Devil's Ambition - 1

Summary: "Magic bends to the stronger will, while the weakest is tugged into a grander scheme."

For The Weird Prompt Strikes Back! [Daily Competition] prompt: Final Fantasy

I liked writing the last one with these two so here's a short multi-chap on how they met and such. It's basically a prequel to Promist Desert.

Her fingers curled around the thick leather spine, pulling the book from the shelf only for it to slip out of her grip and hit the floor of the library with a loud thump. A multitude of shh and swift glares were sent her way the following second before it was quiet again.

Luna bent down to gather up the book, clutching it to her chest as she stood up and walked down the aisle towards the back of the massive library so she wouldn't bother anyone. She found a desk crammed in the corner and placed the book on-top of it before sitting down in the rickety old chair. With a flick of her wrist, a wave of her wand, the chair straightened just enough so she would be certain it wouldn't collapse with her in it. She turned her attention to the book then: it had no author emblazoned on it's cover, just a worn set of nearly indistinguishable letters decorating the dark brown leather.

Quattour Elementa

The Four Elements. Something the wizarding world didn't touch anymore considering the cloud of dust when she had set the book on the table. It was extremely old magic that didn't require a wand, and yet very few people looked back to what their ancestors had done in the time before transfiguration and the ilk. All the magic they cast now had some connection to it. It had to, but no one could ever pinpoint what it was.

For instance, you could create water with a wand so it was safe to say the water element was used there. As for the other elements though? The fiendfyre represented fire well enough: a blaze of colors, wild, destructive. It was actual living fire, but it was passed on as a creature rather than living flame. A summoned creature who's existence was speculated on, because unattended magic made it. Which begged the question of how this unregulated magic could create such a thing without a wizard there to direct it?

The answer was in this book - or rather a book with the same topic as this one - along with many others on those mysteries; she wanted to re-discover it. That wild magic of the elements and this was her first stop of many in her quest. She could hardly wait to see if she could even discover completely new creatures by becoming more in tune with the ancient magic of the earth.

Speaking of earth... She flipped open the book to the first page. That was the first element it spoke of: unbending, strong, flexible. It seemed hypocritical at first, to say the element didn't yield but then to say it could bend but it made sense. Stone itself was hard to break, but trees could be uprooted by a strong wind and there was natural erosion from wind and water that shaped the earth differently over time; it just took awhile.

It would certainly be an interesting element to learn. Luna tucked her wand into her robes before she began flipping through the worn pages; they were thin and nearly cracked at her touch so she had to take care with each page. Some of the letters in the words were faded and she would have to squint to see the curve of the line to distinguish which letter it was without resorting to guesswork. Something she didn't want to do unless she interpreted the words wrong and caused a wreck in the library.

That's partly why she had chosen the corner instead of the more inhabited areas of the library, and also because the librarian wouldn't allow a book in this condition to leave the library or else it might 'mysteriously' fall apart. In other words it might get ripped or spilled on, anything that would make it unreadable that couldn't be fixed with magic because of it's age.

Her finger stopped it's slow crawl just above the current page. It was talking about a spell now, conjuring earth. She gazed over the words, the main way to cast a spell back then when they didn't have wands; it was just the voice of the witch or wizard that controlled the magic. It looked simple enough, not something that would cause a ruckus in the library so she stood up, pushing the chair back.

Luna took in a breath before extending her hands in front of her, palms open in a cup as if she were catching raindrops. "Egomet excieo lutum ex terra. A saeculo fragmen tarde moreretur." She watched as little grains of dirt appeared in her hands, stopping just before even one of them could fall out.

There was another step as well, to continue the casting of the spell though it wasn't required. With a grin at her success she closed her eyes and slowly parted her hands, letting the dirt tumble down to the floor. It could easily be swept up after her experiment. As she let the dirt fall around her she began speaking softly, "Custos terra, afferte mihi nostra arenc solitudinibus. Calida et ardens acerrimi quidem bellator. Ego ad domum tuam."

The sand around her lifted from the floor as she repeated the words again. She could feel the magic in the air, the small grains grazing her fingertips as they appeared around her, spinning slowly. It was working. It was really working! She grinned at the end of the last word only to get a mouthful of hair.

Her eyes shot open as she spat out the strands of hair from her mouth that kept threatening to jump back in as the air spun even quicker around her. Luna blinked through the strands of light blonde to the sand beyond that was now spinning madly around her. She couldn't see a thing beyond the multitude of grains, it was a sea of varying shades of brown and she was in the middle of it as the magic fluctuated around her.

She must have done something wrong for it to be reacting this violently. The words repeated again and again in her head as the sand slid across her skin, closing in around her every second. Luna let out a scream when she saw the first slash of red among the brown and could feel warm liquid trailing down her forearm.

It was a miracle when the sand expanded back out a moment later, whirling faster than ever until it exploded outward, away from her. The resulting wind tugged at her sharply and she fell to the floor.

Luna sighed softly as she felt the cool stone beneath her. She certainly wasn't going to attempt that spell again, not without some much needed supervision from another witch or wizard. Blinking to help get the dirt out of her eyes she stood up, brushing her hair out of her face so she could see clearly.

Perhaps she should go to a professor for some help with her project-

The earth rocked violently beneath her feet and she fell backwards onto her butt. "Ow," Luna muttered, placing her hand to the stone on her right. Stone? She glanced up blinking at the odd engravings along the stone where she had placed her hand. There was a circle near the middle, tilted up to the ceiling. It looked a lot like an altar, but without the candles. Instead directly above that stone was a circle in the roof that was letting sunlight down into the structure.

It was fascinating for sure, but... why was it here? Where was here?