Under The Seal, The Antechamber Of Sin Would Be Revealed.
Quinn stared down the pitch dark opening... the entrance to the Sin Vault, the greatest tragedy of the life was under the room called the Room of Rewards. He didn't know if it was ironic or not — his magic reserves had received a boost but at what cost... he had lived under the influence of a curse for months and lost control of everything for what were the excruciatingly hard months of his life.
He placed his hands on the floor and let his feet dangle in the narrow tunnel. He wasn't one to be scared of the dark, especially not after Tohem's Delight — but something about this particular darkness settled a weight in the base of his heart.
"Fortune favors the bold.... I should have asked the Felix Felicis from Ivy."
Quinn pushed himself off the floor and let himself drop into the tunnel. He breathed out, and a gust of wind flew in an updraft pushing Quinn's already flying hair straight up. There was a second and half of the wind-resisted fall before the tunnel opened up to the antechamber, and Quinn came to a hovering stop in mid-air.
The dim light from the Room of Rewards shone upon him, casting a halo of light around where he flew while the rest of the antechamber remained drowned in darkness. The snap of fingers reverberated in the room as two dozen white sparks lit up in the room, bright like magnesium set on fire before turning into orbs of soft lights illuminating the room.
Like the seven sins, the antechamber had seven shapes making it heptagonal in form with polished smooth walls, floor, and ceiling, lending it an out-of-the-ordinary feel, eliciting a frown of deep discomfort from him. It was bare as the last time he had seen without any visual clue of the horrors that it held.
Quinn gently flew to one of the walls, and as he did the last time, he touched one of the walls with both of his hands and closed his hands while his magic flooded into the walls, floor, and ceiling.
His brows furrowed, and his facial muscles twitched, and a snarl tugged on the corner of his mouth. Even after five years, he couldn't sense iota magic in the antechamber. He, who had undone Dark Lord's Voldemort protections charms that guarded his precious as life Horcrux, couldn't sense any magic even when he knew there was a magic hidden in here waiting to reveal its predatory nature.
He slammed his rage-fueled body magic-infused fist on the wall, and not a single speck of dust got displaced. It only further angered as he knew it was because of magic.... which he once again couldn't detect.
Quinn turned back to look at the center of the antechamber. He stared at the slick floor and knew the moment he stepped on it, the pandemonium would start, whatever it was — he didn't even know what it was, for he had been rendered unconscious before knowing what had happened.
He was grossly unaware of what had happened, with no way to find out without triggering the events again.
The chain around his neck and the pendant piece against his chest felt cold. The cold felt reassuring when the rest of his body burned in slight heat. Winds blew Quinn to the center of the room with his eyes fixed on the floor below. The more he waited and dawdled in his thought, the more he felt he was not reading.
"I'm ready," the words flowed out of his mouth. "I'm going to win this time."
The supply to wind magic was cut, and Quinn's feet to the ground. His senses turned up to eleven as his magic flowed to every inch of the room, flooding the Hogwarts classroom-sized room into a magically charged environment.
His magical bid paid off as Quinn felt a foreign magic manifest into the room, and it instantly zoned in on him. Quinn flexed his magical muscles and turned his magic to combat the attack that came barreling towards him from all the sides. The continuous assault of magic was like a beast trying to sink its claws into him — they were the heaviest hands of magic he had felt launched upon himself. And they didn't seem to stop.
"What?"
Quinn, who was staring ahead, suddenly stiffened as the smooth walls in front of him took on a liquid sheen and rippled before runes emerged on it. He hastily turned to look at the other walls, and complex runes had overtaken the previously glossy walls.
He squinted his eyes at the runes on the walls, and his heart dropped just at the first few observation that caught his eyes. In a glance, he had caught seven interconnected layers of runes, pointing to the complexity of the magic... but that was just the first strike of the hammer as Quinn noticed upward of seven different runic languages flashing in multicolored light.
The Aegis wards were Quinn's most complex runic invention, and he only used three different runic languages as he couldn't achieve harmony and synchronicity for more than that. The last hammer strike... out of the various symbols, alphabets, and hieroglyphics, he could only recognize three sets — two types of Futhark and an ancient strain of proto-hieroglyphical Egyptian, the latter he only had seen rough records of and knew the translations were lost with time. He couldn't even tell which languages the other runes stemmed from.
The magical imbalance and chaos snuffed out Quinn's light orbs, and the room was dominated by seven different lights — Violet, Green, Orange, Blue, Yellow, Pink, and Red.
'What's going to happen?' Quinn's eyes bounced from rune to rune, glowing brighter and brighter as he fought off the other magic in the room.
A sudden yet eerie silence fell upon the antechamber as the other magic vanished without a trace, and in its place, a heavy, viscous, suffocating weight started to leak out from the runes.
Quinn's heart palpitated out of rhythm as his base instincts, the core of his being, shouted at him to run! Body magic jolted throughout his body as wind magic ran rampant as he shot towards the only exit/entrance.
However, only a magic-aided wide step after the magics from the rune struck. Beams of seven different colors shot towards their intended target at laser speeds, screaming as the room grew brighter.
"Gah!"
The beams hit Quinn, and he stumbled onto the ground, kneeling. He could feel the shearing hot and cold magic break through his skin and drill its ways through being.
"No!"
Quinn's squeezed shut eyes snapped open and defiant purple glared, not willing to submit. His magic roared and the reserves built through the years that had long past the level of obscene for a human to hold were put to work. Quinn knew that he didn't have the magical focus or experience to fully utilize his reserves, and he doubted that he would be able to reach the levels desired any time soon; it would take at least a few couple more decades to reach a point where he would have complete control of his magic.
He didn't like pumping eleven units of magic into a spell that could only correctly utilize ten units of magic. If he wanted to utilize eleven units of magic, he would find another magic that could do so. But there was no spell that could utilize the hundred of thousands of units of magic inside Quinn... so he had no choice but to push magic past the efficient limit.
Quinn's entire body glowed in seven different colors as brighter streaks covered his body. The magics from the beams had long broken through the physical barrier of the body and had reached the residence of the ethereal soul.
The bright soul floated in a pure white place, but suddenly streaks of seven different colors invaded the pristine whiteness and raced towards the bright soul in the center. The streaks bared their sharp spear-like edge and stabbed towards the soul.
However the soul wasn't helpless. It was one of the rare souls who had dared to wander into the realm of soul magic — a magic part of the trinity.
A shield appeared around the soul that the streaks stabbed into. Screeches pierced throughout the pristine white space. They tried to drill a hole into the shield, but it stood solid like an unshakable mountain.
The streaks switched their gears in a split-second, and the streaks stopped drilling instead, seven-colored veins sprouted on the surface of the shield and stuck to it like a parasite. Immediately after, the entire pure white space was covered into blotches and streaks of seven different colors.
However, the soul was safe.
Quinn heaved with both his knees on the floor. The beams had stopped. His mouth was chalk dry, and he gulped, which felt like he was swallowing a ball of bile. His shirt was thoroughly drenched, and his head felt like it was on fire. His heart was beating so fast that it hurt, and his fingers shook like a starved addict.
"Ugh.... shit, shit, shit.... ! I'm in control. I'm in control. I'm in control!"
He could feel it, the curse; he could feel it. It was — inside of him. If for one second he stopped the very rudimentary shield around his soul that was keeping the curse on the bay.
«I should just let the curse take over... it felt so good the last time.»
Quinn's eyes widened when he heard his voice, lazy and uncaring, echo inside his mind. He could tell what it was. He had thought about the Sin curse for long through the year, so he knew that this was his Sloth speaking.
«It would only do good... it'll feel good and the power boost it would give would be so nice!»
Quinn shook his head at the thoughts of Greed.
«I recovered from the focus loss once, I can do it once again, I know the formula... I am me, after all.»
Pride reared its ugly violet head.
«Whatever, I am hungry! I used too much magic; I should go to the kitchen!»
He felt his body growl under Gluttony.
«Ugh, this is such a pain! I should take Daphne to Room of Requirements... yeah.»
He clenched his hands to keep the tremor under control. He looked around the antechamber to see if there was something... anything.
«I mean, who made this?! Why can't I detect any magic! Maybe I will get the answer if I let the curse take over!»
He could feel the Envy rise up his throat.
«Why won't the voices in my head shut up! The last time was so less annoying!!!»
He bit the inside of his mouth and taut his neck to calm his Wrath.
Quinn got up from the floor, stretched his back straight, and felt the dull ache that spread through his body. He took slow steps towards the tunnel. He turned his tired eyes towards the ceiling and peered through the hole.
He didn't want to move. He just wanted to go to sleep on the spot and just... get away for a while. Everything was going to start all over again, and this time he was 'conscious' instead of being blissfully unaware of the grave situation he was in.
This time, he wasn't going to enjoy the cloud nine feeling for months.
«Only if I struggle against the curse....»
Quinn blankly stared at the dim light coming from the tunnel.
"This... This is going to be a problem."
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Quinn West - MC - «Ah... this is such a pain.»
FictionOnlyReader - Author - Na, peeps. It wasn't going to be so easy. Also, check out Chapter 53 if you desire a recap.
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