19 Jan 2022, 11:02
Finding Surcross
Backdated - 27th December 2021
Youssuf looked up at the sun. It was bright (DUH). Well, it wasn't bright exactly, but it wasn't grey and covered with clouds either. Uncommon weather for London, he'd found, especially in winter. For a split second, he looked around and forgot why he was there. It was a good day. Pigeons were pecking at the ground in the little snow-covered square of sorts he was sitting in, and he was enjoying a hot drink of coffee from a thermos. Some Muggle inventions were rather useful. Like refrigerators, and TV. And Spotify. And Netflix. Spotify was most prominent in his mind at the moment, since he was listening to songs by Carlos Vives on it at the moment.
Then, as Youssuf hummed along to El Parrandero, he remembered why he was there. To find a man. A rather elusive one. Actually, he couldn't care less about the man, but his uncle had told him to find what the aforementioned man was carrying. Youssuf's uncle, Arfaz Baid, was a collector of magical antiques, and a rather rich one too. It was quite ordinary for him to take Youssuf along on one of his collecting trips; once they Apparated to Paraguay and spent the next two weeks tracking down a rare piece of goblin-imbued iron. A shield, it turned out to be. A shield which absorbed any spell thrown at it to make it stronger. Youssuf was eight.
But his uncle was a true friend of the goblins. The shield was given over to them without complaint. Thereafter, Arfaz Baid was known among the goblins by the nom de guerre 'Oathkeeper'. He went on several collecting missions for them; reimbursed, of course, for his troubles.
Anyway. His uncle had given Youssuf a picture of the man too, for descriptive purposes.
𝕾𝖚𝖗𝖈𝖗𝖔𝖘𝖘 - 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕷𝖆𝖜𝖑𝖊𝖘𝖘 𝕺𝖓𝖊
Solomon Surcross. All-round unsavory character - thief, burglar (those two are not the same thing) and smuggler. A Squib, it seemed, yet an extremely clever sneak even so. He wasn't going to track down the man himself, thank God. He'd just been told to take the picture and the information to...ah, there we go.
He'd been waiting for a corridor to open across the square, as he'd been instructed. At 12 noon sharp, an small archway appeared in the middle of the brick wall just opposite the fountain. It led, Youssuf could see, into a dark, enclosed alley. Then he smiled. Just as the archway opened and then shut loudly, Robarte un Beso had started playing. A good omen!
He drew his wand, and tapped on the closed archway. Youssuf muttered, as his uncle had told him to, "Primus, deleui, novissimus!" It meant 'Made first, destroyed last'. Anyway, the archway opened with an audible whoosh. He set down the passageway fearlessly.
𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖆𝖘𝖘𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖜𝖆𝖞 𝖜𝖍𝖎𝖈𝖍 𝖔𝖕𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖉 𝖎𝖘 𝖔𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙
After 15 minutes, he'd turned four rights and two lefts. He was getting a bit tired of all the secrecy and the hiding and the darkness, too. Then he turned a last corner, and suddenly the corridor changed. Into a REAL corridor. With wood panelling, and jazz music playing, and pictures on the wall. All sorts of weird stuff was in the pictures - one showed nothing but a pixie chasing a man holding a egg.
The young wizard took off his earphones and put them in his pocket with his phone. Then he checked whether he had the pic of Surcross, drew his wand, and proceeded onwards.
Youssuf reached the end of the passage not long after, and the panelled area vanished. There was a set of tightly rounded stairs going down. He headed down them (again, DUH).
In the large room he found below, there was a door on one side, and a staircase on the other. He knew not to take the stairs (it would, his uncle said, lead to a horribly unproductive life). The door looked suspiciously unadorned. There was a lamp hanging just over it, giving light to the dark brick area.
𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖗𝖔𝖔𝖒 𝖄𝖔𝖚𝖘𝖘𝖚𝖋 𝖋𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉 𝖍𝖎𝖒𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖋 𝖎𝖓
He rapped on the door; the front door, as it were, of the Chercheurs De Raretés, renowned in the cursebreaker world and the magical Underworld as the Seekers of Rarities, or just the Churchies.
A family, the Abreos, ran it now. They could, it was said, find anything as long as it was not in the fires of hell. There were two young ones and their father, Jonah Abreo. All accomplished wizards. The son, Philippe, was an especially skilled curse-breaker, till an unfortunate and unknown accident befell him. He now worked for his father, collecting from around the world.
The door was wrenched open by a once-handsome man, in his thirties. Once handsome, because his face was now marred by a scar which ran from his forehead to his neck. A dragon had done it, some claimed. Some said it was a werewolf. All agreed it was a savage beast.
This was Philippe Abreo.
He snarled, "What do you want?"
Youssuf stood, frozen.
Kup-fun-tor ha'kiv na'ish du stau? Dom nam-tor vohris nem-tor ha'kiv.
Can you return life to what you kill? Then be slow to take life.
Stam: 8 | Eva: 4 | Str: 5 | Wis: 8 | ArcP: 2 | Acc: 3 |
Can you return life to what you kill? Then be slow to take life.
Stam: 8 | Eva: 4 | Str: 5 | Wis: 8 | ArcP: 2 | Acc: 3 |