( rami malek / fluid / he/they ) — ZAHUR KHALIM has been living in Port Leiry for 20 YEARS. They currently work as THE OWNER OF OBSIDIAN, and are 41 years old. No one is sure if they’re actually a WITCH or if they’re connected to LINDON. They tend to be quite UNNERVING and OMINOUS, but can also be UNSHAKEABLE and FOCUSED.
Home, a word that doesn't mean much now, but his youth was spent there. Victorian buildings, mountains for miles around, and natural springs running through the little village. It was a beautiful home, full to the brim of magic that he was fortunate enough to be born into. His attunement was Earth, and in a place like Eureka Springs, that made the world his oyster. As soon as he was old enough to understand, he dedicated himself to mastering his magic, but it was clear his specialty lay in a darker place than the rest of his family.
He could use the Earth to heal; he could grow the necessary herbs and bring life to the plants and trees, but he was better at taking that life away. By the time he was fifteen, he could wither a whole tree in moments, using the nature absorbed and ingredients left behind to put back into his magic, to make himself stronger.
At twenty years old, he realised that mastering the Earth meant mastering all of its plants, too. Certain ones responded better to him, grew so quickly, it was as though he was a beacon for them. He learned about the poisonous flora, each one of them; how to handle them, and their effects dependent on dosage, and how to grow them naturally so he always had a supply.
At twenty-one, his parents confronted him. Their magic was meant to be healing and helpful, but in their mind, Zahur only focused on the negatives and the darkness. They didn't understand why someone could have the power he did, and the control over it, and tap into the darker parts instead of helping people. The argument blew up, and they gave him an ultimatum - stop using the dark parts of his magic, or leave.
Port Leiry, OR.
Zahur found a place where darkness thrived just as much as the light, a city in which both were needed, for the balance of it all. It was chaotic, but there was something that told him Port Leiry was where he belonged. Lindon had always been his coven, and so he found a home with them pretty quickly. They accepted him, all parts of him, knowing that each specialty had its reason for existence.
He thrived in Port Leiry, building himself a life and a business. Obsidian was created out of a need for knowledge. It was a hobby, really, a side-hustle, but mystical artefacts had always been interesting to him, and he needed a place to show off his collection. It attracted a small gathering of people, and soon it turned into a little bar with an equally mysterious reputation where the collection and knowledge only grew over the next twenty years.
Despite his time in Port Leiry, not many people truly knew him. A handful, at most. Zahur was quiet and calculated, focused and unnerving. His personality was intimidating to most, with every decision being calculated carefully before being acted upon. Everything is thought out, every decision is planned for, with many different variables being accounted for. He has no room for flaws, and he is constantly pushing his limits. Zahur is sharp in all ways, never seen in something that isn't a suit unless he's in bed, but not afraid to ruin even his best suit if the situation arises. By the time the twenty years pass, he's protective of Lindon. They're his family now, and he won't let anything destroy them, not even themselves.
WANTED CONNECTIONS ;
the klaus to his elijah : zahur lives not only for his thirst for knowledge and wanting to perfect his magic, but he lives for them. without zahur, they're a mess, unable to ground themselves and think on the consequences of their actions. zahur is their conscience, their knowledge and their protector - even if they think they don't need it. this would be zahur's youngest sibling, or a younger member of lindon that they see as a sibling.
In the past... year - year? A year is so short to him, these days - might as well be a week in the grand scheme, if that. In the past year, he has regretted coming into this city no less than twice a day, at minimum. There have been good moment, sure. But now he's dodging straight up monsters. Not Vampires. Not Werewolves.
Things with no faces, or half of his face, or made out of blinky black voids that seem to beckon a headache just off the prospect of the idea that they exist.
He doesn't need to be told twice to be quiet - and it isn't hard for him to maintain that level of low-profile as he takes a peak at what the witch is pointing to.
When the man signals at him, he wracks his brain - he's known sign language before, but he's also pushing a hundred and five and doesn't use it at all often enough, but letters are easy enough to pick out, and he nods, reaching under his jacket, pulling his pistol out and very quietly switching off the safety. There's a shrug there, because who knows how useful that is - it's silver -in case of worse things, but it's also loud. In two hands, he gestures with it - at the thing sprouting legs and craning around like it's sniffing something out of the air.
Zahur isn't sure how well a gun will work against these creatures, but the same could be said for his own magic. It was better than nothing, and the fact that he only had to deal with one thing threatening to attack instead of two certainly increased his odds.
He doesn't know the best way to handle this - which infuriates him - but he figures if he can at least stop it from moving, the other would have the best chance at hitting the thing, and they could see if a bullet was enough to take it out.
His magic swirled, plants near the roadside growing quickly, vines sprouting and entangling themselves into the creature. It fights back in protest, but soon Zahur has a good enough grip on it, and he nods to his allied stranger to make his move.
The signs from Zahur make no sense to him, but he understands the sign to be silent - and understands that he's seeing the mimic out in front of him. He hates using his magic for destructive purposes, but.. at least now, it's not against another being, but a legitimate monster.
Frowning, Jace shakes his head to let the other witch know that he doesn't understand. But instead he holds out his hand and allows the fire magic to flow through his skin, allowing it to crackle and appear burnt. Rivulets of magma appear beneath the skin and he nods his head towards the mimic. Maybe they can team up in silence, if need be.
Tell me what to do, he wants to say. Tell me how to help you. But even whispering right now feels like the wrong move to make.
He hadn't understood, but had brought more to the fight than Zahur could have hoped for. Most things, so long as they didn't look like there was already fire running through their veins, had an aversion to fire; whether monsters he'd faced, or just researched. It was an almost universal weakness, and Jace was one of the best of the fire wielders.
Zahur nodded, gestured to the mimic as if to throw a fireball, as if to say burn it until it's ash. It was all they could hope for, and if Zahur had to sacrifice some of Earth's nature to hold the creature in place, then so be it. He had always been better at taking life away, anyway.
He starts slowly and carefully towards the monster, each step taken after a sweep of the ground beneath him to ensure nothing he stands on would make a noise.
Zahur hoped Jace wouldn't need a more obvious signal as roots upheaved the tarmac, grasping to the slippery mimic, managing to grasp ahold of it on the second attempt.
Estela presses her hand to her heart, eyes wide as she watches the ground beneath the wriggling street lamp start to hold it in place. A mouth opens up near the top and it bends down, snapping at random passersby -
What in the actual fuck.
Whipping her head over to the man, her face twists up in bewilderment. Just leave? Get to shelter? "Are - you're just okay with this?!" She gestures wildly towards it, as it tries to uproot itself once more. There was nothing familiar about him, but the magic told her that he wasn't a part of her coven.
Her own was probably hunkered down in graves and mausoleums - somewhere she wished she could be, too. "Fuck." She runs a hand through her hair, nose scrunching slightly. "Can you kill that thing?" She could, but she'd need to siphon something first.
Perhaps a miscalculation, as the streetlight snaps at a passerby, then tries to uproot itself once more. Brows furrow as he takes a step back, allowing it to happen rather than his magic holding it in place.
"Admittedly, I didn't quite expect it to have a mouth." Zahur had thought the chaos was from the weather they had been having, but now, upon properly seeing the creature he hadn't laid eyes on before, the gears were ticking in his mind.
The witch had never come across something such as this before; something that mimicked its surroundings to blend in until it was ready to pounce. He could burrow it into the ground, but it was clearly powerful - it could break its way back out.
With no information, he wasn't willing to use his magic, in case he inadvertently made the thing more powerful.
"Not unless you happen to know what it is and what its weaknesses are. I won't risk feeding it, making it more powerful." He took a step back, watching the way it moved, head turning this way and that as they talked to one another. Brows furrowed, a theory came to his mind.
With his magic, he pulled a rock from the ground and placed a finger to his lips, signalling to her to be quiet, before launching the rock behind the monster, the noise as it hit the pavement loud and unmissable. Its head spun, turning to the sound rather than watching the person who had thrown the rock.
"I think it's blind," Zahur whispers, his eyes glued to the new monster.
A finger came to his lips to quieten the other, pointing to his ears and then the mimic emerging in front of them. It had incredibly good hearing, or so he'd found out, but it couldn't see well. Weaknesses proven to work, from his research, were fire and electricity; he could control either particularly well, but he was calculating in his mind if it was worth opening a sinkhole in the middle of the city just to swallow this one creature whole - maybe for a hoard of them, but it would leave the ground unstable, unless he could harness enough power to close it up afterwards. Zahur was powerful enough, but all that effort for one monster was too much to justify unless he found himself with no other choice. It was tangible, living, which meant surely it bleeds? And if it bleeds, then it can die by normal means.
Weapons? he signed, knowing the small athame he carried on him wouldn't be enough for this unless he managed to get dangerously close. Magic? Zahur signed again, hoping the other at least knew enough asl to get by.
It is absolutely her luck that she's come to Port Leiry in a time of chaos - she remembers the wild times of the Conclave just before she'd left to study, and here she is again: in the midst of a darkness and a frigid land that's more terror than wonder.
Her first instinct is to move towards where Embrace is - but the quicker she walks out into the city proper, the more chaos she notices. It's when a street light starts to shudder and lift itself up out of the street that she finally stops.
He's heading to check on if Lindon needs anything from him when he hears the scream. A stoic look on his features as Zahur glances from the woman to the street light, calculating if it was worth keeping it tethered to the ground it once stood in, or letting it fall. Light, in the dark, was often needed in Port Leiry.
Magic connected to the earth with ease, the Earth mending itself and bringing the street light back to its initial positioning, roots grasping around metal under the pavement to hold it in place should it try to uproot itself once more.
"Get to shelter." Zahur said what he meant, and rarely any more than that. He would be hunkering down with his coven as soon as he arrived at his destination.
