Looking for a fight [Niska]

The day had started out as a rather unremarkable one. Skyla had awoken at her usual early hour, showered, and carefully dressed herself for work. For once, the workload had been light. She had actually been able to leave work early, at three o'clock in the afternoon, which was a rarity. She Apparated home from outside the Ministry building, arriving in the street below her flat. She climbed the two flights of stairs up to her flat, eager to kick off her heels and relax with her feet up on the sofa. Letting herself into her flat, she tossed her work bag carelessly onto the floor and pushed the door shut with her foot. She stepped out of her shoes and padded into the bedroom in order to change from her work robes into a knee-length, dark blue dress that she selected at random from her closet.

As she emerged from her bedroom, she was surprised to hear an owl tapping at the kitchen window. She hardly ever received mail, and so she couldn't think who would be writing to her. She opened the window and relieved the owl of its burden. A quick glance at the envelope was all it took for her to recognize her father's handwriting. She tore open the letter and briefly scanned it before crumpling up the parchment and throwing it as hard as she could across the room.

"Bastard!" the dark-haired witch fairly screamed in her mind. What business did he have of writing to her now? The last time they had spoken was when she was eighteen years old, just after she graduated Hogwarts. She had gone back to Chester to remove all her personal effects from her family home. Now, her father was writing to her to tell her that her mother was ill, his words heavily implying that Skyla should feel guilty about being so neglectful over the last seven years. He couldn't see and didn't take responsibility for his own role in their estrangement. The last thing she wanted was to hear from him.

The letter had left Skyla feeling agitated and unable to relax. Her afternoon was ruined, as far as she was concerned. She could feel the tight knot of anger settling into her chest, her stomach clenching in anxiety. She had to get out of the flat, which felt suffocatingly small at that moment. Pulling on a light cloak, as it was still only April and a bit chilly, she again donned her shoes - flats this time - and stormed out. Her hand automatically moved to her cloak to reassure herself that her wand was securely tucked in an inner pocket.

Once she was down in the street, her mind and feet began to wander, though not necessarily in the same direction. After a few minutes of walking, Skyla realized with a start that she had strayed into Knockturn Alley. It wasn't a place she normally cared to venture into as she wasn't particularly interested in the Dark Arts. The fact that it was still broad daylight helped to dispel her misgivings at being in such a place. She was about to turn around and walk back into Diagon Alley when a shop called Grimli: Rare Books and Collected Curios caught her eye. Anything that had to do with books piqued her interest, and she could feel her anger temporarily begin to abate at the thought of perusing through a collection of old books. As she drew closer to the shop, she could see that it was rather run-down. That fact did not deter her as she reached out a hand and tentatively pushed open the door to the shop.

To her surprise, the door swung open, the hinges squeaking loudly in protest. For all the disorder and untidiness on the shelves that filled the place, there was something arresting about the shop that pulled her inside despite the nagging voice in her mind telling her to leave. She closed the door as quietly as she could before moving deeper inside. Her eyes darted in every direction, trying to take in what she was seeing. Her attention was drawn to an old, worn book covered in green leather, its spine cracked with age and use. Hesitantly, she reached for the book, but at the sound of footsteps she immediately withdrew her hand as her head turned toward the source of the noise.

Niska leaned back in his chair, blinking painfully down at the stack of papers and open record books strewn about the desk in front of him. He let out a groan as he reached for the ice pack currently resting on his bandaged knee and placed the cool pack against his swollen left eye, letting out a quiet sigh of relief as he closed his eyes and let his head fall into his hands. His head was still throbbing slightly, a painful bump bump that got worse every time he tried to look at the tiny little numbers and scribbles on the papers in front of him. He was just going to have to accept that he wasn’t going to get any work done today, not after the thrashing Cassia had given him yesterday. She wasn’t lying when she said she could make him bleed, though he wasn’t expecting her to take a chair to his face. Then again, he didn’t think girls’d came out of Azkaban where ones to bluff. He would remember that next time.

He was still face-deep in the ice pack when he heard the bell over the door chime and he woke up from his state of half-awakeness. He looked up just in time to see a flash of dark black hair flutter out of sight behind a shelf. He nearly knocked his chair over scrambling to his feet. It couldn’t be… After all this time… She wouldn’t come back here… He quickly walked around his desk, heading for the dark-haired figure. Before he even rounded the corner his nose picked up the smell of tea and flowers and his step faltered. It wasn’t her. The moment he caught sight of the strange girl in front of him, his mind raced to take in everything he saw.

“Stop!” he nearly shouted, voice low and sharp as he went toward her. Niska caught her wrist and quickly yanked her back, away from the bookshelf and the green book. “What in the hell do you think you’re playin’ at, girl? Don’t you know better’an to things you don’t know nothing about? You coulda killed yourself.” He realized he was still holding her wrist (and such a small wrist it was, like he could snap it in half with the lightest pressure of his big, rough hand) and let go. He went forward to the bookshelf and examined the book. Nothing was amiss. She hadn’t opened it. He turned on her, glaring at her menacingly.

Bright blue eyes, just like Amaranth, and the dark hair was like her too. But the girl in front of him was not Amaranth. The magic swirled around this girl like a gentle blue fog, pulsing with flutes and soft like a whispering breeze through grass. Pretty, but unremarkable. Who was she? Niska looked down at the girl, scowling and eyeing her critically. Grimli wasn’t a place that people walked into casually. It was purposefully creepy and run-down to keep strangers from investigating further, not to mention its prime location in the grimy part of Knockturn Alley. Only people who should be coming in nowadays were either fighters or ministry spies, neither of which she looked like.

Something in the corner of his eye drew his attention and his eyes darted just to the left of the girl. Her magic flickered, just ever so slightly that he hadn’t noticed it before. It was like static. One minute the magic was peaceful as a spring meadow, and a second later the image cracked, like it was all an illusion buckling under the strain and there was something fighting to get out. Niska had seen it before. Magic was odd like that. It pushed and pulled against a person’s existence and it knew when it wanted more. He’d seen something like it in his fighters and he knew how dangerous something like that could be.

He frowned at the woman again. “You're not from round here, are you? Girl like you sticks out like a sore thumb. But you know full well where you are, so you know full well the kinda things you can find in a place like this. Be careful before you touch anything else. You best stay away from the books for now. And the jewelry. And the statues. We got plenty of other things here that I know aren’t gonna curse you or hex you or something.” He glanced at her, wondering if his magus’s impression of her was correct and there was something pushing against the surface here. “Got some nice knives if you’re interested too. Those I know are safe enough," he said, gesturing to some weapons hanging on the east wall. "Sorry for grabbin' you like that. Didn't mean to hurt you or nothing, just didn't want someone else getting cursed in here."

“Stop!”

Skyla knew better than to reach out and attempt to touch a strange book in a strange shop in Knockturn Alley. Had she learned nothing in all of her years as a witch? What was she thinking? Truth be told, she wasn’t thinking at all. Rather, she was yielding to her natural impulse, which was something she almost never did. Her concentration was interrupted by a rough hand seizing her wrist and yanking it unceremoniously away from the shelf.

"You coulda killed yourself.”

She looked up into the face of the man who was now - in her view - yelling into hers. Involuntarily, she took a step back, feeling suddenly intimidated by the rough exterior of her assailant. The ugly bruise sprouting on his left eye wasn’t doing his face any favors, and his sheer size caused her mouth to go dry. She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. Normally, her first reaction would be to feel offended if a stranger manhandled her like that. Strangely enough, she was far from offended in that moment. The shop keeper was the type of man she attempted to stay well clear of, because someone like him obviously was no good. She managed to stand her ground as his dark brown eyes looked her over, staring back at him with a defiant gaze that she hoped disguised the worry she felt.

“But you know full well where you are, so you know full well the kinda things you can find in a place like this. Be careful before you touch anything else.”

“Yes, I know. Thank you for the reminder,” she snapped as she found her voice once more. Her left hand closed around her tender right wrist in an effort to soothe the reddened skin. That would definitely leave a mark. Perhaps it was not smart to irritate or talk back to a man who could probably physically pick her up and fling her against the wall without the aid of magic, but Skyla did not appreciate being talked to like she was a little girl. She had seen how bulky he was, knowing that what she could see likely did not do him full justice. There was an aura of dangerousness about him, something sinister that fit in quite well with their surroundings. Never mind his physical assets; what was his magic like?

“Got some nice knives if you’re interested too. Those I know are safe enough,”

Knives and safety didn’t exactly go well together in Skyla’s experience, although compared to cursed books and statutes, they were probably downright tame. “What kind of knives?” she asked, feeling interested in spite of herself. His accent marked him as foreign. He was Eastern European, but she couldn’t quite place him. Russia? Bulgaria? Romania? She shook her head as if to clear her mind from the irrelevant thoughts flitting through it at that moment. Who cared? She would likely never see him again after this encounter.

"Sorry for grabbin' you like that. Didn't mean to hurt you or nothing, just didn't want someone else getting cursed in here.”

She nodded stiffly, her injured pride slightly mollified. At least he had some manners, brutish foreigner that he was. She could easily believe that other hapless customers had accidentally been cursed or hexed in the shop. Dark magic hung heavily, almost tangibly, about the place. Everything looked… old. Suspicion began rising in her. Was this a real shop that served real customers, or was there a much darker purpose behind its presence here in Knockturn Alley? “What is this place?” she found herself asking before she had time to censor herself.

Girl's got more spirit than I thought. Not many girls would snap at him like that, especially since he was looking extra fierce with his banged-up face. The both of them knew he could snap her in half as quickly as she breathed, and yet she still spoke up. She had some fight in her that was for sure. Only one little girl ever gave him as much sass and she turned out to be a handful of trouble. He looked over this girl approvingly, nodding his head ever so slightly as he took her in.

When she asked what kind of place this was, he all but sighed. So she’s gotten curious. Well it wasn’t a really good ruse, if he was being honest. Niska rather disliked lying. Not because he was against it morally or anything, he knew that it had its place, but lying always complicated things. After a while it got hard to keep the stories straight and it was easy to get caught it your own lies. In his line of work, getting found out was one of the most dangerous situations to be in, and usually it ended in blood. “This is a place to where people go to find lost things," he said simply. "Things you didn’t even know you was missing somehow end up here and once you get hold of it, you realize it’s a part of you that you can't go without.”

That was true enough for both the shop and the fight club. The stuff that came through this shop were all pieces of history and if they could talk, he could only imagine the stories they could tell. Fighting too, was something people were looking for, though they didn’t know it. Can’t hide the beast inside of, no matter how hard you try. The more someone pushes against their instincts, the more it grows until the shields crack and they give into it. Wizards were at a disadvantage in that way. The more they focused on magic, the more they tended to neglect their bodies. But they were all humans, and there was a pan-human need for catharsis through beating the sense out of another person. It was just human nature. Once you understood and got ahold of that, the darkness didn’t have power over you anymore.

“We got all kinds of knives ,” he said, bracing his sprained knee as he limped slightly closer to where they hung on the wall. “Every knife’s got a story.” He looked over the ones hanging, taking in the multi-colored fog spiraling around the many blades hanging on the wall. His eyes flashed amber as he activated his magus and pushed out his own magic, blue smoke flowing from his hand and gently nudging away the magenta mist hanging above one of the smaller knives. He took it off the wall and handed it to her, handle first. “This one here was made way back in the 6th century. Forged outta Damascus steel. You can see the banding patterns on the metal: all organic, that’s how you know it’s good. Damascus steel can be sharpened to almost nothing and is stronger than normal steel if you treat itright.”

Blue and white magic swirled around the magenta-tinged blade and he tilted his head to the side, smelling steel and oil and the coals of a hot forge. “This one’s charmed to be even denser than normal Damascus steel to boot. Looks tiny in my meaty hands, but it fits just right in your little ones.” He looked over her skeptically. “You ever use one of these?”

Skyla had never seen so many knives together in one place in all of her life. Of course, she had never been in a shop like this before, either, so the fact that this was a new experience for her was hardly surprising. Likely many of them had magical properties or were enchanted in some way to set them apart from their Muggle counterparts. Her life until now had centered around academic learning and books. It had never occurred to her to extend her learning beyond magic and theory. As he offered the knife to her, she took it, slender fingers slowly wrapping around the hilt.

“This one here was made way back in the 6th century. Forged outta Damascus steel.

Clearly, he knew his subject. “Impressive,” she said softly as she lifted the blade in order to get a better look at it. She turned it over carefully as she studied it, admiring the contrast between her well-manicured, feminine hands and the fierce, naked steel. The weight of it felt solid in her hand. She held it with a sort of reverence, feeling humbled to be able to hold something so ancient and with so much history. Oddly, the fingers of her dominant right hand, which grasped the hilt, began to tingle with a strange warmth. The closest sensation she could think to compare it to was when her wand first selected her at Ollivander’s when she was eleven years old. It seemed silly to her, though, that holding a knife, something potentially deadly, could elicit such a response in her. And yet…

And yet she could imagine using this knife. A scene passed before her eyes, so quickly that she almost missed it. She could see herself using it to gut and stab her father, who at that moment was her most hated enemy. It almost shocked her to recognize how much potential for violence there was within her, especially since it was directed at a member of her own family. It would be a bloody job, and a knife was certainly no wizard’s weapon. A proper wizard would dispatch of an enemy using his or her wand, preferably at a distance. By her understanding, the Unforgivable Killing Curse was virtually painless. The use of a knife would require getting close to one’s victim, inflicting pain, and looking into his or her eyes as life was extinguished.

“You ever use one of these?”

She blinked, returning to the present. She allowed her left index finger to gingerly trace the banding along the flat of the blade. A weapon like this deserved to be treated with respect. She raised her blue eyes to his. “No, I haven’t,” she said simply. “I’ve never held anything like this before.”