit their new home. The little goddess was giddy when she arrived and saw their new and more permanent home. She even blessed their house, adding to its own fort-like protections. The wards that Erik and Selena had put together to protect their house were ridiculous. They estimated that it was three times stronger than Hogwarts' wards while in siege configuration. Hestia stayed with the couple for an entire week. It was her own 'vacation', and when she went back to Olympus, she had a shrunk package under her arm. It had a full stock of sweets and her own bathtub made out of white marble that was fully enchanted, of course. Hestia had been spoiled rotten by the massage function of the bathtub while in Erik and Selena's house.

–

It was a year later when Selena had her first great enlightenment about the library's index. She had finally put together a mix of a runed room together with a Book of Records, like the one that her mother had made for Hogwarts, and a book enchanted to have endless pages. She would have to keep evolving the index, but for now, it would be good.

Selena had carved the runes over the entire library of their new house and linked them all together with a magecraft spell of her creation. It had taken an entire week for the index to be made and it had drained her magic three times, but in the end, all worked well. The index would work together with the carved runes and the Book of Records to store all the information that the library had inside it. Using a quill and ink, the person could write the subject down and the index would then list all the books that had that subject together with where in the library it was stored. The cons of the actual system were that it took too much time indexing the books and to add a new book to the collection was a bother. Resuming, it would need more work.

Their personal strength never stopped growing. Erik and Selena continuously exercised and had mock battles together. All to get more strength and live a more peaceful life together.

–

Ravenclaws' Home, North of Scotland

October 31st, 1055

–

A little more than two years later, during Erik's seventh-third birthday, they received an unexpected visitor. An armored woman that had white hair and a fearless look came knocking on their doors. Erik could feel her strength from the moment that she crossed their wards' line while riding a gray winged horse. And since the wards didn't react to her presence and she was much weaker than him or Selena, Erik decided to see what the woman wanted.

*knock-knock-knock*

The sound of the woman knocking on the doors of the house echoed through its corridors. It was an inconsequential little enchantment that made the sound of someone knocking on the door echo through all the first floor and second floor of the house. Just an add-on to make the house look more 'normal'. Erik walked to the door and opened it. He looked at the armored woman in person for the first time and felt something from her.

"Yes?"

Erik said while giving the armored woman a second look. Aside from the white hair and armor, what got Erik's attention was her eyes. They were gray, a stormy gray. Not really like his own eyes, but very close to it. The woman stood there at the door, silently looking at Erik.

"Lady?"

Erik talked again, snapping the woman of her stupor.

"Eh… Hi. I'm looking for Agnar and his family. I believe that they used to live in a village here. And since you are the only one living anywhere near it, I wanted to know if you know anything."

The woman said to Erik, whose thoughts were running at a very fast speed. Of course, he knew about his father's side of the family and their origin but since they had never come to visit he didn't know anyone from that side. And he couldn't care less about it too.

"The village was dismantled and abandoned some decades ago and Agnar has been dead for sixty-six years."

Erik replied to the woman, who got a frown on her face. She was not expecting that.

"And how about his family? Do you know anything about his wife? I believe her name was Aria."

The woman asked Erik again, who raised an eyebrow at that.

"And you are…?"

Erik asked the woman without answering her question. The frown on the woman's face deepened at that.

"My name is Galdun. And I am a Valkyrie. Agnar is… was my half-brother."

The armored woman, now identified as Galdun, said to Erik while stuffing out her chest while saying what she was with visible pride. That made Erik roll his eyes inside his head. But the woman was, technically, his aunt, so he answered.

"Agnar's wife, Aria, is dead too. She died thirty-six years ago."

Erik replied shortly. The woman could be his aunt, but she does not have his respect. Galdun visibly sighed at that. It seemed that she had hit another wall in her search. A month ago she had discovered through gossip that her mother had had a son before her. She confronted her mother about it and she had found out that it was true. Her half-brother was a warrior that had married, settled in a little village in the North of Scotland, and the last time that she had seen him was more than seventy years ago, during his son's birth. When Galdun asked to know more, her mother confessed that she didn't know anything more. She had left before the child was even named. Gandul was not happy with her mother's actions and the two had a heavy discussion about it. And wanting to meet this lost part of her family, she started to search for them. Unfortunately, she had a mission starting and had to postpone the start of her searches.

"I heard that they had a son too. Do you know anything about him?"

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