"Let's start with a simple question," said Quinn. "What is your name?"
Damon stared at Quinn and his hands as he(Quinn) put on black leather gloves. Damon's brows furrowed as his body language turned defensive.
Quinn looked up, stretching the gloves to adjust the fit. "Hmm? Not answering, or was my question not clear enough? Is Damon your real name, or just something you made up from the top of your head?
Silence? Well, we do have the entire night," said Quinn, seeing that Damon wasn't answering his questions. "But, I do not appreciate this silence, so let me put another question on the table."
His voice turned deeper as he asked, "Why is your last name West?"
The effect was immediate. Damon's facial expression turned into one of shock, with wide eyes and eyebrows shooting up to his hairline after his body stiffened immediately.
"Oh?" a smirk appeared on Quinn's face. "It seems I was not wrong."
Recon seemed to be working correctly.
It wouldn't have mattered if there was another West in Hogwarts, but as Quinn knew, there wasn't any other West in Hogwarts; there wasn't even another West family in the British Isles as it was a rare late family name for a magical family and the West family had only been producing one heir per generation for many generations— Lia and Quinn being an outlier case in the family.
"... How did you know?" asked Damon.
"I wasn't sure, but thank you for confirming," said Quinn, making Damon flinch.
"Now, if I assume you are indeed named Damon, making you Damon West, the question arises if you're the same West as my family and I. Which given the balance of probability, I am sure you're the same West as I am," said Quinn. "Which leads me to ask, what's your origin, Damon?"
There was another response of silence to Quinn's question. Damon didn't open his mouth, which was pressed into a line, and only stared at Quinn with a blank face.
'Occlumency,' Quinn noticed the lack of emotion. 'I wonder how long that would last.'
"Come on, don't be shy—"
Damon raised his hands, and two rings, one on each ring finger, glowed with sharp burning yellow glare. He jutted his hands forward, and zaps of orange magic flew towards Quinn.
A magical bluish-white shield appeared in front of Quinn and met the brunt of Damon's spells. Slice. Quinn blinked in surprise as a tear appeared on his shield when the jet of magic started to split his magic.
'What is this magic?' thought Quinn. He hadn't seen this kind of severing spell if he could even call it that. It wasn't strong or heavily loaded with magic, but it was still cutting through a shield cast with much stronger spells in mind.
Quinn raised his hand, and a thrumming orb of bright magic manifested over his palm. He aimed it towards the incoming spell and let the orb shoot out a thick beam of magic that swallowed Damon's spell along with his own shields, then proceeded to barrel towards Damon with a ferocious charge.
Damon's rings again glowed. Quinn's spell suddenly came to a screeching halt halfway, exploding into what seemed to be an invisible barrier, until the magic in Quinn's attack was extinguished.
Quinn lowered his hands and stared at Damon. "Hey, are those ring-type magical foci? I have seen those a few times, but I haven't seen anyone use two at the same time. And what was the spell you used to bisect my shields; I haven't seen anything like that in my studies. You're becoming more and more fascinating every second, Damon. I must know what's the deal with you."
Damon's face twitched as his eyes narrowed. He shifted his body to face the side and placed one of his hands on the yellow barrier that blocked his path. The rings glowed again, and the barrier started to tremble and shriek violently.
"Uh-uh, I'm not letting you go so easily," said Quinn. He spread his palm for a glowing-red colored chain made from Empyrean with a weight on end to sprout out from the middle of the palm and rattled towards Damon.
To Quinn's surprise, the ring-user released a bullet made from a familiar red magical malleable material and shot down the weight to another side.
'He used Empyrean,' thought Quinn. 'But the color was darker than mine. Was his spell a different version from mine?'
Damon, who wasn't privy to Quinn's thoughts, stepped up for the offense. Dozens of blades made from the darker Empyrean appeared manifested around Damon. Quinn's eyes widened when he saw what looked like red zaps of electric arcs dancing around every blade.
'He has reached the level of adding elemental properties to Empyrean,' thought Quinn, his eyes moving between Damon and his magical constructs in surprise.
Empyrean was a magical material, capable of assuming a range of physical properties— only limited by the caster's skill and knowledge. However, achieving a wide range of those physical properties was a tricky task while using Empyrean. Empyrean could assume solid, liquid, and gaseous states. It could become flexible, rigid, semi-solids, or any form of similar properties. However, that was only one level. Above that level, additional properties like adding electric charge, making Emyrean burn, or an ice attribute that could freeze objects at contact, among other similar properties.
The red arcs around the blades were clearly a lightning attribute added to Empyrean.
"Alright, so that's how we are going to do it, huh," said Quinn to Damon. "Time for the kiddy gloves to come off."
Damon didn't reply, and the dozens of Empyrean blades shot towards Quinn with lightning dancing around them.
Suddenly, the temperature in the hallway between the two yellow barriers dropped, and the blades ripping towards Quinn slowed down as if the energy had been sucked out of them, and before long, they came to a freezing halt in the air.
Quinn and Damon's breathing turned to white mist.
Damon's rings glowed brighter, and the Empyrean blades started to chirp with lightning arcs and vibrating as he pushed in more magic to make them move. However, his eyes grew wider as he saw that not only did the blades not move, a deposit of ice started to build on the blades.
"... Ice," muttered Damon. "That's...."
Quinn's raised his arm and clenched his fist for Damon's Empyrean blades to shatter into red and cold shards.
This time, Quinn didn't speak to Damon. He let the magic flow through his body, reaching his every muscle, and shot towards Damon like a cheetah.
"Fast!" Damon exclaimed. His magic thrummed, and the marble tiling beneath, between Quinn and him, broke away, and the floor started to shake and split, aiming to throw Quinn off balance.
Quinn didn't blink, flinch, or slow down. He kicked the floor and took a body magic-powered leap above; Quinn didn't stop and immediately cast wind magic to push him up and ahead. He thrust his hands forward, and wind blades flew out from his body and sheered towards Damon.
Damon, though surprised, didn't lose the focus of the fight and immediately countered with wind magic that surprised Quinn as his wind attacks were canceled out. Damon didn't stop, and the broken tiles transfigured into metal chakras and shot up towards the mid-flight Quinn.
Quinn didn't give the metal chakras a glance and directly simul-cast two magics. The metal discs coming towards groaned and crumbled into balls while a war hammer with a long handle made from Empyrean manifested in his hands cocked above his head, ready to be brought down directly on Damon.
Damon's pupils dilated. He raised his hands above his head, and the twin rings glowed brightly as a shield manifested above his head.
Bang! The war hammer cracked down on Damon's shield. The shield flickered, its glow dimming as Quinn's hammer did damage to its integrity.
Quinn didn't stop for the shield blocking him away from Damon to disappear and landed on the ground. Two spells charged up in his palm and shot them towards Damon the very second the shield collapsed.
'This will hurt,' thought Quinn as he jumped back a few steps.
The next moment, a deep purple shield appeared in front of Damon, again blocking Quinn's attack from reaching Damon. Quinn didn't skip a beat and let the spells fizzle out; instead, he cast another magic, many times more potent than the previous attack. He again let the magic assault into the purple shield, and an explosion boomed on impact.
When the magic settled, Damon stood behind the shield, staring at Quinn.
"It's not going to work," said Damon with a complicated in his eyes.
Quinn, wide-eyed, stared at the unfazed shield. There wasn't even a single speck of damage on it. Without a single word, Quinn charged his magic and cast a more powerful explosive offense magic onto the shield, sending more louder and brighter explosions, only contained by the yellow barriers that Quinn had cast.
"Don't waste your energy," said Damon, looking down his neckline at the soft glow underneath his clothes. "The shield is not going to break."
Quinn didn't stop and started the barrage of successively stronger magic at the shield until he couldn't cast a stronger magic that wouldn't Hogwarts structural integrity.
He stared at the shield and Damon for a while before sitting down on the floor. "You must be powerful for you to be able to cast a shield that I can't even put a scratch on," he said.
"It's a magical item," said Damon as he watched Quinn cast magic on the floor, restoring it to the pre-fight stage.
"So, who are you," asked Quinn. "Are you grandfather's secret child that he kept hidden from the family? Or are you my late father's illegitimate child that he had with a woman other than my mother?"
Damon didn't reply, though there was something in his eyes that Quinn couldn't put a finger upon.
"You can tell me, I don't really mind if there's another West out there," said Quinn. "Moreover, if you are family, I would like to know more about you— and seeing that you were in the AID office, it seems you know about me, so it is only fair that you share something about yourself."
"I... I, listen—" Damon sighed. He went silent for a moment and stared at Quinn through the purple shield. After a few moments of silence, he reached into his clothes and grabbed the neck chain, and a ring glow later, the purple shield was gone.
"Listen, I am not saying this for just avoiding answering, but I can't really tell you—"
Damon's eyes widened when he saw a smile on Quinn's face. The next moment, ice rose from the floor, and before he could blink, he was covered in a block of ice till the neck. His eye jumped down, trying to look at his hands, but he could only feel it as the rings on his hands were twisted out from his fingers and taken away from him.
Quinn stood up from the floor and walked towards the frozen Damon and stretched his hand as the rings encased in pockets of water flew out of ice and landed into his hands.
"Give those back!"
Quinn picked up the ring and raised it to his eye line to observe it.
"You shouldn't trust your opponent so easily," said Quinn. "I mean, even if you're a West, I don't know you, so yeah... it is your fault."
Damon growled as he glared at Quinn with anger, betrayal flashing in his eyes.
"I will check them out later," Quinn pocketed the rings and looked at Damon. "For now, I would like to get my answers; from the looks of it, you aren't going to get them from your mouth, so we are going to use the magical route."
He stepped closer to Damon and spoke, "If you would look into my eyes and relax, everything will be over before you know it."
Damon's eyes widened, realizing what would happen, and he couldn't close them as magic held them open. "No, wait! Stop!"
"Oh my, I couldn't see it in this light, but you have heterochromia. That's neat— well, at least one of them is stone-grey."
"Stop! Please, you don't want to do this!"
Quinn reached out with Legilimency into Damon's mind with a calm smile. The smile froze and died down as Damon tried to struggle out of the freezing bind.
He couldn't feel a mind where a mind should be. His Legilemency couldn't find the presence of a mind inside Damon. It was something that had never happened— everyone had a mind, no matter if they were unprotected as a newborn baby or as protected as Alan D. Baddeley's.
"Damon... where is your mind?"
Quinn frowned when he didn't hear anything from Damon, not even sounds of him struggling. He focused out and on his face to see that Damon's wide eyes were staring behind him.
"Where are you looking at?"
He turned and suddenly came across a man dressed in a suit standing behind him, staring at him with eyes that he had only seen on two other people.
Before he could speak or make a move, his entire body froze. Every muscle in his body betrayed him and refused to obey his command.
"I would like to have my son released."
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Quinn West - MC - Yeah, I don't care about fairness.
Damon - West??? - Naive? Or is there a reason?
FictionOnlyReader - Author - Well? How about that!
