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When everything was quiet, and only the Diabolica's flame hummed softly, flooding the hall of the house with an otherworldly blue light, Delphine got up from her knees and examined my creation.
"Radical, but effective. I know where to go. Put it out."
With a wave of my wand, I extinguished the spell and followed Delphine, again moving quickly through the corridors of the house. Several times, on the move, we overloaded areas of the floor and walls with trap charms, simply launching energy-intensive spells into them or breaking the very surface to which the charms were attached.
In less than half a minute, we found ourselves in a two-level hall, along which a man I knew was running away from us. After checking everything with shadow and magic, I found nothing worthy of attention, and together with Delphine, we abruptly rushed after the man. But the strange thing is - he managed to cover the rest of the hall, after which he turned to us and grinned. It was as suspicious as possible. We stopped abruptly, creating a whole bunch of different shield charms from everything in a row, simultaneously strengthening it. As it turned out, it was not in vain.
A second - that was how long it took before powerful concentrated streams of magic, clearly carrying some sort of spell or curse, struck us from four directions. These dark blue beams struck the shields we'd created, knocking out blinding flashes of bright sparks. The attack lasted only a moment, and when it subsided, as well as the flow of magic from it, we were already standing in a well-lit stone hall without any special decorations, in the middle of a powerful force screen the size of the entire hall. On the second level of the hall, sixteen assorted wizards were standing around us behind the railing.
Delphine, after a quick look around, turned to me.
"Buy me five seconds..."
But I could see from the faces of the wizards surrounding us that they were going to mock us, not attack us. And I also found a lot of doors in the walls of the hall suspicious, and what is important — they weren't affected by the force magic field. Having launched the Architect's ability, which, to my joy, worked perfectly, I found behind each of the doors a hefty werewolf on chains and with foam at the mouth. The shadow was able to get out of the field, but I immediately returned everything as it is - what if they find out that it works?
"Let me take it from here," I whispered quietly to the Delphine standing beside me. "It's not just your revenge. How much material do you need?"
"One. Selwyn."
"Well, well, well," spoke Selwyn, already standing on the second floor of the hall and looking up at us, leaning against the railing. "Who do we have here? What am I talking about? It's like I didn't know you were coming, Delphine."
The dark-haired man chuckled, and the others echoed him but stopped at a hand gesture.
"By the way, not likely, of course, but do you know where my faithful comrades have gone? Jugson, for example? No?"
"You'll meet soon," Delphine replied calmly, throwing a couple of simple spells at the barrier with her wand to see the exact reaction of the magic.
"You don't have to try - you won't get out of there. It's an old family trick to restrain recalcitrant wizards. If you only knew how those pathetic Muggles we let in to feed this creation screamed."
The wizards around him laughed again, but they fell silent, as before, at Selwyn's hand gesture. He unzipped his robe, revealing his leather camping suit for a moment, and pulled a small cube from the pouch on his belt.
"The Dark Lord does not tolerate refusals, as well as failures, and he is always merciful to those who fulfill his will. My son," Selwyn glanced at me, "because of you, brat, who ended up in Azkaban won't stay there long. Your last words?"
Selwyn pressed the edge of the cube, and the doors in the walls abruptly opened, revealing werewolves on chains. When they saw the prey, they immediately went wild, pulling these chains with a clang, but they withstood, keeping the distraught creatures in place.
Trying to feel the magic, I found a powerful and crazy saturated ritual structure under our feet, but it was not there until the moment of activation. In fact, neither were the wizards around. It's worth paying attention to such things in the future. Literally creating a blade of blood under the heel, I made my way through the floor with it to the very contour of the ritual, starting to fill it and preparing to absorb magic according to the scheme remembered by Rowena back in my state of disordered consciousness.
"If anything, mine are ready to attack right now," Delphine whispered, giving me the "helm" of the operation, so to speak.
It seems that the pretentious villain is waking up in me again…