Chapter 80 - The Power of Knowledge.

Author's Note: Due to the fact time travel is a thing, because she’s in a time loop, Aubrey will very regularly be picking up threads and then discarding them after she has done enough to figure out what she needs to know immediately.

Then she’s going to poke other threads. She wants to solve ALL of the problems. Should be obvious, but I wanted to say it directly.

o~*****~o

Since I now know about the attempt on my life which would be coming from the Chinese Shadow Mages I decide it is likely time that I should look into the Egyptian Shadow Mages. These separate groups of Mages both came after me in the initial rendition of this month but are now operating in different manners as the loops continue. For example on the second reset I ran only into the Chinese group but not the Egyptian group. This is odd. For obvious reasons I would like to know why this is happening.

It doesn’t take me long to figure out exactly what is going on. At the beginning of the third reset, I go to where in the Chinese Mages memories they saw the Egyptian Mages for the first time. I find them very quickly, which isn't surprising of course, but it is a disheartening display for their skill level. These are, allegedly, some of the best Mages that the Egyptians have to offer in terms of Shadow Magic.

I can see why the Chinese thought that these were untrained fools in comparison to themselves.

It takes me almost no time at all to knock out all of the Egyptians and then disable the various traps and tricks which they have about themselves so that nobody can read their minds and steal their secrets. The  only exception to this is the contracts which they are laboring under to preserve the sanctity of their Guild. It’s really a shame for them that I know how to suppress and trick these magical binds while I go about reading their minds and memories. The technique is much more careful and slow. It must be so to keep their minds intact and determine what exactly they’re after, not leaking magic for the contract to use to kill them. Even with the slowed pace, it only takes me perhaps 30 minutes to discern the first person I’m probing’s goals. Slow, but not as slow as it could have been.

It takes a few minutes of observing the contracts chains on their persons mind to determine how I can attempt to trick it. It’s based on their memories, so if I change those, and then manually reset the triggers which have gone off… It’d be a complex thing, but I can do it. It’ll just take a bit of time…  So I’ll spend the time. No need to kill them when I can get more information out of them. They’re just following orders. If I can refrain from killing them, then I should.

As I go through the other mages to confirm the information, I refine my technique. By the end of the group, I’ve gotten to the point that when I’m done reading their minds, I’ve already changed their memories slightly. To them, they know that they were knocked unconscious and left tied up somewhere by me and then when they wake up they remember the combat and that I defeated them. They aren't dead, but imprisoned somewhere.

This ‘imprisonment’ is important because when they realize they have absolutely no chance of taking me out, through no fault of their own besides lacking the requisite skill, mind you, they will inevitably flee.

Knowing this, I make the escape from the place I’m holding them extremely difficult of course.

I put them inside of a heavily warded location where they cannot use any magic to escape. I bind their hands and legs to a wall, and put enchantments on them so that if they try to escape with magic they will feel some great deal of pain, and the magic will fail. I do provide them with some things which might be left around in a dungeon which could be used to pick locks, however. On ‘oversight’ which is entirely believable.

Essentially I put them in a location which tells them I'm going to come back to torture them for the information later but I am not actually killing them yet. I am just giving them a great incentive to leave. I have the location charmed so that it will give them food and water whenever they need it approximately every 6 hours is how the charm is set up. I have the house-elf of the manor go ask them questions every day, and write down the response. At the end of the first week, the House Elf tells them that the Mistress is going to come at the end of the month, due to dealing with other complications from their foolish organizations.

Let them make of that what they will.

Lastly,  I have everything very carefully set up so that if at the end of the month they have not escaped there is a ‘failure’ in the enchantments which allows them to escape. This is so if they fail to escape naturally by themselves they think that there is some failure. Perhaps caused by someone trying to break into the property. Testing what caused the failure should come up as inconclusive unless you get to the actual ward-stone, which would probably kill anyone but myself.

I made sure of that.

I have the enchantments set up however to tell me if the number of people inside of the compound drops below a certain number. The number is the number of people that are restrained inside the compound itself.

I am naturally disappointed because nobody escapes from either compound. Instead, all of the Shadow Mages from the Egyptian and Chinese groups are both firmly held within the wards.

It occurs to me that ultimately they can't escape because their escape methods rely upon Shadow Magic, which I put a ward against. Their likely backup is also blocked. Normal magic won’t work for them either.

The Chinese prove more capable once again as they do manage to get into the second layer of defenses. I set up three layers of defenses. One to test skill, one to test physical aptitude and one to test knowledge.

The Egyptians do not escape the first layer. Disappointing.

The Chinese have capabilities to pick locks and Dodge traps and other such things but they do not have the ability to scale vertical surfaces -  as their prison is ultimately underground - and the only way out is to scale a 30-foot vertical wall -  nor do they have the ability to create objects which could assist their escape from materials that they have on hand. At least not within the week and a half that they had to escape when they escaped the first layer.

The goblins on the other hand have a much much more interesting development. I start the month by speaking with Flitwick. I tell him of my predicament and the fact that the Goblins have been very blatantly stealing from me and my family for some time. As a result I took something of equal value from them and now that they want to kill me. I make it clear that I am afraid that it will turn into an outright blood Feud, which I do not want.

He is not very happy with me of course. The fact that I stole from the Goblins is a big mark against my honor as he sees it. However, he is willing to look past this and inform me of what I would like to know.

In short, which goblins are the main detractors from the current Goblin leadership. There are three factions in the goblin government. The old money faction, which is the current ruling class. The warrior faction, which thinks that the goblin should become a martial society again and sell their skills as mercenaries to other races. They say this, along with banking, would allow them to grow in terms of Financial and political might much faster than just being bankers.

The last faction is the reconciliation faction. They want to make up with the other magical species which the other goblins look down on and are native to the Isles. The reconciliation faction ultimately is probably my best shot at getting a group of goblins to agree to something.

They don't want to fight Humanity, they don't want to fight anybody in fact. What they want is to become bankers for every race who live on the British Isles and beyond. I can get them in with other races, which I can use as a stop-gap until I find a way to get them in with another continent - like the Americas - where there are no Dwarves.

I have connections with the centaurs and the Merfolk which would be valuable for them. I can also have them be moved to a location where the Dwarves get what they want and the Goblins who do not want to fight anything or indeed have anything to do with the current power structure can be safe and completely separate from what the Dwarves would be doing.

This would mean that the ultimate reduction in Goblin population would just be the current magistrates and the current ruling class of the Goblins as opposed to the entire race.

So I draft a plan, then I go to see the reconciliation faction.

Upon seeing me for the first time the reconciliation faction is not at all happy. It is publicly known, after all, that I am a thief and that I am not to be trusted and so on and so on. However, the reconciliation faction is not in any way interested in fighting anybody. They understand that I am a prime combatant for my species and somebody who is very capable in destroying them if I manage to sneak all the way to their homes.

So, in fear they are willing to communicate with me.

We quickly came to an agreement. The agreement is not reached easily but I do show them the information that I have been stolen from by the current ruling class. I explain that my theft is merely equal to what they have stolen from me.  They've been stealing precious artifacts from my house including money, rare items and other pieces of historical importance.

So I stole back. In response to this, the rulers have been trying to get all goblins to hate and kill me. As a result I feel pressured to remove them from power and would like to not have to kill all the Goblins but instead relocate them somewhere else. I’d like to let the reconciliation faction take over once the old blood is removed and ultimately they agree to this proposal.

This takes most of the reset however, so in between meeting with those Goblins who periodically will take three to four days to even come up with an adequate response or to review various documents which I present them with I am training with Harry.

The training is ultimately just as fruitful as it was back when we started training together in the last reset. It is not going any slower or faster than the last reset, which is good, but the changes Harry is making are drawing attention.

Unlike in the last reset, Harry is much better in every class because he wants to see what the result of him doing his absolute best in every class would be. While afraid of upsetting me, obviously, he’s still doing what he can to break any record he can.

We invariably have now set the record in every class. Every single record in every single class for 5th-year students is currently absolutely unattainable for others.

On top of this, Harry has been trying other things.

He's been making new friends and he's been attempting to make inroads with some people from every House. His sphere of influence has grown immensely, so he suddenly finds himself not needing his first friends nearly as much. Hermionie is still the most theoretically capable, but Ronald is wholesale replaced by a plethora of students who are better than him in every facet. Neville had already been hedging in on his purpose in the group. Now, the niche of Ronalds strategy was taken over by one of the Ravenclaw boys and Blaise Zabini, whom Daphne tells me is a brilliant boy.

I’m glad for Harry.

By the end of the reset, Harry has a group of friends who are loyal, powerful and knowledgeable in various fields of magic which Harry himself has not studied. Their families have been teaching them well - and so Harry discovers the truth of what I’ve been telling him.

As a side effect, his political alliances have never been stronger. A lot of the factions which naturally oppose him as the heir to Dumbledore’s faction are absolutely terrified, because suddenly Harry went from being somebody with no real political connections or ties to somebody with a lot of them. Most of these connections are to people in my circles, or the other houses who belong to Dumbledore's faction.

While at first, I subtly encourage people to interact or work with Harry, after about a week into the reset I don't need to encourage them at all. They're actively seeking Harry out on their own. As a point of fact, they seem to like him quite a bit more than they like me.

It’s saddening, but ultimately perfectly fine, of course. I understand that my personality is off-putting to a lot of people. I’m not like them, at all.

So it is, come the end of this reset, Harry has a lot of skill, knowledge and interpersonal relationships. He understands how to build and naturally work with the people whom he’s befriended.

And so the third reset ends. The Goblins of the reconciliation faction have come to an agreement with me to move into the Forbidden Forest, where they can easily contact the non-malicious magical creatures of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

The training with Harry is at an all-time high, and I've managed to acquire enough information about the Shadow Mages but I can take appropriate action against them without having to kill them and indeed I don't even have to trap them anymore. I can just Ward against their specific skill sets in required locations and they will realize that attacking me is a fruitless endeavor.  Perhaps they'll send more assassins against me as a result but it will take some time for them to be able to get back, convince the others that they need additional help and then assault me once more. I assume this will take more than one month total. If not, I'll leave some very basic alarms and wards set up to alert me if something goes amiss.

And so Begins the fourth reset.

I quickly contact the reconciliation faction and deposit the papers which they reacted most strongly to upon their desks. I then explain my purpose in the way they had the most favorable reaction to in the last reset - which was argument number three last time - and then leave to give them the required time to process the documents and formulate a response. I suspect it'll be about 5 days this time.

Once I finish with that task I head over to where I know all  of the Shadow Mages to be,  and after confirming that they are all the same groups and people that I captured last time I go about setting up words to counter their specific power sets and techniques. This is to give them a non subtle poke that I know who they are, what they can do and that I've already countered them. If this doesn't terrify them into leaving I do not know what will.

The final thing that I do is go back to school. This first thing only takes me about one day total and in the end I am training with Harry once more.

This reset, while being much calmer than the previous one, has much more progress on my personal goals. It is at the end of the reset that I get to see what my plans coming to fruition - at least for the goblins - looks like. The reconciliation faction fully moves out,  and as they're moving out I go to the dwarves, open the gate to the Goblin Town, and let them take it back over. The Warriors and the heads of government are removed and the rest of the Goblins successfully escape as this was planned for the second that they heard combat happening they realized the reconciliation faction had been telling the truth and they escaped via pre-meditated methods of which I am not privy to.

Harry  continues to expand his political influence of course, he spends his time not training with me, feeling out people who he did not feel very good about in the initial reset to see how they react to his comings and goings. he spends the entire reset mostly focused on a couple of people who he thought were good connections to make but wasn't very sure about their ultimate loyalty.

I - in the meantime - work on improving my tracking and undetectable tracing charms. I work on these because I want to put them on the Assassins who are visiting the country so I can see where they go and roughly who they report to. This is ultimately so that I can retrace their steps and remove any major threats to my family before they become a threat to my family. I doubt that the whole organization has an issue with me, based on the fact that when I have read these people's minds they didn't Harbor any resentment for me personally. This tells me that while I have enemies they are not necessarily the entire organization. It is somebody highly placed in the organization. perhaps the leader perhaps whatever Force drives the organization as a whole but not the whole organization. I suspect it is ultimately some priest or similar entity who has a connection with some deity and that Daddy doesn't like me so that priest doesn't like me and they are sending this organization against me to stop me from becoming a larger threat down the line. of course they don't know how  dangerous I actually am, they only know that their daddy does not like me.

So, they send a group which they think would be able to handle anybody at my age to take me out. This is obviously a gross understatement of my power as if they actually did  their research properly, they would find that this level of opponent is likely not able to handle me. or they're stating that the people that The people that they are acquitting me to would be able to be handled by this and when they discover this level of effort is not enough to kill me they will reassess.

Either way, the Assassins have been dealt with for this reset. I did not find where their bases are but I'm working on that, Maybe next reset.

The only other thing of note is that when I complete the quest, and get the Dwarves their home back I get an additional secret objective completion. This secret objective is very tantalizing in the fact that the reward isn't something I can actually acquire- but it tells me what the reward will be if I managed to complete the secret objective for this Quest. it is quite obvious that this is why the quest entirely didn't close out once I completed it. There are secret objectives which have time frames which extend to beyond the actual Quest itself.  Miniature quests inside of the quest, if you will.

What is this Quest?

Secret Objective:
Ensure all Goblins do not die as a result of the Dwarves taking back their rightful homes. To complete this, 60% or more of the Goblin population must survive for a year beyond the completion of this quest.

Reward:
Anything you ask of the Goblins, in their power, will be granted. Even dropping blood Feuds, should you wish.

Obviously I would be using this reward to eliminate the blood feud between the Dwarves and the Goblins. This would allow me to build my city in the future with both Goblin and dwarf assistance. The stonework, architecture and capabilities inherent to go with races would be useful.

I'd have them keep checks and balances on each other of course. they may not be in Blood Feud after I've completed these quests and made my requests of them, but they will still dislike each other quite a bit. If they are actively auditing each other constantly, looking for any excuse to get the other in trouble, then I won't have to do any of that myself.

This is ideal for a perfect banking situation. The economy will regulate itself with no need to be interfered with by myself or the human legislation beyond a once a year check in.

The Goblins will make sure that the dwarves don't do anything that is not inside of their contracts, and come up with creative solutions to invest and do the tasks which the Dwarves don’t usually handle. The more risk-taking sides of banking.

The Dwarves meanwhile will make sure that the Goblins don't try to steal anything in the flurry of paperwork they produce in that investment and other money making schemes. They will also make sure that anything that looks amiss is punished swiftly and brutally.

The cunning minds of the Goblins working with the careful, methodical minds of the Dwarves will likely result in the most economically viable banking solution that I could possibly hope for.

If they can actually put aside their enmity for the requests I’ll make. Maybe ease them into it. Make them agree, then have them put the most open minded, likable Dwarf and Goblin together on a simple project. When they don’t kill each other, and the project works out, then do more collaborations. Slowly. I have years to make this work. I don’t need to rush things.

I hope.

o~*****~o

The reset after that went in much the same way - with my rearrangement of the obstacles the trapped shadow mages had to overcome showing me that while the Egyptians weren’t good with locks they were very good at escaping anything which wasn’t locked firmly.

After all, they got to the third obstacle, which was a very difficult lock. The very best locks I could make, find or otherwise conceptualize, backed with magic to foil anything but a perfect pick attempt, or the actual key.

The Chinese shadow mages never got past the obstacle which required them to climb up the stone shaft which went up vertically 20 meters. The Egyptians made it by the end of the second day, having apparently used their various beds and metal pieces from chairs to construct a set of handholds. They climbed those over those two starting days, making more handholds as they went.

They were very crafty.

So it seems the Egyptians are better with resources where the Chinese are better at classical infiltration. This tells me the Egyptians are probably better outdoor assassins, where the Chinese would be better at indoor assassinations.

If they had the skills of the other group they’d be a nearly perfect assassin. Unfortunate, in the long run. They probably hate each other as much as they hate me - I have to believe that because they never help each other. They do take advantage of each other when they see the opportunity to gain from the other doing something.

They’re assassins and I am the target. If another assassin is going to fight me, they can either report I died, or they can figure out how I beat the assassin in question and then try to kill me more effectively.

The issue with these groups is I still don’t know why they want to kill me. Reading their minds shows they were just ordered to do it - which means I’ll have to go find where they got their orders and read the minds of the ones who sent them. Maybe they’ll not know either and I’ll have to go up and up the chain. I’d rather make these people allies and training partners. I doubt there are any Prodigies, but perhaps one or two…

If I am unlucky, there’ll be two.

That aside, nothing noteworthy happened. With my base testing of the limits of other shadow mages - when they can’t use magic - done, I decide to move on to my next stage of planning.

Going to their masters, and seeing if I can figure out why they want to kill me - and if they know who else might be interested in killing me. Usually when you research a target, you’ll find more of their enemies than they’d know about.

I might not find anything new, but I might find I have a lot more on my plate than I know how to deal with. I’d rather know who is doing what now as opposed to later. A couple outside perspectives will be welcome, I think.

Egypt is closer for the main group of people I’ll need to deal with. The Chinese mages do, however, have a forward operating base which they came from. It’s in Berlin, which is interesting, if not a little disheartening. The fact they have twenty assassins and five ‘elders’ who live in the city and have gone undetected for as long as the memories said they had - well.

I’ll check that out first. After all - most of their assassins are in England right now - looking for me. I’ll tie them down in my dungeon and then go poking about their base. The Egyptians will be scouted, and maybe tackled next month. If that goes well enough, I’ll probably visit the various places again and  try to figure out as much as I can from their libraries and centuries of knowledge gathering.

Surely they have more than I do with their centuries in the arts. I can - and will - benefit from their efforts.

.*****.

I sit - upside down - on the ceiling of the meeting room where the Elders of the Chinese Shadow mages are talking. I’m in Berlin, and honestly this is horribly disappointing. The Shadow mages who led me here seemed to think that these guys were terrifying in combat - unbeatable by their crew.

That may well be true, but their senses of when they’re being spied upon are quite dull. I’m not using Shadow Magic to hide - instead using generic magic which I’ve compressed so tightly as to be almost undetectable. But still. Rolling my eyes, I decide I’ve heard enough of their arguments. I strike.

The first two get dragged into the shadows before the other three can react, and when they do, they are appreciably fast.

Only marginally slower than I am. Impressive.

Then, I pull out a deliberately blunt sword - minimally enchanted to not break the skin but be almost impossible to break, and jump down to fight.

I parry the first elder’s dagger thrust and use my offhand to grab the second elder - behind me - and twist his arm as I throw him into the first. The crunching of bones in his arm makes me smile lightly. Fast, but not very tough…

I blink as I notice the female elder has disappeared from my senses. I sweep around into my blind spot with the blunted sword and feel a solid connecting and a crunching as a pain enters my side.

Sneaky! Good!

I twirl in place and deliver a kick into the opposite side of where my sword hit, and then punch her squarely in the chest, sending her back with a surprised gurgle.

I’ll have to make sure no ribs punctured her lungs. After the other two --

Ah, one. Somehow the first one I parried was knocked out. Hit his head, maybe? Doesn’t matter.

I parry the dagger, throwing it out of the final good arm this elder had, then break the shoulder and punch squarely into his chest to send him in a heap with his fellow. None of these were extremely impressive but that one female elder. The other two reacted faster, but didn’t surprise me.

I touch my side, fingers coming away with blood, and grin, before healing myself. This will be a good time to learn. How to avoid killing them, that’s the question. Surely they’ll have more touchy mental defenses than the others…

I tilt my head in thought as I double check everyone is down - but not dead - and then begin slowly putting up a containment field, as with the others. Maybe add in contract runes to overlay on the current defenses which allow me access to what is locked away? That might be an option, but it’d be hard to do correctly.

I have to assume they’re using relatively normal contracts, which means that they can be countered with another contract, but how they’re unique will determine exactly how I can counter them.

I’ll use this reset to figure out how their defenses work - and then next reset I’ll have a counter designed to pry their secrets from them. That should work. I think.

I twist my mouth in dissatisfaction, intentionally showing the emotion because I need to work on emoting, because I don’t, due to my level of bodily control. Then I wrinkle my nose in distaste.

This poking and prodding could take too long. I’ll see if I can make a modular defense. Add a layer to allow me access after the initial runic prison. It should work. Should. The theory is sound.

I nod to myself as I set to work.

.*****.

Two hours - and a near miss with my first attempt, I have a working prototype. The counter to their exact contracts turned out to be three counters. They had three contracts. The first defended their mind, the second defended the contract, and the third defended the fact there were any defenses at all on the mind. That last one had caused the near miss. The fact this lady isn’t dead is due in large part to the magical isolation I’d put her in. Annoying contracts.

Thankfully, with my admittedly crude countermeasures up, I managed to reset the contracts, then peek into her thoughts.

She isn’t a Shadow magic specialist, not at all.

She’s an elemental specialist, with shadow magic and general magical training. Her elemental magics allow her to erase her scent, noise and sounds. They increase the penetrative power of her weapon, they increase the damage that penetration does, and they make the wounds very hard to heal.

She’d been almost impressed, and a bit scared at the lack of damage her blade had done when it pierced my side. I’d been impressed it had in fact penetrated my side at all. My skin is, at this point, pretty hard to get through. I have a constant set of spells on myself when I go into combat, though they’re not flawless - as she proved - they are good. I have perks making my skin harder to breach too.

The internal damage had been resisted due to the weakening of the attack by my spells and perks. Then the rest was absorbed when it tried to branch into me, thanks to the Giant’s Blood perk.

Still, her tricks and improvements, along with the knowledge she had as an elder of the second ring -- which means she’s not one of the main clan elders but is basically in charge of everything they don’t directly oversee I guess - means I got a lot of little tricks her clan had made since their founding on elemental support magics. She was the primary trainer for those who live in Berlin on the elemental support skills for their shadow magic, and was considered and adept in Shadow Magic by the clan - and her knowledge of Shadow Magic had been nearly equal to my own - barring the Shadow Queen skills.

So I moved onto the other elder who her memories indicated was the local expert on Shadow magic - not a Master in their clan, but one step below true mastery as they see it, and built an entrapment around him. I put up the counters to the generic contracts blocking me from seeing the things stopping me from all of the information I wanted, then looked into his mind.

He’d been much less defended than the previous Elder.

One contract for generic information control, and the one to block him or anyone reading his mind from figuring out he had a contract. I formulated then put down a counter to his contract, and then delved deeper.

Now this - this is what I needed.

He has three techniques, which are all the Expert level clan tricks which lead into ‘true mastery’. One is a technique to allow control over creatures of shadow and night - Ravens, Crows, Wolves, Bats and so forth.

The second is a technique which allows you to exude a shadowy aura, masters of the technique can cover up to 20 meters of space with this, allowing them free reign to go wherever they want in that area whenever they want. They should be able to exude it instantly. He’d never mastered this - it still took him a handful of seconds of focus and complete immobility to exude a 10 meter shroud.

The third technique is the one which really grabs my attention - it is known as ‘Dark Mirror’ and it allows you to create a parallel consciousness to your own to allow you to process information faster, and it can learn and grow independently of your own mind. Masters have it going forever. He’d thought this the least important skill - and I heartily disagreed. The price was steep - to have an exact copy of your mind to process and give you information on details you may have otherwise overlooked required half of your total Shadow mana. But that was a low cost - considering the fact that this was obviously a starter skill for something bigger, if you knew what you were looking for.

And I did.

This is what I need to complete Simulacrum.

Sure, it’ll take some modifications, using normal mana instead of Shadow Mana - or both types for a better Simulacrum - but it will do what I need. Then I just need a shell to hold the mental shell, and I’m set. Considering this is something which is its own entity once created, I just need to put it into a body which is designed for it, and I’m golden.

Metal will be too clunky and loud, where soft things like snow will be too fragile. I’m not going to dip into necromantic arts and make flesh golems to house the mind, so I’m left with a couple of options.

First, would be something organic - like wood - but that’d also be too heavy. So I’m looking at materials which would be light and strong enough to endure damage. Modern body-armor like Kevlar will be a likely go-to for me. It’d be about 14 stone of Kevlar, which is just a bit more than I weigh. If the whole body is made of Kevlar.

A very good option indeed…

I’ll have to see how enchantable Kevlar is. I can’t see it being a problem, but you never know, honestly.

The third Elder, I read the mind of just to be certain I’m missing nothing - and I’m a bit glad I did so. He’s the master of mundane skills - and that includes everything from weapons to cooking to picking locks. He’s a bow and swords specialist, but his insights into cooking and other mundane skills are worthy of keeping in my mind, because he knows a lot about the subjects.

Everything I could get out of them acquired, I frown in indecision. These people won’t be held by the prison I set up for the non-elders they’d sent after me. Nor can I just let them loose.

Memory charms might work -- for a bit. Maybe I just put them somewhere they can’t get back from easily? No, that’s too traceable.

I hum in thought as I consider my options - and the three elders - awake - look on in horror as I hum for minutes, before nodding decisively.

“I’m going to just seal this place. Nothing against you lot, but I can’t let you get out, nor can I rely on wiping your memories. I apologize, but I see no other way around what has happened. You’ll be freed at the end of the month - I should be done with my tasks by then.” I say aloud, and get what I imagine is a colorful cursing out by the martial elder - though I can’t hear him, and choose not to read his lips.

I set to work on laying out the imprisonment array. The hardest part is making sure it summons enough food for them to survive on. I have to link it to the only place I know has food - which is the Hogwarts storerooms - and that makes the rune sequence harder to complete than I’d have liked.

Still, it only takes a bit over an hour to complete, before I bow, and leave, activating the runes which will seal them inside for a month.

I have some Egyptians to investigate!