Corvus' feet touched stone and let Phase bleed away. Speed and Agility stayed. The room stretched thin around him. Four hooded figures raised wands in a slow unfurl. Light swelled at four tips. Stunners, clean and textbook for a target that cannot use magic.
Choice came and went in a breath. Dead wizards were useless, alive though they could be questioned, repurposed. He lifted the Elder Wand and sent four coma curses without a whisper. The bolts crossed midair like red threads and struck chest, shoulder, shoulder, throat. Each fizzled against grey cloth and died as if swallowed. The robes drank the spells and kept going.
It was their armour he judged. Solid work to stop a curse from him. Heavy enchantment layered into the weave. The solution was easy, fix it the old way.
The conjured dagger he had shaped at the door vanished on a breath. 'Evanesco.' Air filled the space it left. His hand opened for weight. A heavy hammer answered. Not pretty, not ceremonial and definitely not for delicate work. A haft that fit his palm and a head that would end a limb in one blow. He moved.
-
To the Unspeakables he became a smear of black with light inside it. They lost him between one blink and the next. He slid past the first wand and brought the hammer down into the man's right knee. Stone rang. The joint folded. A cry tore free and stretched thin by his speed until it was only a long ribbon of sound. The second cut came up into the same man's right elbow. Bone gave with a dull pop. The third took the left forearm just above the wrist. The wand fell. Corvus caught it from the air and dropped it into the mokeskin pouch without looking.
He pivoted on the planted foot and stepped into the second hood. The hammer rose from low hip and travelled a short, hard arc. Impact landed between the legs unlucky sod. The body started to fold on instinct older than magic. A breath later both arms broke clean at the joint. The wand jumped. He plucked it and was gone before the pain of the last hit reached the man's brain.
The third was cleaner, The hammer clipped the wand hand, then the shoulder. Joints failed like weak links. Corvus slipped the wand away and stepped through his own wake toward the fourth.
The last of the four aimed to the position Corvus was. when Corvus tilted his head brom behind the the Unspeakable and closed one eye to see where he was aiming exactly, it was for the centre of Corvus' chest. The spell was still forming at the tip and did not leave the wood. A quick twist of the hammer's flat face into the ribs broke the man's focus. Corvus let the head fall a handspan onto the left knee and felt the crack through the haft. He took the wand as the leg buckled and eased the body down enough to keep the skull from striking the floor.
Speed ebbed. Sound returned to its given shape. Four men screamed to their hears content. None could lift a hand. Wands sat warm in Corvus' pouch. He crouched by the first and pushed the hood back.
Middle aged, lines at the eyes. No ring, no obvious house mark. Corvus set locked his gaze to the panicked and painfilled eyes of the man and let Memory Mapping take hold. The contact opened in a spread.
Twelve anchors, twelve rooms, twelve leads. Sixty Unspeakables in total, give or take for illness and leave. Twelve of them were the council that rules this department. Six seniors among the twelve, each with run of a chamber and authority to close a door for days if a thing inside was exciting enough. Maps of the floors slid past as if drawn on oiled paper and stacked. The entrance chamber sat at the hub. Time rooms ticked to the left in a wing that did not care for visitors. Prophecy kept to the right behind glass and curse. The Veil sat lower where even memory did not like to look. He let that one pass without taste.
He broke contact cleanly and breathed once to settle. "Thank you," he said to the air, and moved to the next. Faces changed. The details did not. They repeated with small changes that told him the structure was sound. He took what he needed.
The robes drew his eye again. Up close the weave showed its secrets. Threads were not single. Each strand braided cloth with hair and something that felt like dried fiber, like a heartstring. Rune lines ran through the warp, not painted later, but woven in at birth. It drank the curses thrown at it and turned common hexes to more resilience. It did not stop a hammer to dismay of these four.
He stripped the first one down. The weight surprised him. His mokeskin pouch took it in. The rest followed. Coma Curse, this time did not find any resistance. as the four layed silently, harmless and bloodied.
--
The twelve doors waited like identical faces with different souls behind them. Corvus stood in the centre of the entrance chamber and let the quiet settle. The men he had put down breathed in a ragged line by the threshold.
He laid a square of parchment on the floor with a flick and wrote a note for the old guard behind him:
Hub with twelve doors. Each door leads to a chamber bound to an aspect. Senior Unspeakable per room. Do not assume a door keeps the same destination between openings as they rotate on each use. Robes of the Unspeakables are defending them against spells use physical attack to subdue.
He sealed it to the stone with a touch and straightened. The Elder Wand weighed easy in his palm. Bloodsight skimmed the edges of the twelve thresholds and came back with the same answer from each, magic gathered and held, but no clear flavour unless you lived with it long enough to breathe and recognise it.
He wondered what would Time smell of feel like. Death would be cold without draft, at least this was what he thought. Alas, he would go in blind.
He walked to the nearest door on his right. The black wood gave nothing of what lies behind. He set his palm to the seam and felt the wards press once in acknowledgement.
"Let us see what you keep," he said, and drew the door wide.
Stone fell away in tiers like an old amphitheatre. Benches sank toward a floor that was not a floor at all but an ancient arch, freestanding at the centre. A tattered black veil hung from it, thin as smoke and never still. Voices moved in it without wind. Not loud and not with words. A current that tugged at the ear and promised answers if you stepped into it.
The Elder Wand trembled in his hand as if it recognised the place.
"Not now," he thought, and let his breath even. At the far benches seven cloaked figures turned toward him.
Speed came back in a clean slide. Agility settled over his bones. He stepped off the top tier and crossed the distance in a breath. He conjured a war hammer this time.
To the hooded figures he was only a blur in the dim. The first knee broke before the wand lifted. The second lost the wand hand and the shoulder in two short cuts. The third folded on a strike to the ribs, then the elbow. He took each wand as it fell and moved on. The hammer did what spells could not against rune soaked cloth. Limbs failed. Bodies went down. He did not let a skull meet stone.
When he let the speed fall away, the room returned to itself. Seven researchers lay dropped one after another in screams of agony and cursing through their hoods, arms and legs ruined for now. Seven more robes waited for study. He knelt, pulled back a hood, Memory Mapping snapped and took in what they have in mind, literally. Layouts, chains of command, the small habits of a room that had watched the Veil for years. He took what he needed and kept the rest for study. .
He stripped the robes quickly, rolled them tight from hem to collar, and added them to the ones he got from the first four. Coma curses followed, there was no need for the defeated ones to act freely.
He backed up the tiers without turning his back to the arch. The veil whispered and did not change its song. At the threshold he glanced once at the old arch and filed the tremor of the Elder Wand away for later. He will come back to see what will happen when all three artifacts are together.
He stepped into the hub and pulled the door close without letting the latch kiss the frame. "Death is secure," he said for the benefit of the line. "Eleven down, robes taken."
He watched as the chamber started to move the moment he closed the door of the Death Room. The next door stopped in front. He set his palm to the seam, felt the wards press once, and opened it to whatever came next.
--
Croaker stood over the map and watched the ink move in illogical patterns. Lines traced the corridors in dim blue. Bright motes marked staff on duty. Four near the hub dimmed in sequence and slid to the edge in amber. Alive yet injured. The door rune for Death flickered from shut to open to shut again. Seven motes inside that chamber went from bright to amber just as fast.
He tapped the brass ring at the map's rim. Glyphs shifted. The entrance threshold plates showed as active. Suppression woven into the fourth tread reported green.
"Impossible," he said. His voice came calm out of habit. "The plates bit. He shouldn't have been able to cast."
The Elder of Death rested both hands on the table. "He can still break bones without casting. He has the body, I cannot say anything about his skills." she said.
Croaker simply shook his head. No Witch or Wizard was training their body anymore. That breed died long, long time ago. "The robes," Croaker answered. "They absorb magic from the spells. They work up to and including the Killing Curse. He did not have a path."
"Robes absorbs magic," the Elder of Space said. "Not fists."
Still Croaker did not give even the smallest of a possibility that a Black has learned martial magic or sword arts.
His gaze went back to the hub. The old guard settling along the wall in a clean line. Another chime marked the lift. More motes arrived, nineteen in total. "The map is fluctuating. The arrays may be out at the seams."
The Elder of Time drew a circle on the desk beside the map and pressed pressed the tip of his wand while chanting. "The runes, wards and arrays are intact," she said. "Your hub ward held. Your suppression held the boy simply avoided it."
Croaker kept his eyes on the ink. "A fluctuation," he said. "We will correct it after we take him."
Croaker focused on the map again. The hub doors showed identical, but the map printed the one he had just taken in a thread of colder light. Death. The next door to the left pricked a faint heat under the varnish.
"Time," the Elder of Time said. She did not smile. "If he turns that way, we can put him time arrays."
Croaker nodded once. "Prepare bubbles. Slow to a crawl on contact. Lattice them ten feet apart. No full arrest. I want him moving and in panic."
The Elder of Soul watched the seven amber lights in Death Room. "Send healers when the hall is ours," she said.
"Later," Croaker said. "We hold the hub first." He traced three quick sigils at the edge of the map. Hall lamps brightened a notch in answer somewhere below them. "Seal Death Room for now."
Fate lifted her head. "The second wave has arrived. Volkovs, Kraffts The Rosier girl. We need to suppress them."
Croaker marked them with a thumbnail. The motes took a rim of silver on the map. "They do not step past the threshold," he said. "They have orders to hold the line. They will not be our problem if he goes down inside Time."
"Assume he does not," Time said. "Assume he sees the bubble in the way a hawk sees a mouse."
He stood and waited for Corvus to take the door to his right. To the Time Room so he can open that genius mind to his heart's content.