Sagres wandered aimlessly through the narrow streets of Brundale, observing the small village that would one day become a ruin.
A biting cold wind carried fine snow between the low rooftops.
As he walked, he used Legilimency to lightly skim the surface thoughts of hurried passersby and those harbouring ulterior motives, casually gathering fragments of information.
During this time, he not only figured out the locations of several Church Witch Hunting Squad camps, but also identified several Dark Wizard factions entrenched in the area.
In the process, he also witnessed just how chaotic and diverse this borderland truly was.
In one corner of the village square, an old witch wrapped in filthy bandages openly hawked her wares, constantly trying to sell passersby cursed objects woven from the finger bones of infants.
Her cloudy eyes were filled with greed and malice. She was clearly not a respectable witch.
There was also a gloomy man who always hid in the darkest corners of the inn, carrying a faint smell of decay.
He was constantly accompanied by one or two "attendants" with vacant eyes and slightly stiff movements. Sagres could sense no life force within them.
This wizard was obviously no respectable sort either.
He occasionally caught sight of another wizard in the woods, a man built like a bear who was crudely stitching the limbs of magical creatures onto a giant wolf.
Discarded limbs and bloodstains from failed experiments littered the snow around him, attracting flocks of crows that pecked greedily at the remains.
It was difficult to say whether this wizard could be considered respectable, but probably not.
There was also a very normal-looking wizard dressed in decent robes who constantly tried to extract information about ancient spells and magical ruins from drunken travellers of the opposite sex in taverns by using love potions and the Confundus Charm.
People like that existed in the Muggle world as well.
The one thing they all had in common was that none of them were respectable.
These various wizards were rather interesting, showing Sagres a side of the magical world he had never seen in later generations.
One snowy afternoon, as he wandered aimlessly along the street, a peculiar and highly discordant creaking sound suddenly caught his attention.
The sound was decayed and cold, carrying the twisted vitality characteristic of certain forms of evil alchemy.
It came from a wooden house at the edge of the village that looked as though it might collapse at any moment.
Sagres approached silently.
Through a crack in the wall, he saw the scene inside.
A tall, thin wizard in a stained robe stood with his back to him, busily working at a makeshift alchemical table assembled from broken wooden crates and stones.
Whenever the wizard turned slightly to the side, Sagres caught glimpses of his profile.
Even with all his experience, Sagres could not help furrowing his brow.
The man's appearance was horrifying.
The left half of his face still retained a rough human shape, although his skin was deathly pale.
The right half, from cheekbone to jaw, had been completely replaced by dull, unpolished metal.
Intricate runes were carved across the metallic surface, constantly shifting and faintly pulsing with an ominous glow in time with his breathing.
His right eye had been replaced by a complex multifaceted crystal lens, within which pale green liquid slowly flowed as though alive.
When he opened his mouth to bite down on a tool, Sagres saw that his original teeth had been replaced by two rows of small, sharp, serrated fangs.
Most unsettling of all, through the gaps in his greasy, matted hair, part of his skull could be seen to have been replaced with a transparent material resembling reinforced glass.
Deeper inside, several extremely fine glass tubes were visibly embedded across the grey surface of his exposed brain tissue.
They were filled with fluorescent liquids of different colours, making the entire thing resemble some kind of sinister circuit board.
This was a wizard who had used his own body as an experimental subject, subjecting himself to extensive inhuman modifications through extreme alchemy.
"Truly... insane," Sagres murmured to himself.
After several more uses of Legilimency, Sagres gradually pieced together an interesting fact.
This wizard, obsessed with alchemical modification, was none other than Noctis, a member of the School of Withering.
His primary fields of research were alchemical poisons and modified magic.
In addition, he was also a raven Animagus.
However, in Sagres's view, the wizard's current body, covered in metal, glass, and magical implants, had already become a prison of his own making.
His ability to transform still existed, but it was now like a locked mechanism, jammed by the foreign components he had forcibly implanted into himself.
If he attempted the transformation by force, the result would likely not be an elegant change into a raven, but a bloody catastrophe.
The implanted objects might be violently expelled from his body during the transformation, or worse, become twisted together with shifting flesh and bone, causing unpredictable deformities.
"Interesting..."
Sagres murmured softly.
He himself had never bothered to learn Animagus transformation, not because it was difficult, but because he felt it had limited practical value for the path of magic he pursued.
Even so, although he had never learned it personally, he understood this ancient branch of self-transfiguration deeply, including both its principles and its risks.
Noctis's condition also gave him a more concrete understanding of Animagi in this era.
At this time, Animagus transformation was far more common than it would be in the era Sagres came from.
Perhaps it was because the magical system was still undergoing vigorous exploration.
Or perhaps the turbulent environment meant that possessing another form gave a wizard one more way to survive or hide.
Whatever the reason, there were clearly many wizards who had mastered the art.
But greater prevalence also meant more failures and more loss of control.
Sagres knew that countless wizards had paid a terrible price when attempting to cross this dangerous threshold.
Some made a tiny mistake during the transformation and became permanently trapped between human and animal form, neither fully one nor the other, reduced to monsters accepted by neither side.
Others successfully transformed into animals, only to gradually succumb to the purity of animal senses and the lack of restraint in instinct.
Their humanity was slowly eroded by bestial impulses until they were eventually assimilated by them.
They began resisting the return to a human body, with all its complexity, obligations, and troubles.
One day.
Two days.
As time passed, the memories and will that belonged to their human selves were gradually washed away and diluted by instinct like a sandcastle beneath the tide.
Eventually, they forgot how to return.
And worse, they lost the desire to return at all.
Their magical bloodline might still remain, but at their core they had already become true beasts, spending the rest of their lives in forests, skies, or swamps, following only the most primitive laws of nature.
Sagres's gaze returned to Noctis's dilapidated wooden house, and a hypothesis began to form in his mind.
Perhaps the future Noctis would become exactly such a lost Animagus.
He might transform into a raven and spend too long soaring through the sky, becoming so enamoured with that freedom that an insurmountable resistance and estrangement towards human form gradually developed.
Perhaps he was already aware of this tendency now.
He knew it was wrong, yet could not stop himself.
If so, these extreme alchemical modifications might not have been motivated solely by the pursuit of power.
They might also conceal a desperate attempt to bind the bestiality struggling to break free from its cage with cold metal and glowing conduits.
He was using alchemical creations to replace parts of his flesh-and-blood human body, almost as a form of self-punishment, cutting off the possibility of surrendering to his raven form again and forcibly anchoring himself to humanity.
Even if that human form was already becoming fragmented.
Of course, this was only a hypothesis.
But Sagres felt the possibility was not small.
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