Chapter 218: The Vault Is A Vault (1/2)
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The link is also in the synopsis.
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Magic was a supernatural force that changed aspects of the world at fundamental levels while allowing the possessors to perform feats outside the norm — feats like sensing what lay inside the deep, dense stones.
Quinn sat on the pedestal as an exceptional amount of magic flowed out of his body into the stone all around him; every knock and cranny of the vault room washed in his magic, filled to the brim, not a single grain of stone was left untouched by Quinn's magic.
'Uh-huh,' thought Quinn as he channeled Earth magic, 'I'm close.. . I'm really close; it just needs a little bit adjustment.. .'
Icy vault required his Ice magic to be excellent in both pure strength and fine laser control and skill. The Aquatic vault had the same arrangement with the solution to each trial being a mix of strength and skill, albeit each trial gave more weight to one than the other.
But now, as Quinn sat in the Architect's vault, he realized that this room only required pure skill for Earth magic without a requirement for power. Anyone with a decent amount of magic could train fine-train their Earth magic to succeed in this room, and currently, Quinn was close to making a breakthrough in his Earth magic skill. What he was trying to accomplish was to spread his magic into the stone and turn it into a sixth sense that would provide him a 'view' of the entire room.
'The fuzziness is because I lack control over my Earth magic.'
Quinn's magic in the stone shifted at his command — the density of his magic thickened in some places while in some areas, the magic thinned.
'Remember, it's not about the quantity of magic. The vault doesn't require floods of magic. Stigweard Gragg was an architect; he was the Architect.. . a profession that requires precision, calculation, and sureness to bring their creations to life.'
The design and nature of his magic changed. The days of him studying the type of this particular stone were ingrained in his mind, one of the most immersed memory books that he possessed in his mindscape.
'Imagine being present in every particle of stone.. . put yourself in the Architect's shoes.. . remember how to cast magic — focus your intent, apply the knowledge you have learned, and turn imagination into reality.. . and.. . bring about the blueprint, an architect's blueprint.'
Then it happened.
Quinn inhaled noisily as his magic clicked into place. The fuzziness that he experienced lifted in all but an instant, and everything became clear as if he was looking at the insides of the stone walls, floor, and ceilings in a brightly lit environment.
He opened his eyes and whispered, ”Illusion.. .” and the next moment, the self-illusion he cast on himself translated his Earth sense into vision — granting him something akin to x-ray vision.
'Illusion magic is convenient like that,' thought Quinn.
That was the last errant thought in Quinn's mind as the awe of the sight in front of him overtook his mind.
”Stigweard Gragg.. . for the love of magic, he really was an architect through and through, wasn't he.”
On the day, he had found that there were hollow spots inside the walls, floors, and ceiling; Quinn matched it with the solution to opening the archway but not in his slight imagination did he imagine that the fuzzy hollow would be something like this.
Every inch of the room, except the solid pedestal, was covered in gears of hundred sizes, shafts of different lengths and thicknesses, levers of different configurations, mechanical switches that locked into various places, rotating axils with screw-ends, oscillating half-wheels, deadbolts jammed into cam slots at dozens of sites, locking everything into place.
'The entire vault is god damned lock,' thought Quinn as he couldn't voice it in words.
Just below the pedestal were nine thick plates of stone, each connected to an intricate mechanism that, when solved, would separate the plates from the middle, pulling them apart, allowing the pedestal to sink a level with every solution.
”What a masterpiece,” he muttered, ”what ingenuity, what creativeness, what must his mind be like for him to create something like this.”
Every vault before this had been 'magical' in nature, but the Architect's vault was purely mechanical, without a trace of magic except the fortification of stone and fail-safes in case someone tried to brute their way through the vault. Just the thought of someone turning the entire room into one huge lock mechanism.
”.. . I don't know this level of lock-picking.”
Believe it or not, he had ordered various locks to pick while doing extra research on Unlocking charms (he followed the same method he taught in DA), but this was another level — this was the level used in complicated safes and.. . vaults.
Quinn jumped down from the pedestal and put his hands to his sides.
”I suppose I need to learn how to pick safes now,” he said while sighing but with a big smile on his face.
This was going to be different; he could feel it, and it made him excited all over again. He was going to learn something new, and that made his body fill up with giddiness.
”This is going to be grand.”
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- (Scene Break) -
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The Golden Squad exited Hagrid's house after having a good long chat with the recently home half-Giant.
”He was in bad shape,” said Hermione sighing.
Ron snorted in response, ”Bad is saying it lightly. I'm pretty sure he had his ribs broken.” Broken ribs weren't a severe injury in the magical world, but it was terrible anywhere if the injury was left unintended for days or yet more than a month, as in this case.
Hagrid's hair was matted with congealed blood, and his left eye had been reduced to a puffy slit amid a mass of purple-and-black bruises. There were many cuts on his face and hands, some of them still bleeding, and he was moving gingerly, which made Ron suspect broken ribs. It was evident that he had only just got home; a thick black traveling cloak lay over the back of a chair, and a haversack large enough to carry several small children leaned against the wall inside the door. They saw Hagrid himself, twice the size of a normal man and three times as broad, limped over to the fire and placing a copper kettle over it.
”We should inform Madam Pomfrey about him and tell her to heal him before Umbitch gets to him,” said Ivy deciding the best course of action.
The other three nodded. Umbridge had been overbearing these days; it was like she was out looking for even the smallest things to blow them out of proportion.
”But to think that Voldemort has been going after Giants,” said Harry, ”I wondered why someone like that bastard was so quiet, but it seems he was trying to get the Giants to his side.”
”Never knew that the Ministry was on a lookout for Portkeys,” said Hermione. It took a month to get to the place where Giants lived, and because anyone associated with Dumbledore was being monitored, Hagrid couldn't take a Portkey to the location and had to physically travel there.
Hagrid had told them that when he, along with Maxime Olympe, had reached the largest tribe of Giants on this side of Europe — a total of eighty Giants.
There were hundreds of tribes of Giants dotting the entire world map, but because they lived in small groups, it wasn't feasible for Voldemort to send delegations to each tribe as giving gifts to every small tribe was too costly and required too much effort; that's why this eighty Giant tribe was the only attainable option and thus was the one where Dumbledore sent Hagrid and Maxime to.
Hagrid and Maxime presented the Giant chief, Karkus, with gifts to garner his and the tribe's support — Giants loved magic, but because they couldn't perform it, so they liked to collect magical items; Dumbledore had sent a branch of Everlasting fire to help them to keep warm in the winter and cook food. Other gifts included a goblin-made helmet for the chief of a battle-hungry race and a great roll of old dragon hide.
Unfortunately for the Order of Pheonix delegation, just when Karkus had finally sat down with them Hagrid and Maxime to listen to them, tragedy struck — Giants weren't meant to live in tribes with more than a dozen members, and it seemed like an outsider bearing gifts had offset turmoil in the large tribe as the very next night, there was great inner-fight in which a dozen Giants died along with Karkus, the chief.
Giants were a violent race and had no qualms about killing their fellow members over food, best sleeping spots near warm fires, women, and that's why Giant tribes weren't larger than a dozen Giants each as that was the highest number a deep mountain or forest could adequately provide for without inciting in-fighting.
The next day, a new chief was elected, Golgomath.
The new chief, it seemed, was on a power roll and wanted to assert dominance to consolidate his position as the head, as the moment Hagrid presented them with their final gift (a great roll of dragon skin), Hagrid and Maxime were captured and hung upside down. They only escaped because of Maxime Olympe whipping out her wand and injuring their captures before making a break for it.
That was the end of Hagrid's and Maxime's talk with the tribe, as Giants hated the wizardkind. The humans had been hunting Giants for a very long time and were one of the reasons why Giants had gone through a great thinning in population worldwide. The moment Maxime had used wanded magic, any chances of communication were closed.
And as Hagrid and Maxime hid in caves to heal themselves before heading out, they chanced upon the newly arrived Death Eater delegation. And they had sent a familiar face, Macnair, which was why Golgomath didn't hang them up on sight; the rest was handled by a series of gifts to appease and impress the new chief.
”In the end, Voldemort got the Giants' support,” said Hermoine worriedly.
The four fell into silence as their minds turned in each's imagination of the repercussions of Giants falling into Voldemort's hands. Giants were hard to kill or even subdue.
”Hey, isn't that West there?” said Ron, breaking the silence as he pointed a short distance away from Hagrid's house.
Harry, Ivy, and Hermione turned to where Ron was pointing, and they saw Quinn leisurely walk out of the Forbidden Forest trees while stretching his hands over his head.