Chapter 124: Self-Exploring, Nordic, Squabble (1/2)
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The link is also in the synopsis.
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Aksel Thorn sat on the sofa in the lounge area of the hotel's master suite, booked for Quinn to stay in for his time in Denmark, reading the newspaper Daily Eyewitness for the daily happenings in the community. He, too, had been staying with Quinn instead of living in the comfort of his own home. The instructions for his job had been clear; he was to stay with Quinn and don't leave him alone.
It was eight days since Quinn had arrived in Aarhus, Denmark, and today was also the last day of his stay here. Tomorrow morning, the portkey back to Quinn's home, Herefordshire in West Midlands of England, would activate, and Quinn West would return to his own country. Setting Aksel free from being a chaperone so that he could return to his actual and much more meaningful job.
He looked up from his newspaper to the closed door of the master bedroom that Quinn was using. The British teenager had been spending a lot of his time inside his room since day five.
Quinn would wake up at the same time as him and would go work out at a park nearby, wash up, eat breakfast at a new restaurant, and then they would go to Haldor's apparition classes to learn apparition. They would return after Quinn spent two to three hours practicing apparition. A time that both he and Haldor believed to be a ridiculous amount of time to devote to apparition magic every day. Most people would practice it for a quarter of an hour each session and not the time Quinn put in.
They would return just before lunch and eat their second meal at a new restaurant yet again, and then Quinn would rest for an hour in his room before he would drag him to explore more of the community for the rest of the day and call it a day after eating dinner a new restaurant. After that, Quinn would retreat into his room, and it would be the last time Aksel would see him for the day.
But this tourist-guide routine changed on the fifth day when Quinn didn't ask him to continue exploring his homeland and choose to rest for the day inside his room.
Aksel assumed it was magic fatigue from the long sessions of apparition every day. Apparition magic was magic-heavy sorcery, and it was already astonishing that Quinn was able to go three days without choosing to rest after spending more than two hours of continuous apparitions.
Aksel's assumption seemed right when on the sixth day, Quinn once again asked him to be his guide for the day, and they repeated the routine they had been following. Quinn seemed to be feeling as energetic as ever, suggesting that the day's rest had worked for the magic recovery. But then the same thing happened on the seventh day when Quinn decided to stay inside his room for the entire day, only coming out for meals at new restaurants.
And today, on the eighth day, Quinn was once again holed up in his room after returning from apparition classes and lunch. Aksel raised his wrist to check the time on his watch and saw that the time was five in the evening and decided to check on Quinn.
Quinn had been civil in his stay here with him and hadn't given him much trouble, unlike what the briefing had warned him. Today was Quinn's last day in Denmark, and Aksel wanted to find if he wanted to go out today.
Aksel got up from his sofa and walked to Quinn's door.
”Quinn,” called Aksel, knocking on the door. Then waited for his charge to answer, but no answer came from the inside. So he knocked on the door once again and called out a bit louder this time. Once again, the silence was returned to his calls.
Aksel's first thought was that Quinn was asleep and turned away from the door to let him sleep until it was time for dinner. But after talking a few steps away from Quinn's door, Aksel stopped and turned back to the door. He thought back to the briefing he had been provided on Quinn, and another thought entered Aksel's mind.
”... Would he? No, right? He didn't give me any trouble,” muttered Aksel as he stood still for a moment before walking to Quinn's door and turning the door handle to open the door.
Inside he saw that the candles were lit, bathing the room in light, but his eyes widened when he saw no signs of Quinn inside the room. Aksel immediately entered the room, briskly walked to the attached bathroom, and opened the door to see it empty.
”Oh, no,” spoke Aksel as his hands tightened into a fist.
Quinn West had evaded him without knowing, and he had no idea where the person he was supposed to protect was.
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- (Scene Break) -
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Quinn smiled as he walked through the biggest magical hotspots of Aarhus, wandering between the magical population of Denmark, which gathered to work, shop, and enjoy themselves. The streets he strolled through were similar to the ones of Daigon Alley and the other markets surrounding it.
He had already visited the area with Aksel, so he knew the layout and had memorized the streets. Occlumency had helped him greatly to remember the details needed to navigate without the assistance of Aksel or any other native.
Exploring with Aksel was fine-and-all, but the Danish chaperone stuck to the shops in the central area and some of the local spots he knew from living in Aarhus, refusing to be adventurous and detour to new and exciting places.
'Places similar to Knockturn Alley back home. Places frequented by those who deal in the so-called ”darker” arts,' thought Quinn as he browsed through the shops on the central street where people who wanted nothing to do with the ”darker” aspect of the society.
These were the places that Aksel took him to, but Quinn was only in Denmark for a week and didn't have much time, so he needed to move along and dive deeper to get what he wanted. And to accomplish that, he started to sneak out of the hotel room starting from the fifth day.
It wasn't easy to get past Aksel; as it turned out, his chaperone was great at his job. It had taken a bit of magic to get past without Aksel doing aware that he was gone. Quinn had employed very subtle use of confundus charms, illusion magic, sound magic, and watching his timing of sneaking out.
He was successful on his first day, which turned out to be great because it didn't arise Aksel's suspicion, and Quinn could easily sneak out today and the day yesterday. He had to stay with Aksel on the sixth day to check if the Danish man was suspicious: fortunately, Aksel didn't have any inkling of what had transpired.
Quinn ducked into a dark alley between two buildings, momentarily distancing himself from the crowd. No one came out of the tunnel for a full minute before a grown man with golden hair and blue eyes walked out of the dark alley with a handsome smile on his face.
He casually walked back into the crowd and continued to walk among them with his hands behind his back, but if one was paying attention, they would notice that the man was trying not to make even the slightest contact with anyone.
The man was, of course, Quinn West, albeit not in his usual form. This was the form Quinn used to mingle amongst the market while hiding himself from everyone.
There were a couple of ways through which a person could change their appearance. The ones Quinn knew were Polyjuice potion that could copy the target's appearance to a T, full-body transfiguration to alter the body structure, and finally, illusion magic to cast a glamor that would deceive the eyes of an observer.
Polyjuice potion wasn't usable in this situation because Quinn didn't have any hair from a British person, and taking hair from a Danish person would be risky with chances of getting recognized. Plus, the Polyjuice potion took a month to brew, and Quinn only had a few doses that he was saving for emergencies.
Full-body transfiguration was an application of transfiguring the body to alter the structure and appearance to resemble someone else. The concept was a simpler version of what a metamorphmagus did instinctively on a daily basis.
A highly skilled and trained transfiguration master who specialized in self-transfiguration could recreate a metamorphmagus's genetic ability. What came naturally to a metamorphmagi required hard work to a person who lacked the trait. Quinn, on his current level, could perform a self full-body transfiguration. But not on a level where he could change his body structure on a whim.
The last option was illusion magic, something Quinn was quite skilled at, and it was the method he was using. The face he wore was an amalgamation of features from a couple of different people from non-magical England. A random face, yet slightly charming face, made from borrowed facial features to create something that couldn't be tracked as the person didn't exist.
Recreated by the use of illusion magic to sculpt a body over Quinn's actual body. The body was taller than Quinn's, meaning that if he were to turn his head, then the illusion's head a few inches above him would also turn the exact same way. If he raised his hand, then the surrounding illusion would raise his hand.
If he grabbed something, then it would be through magically produced telekinesis. Even if Quinn collided with someone, then they would be coming in contact with a force field roughly in the shape of Quinn's illusion body, and they would feel like that they came in contact with an actual body through the means of tactile illusion magic that messed with the sense of touch.
But it was best Quinn didn't come in contact with anyone at all. Prevention was better than cure, after all.
Slowly the crowd thinned, and people started to turn away from the direction Quinn was walking in. The central area that shone with activity and beaming with lively air slowly faded into grey streets and dim buildings. The place's turned dull and simple, but yet there was a freeness in the air.
As Quinn walked, the few people in the different streets would give him a glance over for identification as if he was prey. The shopkeepers inside their shops would check him out to see if they could profit from him as they ripped him off his money for artifacts that would turn out to be a fake.
But Quinn didn't give any of them a single look. He simply walked with a smile of confidence on his face that radiated that he belonged here and knew what he was doing. Walking for five minutes and deep into a darker side of the Danish magical community, Quinn arrived at a storefront with no signboard on it.
None of the stores in this part of the area had name boards. The people who visited here either already the names and function of the shops. If they were new, the information was communicated via word of mouth. No advertisement was ever required or necessary.
Quinn had gotten the information about the entire region on the first day when he let a woman lure him into a shop where she tried to con him into buying a book that she described as a grimoire with a thousand ancient spells. Quinn let her talk and went along by pretending to believe her lies. In actuality, he was simply listening to gain time as he used legilimency on her to find all he needed to know about the place known as Mørke Gade.
The door-chime over the door rang while it loudly creaked open as Quinn entered the store. The ringing and creaking filled the otherwise quiet store, alerting an old man behind the counter who had his eyes closed to open them to see Quinn's illusion form standing there.
”Mr. John,” greeted the old man. ”You're here once again.”
Quinn, or the name he was using, John without a family name, just like Haldor greeted back. ”Of course, old man Gamel. You've things that I'm interested in, and you drive a hard bargain. But today, I'm going to get what I want.
The old owner of the store chuckled slyly. ”You're asking me for something precious, Mr. John.” He then looked at Quinn with a gaze as clever as a fox. ”Not only it's precious, but the tomes you seek are also dangerous. If I give them to you, would you be able to handle them?”
Quinn, in the form of John, laughed lightly. ”Thank you for your concern, old man Gamel. But, I will be fine.” He then reached into his clothes and took out a medium-sized pouch, and jiggled it for the bag to make clinking sounds. ”I have coin and lot of it. You want it, so let's put an end to this farce, and you tell me how much do you want.”
Gamel, the shop owner, was able to speak English, and because Quinn couldn't speak Danish, he had to communicate with someone who spoke English. Gamel was one of them, and he had the thing that Quinn wanted.
The old man stood up from his seat and walked to the back room of the simple store with his walking stick for support. Gamel returned with an ancient tome in his hands. It had a thick brown case as its cover, and the pages inside were thick parchment which had turned yellow with time.
The tome looked like it could fall apart any moment, and yet Quinn knew that it wouldn't fall apart. He could feel traces of esoteric magic coming from the tome, and that's what told him that the ancient tome was the real deal and not just some old book.
Gamel set down the tome on the counter, and there was word engraved on the thick leather-bound cover of the tome.
「Book.」
That was all the cover of the tome said. But that wasn't important; the important thing was the language of the word. Quinn was able to read it because he knew the characters. It was written in runes and a type of runic language he recognized.
'Younger Futhark,' thought Quinn and looked up at old man Gamel when he said the source of this book.
”The tome is from the Nordic warlocks of the Viking age.”
Vikings.
It was the modern name given to seafaring Nordic pirates from southern Scandinavia who, from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries, raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe. They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, and North America.