Chapter 18: Experimenting
As Max drove off, he utilized telekinesis to drive the car. Grasping Verbaton Stone in one hand, he used it as a knife, carving a rune into his arm, consciously keeping his healing factor from healing it.
Blood dripped from both the stone and down the length of his wrist. The pain was unimaginably intense, but then again, the stone wasn't just carving into Max's arm physically. Using representational magic, it was also carving into Max's soul in the literal sense. And it was doing so multiple times, as Max hadn't stopped at just one rune. He carved four — two on each arm.
Through channeling and representational magic, Max carved the Rune of Privacy, the Rune of Storage, the Rune of Focus, and the Rune of Awareness into both his body and soul.
'All four are original runes I've created on a whim,' Max thought privately, observing how they all glowed with a vibrant white-blue light as they activated before fading into regular skin. 'The Rune of Privacy allows me to have absolute privacy, even against ghosts and astral beings. Any being who isn't a god or a cosmic entity wouldn't be able to find me or even see me if I don't want them to.'
'Kol, though fun, has been spying on me too much. I don't have any privacy. I reckon Qetsiyah was also spying on me through the Other Side, and only the gods know whoever else,' Max thought to himself.
"With this," Max thought aloud, already sensing the absence of presences with the rune active, he rubbed a hand over the scabbed, rapidly-scarring rune. "I can initiate a few plans of my own in peace without busybody eyes watching my every move."
The Rune of Storage allowed Max to store things in his psychic world — an ability he had gained after becoming psychic.
'The rune is basically an access way to my psychic world. Unlike Bonnie or Cade, my world wasn't psychically generated through pain or grief or a need to punish the wicked,' Max thought to himself. 'No, mine was generated methodically through manipulating key variables, usage of the Verbaton Stone and usage of adaptive magic — all to create a psychic world capable of storing physical objects, items and, yes, beings, too.'
"I can't access the world directly myself quite yet, but I sense I will be able to soon. Maybe when I do, I can use it as an achor point for the Travelers their curse to by way of the Verbatim Stone…"
That was a thought for later thinking, Max supposed.
The Rune of Focus permanently and vastly increases Max's ability to focus. It was already quite good, but now, Max may have just become the most focused individual on Earth.
The Rune of Awareness gave Max's senses an exponential boost of amplification, both around him and from afar. Now he had the ability to psychically mark anyone on Earth and astral project his vision to their live activities at will, so long as he's left a psychic mark on them.
"Perfect," Max thought privately, already planning to mark his loved ones, as he drove past the Mystic Falls sign. He drove far and long for at least an hour before exiting the highway, pulling up to a medium-sized warehouse.
Parking, he got out, fishing for his keys before unlocking the front entrance and making his way inside.
"I purchased this warehouse to initiate my more private plans. It was one of the reasons why I was late to Elijah's meeting." Making his way to the back, where a ginormous meat freezer, active and freezing, remained empty of meat — or mostly, anyways.
Below the countless hanging hooks on a chain, three bodies lay undisturbed, separated but so obviously dead. Two of them were the warlock men, Jonas and Luka Martin — the ones that were tasked by Elijah to get close to Bonnie to find the Moonstone.
Little did they know, Maximus had the stone the whole time.
"I couldn't perform my ability before with so many eyes on me, but now—," Max pulled out a jar containing four and a half liters of blood, voluntarily given to him by Bonnie, his cousin Lucy, his father and himself — he brought it out of his backpack, alongside three candles, and his Verbaton Stone. He lit two of the candles. "I can practice my biotic matter manipulation to my heart's content. And what better way to practice this than in conjunction with adaptive magic?"
Dawning his necklace, a hand on both Luka and Jonas each, after opening the jar of blood and placing it between the two corpses, Max closed his eyes and focused. Then, finding his words, he spoke his chant:
"Extract the blood from this jar and merge the bodies I touch into one being."
"Pa san mwen prezante, vin lyen ak chemen — mare lavi ak lanmò ansanm."
"Sanguis Bennett fluat ut nexus, sanguis Martin fluat ut anima."
"Let both bloodlines course as one — bound, balanced, and made whole."
"Lespri ki te ye yo, mwen rele nou soti lòt bò a."
"Retounen sou tè a, pa kòm de, men kòm yon sèl."
"Unite spirits under this form — one will, one soul, one being."
The whole while the wind outside picked up and the flame of the candles lit up, reaching three meters in the air as power coursed through Max and into the merging corpses. Max felt the two spirits of Luka and Jonas enter the corpse and merge into one, with Luka being the dominant soul.
Max used his biological matter manipulation to ensure all went well and properly through the process. He adjusted the being's muscle density and inputted unbreakable inhibitions into this person's mind: from a strong sense of loyalty to Max and a strong desire to get powerful on his own, Max inscribed a mark of devotion into this being's mind and soul, hidden even from him.
"With so much Bennett blood coursing through his veins as well as the late Luka's and Jonas' blood and soul, I may have just created the most powerful warlock on Earth," Max noted. "Or one of them, anyway, right after me, of course," he specified.
"Now, I command you," Max commanded, giving a final command, "Awaken, Marcus Martin."
Instantaneously, hazel-green-brown eyes opened, and out of this man's mouth came a gasp of breath as Marcus awoken.
[Marcus Martin Reference Image]:
"Wha—where am I?" Marcus asked, looking around, breathing heavily. "And why am I naked!?"
Max waved a hand and firmly dressed the individual with magic before explaining the situation to him. He told Marcus of how he came to be and his purpose. Thankfully, it was around this time that Marcus' memories came to him — From both Jonas AND Luka and he recognized Max as someone worth following after realising he really was brought back from the dead.
He was fast to join Max's coven, immediately offering to teleport to his family's repository to get all the Martin family's grimoires and artifacts — or rather, the really important ones.
It wasn't like Marcus needed to ask permission. As the last of the Martin lineage, Marcus owned all the stuff his family did. — And the Martins were old, powerful and ancient witch lineage, known to sire powerful warlocks and witches, but mostly warlocks. The things they've collected over the centuries were many, and quite powerful, even dangerous to less experienced practitioners.
'With the Martins on my side in the coven, I'll have a second powerful lineage making up the coven,' Max noted, before storing the thought to focus on later.
Marcus had already left, leaving Max alone with the 3rd corpse — of a young vampire — Ben McKittrick, or the recently turned vampire that had been turned by Anna to help free the tomb vampires. He even pretended to date Bonnie just to use her to do it. Of course, Stefan had killed him but Max had dug up his corpse.
'I really shouldn't do this,' Max thought. 'But at the same time, he's hot and I am a sucker for a dark haired vampire… No! I think I'll wait to bring back Ben. I could use him as the vampire sacrifice for Klaus' ritual. Maybe afterwards I'll add him to the harem.'
Sending the corpse into his psychic realm, Max exited the freezer and left the warehouse after Marcus returned with the stack of grimoires and a few artifacts.
Max then drove off, with plans to do for tonight's full moon, but first he had a siphonner to free from the prison world.
Ironically, it was then that he felt a sudden magic wave wash over the planet, clearing the image of a certain sociopathic, supposedly imprisoned siphon from the collective unconscious and Max had used his psychic abilities and Verbatim stone on instinct, protecting his memories of Kai Parker from vanishing.
Of course, he had swerved to the side of the road in the process, but the event drew him to one conclusion: Malakai Parker had used the Malivore pit ahead of schedule.
"Damn it, Kai!" Max yelled out loud, startling Marcus in the passenger seat.